Feminist Hermeneutics
Before an undergraduate student proceeds to a discussion of hermeneutics, he or she ought to reflect upon the following questions: "What is the place of the Bible in your theology?" "What is the object of your interpretation?" "What is the role of authorial intent in your interpretation?" "Do you think that the Bible is infallible or inerrant?"
A feminist hermeneutic is not a methodology so much as a goal. If the reading entails a feminist critique and/or promotes the social, political or religious advancement of women, then it is a feminist reading. It begins with the a prior position that the Bible is not inerrant and that meaning resides with the reader rather than the author or text.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in "The Will to Choose or to Reject: Continuing Our Critical Work," Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Westminster Press, 1985), pp.125-136, identifies the following principles:
1. "[A] feminist critical hermeneutics of suspicion places a warning label on all biblical texts: Caution! Could be dangerous to your health and survival. Not only is scripture interpreted by a long line of men and proclaimed in patriarchal churches, it is also authored by men, written in androcentric language, reflective or religious male experience, selected and transmitted by male religious leadership. Without question the Bible is a male book." (130)
2. "[F]eminist theology must first of all denounce all texts and traditions that perpetuate and legitimate oppressive patriarchal structures and ideologies. We no longer should proclaim them as the "word of God" for contemporary communities and people if we do not want to turn God into a God of oppression." (132)
3. "Such a hermeneutics of proclamation must be balanced by a hermeneutics of remembrance Rather than abandon the memory of our foresisters' sufferings, visions, and hopes in our patriarchal biblical past, such a hermeneutics reclaims their sufferings, struggles, and victories through the subversive power of the "remembered" past. (133)
The first published attempt at such a reading appeared in 1895-98 in a work by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (American Suffragette) entitled The Women's Bible
Cady Stanton simply trimmed the text, for example, choosing the first account of the creation of humanity and eliminating the second. Rather than being well received, many women left the suffrage movement because they considered such a publication as suspect of heresy.
Mary Daly's response to works such as Cady Stanton's is as follows, "It may be interesting to speculate onthe probable length of a "depatriarchalized Bible." Perhaps there would be enough salvagable material to comprise an interesting pamphlet." Beyond God the Father, p. ? Given that the prevailing hermeneutic of the 1970's considered a valid hermeneutic one that recovered the author's intent or the intent of the text and that the author and text presupposed a patriarchal reality, the interpretation was bound also to be patriarchal. Given that the Bible is an historical document, it is difficult to justify altering the words or surgically removing a few texts. Mary Daly's approach is, therefore, to leave it behind. |
In the 1980's and 90's, biblical scholars began to turn to alternate methodologies to the historical criticism that had prevailed during the late nineteen and twentieth centuries. Some of these methods were generated by feminism, others received impetus by the need to find more edifying readings or questions than those being asked.
At this time, biblical studies seems to be awash with methodologies and criticisms. It is difficult for even the most active scholar to stay on top of the critical literature. The expertise of sociologists, literary scholars, continental philosophy, structuralist, post-structuralist, and psychology have gained the attention of biblical scholars. The following is a list of methodologies that feminist scholars have employed. It is by no means exhaustive nor definitive of the way scholars categorize their work. None of these are necessarily feminist methodologies.
Ideological Criticism -- Both the ideology of the text and that of the reader may be at issue.
Ideology: A false consciousness that produces social and politicial institutions that tend to be tools of oppression or allow for injustice.
"[I]deological criticism has as its primary purpose the task of exposing and charting in language and dynamics of these power relations as they come to expression in language, in conflicting ideologies operating in discourse, and in flesh and blood readers of texts in their concreete social locations and relations." The Postmodern Bible (Yale University Press, 1995) p. 274.
Goodnet Bibliography:
The Bible and Culture Collective.The Postmodern Bible . BS 476 .P67 1995.
Day, Peggy. Gender and difference in ancient Israel. BS1199.W7 G46 1989.
Jobling, David. The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis. BS 1171.2 .B52 1991
Foucault, Michel.The Archaeology of Knowledge. AZ101 .F6813x 1976
Often Narrotology (a form of literary criticism that asks the questions of Mieke Bal (theory of focalization) "who speaks? who sees? who acts?"
Application: Michal
Goodnet Bibliography
Bal, Mieke. Lethal love : feminist literary readings of biblical love stories. BS575 .B2913 1987
Chatman, Seymour Benjamin, Story and discourse : narrative structure in fiction and film NX650.N37 C45 1980
Genette, GÈrard, Narrative discourse revisited. P302.7 .G4613 1988.
