Article: Reading the Bible as a woman by Sally Nash

This article is based on lecture notes from a session I did at St John’s Nottingham where I work as a lecturer in youth and community work and applied theology.

Individual identity
Each of us is in some ways:
•    like all others – there are some characteristics that all humans share – born helpless…die!
•    like some others – the culture in which we are socialized plays some part in determining who we are and we share that culture with others in the community.
•    like no other – each of us has a different life story, we do not experience things identically.       
(Kluckholn and Murray cited in Larty 1997:12)

Who is Sally?
One of my earliest memories is being read the story of Noah in our new house – I was 3.5 years old – from my Christening Bible – the authorised version – I’m quite old!  My family are not churchgoers, I don’t really remember them going at all during my childhood but we did Sunday school at what I now know is a High Anglican church. I was obviously interested in Christianity as I went to the Young Sowers League and got a New Testament by answering questions on every chapter of the New Testament. I also went to Crusaders. At 14 I got baptized by full immersion. I had started going to the church with a friend; it wasn’t a conscious change of denomination. So looking back, my teenage years were full of evangelical Christianity. I also did two summer missions in Germany with the Church Army. After a bit of a break while I was at University I ended up at a House Church where there was a great emphasis on the Bible too. Most of my more detailed Bible knowledge and verses and passages that I know and take comfort from are predominantly from that period in my life. We can never read the Bible as value neutral and who I am, and how I have become who I am, will impact everything I do, not least reading the Bible.

If pressed to choose one book to take with me to the mythical desert island rather than the whole Bible castaways usually get, I would go for Isaiah. I love the imagery, the poetry and it is probably the book that has been most formational in my own theology. It relates to my MBTI “N” I think. I like the possibilities, the symbolism, the future orientation. If something from the New Testament it would probably be John’s gospel for many of the same reasons.

I like the Janis Ian song “At Seventeen” . The first line is “I learned the truth at seventeen that life was meant for beauty queens” . That was the age at which I began to get radicalized. Up until then not I had not really challenged the status quo. This radicalization didn’t fully impact my faith until my mid-twenties – I accepted the way things were in the church.

Incrementally I have been having more and more problems with issues like inclusive language or lack of it and the way that passages about women are commonly interpreted and the complete lack of consistency or common sense in some people’s thinking – let women teach children at their most impressionable age but don’t let her loose on adults!

I self-define as a feminist which is a term I know some younger women are not comfortable with. I am of a generation that feels that liberation is still a goal; it has not been achieved in many areas. This means I bring this lens to my reading of the Bible.
What does being a feminist mean hermeneutically?  Thimmes summarises it:
1)  Feminism is a political category understood and practiced as a liberation movement, critiquing the oppressive structures of society
2)  Experience - is not simply a construct; it also constructs
3)  Culture (social location) - mediates our experience, and thus our worldviews or paradigms
4) Reading/Interpretation (Language) - language is more than simply a non-material tool, it is an expression of a particular understanding of reality. It is in language that social locators (gender, race, class etc) are first noticed and first submerged (1998:134).

HOW WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID GIVES ME A VOICE, BRINGS ME COMFORT AND INSPIRATION
Here are some of the writers and thinking that have inspired me.

Speaking of silence:  a reproach
The sounds of women’s silence run deep
Let us attune our ears to the sounds of women’s silence,
to attend and listen to what is not said,
what has never been said,
what is only now beginning to be said.
Let this silence cry aloud in our ears,
let it resound and reverberate inside our heads,
let it deafen our whole being with a colossal roar.

This silence is eloquent, articulate of women’s pain and women’s lives.
It is compelling, hypnotic, fearful, overwhelming.
It speaks louder than words.
It utters volumes of speech.
It drowns out all other language.

Where are the women in our history, in our heritage?
Where are the stories of our women heroes, mystics, leaders and teachers?
Who will guide the footsteps of our daughters?
born today into a deafening silence about their ancestors, about themselves?

So many women’s voices have been lost in the pages of history,
erased and blotted out and passed over in silence
by the rulers of patriarchy, the makers of culture.
So few have survived in the pages,
and their stories have so often been ignored,
trivialized, marginalized, distorted.

