Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis

Preface

xv 1 Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998. 2 McKim, x. Preface The headless woman on the cover reminds us that history has forgotten women who interpreted the Bible. This book is part of the long process of recovering the voice of women interpreters. The idea for the book began with a question. A few years ago, when Marion Taylor was teaching a class on the History of Old Testament scholarship, a student asked if she could do her term paper on a significant woman in the field of Old Testament studies. Taylor’s ini- tial response was to suggest a number of twentieth-century women who had made a significant contribution to the field. The focus of the course, however, was biblical studies in the nineteenth century, and Taylor was left wondering about women interpreters before the second half of the twentieth century. Donald K. McKim’s Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters did not help in her quest.1 Of the 101 individuals covered in McKim’s book only two twentieth-century women (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Phyllis Trible) were included. McKim recognized the omission of women and non-Western interpreters in his introduction and invited others to supplement his volume by producing additionally needed resources. Taylor’s search for women interpreters continued. She was convinced that women had read and interpreted the Scriptures throughout history and that some records of women’s interpretations must exist, although women’s voices were never included in any courses or readings she had done as an Old Testament scholar, specializing in the history of interpretation. She found that other women had recognized the gap in knowledge of women interpret- ers of scripture. Patricia Demers examined women interpreters as an English scholar.3 However, Demers’s book is quite short and her own engagement xvi Preface with feminist hermeneutics effectively shifts the focus of the book away from recovering voices of women interpreters from the past to engaging contempo- rary issues. Similarly, Marla Selvidge’s book, Notorious Voices: Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 1500–1920,4 focuses narrowly on the “notorious voices” of proto-feminists. A number of books written by church historians pointed to the names and writings of women throughout history. Internet resources on English literature, including “A Celebration of Women Writers” suggested countless names of women to be investigated.5 With the help of Renata Koke, the pos- sibility of mounting a course on women biblical interpreters became a reality. Heather Weir took the first course on women interpreters and began to work on the search for more interpreters. As the project grew, the decision was made to focus research on the nine- teenth century, a period of great interest to biblical scholars in terms of the development of new approaches to the study of the Bible and in terms of women’s history. A Lilly theological research grant allowed Taylor to spend a sabbatical year doing research on women interpreters of the nineteenth century. The task of finding women interpreters of the Bible has been difficult. Techniques of a detective are needed. Weir unearthed the names of many women by entering “Mrs.” as author and “Bible” as subject in various library search engines. She also tried entering popular Victorian girls’ names (e.g., Sarah, Elizabeth, or Mary) and “Bible.” Searching the inventory lists of used booksellers and searching various publishers advertising lists uncovered still more names and books. Through our extensive research, we unearthed the titles of more than a thousand books written by nineteenth-century women on the Bible. Once we had the titles, the task of finding the actual works also proved to be challenging. Many books written by women are now very hard to find. Some are available through interlibrary loan; the interlibrary loan staff at the University of Toronto assisted us immensely in our search for these hard-tofind treasures. The writings of many British writers are only found in British Libraries. Happily, an increasing number of primary and rare materials, par- ticularly writings of Canadian women, is being published on the Internet. Thanks to the generous support of the Louisville Institute, we have been able to find many of the interpretive works of American women. A Lilly Research 3 Patricia Demers, Women as Interpreters of the Bible (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). 4 New York: Continuum, 1996. 5 Mary Mark, “A Celebration of Women Writers.” http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ women/ (accessed Nov. 7, 2005). [3.145.78.95] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 15...