Sternberg, Meir. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative. BS535 .S725 1987.
Honor and Shame criticism: This form of criticism is borrowed from the field of Anthropology. It examines how the concepts of honor and shame effect institutions within the biblical world and the literary world of the Bible. For a fuller description cf. Honor and Shame.
Application: my own treatment of thee story of Abigail
Goodnet Bibliography:
Gottwald, Norman K. The tribes of Yahweh : a sociology of the religion of liberatedIsrael, 1250-1050 B.C.E. BS1199.S6 G67
Patai, Raphael, Sex and family in the Bible and the Middle East. BS680.S5 P3
Sumner, William Graham, Folkways; a study of the sociological importance of usages,manners, customs, mores, and morals.GT75 .S8 1959
Professor's Collection:
Honor and Shame in the World of the Bible, Semeia 68 (1994)
Narrative Criticism (a form of literary criticism): Mikhail Bakhtin provides some of the more helpful guidance into the world of narrative. Bakhtin looks at the interplay of voices in the text (polyphony) and agrues that a text is dialogic. He finds that two types of forces are at play in narratives, centrifugal (those that push toward a centrist or orthodox view) and centripetal (those that push the bounds of meaning outward). He argues that narratives can carnivalize social traditions and transform ideologies.
Application: Our Reading of Genesis 1-3
Criticism of Cultural Representation: How are texts used in cultural expressions such as paintings, literature or film?
Application: J. Cheryl Exum, "Bathsheba Plotted, Shot, and Painted," Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz.; Semeia 74 (1996) p. 47-74.
Collins, Jim et al. Film theory goes to the movies. PN1994 .F43915 1993
Exum, J. Cheryl.Plotted, shot, and painted : cultural representations of biblical women. BS575 .E98 1996.
In Cecil B. DeMille's second version of The Ten Commandments, the character of Nefertiti is introduced into the biblical story. Our analysis centres on the question of why she is needed, what does she contribute to plot, how does she change the plot? It seems to me that DeMille's audience needed some motive for Pharoah to persist in his refusal to let the Hebrew people leave Goshen. Perhaps the idea that God hardened his heart was too theologically ambiguous. Perhaps the exaltation of human will to overcome one's opponents as a virtue made it untenable to treat it as a vice. Perhaps, the clash of human will against divine will was simply too boring for good theatre. The desire for power is replaced by the seductive powers of a woman. The source of evil is a woman. The insertion of a completion for the affections of a woman between Moses and Ramses, Ramses jealousy when Moses is her preference, Nefertiti's scorn when she is rejected contribute to the plot in a way that threatens to overwhelm the biblical narrative. It succeeds because its audience can easily believe that a man would sacrifice the well being of his kingdom because of his frustrated love of a woman. The audience is prepared to overlook that DeMille's attempt to present them with another story and to do the miraculous to woo his audience puts him in the position of Pharoah rather than Moses, despite his avowed desire to mediate God's word in film.
Deconstructive Readings: Finding voices or ideas in the text that contradict or over turn the dominant ideology of the text.
One form of deconstructive reading is Counter Reading: Moving a female character to the center of the reading and not being bound by the ideology of the text.
Application: The story of Jezebel
Goodnet Bibliography:
De Lauretis, Teresa.Alice doesn't : feminism, semiotics, cinema PN1995.9.W6 D4 1984.
Exum, J. Cheryl. Fragmented women : feminist (sub)versions of biblical narratives. BS1199.W7 E88 1993
Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and film : both sides of the cameraPN1995.9.W6 K3 1983.
Kreitzer, L. Joseph The Old Testament in fiction and film : on reversing thehermeneutical flow. PN56.B5 K74 1994
Martin, Joel w. and Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr., eds. Screening the sacred : religion, myth, and ideology in popular American film. PN1995.5 .S36 1995.
Penley, Constance. The visible woman : imaging technologies, gender, and science. RA778 .V53 1998
Historical Criticism asks the simple questions "what happened?" and attempts to answer the question while governed by a strict set of rules of evidence.
This method has been very important in the past. It has given us a critical text. It has provided the philological tools of grammar and lexiconography that make it possible to read ancient languages. I it has made us aware of the genesis and editing (redaction) of the text, and drawn our attention to the different forms and the relationship between forms and sociological settings in the life of the community.
The application of historical criticism to a feminist hermeneutic lies in the historical reconstruction of the event behind the text that recovers women's central role.
Application: Examination of the centrality of women witnesses to the early church.
While these readings may be at odds with the way that the Bible has traditionally been read, you may find yourself asking whether or not they more adequately express the original authority intent or the meaning of the text.