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Bread Not Stone-Feminist Theo
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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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