But every time the canon is described as universal, the life of the patriarchal myth is extended. If feminist criticism has demonstrated anything, it has shown the importance of the reader to what is read. A large part of the joy of the text is the sense of process, of moving along a path towards.
Feminist literary critics are now exploring the role of women in biblical texts as a catalyst of patriarchal society. They are too powerful and embody male fears, and should be silenced or written out of the story. Cheryl Exum protests the marginalization of biblical female characters through analysis of the phallogocentric texts in which they appear.
To subordinate the other to the same?" On the basis of a corporeality of difference, writers such as Irigaray and Helene Cixous attempt to assert the primacy of the.
The Pleasures of Her Text by Alice Bach
Protestant Feminists and the Bible: On the Horns of a Dilemma
In this essay, I want to explore this question specifically in relation to the struggles of women in one particular branch of the Christian tradition: Protestantism. 29 The restoration of the tradition of women writers was and remains one of the most important contributions. In the case of the scriptures, the underlying message is that one must be addressed by God, to be a full member of the divine creation.
On the problems with ordination, see Sara Maitland, A Map of the New Country: Women and Christianity (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983). See the excellent discussion of women's losses and gains in the Reformation in Jane Dempsey Douglass, "Women and the Continental Reformation" in R. For a discussion of the relation of the Protestant Reformation to the beginnings of historical-critical biblical scholarship, see Yes there.
See e.g. analogy the modern history of science in relation to the specific interests and backgrounds of the scholars, as discussed in N.
The Pleasure of Her Text by Alice Bach
A closer examination of the sexual codes in the text reveals that Abigail is more subversive than her male authors have understood. One impression of the patrician landowner's wife is that she is the mother wife of order and control. The connection with the book of Proverbs, where the use of the word sekel is most extensive in the Bible, is immediately apparent.
Food in the book of Judith functions as a symbol of impending death; Abigail's large quantities of the same food serve the opposite function. This is the only one of the three stories in which sexual violence does not lead to marriage. It is also the only one of the three in which there is no allusion to sexual union, or nonunion in the case of Michal.
He is secretly a slave to the mother's power, which he subjugates or destroys."
Murder They Wrote
She and Professor Exum have written a second volume, Miriam's Well: Stories of Women in the Bible, published by Delacorte in 1991. She is a PhD student in biblical studies at Union and involves literary strategies for reading biblical and pseudepigraphic texts. The Pleasures of Her Text, Feminist Readings of Biblical and Historical Texts was published in 1990 by Trinity Press International.
Ideology and the Manipulation of
Female Presence in Biblical Narrative, by J. Cheryl Exum
In the second case, the victim protests, but the murder does not take place in the story, but rather with the help of the story. The problem lies not so much in the making of the promise as in its object. I will return below to the subject of the women's commemoration of Jephthah's daughter and its complex impact on this story.
When the house of Saul is withdrawn, David receives from YHWH the promise of an eternal dynasty. 23. So it is. the memory of the death of a virgin androcentric inversion of the female expression. The phallocentric message of the story of Jephthah. I suggest that the daughter submit to her father's authority.
In her speech, Jephthah's daughter submits to her father's authority; in hers, Mikal challenges the man's authority. And the women of Israel cooperate in this elevation of the willing victim to honorable status. Whether or not Mikal means to include "(primary) wives of the free Israelites" in her rebuke,33 of.
Her protest thus serves as an indictment of the phallocentric worldview represented and reflected in the story. This brings us back to my earlier comments about the coincidence of the terms of the vow and the daughter's. The most interesting feature of the daughter's ceremonial lamentation is the involvement of other women in the event.
For a detailed discussion of Michal's fate, see my forthcoming study, Arrows of the Almighty: Tragic Dimensions of the Biblical Narrative. In the midrashic literature, one finds various attempts to explain Jephthah's ignorance of the law in this case.
The Pleasures of Her Text by Alice Bach
Human Persons as Images of the Divine: A Reconsideration, by
Victor and Walter Hilton, I will argue for the centrality of the image of God theme in a contemporary feminist theology, suggesting that it is precisely the practical or moral implications of image-bearing that can best help theology today. The German theologian Dorothee Soelle, who speaks eloquently about the need for the development of the inner life as the only possible cure for the social evils afflicting the contemporary world, makes little direct use of the image of God theme. Soelle provides a contemporary analysis of what Hilton would call "the image of sin," our difference with God, and a vision of solidarity, an affirmation of the immutable connection between love of God and love of neighbor.
Victor and Walter Hilton provide a rich symbol of the "think-relation"5 itself, both Ruether and Soelle help us to restore. I will present three thesis statements about the image that reflect traditional and contemporary uses of the image theme. As we develop as images of God, we come to express our full humanity in a unity of the "thought-relationship" itself, and we learn to respect the image character of other human persons.
In the medieval tradition presented here, the image concept guides and directs all aspects of the relationship of the human person to the divine. For Soelle, representative of the political turn in contemporary theology, the fact that we are God's image-bearers means that our destiny is to realize God's justice in the world. In calling for an end to the compartmentalization of roles in our lives as an important precondition for achieving justice that respects the full humanity of all persons, men and women, Ruether raises one of the issues that can most productively tackle the theme of 'Image of God'.
The attention of modern theologians to the political consequences of our actions in the world echoes the medieval recognition of the emptiness that arises from split love and knowledge. Victor or Walter Hilton and their emphases shed new light on the implications of the darkness of the image of God; and the basis for using the image. The goal of image restoration is the conformity of our will with God's will, so that man perceives himself not as God's servant, but as God's friend.
The focus in traditional interpretations of the imago Dei theme is on our closeness to God and on the possibilities of advancing this closeness to the point where we can be considered friends of God. We move from the datum of revelation that we are made in God's image to the process of actively realizing our potential as images of God by cultivating unity.
34;The Devils Are Come Down Upon Us": Myth, History and
Reineke
For Carol Karlsen, historian of the New England witch hunts, women accused of witchcraft were women who threatened. The Privy Council set up commissions to hunt witches, and the witch-hunt moved forward with a rising tide until the witch-hunting machinery of the state. Crucial to Larner's thesis that witch hunting was a ruling class activity among institutions competing for social control is her analysis of the role landlords played in the witch hunts.
For Klaits, the decisive factor in witch mania, on the part of the educated and the politically powerful, was a spiritual atmosphere. Kieckhefer, whose work focuses on the prerequisites of the witch craze that developed during the late medieval period, has argued that a. Larner's analysis of the conflict between secular courts and clergy suggests that Klaits'.
Current analyzes of the witch madness, reflecting broader trends in historical scholarship dealing with religion, make commendable progress over previous treatments. I want to argue that the strength and weakness of any theory depend on the appropriateness of each theory's idea of the scapegoat witch. In the seriousness of our quest to recover the memories of the victims of the witch craze, we have shied away from an embrace of myth that would bring us too close to the accuser.
Thus, Larner, Midelfort, and Klaits dutifully record the importance of the witch's confession to the accusers and their statements. To better explain the beliefs observed in witch hunter accounts, scientists are turning to another strategy. Seeing no justification in the external discourse of the witch-hunters, they turn to the masters of unspoken discourse: psychologists.
If we resist the mythic reading of witchcraft madness, persecutors cease to be persecutors. Did they stubbornly cling to current plague theories because they had some ideological stake in the status quo. Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
In the story of the Jewish woman quoted here, therefore, the dynamics of her persecution cannot be traced back to her.
