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SPEAKING DOCUMENT: The Personal is Still Political: What else did you expect, or have
we forgotten just how radical feminist exegesis can be?
Sheila A. Redmond, Department of History and Philosophy, 1520 Queen Street E., Algoma
University, Sault Ste Marie ON CA P6A 2G4.
Presented to the SBL International Meeting at the University of Amsterdam, July 24, 2012,
Amsterdam NL
1
Let me introduce myself:
I have been called a radical feminist theologian, a pastoral counselor, a psychotherapist. I did a
BA in History of Religions, MA in Intertestamental, PhD is seemingly uncategorizable – modern
Xianity?; Psychology of Religion; Sociology/Anthropology or Religion? I have taught
OT/HB/CB; Ethics, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, and am now ensconced in a History
& Philosophy department where I teach introductory courses in ANE/Ancient Egypt; Ancient
Greek & Roman; Early & Late Medieval; nineteenth and early twentieth century German history,
and Women’s history – a “regular Jane of all trades”. Most importantly, over the last 25 years, I
have been counseling adult survivors of child sexual abuse within Christian environments.
I was raised in the United Church of Canada, one of the most liberal denominations in North
America and as a UCC minister once said to me – “they are the only ones who would take you!”
My personal journey is partially available on my blog (www.sheilaredmond.com); my academic
on Academic Room (http://www.academicroom.com/users/sheila.redmond?1132335099=1).
Whenever I do exegesis, it is filtered primarily through my own struggles with the god of the
1
This text is 98% consistent with paper that I delivered in July. I have added a few footnotes for clarification; fixed
a few typos; and cleared up a few ambiguities in the text, either by rewriting slightly or adding a clarification
footnote.
2
bible, then the lens of my fellow travellers’ and clients’ experiences and with my self-
identification as a feminist.
Opening Remarks:
This paper isn’t quite what I had envisaged when I wrote the abstract. Two things contributed to
this. The first was a class that I taught in the winter term on modern women’s history. I teach this
particular course from the perspective of issues of feminism over the last 50 years. The women,
for the most part, did not want to engage with the material – a problem that is familiar for many
of my colleagues. One of the comments made anonymously by a student said that she didn’t
understand what domestic and sexual violence had to do with women’s history and why did she
have to deal with this in class! The second was the research and process of writing this paper. At
times, I was actually outraged because it is clear that we are not living and researching “in the
ruins of patriarchy”
2
.
The Crux of the Issue
The main question that I was responding to in the Call for Papers is “why hasn’t feminist
exegesis been integrated into the forms of traditional exegesis”?
3
Why can’t, for example, the
structures of “hermeneutics of suspicion” or “hermeneutics of critical evaluation” be part of what
2
A piece of wishful thinking proposed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English in For Her Own Good: Two
Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (2005(1978)), 3-26.
3
I would also ask why haven’t the insights of feminist exegesis and other research on women in the ANE been
integrated into the “History of the Hebrew Bible/Ancient Israel”? If they did, it would probably be called a “feminist
history of the Hebrew Bible/Ancient Israel” and be relegated to the back of the shelf. See Peggy L. Day, “Hebrew
Bible Goddesses and Modern Feminist Scholarship” Religion Compass 6/6(2012): 298-308.
3
is taught as exegesis.
4
Calling it feminist exegesis has become reductive (since feminism is the
new “F” word) and marginalizes it in relation to traditional exegesis. It seems to be considered as
a fringe form of exegesis. Feminist biblical exegesis suggests that women did in fact exist when
the biblical texts were being written. However, they weren’t treated well and behind the
androcentrism and misogyny evident in the text, there are indications that women weren’t
exactly thrilled with the pressures to conform to the monotheistic religion of the priestly writers,
the Deuteronomist, or the prophets. It is as if there are a number of approved ways to do exegesis
of the bible and we are on the non-approved list.
So, the quick answer to the question “why hasn’t feminist exegesis been integrated into the forms
of traditional exegesis” is: “They (traditional exegetes) don’t seem to like us very much!” They
see us as only concerned with women. The fact that we make over 50% of the world’s population
and are the mothers of its children seems to be lost on them. The obvious fact that Malestream
exegesis has had control of the discourse at least since the inception of the written texts of the
canon seems to escape many of our colleagues as a critical point of fact. Feminist exegetes are
finally changing the discourse and need to be unapologetic about it. How this plays out in reality
is a different paper!!