We want to hear the sounds of our foremothers’ voices.
We want to listen to our grandmothers’ tales.
We want to speak the name of our sisters who came before us.
We need to hear their stories,
we need to hear their voices,
to hear and know who we are.
(Slee 2004:29)

Texts of Terror
There are ancient texts in the scriptures that, for centuries, have been used to terrorize and victimize women. These texts show women as victims of abuse, hatred and violence. They depict women raped, murdered, dismembered, abandoned, betrayed, sold into slavery, maltreated, silenced, subjugated. They do not cry out against women’s misery, abuse and pain. They do not whisper a word to suggest such deeds are wicked, evil, shameful. They do not denounce the God who demands such acts to be done in his name.
(Slee 2004:36)

Hermeneutics based on women’s experience celebrates the realities of life and acknowledges that many biblical texts engender anger, disparagement, hopelessness, disenfranchisement, ugliness, pain and manipulation. Some of these texts remain problematic, while other texts allow an option for a redemptive, liberative praxis. (Kirk-Duggan 1998:269)

Women anointing Jesus

God our Love-Maker
We are afraid of your love, your intimacy.
We are used to being judged,
but we are not used to being loved, totally.
We would rather hold on to our self hatred
than believe in your total acceptance of us.
Give us the courage to let go and embrace you;
may we learn how to want you to touch us, to know us,
that we in our turn may love generously
those who cannot believe they are love. Amen

Luke 7:44-50    "That's right," said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, "Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn't quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn't it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal." Then he spoke to her: "I forgive your sins." That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: "Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!" He ignored them and said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."

God our Pain-Bearer
Give us the courage of this unknown woman,
to speak the gospel with authority
from the place of no authority
to break open all our resources
from the place of no resources;
to break open and pour out
even the pain that we want to hold on to,
so that we can dare to name the truth about our world,
and truthfully stand with the one
who made himself nothing for our sake,
Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Mark 14:3-9  Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. Some of the guests became furious among themselves. "That's criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year's wages and handed out to the poor." They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her. But Jesus said, "Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could—she pre-anointed my body for burial. [9] And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly."

God our Life-Giver
Again and again we find ourselves stuck
in old patterns of domination and submission;
we stay resenting our powerlessness
or guilt-ridden by our power.
Give us courage to believe that change is possible:
let us so wash one another’s feet as friends
that the fragrance of our ministry  may fill the whole church;
and free us with the symbol of slavery
to make a world where not one is in bondage.
In the name of the one who died to give us life, Jesus Christ. Amen.

John 12:1-8    Six days before Passover, Jesus entered Bethany where Lazarus, so recently raised from the dead, was living. Lazarus and his sisters invited Jesus to dinner at their home. Martha served. Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table with them. Mary came in with a jar of very expensive aromatic oils, anointed and massaged Jesus' feet, and then wiped them with her hair. The fragrance of the oils filled the house.
Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, even then getting ready to betray him, said, “Why wasn't this oil sold and the money given to the poor? It would have easily brought three hundred silver pieces." He said this not because he cared two cents about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of their common funds, but also embezzled them. Jesus said, "Let her alone. She's anticipating and honoring the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you. You don't always have me."
(Morley 1996:42-3)

Language and identity:
If every naming of God is a borrowing from human experience, and if language slants and angles our thinking and behaviour, and if our society makes qualities labelled “feminine” inferior to qualities labelled “masculine”, forming women and men with identities steeped in those labellings, in structures where men are still dominant though shaken and women still subordinate though seeking emancipation… Then it follows that using only male language (“he”, “king”, “father”) to name and praise God powerfully affects our encounter with God and our thinking and behaviour;  so that we must then ask whether male dominance and female subordination and seeing God only in male terms are God’s intention or human distortion and sin;  for if these things are indeed a deep distortion and sin, so that women and men are called to repent together from domination and subordination, then how can we name and praise God in ways less idolatrous, more freeing, and more true to the Triune God and the direction of love in the Anointed One, Jesus?  (Wren 1989:1)

Dear God, are boys better than girls?  I know you are one but try to be fair. (Little girls letter to God).

