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23 Reaffirming Feminist/Womanist Biblical Scholarship Our present and future are shaped by the past, our hopes and visions rooted in memory.1 Hence, it is important for feminists of all colors to understand from where and how far we have come in order to move into a more just future. Since I belong to the first generation of scholars who sought to develop feminist the*logy and biblical interpretation,2 I will approach this topic in light of my own experience, area of study, socio-religious location, and theoretical liberationist framework, but will avoid giving a review and summary of the status of the discipline of feminist/womanist3 N*T studies.4 While wo/men have interpreted the Bible throughout history, feminist biblical studies is a discipline of recent vintage. After lectures, I am often asked, “With whom did you study feminist biblical criticism?” and I usually reply, “Feminist biblical studies as an academic area of inquiry did not exist forty years 1. First published as “Reaffirming Feminist/Womanist Biblical Scholarship.” Encounter 67, no. 4 (2006): 361–73. 2. See Fernando F. Segovia, “Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Ahead: An Interview with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza,” in Toward a New Heaven and a New Earth: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ed. Fernando F. Segovia; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003), 1–30. See chapter 1 above. 3. In the preface to her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), Alice Walker defines a “womanist” as a “black feminist” or “feminist of color.” In this understanding, feminist and womanist are not exclusionary but complementary terms. I use feminist as an umbrella term to signify an intellectual and social movement. Such a formal category needs to be contextually specified with womanist, mujerista, Latina, queer, Western, global, critical, liberationist, etc., since there are numerous articulations of feminist theory and practice. Such a political use of feminism as an umbrella term seeks to avoid the fragmentation and splintering of feminist power that is still marginal in societies and religions around the globe. 4. Since the expressions “New Testament” and “Old Testament” carry supersessionist overtones vis-àvis Judaism, I prefer to speak of N*T studies. 367 ago when I was a student. Therefore, we had to invent it.” This question does not simply bespeak historical forgetfulness. It also reveals how far we have come in the past thirty years. I remember in the 1960s when I could read everything that appeared on feminism; in the 1970s when I could still read everything in feminist studies in religion; in the 1980s when I was still aware of everything published in feminist biblical studies; and in the 1990s when I could still keep tabs on everything that appeared in feminist N*T/early Christian studies. Yet today I find it impossible to be aware of everything published in the field. Feminist biblical studies has grown into an intellectually strong and healthy discipline. Does Feminism Have a Future? Since publications and courses on feminist biblical interpretation and gender studies abound today,5 many students no longer remember a time when feminist studies of any kind did not exist in the academy. Hence, they believe this field of study is well established and no longer needs to be struggled for. They do not consider that it could easily be wiped out again since many of the leading feminist scholars have retired or are close to retirement and will not be replaced by feminists. They do not consider that many feminist classics have gone out of print and that publishing feminist works has become more difficult since younger scholars have not created their own institutional support and since market whims determine what publishers distribute. Now that feminist biblical studies have come of age, it is timely to assess the field and its prospects. I understand feminist N*T/early Christian studies as an important area of scholarly research that seeks to produce knowledge in the interest of wo/men, who, by law and custom, have been excluded from 5. See, for example, Janice Capel Anderson, “Mapping Feminist Biblical Criticism,” Critical Review of Books in Religion 2 (1991): 21–44; Elizabeth Castelli, “Heteroglossia, Hermeneutics and History: A Review Essay of Recent Feminist Studies of Early Christianity,” JFSR 10, no. 2 (1994): 73–78. For Jewish feminist interpretations, see the work of Esther Fuchs, Ilana Pardes, Adele Reinhartz, Tal Ilan, Amy-Jill Levine, Cynthia Baker, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, and...

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