In the paper I will look at a few examples of what they are saying about us. Then I will look at
the biblical worldview that feminists have unearthed through their exegesis by focusing on the
god construction of the bible. The final section will take a short look at a church that took
feminist exegesis and hermeneutics to heart even if it seems to have relegated them to the
backburner.
4
For a description of forms of feminist exegesis and interpretation, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways:
Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 165-190.
4
The Bad News: They Really Don’t Like Us!!
I want to give two short and one extended examples of attitudes towards FBE that sum up much
of what I have been reading. In a 1996 article called “Methods in Old Testament Study”, David
Cline describes FBE as a second order form of biblical exegesis and claims that feminist biblical
exegetes come to the text with a pre-determined critique. The implication is that we have an
explicit agenda even before we get started.
5
Yet he acknowledges that the texts of the Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament are androcentric!
The second is from the 2004 History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader by William Yarchin. In
the section on feminism, he introduces an article of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
6
and has a short
discussion of feminist biblical interpretation. To quote Yarchin:
“But it would be mistaken to categorize Schüssler Fiorenza simply as a feminist
biblical scholar. As the following selection makes clear, her concerns for ethical,
self-critical interpretation of the Bible have brought her to speak against the
unexamined cultural assumptions operative in biblical scholarship that have
tended to marginalize any other racial or social elements of humanity. Hers is a
call to a consistently critical practice of biblical interpretations.”
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[emphasis mine]
I would assume that this makes the feminist position more palatable. The implication is, of
course, that feminist biblical scholars aren’t concerned with the world, or ethics, or cultural
assumptions. I suspect that Schüssler Fiorenza’s construction of, for example, kyriarchy, while
useful for those who hate the term, “patriarchy”, will move her thought into greater acceptability
in the Malestream – for better or worse.
5
David J. A. Clines, “Methods in Old Testament Study” in John Rogerson, John Barton, David J. A. Clines and Paul
Joyce, Beginning Old Testament Study, (London: Chalice Press, 1998), 38-40.
6
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Biblical Interpretation and Critical Commitment” in William Yarchin, History of
Biblical Interpretation: a Reader. (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004),
7
Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation, 384.
5
The third example is, in some ways, the most disturbing. I want to take a short look at Helen
Kraus’ 2011 Gender Issues in Ancient and Reformation Translations of Genesis 1-4
8
This textual
analysis of the Hebrew Masoretic text and its translations in the Septuagint, Jerome’s Vulgate,
the English Authorized Versions, Luther’s Heilige Schrift and the Dutch State Bible is quite
interesting. However, it is the framework that is, from my perspective, problematic. Kraus states
in her introduction that:
The context of my study is the challenge mounted by feminist scholarship. A
significant number of feminist biblical scholars – particularly those of the ‘second
wave’ – have tried and convicted Scripture, although the approaches and methods
deployed are manifold and tend to defy classification. … A small but significant
number of biblical scholars now seek to allow the text to speak for itself, and
leading female scholars appear to be in favour of a more balanced, focused, finely
tuned, and even multi-disciplinary approach.
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“Furthermore, feminist criticism appears to have addressed exclusively the
question of women in Scripture and their roles, often without giving due
consideration to male-female interaction and the context of the relationship. Eve’s
actions, for example, affect both Adam and herself in equal measure. It is also
vitally important to allow male biblical scholars sympathetic to feminist criticism
to express their viewpoints, as well as giving a voice to those who are non-
feminist but who welcome the contribution made by feminist critical approaches
to biblical scholarship as a whole.
10
So how does this book end? She argues that misogyny – which, apparently, is the real sin that
feminist biblical exegetes are guilty of unfairly promoting as part of the Sitz im Leben of the
Genesis story – only really began (crept in?) with the Inquisition and, of course, the Malleus
Malificarum (which she does mention uses scriptural justification for its misogyny). She then
goes on to state:
8
Helen Kraus, Gender Issues in Ancient and Reformation Translations of Genesis 1-4 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
9
Kraus, Gender Issues, 7.
10
Kraus, Gender Issues, 1-2. I read these few words in utter amazement.
6
The Hebrew account of the Creation and Fall and its intrinsic androcentricity
cannot escape a ‘guilty’ verdict, even if the translations have played their part in
perpetuating the gender inequality. In mitigation, the translators might claim that
they retained as much of the original meaning as possible and therefore it is the
Hebrew text that must be ultimately responsible for any influence upon the faith
communities that adopted the translations.
