On Feminist Interpretation of the Bible: A Brief Summary

Last updated on: May 29, 2015 at 10:05 am by Kyle Roberts

On Feminist Interpretation of the Bible: A Brief Summary 2015-05-29T10:05:26-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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The following is a draft of an excerpt from the introduction to a chapter I’m writing on feminist biblical interpretation. Anything off here? Anything I missed?

Like liberation theology and other self-consciously contextual theologies, feminist biblical interpretation takes its point of departure from the lived experiences of the interpreters–in this case, of women. Womanist interpretation designates, in particular, the context of African and African-American women in reading the Bible which, while overlapping with feminist concerns, also claims significant distinction from Anglo, Euro-American feminism. For both womanist and feminist interpretation, the experience of marginalization, disenfranchisement and oppression (in either explicit or implicit forms) awakens sensitivity to social location and to bias—the bias of authors and editors/redactors but also of readers. For feminist readers, in particular, the Bible reflects the long historical influence of patriarchy, both in its original formation and in the history of its interpretation—but especially the “orthodox” interpretations of the Bible, which have been sanctioned by the formal institutions of Christianity—to the exclusion of lesser known (and often deemed heretical) readings. Feminist readers, by and large, attempt to expose the patriarchal influences undergirding both the Bible’s formation and its received interpretations. They attempt to bring to light forgotten or overlooked narratives, images, figures, and theologies within the biblical text itself as well as to decenter patriarchal readings so that heretofore marginalized ones can be heard or reheard.

Feminist interpretations, like all consciously contextual approaches, are acutely aware of hermeneutical, theological, and political bias, and include in the practice of interpretation acknowledged objectives, such as: exposing sexism and creating, through both creative and faithful hermeneutical practices, some combination of the following: affirmation of the equality of the sexes, affirmation of the diversity/complexity of gendered experience, the contribution of women’s’ theologies to Jewish and Christian understanding of the Bible. Feminist scholars rightly insist that only the difficult work of critical interpretation can sufficiently expose the patriarchal hegemony underlying many biblical texts. Only painstaking attentiveness can discern and uncover forgotten or neglected elements in the Bible, which elements speak a counter-cultural or prophetic word against patriarchal norms and expectations. Uncovering these forgotten or marginalized witnesses within the Bible itself is a way of explicitly affirming the full equality of women. Feminist read the text with a critical consciousness and a hermeneutic of suspicion—though also (as some feminists will insist) this critical reading is balanced by or alternates with a hermeneutic of trust [1]. This balance or dialectic, combined with feminists’ theological and political goals, means that in some cases the Bible’s patriarchy needs to be exposed, addressed and critiqued whereas in other cases, the Bible’s affirmations of the equality of women and celebration of diversity needs to be highlighted—delivered from the obscuring shadows of patriarchal readings.

[1] For a good example of the stated goal of balancing a hermeneutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of trust in biblical interpretation, see Ann Clifford’s Introducing Feminist Theology, Orbis Books, 2000.

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