Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 6, 1995 by Miriam Therese Winter

I won't be carrying this book around in my briefcase - it weighs nearly pounds - but it has a spot on my commentary shelf and I know I will refer it often. It's a must-have, must-read for all who feel marginalized by the Christian scriptures, particularly women, and for others who wonder why there are who actually feel that way. You don't to be a scholar to find something of value in these 894 pages, or even a radical feminist, but let's be honest: It would help.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, whose treatise In Memory of Her, published in 1983, changed the way we look at th Bible and revolutionized biblical interpretation, has assembled an impressive array of international female scholars whose credentials make this a biblical resource difficult to dismiss. The cross cultural diversity of the 38 Christian and Jewish contributors gives credibility to the process of examining biblical texts from a liberation perspective ed in Schussler Fiorenza's "hermeneutics of suspicion."

The volume is dedicated to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a 19th century pioneer in the women's suffrage movement an author of The Woman's Bible, an early and not very successful effort to relate scripture to women's experiences. We celebrate this year the, 75th annivesary of women in the United States having achieved the right to vote and the 10 anniversary of that first women's commentary published by Stanton. It is evident from the size and scope of Fiorenza's effort that, 12 years after the publication of her own pioneering work feminist biblical scholarship has come into its own.

Searching the Scriptures covers th entire New Testament and includes number of extra-canonical writings a part of its overall objective of giving voice to suppressed traditions that have le traces in ancient texts. To accomplish this and a second objective, that of revealing how canonical texts advocate an foster women's and marginalized men's subordination and exploitation, th authors of this commentary consistently read both canonical and noncanonical texts "against the grain of tradition." This is achieved by putting women a "the center of the frame' within a variety of interpretive frameworks so that women's reality, implicit in the text might more clearly emerge.

Because the commentators assume that scriptural texts do not fully report what actually happened and that references to women are filtered through androcentric interpretations and redacations, they are alert to other information previously overlooked and are free to turn to a variety of sources from a number of ancient communities influenced by the Bible in order to recover and reconstruct something of women's long-lost histories.

Particularly effective is the use of a rhetorical analysis, which takes as its starting point the fact that the scriptural text under consideration was written in response to an argument or debate in order to persuade an audience to adopt the writer's point of view. Once we see that the writer's perspective is only one of many competing voices in a real-life situation, commentators take us a step further by reconstructing the arguments "on the other side of the text," often allowing invisible women to speak.

Through the careful and critical work of the authors of this commentary, we hear from the women in Corinth, whose prophetic voices Paul said should be silent in the church. We are led to conclude with some degree of certainty that the Jesus movement was truly a "discipleship of equals" and that discipleship was a call extended to both women and men.

We are shown time and again that women did indeed exercise leadership in the post-Resurrection church as heads of households and house churches; that women were preachers and teachers and among those who prophesied; and that some were also apostles.

Searching the Scriptures supports these and other significant claims, among them the realization that issues of race, culture and class, as well as other aspects that arise from one's social location, are critically important lenses through which we must collectively approach biblical interpretation and application. Each brings us a giant step closer to a more fully inclusive understanding of God's liberating word.

An important learning flows from the book's organizing principle, the Sophia metaphor. At the outset we are invited to "read these ancient works in light of Sophia's manifold revelations." By doing so we encounter the God of Israel through the image of a woman and are shown the role gender imagery plays in reorganizing social and cultural worlds and in shaping identities.

In the process we learn that earlier times were far more imaginative in their relationship to scripture and that Christian midrash flourished beyond the confines of the canon and was dismissed as heresy. We also make some new friends: Norea, the daughter of Eve who emerges from apocryphal literature as a savior of her people; Thecla, whose story would be a blockbuster television miniseries if she were contemporary with us; Perpetua and Felicity, two early Christian martyrs known to many by name.