11
….
What the study does show is that there is enough semantic and syntactic variation
… to suggest that the blame for the inequality of the gender relationship through
the centuries lies at least partly with the translators. At the same time, it seems
that both Hebrew text and its translations are largely accountable for the
development of comparatively ‘innocent’ androcentricity into justification for the
subjugation of women.
12
What in heaven’s name is “innocent androcentricity”? Are we to believe that it is not really
misogyny if it happened organically? In other words, it’s not really misogyny unless men get
together and deliberately make an organized decision to oppress women?
13
The bottom line of
this book would appear to be that the feminists were right all along. However she doesn’t say
that. Her conclusions contain no sustained reflection on the “challenges mounted by feminist
biblical scholars” an issue that was the supposed context for the book.
I have come to the conclusion that feminist biblical exegetes are being accused of doing eisegesis
instead of exegesis. Thus we are not “true to the text”; we don’t “allow the text to speak for
itself”. What I don’t understand is what being “true to the text” means in the postmodern and
postcolonial era. Are we supposed to only look for the intent of the author in writing the text?
Are we only supposed to read the texts as the original hearers would have understood them? Are
we supposed to ignore reception history? Are we supposed to ignore how these texts might
11
Kraus, Gender Issues, 192-3.
12
Kraus, Gender Issues, 193. Note also her use of the term ‘innocent’ androcentrism on page 38 in the chapter on
the Hebrew/Masoretic Bible
13
I have to ask whether or not she has read Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy (London: Oxford University
Press, 1978). Lerner’s book and its argument are still foundational for understanding women’s history in western
culture. Lerner does not appear in Kraus’ bibliography/references. I might also suggest that everyone needs to read
Judith M. Bennett’s History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of
Philadelphia Press, 2006) if only for her concept of patriarchal equilibrium.
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possibly be heard by women, by children, by the abused? As I was taught it, exegesis always
included a section at the end called variously “what relevance does this text have today, to my
life, to believers’ lives, to the life of the community and/or what does it tell us about god?”
They have told us that we aren’t really doing pure academic exegesis; that we need to prioritize
the traditional forms to properly understand how to “let the text speak for itself”. However, in
return, what are we telling traditional exegetes? It is more than “you didn’t take women’s point
of view into consideration”. We have told them, you are privileging:
a) Christianity and Judaism
b) The authority of the bible
c) The traditional interpretations of the texts
d) The canon
e) The god of the bible, and, I would add, Jesus
f) Finally, you are privileging the male point of view or Malestream hermeneutics
In other words, traditional forms of exegesis come with as many built-in presuppositions as
feminists are accused of bringing to the text.
Who is The God of the Bible? The Biblical Worldview According to Feminists
In 1985, I delivered the paper at the AAR that became “Christian Virtues and Recovery from
Child Sexual Abuse”
14
. One of the questions that I was asked was, “What happens to Christianity
14
Sheila A. Redmond, “Christian Virtues and Recovery from Child Sexual Abuse” in Joanne Carlson Brown and
Rebecca Parker, eds., Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989),
Available at http://www.academicroom.com/bookchapter/christian-virtues-and-recovery-child-sexual-abuse
8
if we get rid of our traditional understandings of suffering, atonement, forgiveness, obedience
and authority?” This question reflects a fear of change and of the future and is one of the keys to
understanding the fear of feminism and its interpretations. Feminist biblical criticism has already
changed the discourse. It is often not given the credit that it deserves but it is there nonetheless.
15
David Blumenthal defines theology as “defending the ways of God to humans”
16
and traditional
biblical exegesis tends to support this view. Traditional exegesis is often about finding some way
to support the status quo, whatever variety of Christianity or Judaism. Feminist biblical criticism,
on the other hand, is set up to challenge the traditional readings and assumptions about the world
the bible creates. Feminists question all those traditional understandings and more. Whether we
like it or not, feminist biblical exegetes are engaged in “god-talk”. It is the implications of our
exegesis on “god-talk” that is one of the main reasons, I believe, why we are not being integrated
into the dominant Malestream exegesis.
