Schussler Fiorenza's "feminist model of biblical interpretation" is a highly 
critical interpretation.  It differs from traditional studies of women and religion 
in two important ways.  Instead of writing "about woman" in a "prescriptive" 
way (109), the foundation of her feminist biblical hermeneutics is women's 
experience.  Secondly, a feminist critical hermeneutics treats the Bible as a 
"prototype: an "resource" not as an eternal changeless outline for religious life.
	The "right question" for her is theological instead of sociological, 
psychological, or political because Schussler Fiorenza searches for meaning and 
alternative interpretations of  the Bible, Although the need for this new 
interpretation and understanding seems to be based on the observations of the 
injustices that are felt by women in three secular realms, and sanctified b 
traditional religious structures.
	How can the believer know what is transcendent or divine in its essence, 
and what is a cultural creation born of a certain people at a definitive point in 
history?  This question seems to be the main problem in using a subjective 
position when interpreting the Bible.  Of course I believe on can take an advocate 
stance and still be a scholar.  I have never trusted objectivity; theological 
interpretations and literal claims about the Bible are always subjective.  Yet, if we 
accept that a literal or objective reading of the Bible is impossible, dangerous, 
and irrelevant because it was written in androcentric language and enshrine in 
patriarchal social construction, and if we agree that the Bible was written by men 
and not God, how does the Bible still have authority to the "women-church"?  I 
don't think calling the Bible a prototype and going through the hermeneutics of 
suspicion, proclamation, remembrance etc. makes sense to me.  Although I do 
think her feminist biblical hermeneutics works to bring out the liberating 
principles of the Bible, people have been using the Bible to justify their own 
beliefs and to assign meaning to certain situations that suit them for centuries.  
Because of all the layers of subjectivity and centuries of translation, I don't see 
how she can still hope for finding "liberating truths".  Why must the history in 
the Bible (or unspoken history) reflect her goals for the future and the religious 
principles she advocates?  Perhaps because I have no religious interest in the 
Bible I just don't comprehend how it could hold any weight when we recognize 
how fluid various translations can be.
	However, I do see what she means that "history is not written for people 
of past times but for people of out own times" (102)  Schussler Fiorenza explains 
that the Bible has been a "continuing cultural-political influence" (69).  I am just 
not convinced that is possible to identify "specific patriarchal structures and 
elements within biblical religion and family" (69) instead of claiming that the 
biblical religions reinforce and are, in fact, the patriarch.  I t is important to retain 
androcentric texts that describe the suffering and oppression of women in the 
past.  "This 'subversive memory' not only keeps alive the sufferings and hopes of 
women in the biblical past, but also allows for a universal solidarity among 
women" through " committed remembrance of their hopes and despairs in the 
church of women" (19, 20).  Retaining these androcentric texts and contrasting 
them with women's experiences in the past include women in history so that 
there is " historical consciousness for the present and future" (102).  Since history 
has always been "linked to the sociopolitical reality in which it arises and to the 
sociopolitical location of the historian who produces it" (103), it is important not 
to leave out these texts for they exemplify past oppression.
	The Bible is the major foundation of current social and political life.  
Although I have learned a tremendous amount from Bread Not Stone, I still reject 
the redemptive position that Schussler Fiorenza has incorporated.  Although I 
support those feminists that choose to do battle from within the systems that be, 
I am convinced that liberty needs to be created elsewhere.

Work Cited

Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Bread Not Stone.  Beacon Press, Boston: 1984
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