Biblical and historical evidence reveals that God includes and transcends male and female. Nevertheless many people cannot see the necessity for changing the way we speak of God. They insist that they can call God “he” while thinking of God as beyond gender. They do not think it is worth all the effort and pain to change language the church has used for almost two thousand years. The little girl’s letter to God makes profoundly clear the importance of changing our God-language. She has internalized messages that society values males more than females. Feeling put down, she appeals to the highest authority she knows. She has been taught that God is loving and just but male. Thus she feels the cards are stacked against her. She wonders if God can be truly fair. How can a “he” God believe girls are as good as boys? (Clanton 1990:66)

Masculine God-language devalues femininity by ignoring it. Women receive the subtle message that maleness, since it is used for references to God, is worthy of greater respect than femaleness. Such a message encourages women to look to men as authorities. Females who grow up with language that equates God and masculinity learn to sacrifice portions of their own identity for the approval of men. Since our theological language implies that God is male, then it is only natural that females would give males – fathers, husbands, male therapists – greater authority than they give themselves or any other woman. (Clanton 1990:67)

BIG ISSUES - FAILURE OR FREAK?

I’m a childless woman…
If God “is the divine agent who bestows fertility upon humans by opening a woman’s womb (Gen 29:31; 30:22)” and whose promise “for those who obey God’s commandments is that  ‘the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body’” (Deut 30:9) and “if fertility represents the blessing of God, barrenness represents not merely the absence of that blessing but at its most extreme a curse that God calls down on the disobedient (Deut 28:15, 18)”  (Kroeger and Evans 2002:157) then where or why did it all go wrong for me?

If I read the Bible then I am supposed to be “’desolate’ (Is 54:1, Gal 4:27) and ‘in misery’ (1 Sam 1:11), with a womb that is ‘never satisfied’ (Prov 30:15-16)” I also should suffer “’reproach’ (Gen 30:23), or ‘disgrace’ (Lk 1:25)” and I “join ‘the poor’, ‘ the needy’, and ‘the widow’ as a symbol for the disadvantaged and vulnerable within the Hebrew community (1 Sam 2:5,  8; Ps 113:7-9; Job 24:21). (Kroeger and Evans 2002:157)

“As biblical motifs, however, barrenness and fertility find their greatest prominence as they are juxtaposed in the accounts of women whose barrenness and desolation have been transformed by God into the joy of conception and childbirth” (Kroeger and Evans 2002:157).

And quite how is all this supposed to make me feel?

If I didn’t see this happen for me then where does that leave me with other promises of God?  It is all the more galling when I reflect on my life and believe that I have made sacrifices, I have been obedient, I have sought to follow God…  Why didn’t it happen?

I can’t help but read the Bible with the shadow of promises unfulfilled always lurking in my conscious, subconscious or unconscious mind.

I’m a woman in leadership – do I have a right to be here?
In my early 20s the philosophy at the house church that I went to was that God only used a woman when a man wasn’t available or wasn’t willing – that was how I was encouraged to read the story of Deborah! (Judges 4:1 – 5:31)

The difficulty I face in this area is the paucity of examples of women in leadership and I feel like people think that I am stretching a point when I give examples of women. Kroeger and Evans argue that “The Bible accurately reflects the patriarchal background of the period, when leadership was predominantly male. But at the same time it establishes principles that critique that situation” (2002:642).

Examples that they then go on to give are:
•    Miriam (Micah 6:4; Exodus 15:20-21)  I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam.
•    Deborah – a married woman who was a prophet and a judge (Judges 4:4-9)
•    Huldah a prophet at the same time as Jeremiah – another married woman – Josiah turned to her and on her authority a newly discovered book was recognized as the word of God. (2 Kings 22:11-20)
•    Esther – in her role to save the nation (Esther 4:14; 8:7-8; 9:29)
•    They argue that Jesus “treated women with the utmost respect, included them in his closest friends and followers, and finally, in a culture that rejected women as witnesses, called them to proclaim the news of his resurrection (Luke 24:5-11)” (Kroeger and Evans 2002:643).
•    Phoebe, Lydia, Priscilla, Apphia, Nympha and Junia are all cited as leaders too.
The two most interesting to me are Phoebe and Junia.
•    Phoebe (Rom 16:1) is described using the Greek word prostatis the literal meaning of which is “one who presides” or “a woman who is set over others”. The noun is only found here in the New Testament but is used by Justin Martyr to describe the president at communion. Paul uses the verb in 1 Thess 5:12 encouraging the Thessalonians to respect those who are over them in the Lord and in Rom 12:8 it is used to describe the gift of leadership.   In 1 Tim 3:4-5 and 5:17 the word is used to describe church officials who preside over the congregation (Kroeger and Evans 2002:644).
•    Junia and Andronicus are “prominent among the apostles” (Rom 16:7). “Later church leaders, uncomfortable with a woman apostle who had leadership within the church, changed her name and created one that is unknown in Greek sources – Junias. The name is nowhere attested in any inscription, public monument, graffiti or literary document” (Kroeger and Evans 2002:645).

