Changing Horizons: Explorations in Feminist Interpretation

Introduction

Introduction Claiming the Authority of Biblical Interpretation Fifty years ago feminist biblical studies was not yet born. Today it is a growing, developing, and stimulating field of study. I am often asked: With whom did you study feminist the*logy? And I unfailingly answer: When I studied the*logy in the s, feminist the*logy and feminist studies in religion did not exist. Hence, we had to invent it. Since the history of feminist biblical studies still remains to be written, this collection of essays on feminist biblical hermeneutics seeks both to trace the emergence of feminist biblical studies and my participaton in it. It does so not only in a chronological but also in a topological way that circles around the key topoi of feminist hermeneutics. The Story and Site of Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics I remember that in the late s, when the so-called “second wave” of the wo/men’s movement first emerged on the scene, I devoured everything that was published on any wo/men’s or feminist topic. In the s, I could still read anything that appeared in the area of feminist the*logy or feminist studies in religion. In the s, I was no longer able to keep informed and to read everything that appeared in feminist critical studies, but I could still keep abreast of most of the publications in my own area of expertise, biblical studies. In the s, I have had a difficult time to keep up and to read the literature appearing in my field of specialization, Christian (New) Testament Studies. In the first decade of this century, feminist biblical studies have been joined by other voices—such as queer studies, postcolonial studies, masculinity studies, or ideological biblical criticism—and it is impossible to read and integrate all these different approaches. This impossibility, however, is not a depressing fact but rather exhilarating, because it documents that feminist biblical studies has developed into a rich and variegated area of study. Indeed, this enormous proliferation of critical feminist intellectual work in general and in biblical studies in particular is ground for celebration. Feminist hermeneutics has been established as a legitimate site of biblical hermeneutics. It brings a chorus of new voices to biblical hermeneutics. The variegated intellectual voices of feminist biblical studies have aptly been characterized with the metaphor of heteroglossia, “speaking in other, different 5 6 Changing Horizons tongues.” This expression alludes to the biblical notion of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) as a gift of the Divine Spirit. Without question, in the last thirty years feminist biblical studies has been established as a new field of study with its own publications. It is taught in schools, colleges, and universities and is practiced by many scholars in different parts of the world. However, to tell the story of the emerging field of feminist biblical studies as a success story obscures the fact that it is for the most part the success story of white Euro-American Christian scholarship. While Jewish feminist biblical scholarship has greatly increased in the  and s, Muslim feminist biblical scholarship is in its beginnings. While the presence and work of womanist/black feminist, Latina, and Asian feminist biblical scholars arrived on the scene of biblical studies in the s and s, only very few African American, Latina, or Asian wo/men scholars have graduate level positions in biblical studies. Celebrating the success story of feminist biblical interpretation must not overlook that articles and books by African, Latin American, Australian, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Native American, Maori, and other Indigenous feminist scholars around the globe are still scarce because only a very few wo/men of the Two-Thirds World have gained access to biblical academic studies and have the status and means to publish their work. This dire situation is not due, however, to the racism and elitism of white feminist scholars, as is often alleged, but due to the fact that academic institutions have not changed their kyriarchal ethos and because global capitalism is built on the exploitation of wo/men. Hence, because of the societal, cultural, and religious structures of domination, very few wo/men of disadvantaged groups or countries achieve access to the*logical education and higher biblical studies. Moreover, even in the white European and North American academy where one finds a good number of highly educated wo/men, feminist biblical interpretation is often still not widely recognized as an important field of study. If one, for instance, looks at and searches through introductions...