15
One recent example. I received a personal copy of a recent dissertation called “Kids and Kingdom: The Precarious
Presence of Children in the Synoptic Gospels” from the author, A. James Murphy. I would argue that without the
last three decades of feminist biblical criticism, this dissertation would never have been written. However, feminist
interpretations get only one mention on page 44: “As with feminist/womanist interpretation, this child-centered
reading will bring a “hermeneutics of suspicion” to the text, scrutinizing how children are portrayed.” There is
neither footnote nor reference to sources. Yet on reading the text, it is obvious that you could tick off a list of
feminist interpretative methods at work in the analysis of the biblical texts. I thought that it was a highly innovative
dissertation and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject to pick up a copy once it has been
published.
16
David Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville KY: John Knox/Westminster,
1993), 3. The full quote is "To be a theologian is to defend God, to put back together the pieces of broken awareness
and shattered relationship. Great is the suffering of our fellow human beings, and deep is the estrangement between
them and God. The theologian must be a healer of that relationship, a binder of wounds, one who comforts." This is
still one of my favourite books of theology. It makes me want to join with my mother and say “I wish I had been
born Jewish”. The feminist in me has some issues, but this is one of the most honest theological discussions on the
issue of the “abusive god of the bible” that I have read.
9
Feminist biblical exegetes have looked at the biblical god and found him wanting. Who is Cheryl
Exum’s god of the bible? A rapist and apparently a potential serial rapist and murderer.
17
Who is
the god of the bible in my Psalm of Anger to a Patriarchal god?
18
A god who only cares about
those who believe in him; a child murderer; a god for whom the end justifies the means; a god
who damns children to hell; a god who visits the sins of the father on the children.
19
In the final analysis, the god of the bible is not a nice man: he is cruel; he is capricious, he is
vindictive; he is only capable of conditional love. He is given to rages, punishes his children in
some of the most violent ways conceivable; then he says “I’m sorry”. He threatens the direst
consequences if you do not obey him. This is not a man that you would want your daughter or
son to marry! This god of the bible is very much like Calvin’s god – the difference is that Calvin
accepts that god; most feminists deny that god. Those who stay in the belief system, whether
male or female, then have to try to find some way to save god and the bible as an inspired word
of god or as in the case of Rosemary Reuther seem to downplay its importance.
20
A few years ago I decided to add biblical references to each accusation made of the god
envisioned in the Psalm of Anger to a Patriarchal god. It was not difficult. As unpleasant as the
Psalm is, it is biblical. Many of the characteristics in the psalm have been noted by others, but
17
J. Cheryl Exum, “Prophetic Pornography”; The Ethics of Biblical Violence Against Women” in Plotted, Shot, and
Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women JSOT, Suppl. Series 215: Gender, Culture, Theory 3 (1996),
101-128.
18
Sheila A. Redmond, “Psalm of Anger to a Patriarchal god”. Théologiques 8/2(2000), 33-4. Available at
http://www.erudit.org/revue/theologi/2000/v8/n2/005024ar.pdf.
19
“Psalm of Anger”; Sheila A. Redmond, The Father God and Traditional Christian Interpretations of Suffering,
Guilt, Anger and Forgiveness as Impediments to Recovery from Father-Daughter Incest. PhD Dissertation, 1993
(Department of Religious Studies/Sciences Religieuse, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON), 94-95. Available at
http://www.academicroom.com/dissertation/father-god-and-traditional-christian-interpretations-suffering-guilt-
anger-and-forgiveness-impediments-recovery-fat
20
Rosemary Reuther has written that she does not recognize this god, that it has no resonance for her from her
childhood. Rosemary R. Reuther, “Le Dieu des possibilités : l'immanence et la transcendance repensées”
Théologiques 8/2(2000), 35-48. Available at
http://www.erudit.org/revue/theologi/2000/v8/n2/005027ar.html?vue=resume.
10
the tendency is to relegate the good characteristics of the biblical god to the “real” god and bad
characteristics to human misunderstandings of divinity. Again this may be true for all we know,
but that is not an unbiased reading of the text.
Feminist biblical exegetes show that the apostles, the prophets, even the women are people who
are bound by their time and place, and this is the god of the bible that was determined by
socialization, canon and authority to be the real god. If the books are the inspired word of god,
then, I would argue, this is the god that inspired them. I hear, “but God isn’t like that!”,
murmuring from people all the time. It is true that the divine is (may?) not be like that, but the
god of the bible is. To truly acknowledge that is to have to make a radical shift in one’s
worldview, and that is difficult, if not sometimes impossible.
So what does this mean for the lives of believers and Christianity? One of my nieces has become
a born again Christian as a member of an unaffiliated Baptist sect. We were talking one day and
she told me about how they never talked about god in the United Church in which she was
raised. Of course, that is not true. The problem is that the impact of demythologizing
21
, process
theology, feminist biblical criticism, liberation theology, gay liberation hermeneutics have all
had an impact on the theological construction of divinity in the curriculum, liturgy and preaching
of the United Church. In the final analysis, it seems that if you want to give women and gays a
place in the church you need to ignore the biblical god.
Needless to say, there is little hellfire and brimstone in the United Church, nor is there a literal
adherence to the god of the Bible. Nonetheless, the bible is still considered the authoritative
21
In the United Church of Canada this process of change occurred early. The curriculum was radically changed in
the sixties to reflect new understandings of divinity. To say that these changes had a formative influence on my
theological thinking is an understatement.
11
document for believers who worship at this Protestant denomination.
22
What does this say about
the bible, when you have to ignore much of it in order to give women and gays a place in the
church? The problem is bigger than just ignoring or getting rid of the idea of canon and authority
within the discipline of exegesis – we must relegate the bible to the place of all texts written more
than two thousand years ago – as the historical foundation for our society and little more. The
bible only tells us what people thought about the divine in the years that it was written – no
more, no less.
Conclusion
The personal is still political. When feminists do exegesis, they come up with worldviews that
are not compatible with what the received wisdom is about the biblical religions. This is
probably one of the main reasons why traditionalist will continue to be loathe to integrate the
insights and methods of the feminist biblical scholar.
The text is the text. Just because traditional exegetes want to privilege the bible and conceptions
of their monotheistic deity doesn’t mean that they are treating the text as the text. There are two
possible worldviews for biblical texts as I see it. The first is the traditional one for which the text
is divinely inspired and, thus whether it is acknowledged or not, the god of the bible is telling the
world to marginalize women. The second worldview comes out of the belief that it was written
by people in a time when women were marginalized and reflects that in the same way that, for
example, Greek mythology does.
22
Think about this statement: “Searching for new different and diverse divine metaphors and images in the historical
context of our faith communities is wisdom, firmly grounded in the biblical faith.” Satoko Yamaguchi, “Father
Image of G*d and Inclusive Language” in Fernando F. Segovia, ed., Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth:
Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 20003), 211.
12
If it is the former, then there we are; there is nothing much we can really do about it, it is a
divinely constructed social order and women just need to accept it. On the other hand, if it is the
latter, then we are allowed to ask whether the bible should still be considered the dominant force
for the rationale of our culture and for Christianity. We are no longer living in tents and not even
the Pope seems to be getting messages from god to revise the canon and the theology that derives
from it! Do we want or need to keep following rules for women laid down by a society defined
by androcentrism and misogyny?
The latter is the challenge that is laid out by the feminist biblical exegete. And this is why it is
incompatible with traditional exegesis.
Addendum
During the question period after this presentation, I was asked a question by a very upset
and angry female participant.
23
In essence, the questions were: "Why did I waste my time
on something that I didn't believe in; didn't I have better things to do than rip apart the
bible; why didn't I go and spend my time doing something else?" So, how to answer?
There is the obvious, academic answer: The bible and Christianity are the foundations of
western culture in all its good and its bad. Therefore, we have to understand where the
structures of our societies' ethical systems, presuppositions about the nature of human
interaction, etc. come from. And to do this, we have to look at the bible as the
foundational document of Western society. That is how I would have answered the
question 10 years ago.
23
A longer version of this addendum can be found at my blog. Available at
http://www.sheilaredmond.com/2012/08/why-i-do-this.html
13
In 2012, I answered quite differently. I thought for a moment then said that I was sexually
abused when I was 8 years old by a Roman Catholic priest, became hyper-religious, spent
years in therapy dealing with the biblical god. And I don't want anyone to ever have to go
through what I have gone through. The personal is still political. I want to end with a
reminder from Cheryl Exum: “… a feminist critique must read against the grain – step
outside the text’s ideology and consider what androcentric agenda these narratives
promote.”
24
Traditional exegesis attempts to pretend that the androcentric bias doesn’t
really exist or matter
24
J. Cheryl Exum, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” in Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of
Biblical Women, JSOT, Supplemental Series 215: Gender, Culture, Theory 3 (1996), 89.