Growing academic knowledge
My basic problem here is probably not gender related but the issue of how I read the Bible knowing a little more about how I should read it!  I know most of the Bible is written to and for communities yet I interpret so much of it individualistically. I believe that the Holy Spirit quickens Scripture to me but then my brain gets in the way and tells me that’s not what that verse means. A classic would be Isaiah 43 which has been a great comfort. The balance between the prophetic and the good hermeneutics is a difficult one sometimes!

SOME POSITIVES THAT RESONATE

Mary and Martha
A balance that I constantly grapple with but an affirmation that I can take the role of the disciple, the learner, from the Luke version (10:38-42)
However, there is the passage in John where Martha identifies Jesus as the Messiah - something more usually associated with Peter.
John 11:1-12:10 “In the middle of the story another verbally names him as messiah (11:27) and, then, toward the end of the story, he is presented again as the recipient of a woman’s anointing (12:3). So Jesus, the protagonist, is first and foremost a messiah, the anointed one, and this designation has been made by both the words and actions of women... What the woman does for Jesus at the Bethany dinner, Jesus does for the disciples at the Last Supper as an example of model discipleship. By accepting his title from a woman and by following a woman’s action, Jesus appears as a non-patriarchal and unconventional messiah”. (Yamaguchi 2002:115)

Yamaguchi parallels the two stories:
Martha serves by ministering (serving) not only by word (11:27) but also at a communal table at which Jesus is a guest (12:2). The significance of Martha’s serving is apparent in the specific use of certain words in this gospel.
1  The word ‘dinner’ (deipnon) is used only twice:  for this dinner in Bethany, and for the Last Supper in Jerusalem (12:2; 13:2, 4; 21:20).
2  The word ‘serve’ (diakoneo) is used only twice:  for Martha’s serving (12:2) and in Jesus’ discourse on true discipleship (12:26).
3  The noun form of ‘serve’, namely ‘servant’ (diakenos) appears only twice:  in Jesus’ discourse on true discipleship (12:26), and in Jesus’ first miracle in Cana, where Jesus’ mother tells the servants (diakonos) to do whatever Jesus tells them (2:5).
The limited use of these words for dinner, serve and servant implies that Martha’s service here is a ministerial service. She is a representative disciple who engages both in service of the word (to proclaim communal faith) and in service at the table (to preside at the communal table/the eucharist). (2002:121).

At the same time, there is a significant and clear difference between the Lukan text and the Johannine text. The Lukan gospel pits Martha against Mary. As a result, both her ministry and personality are severely downgraded. In this instance the Lukan text trivializes women and portrays them as quarrelsome and helpless, relying on male authority. By contrast, in the Johannine gospel the two sisters collaborate, each engaging in service. While the Johannine gospel maintains the significance of Martha’s ministry through the use of specific terms for her service, the reference to her service is described in a short, unstressed phrase that may have considerably downplayed her role. This somewhat contradictory representation may indicate some editorial manipulation that has obscured the reality of women’s ministry. (Yamaguchi 2002:121)

Yamaguchi suggests that we can see Martha as a trusting disciple and friend, a representative spokesperson of the community, a leader in ministry and Mary a well known disciple and friend, a leader with Judean followers, a model for Jesus, a prophet or devoted disciple (2002:120-124).

A feminine spirit and wisdom
Because I am not a biblical scholar here I am presenting views of others more knowledgeable than me. But I find great comfort in seeing the Spirit as feminine and happily use “she” in things that I write and often when I speak (I am sometimes wary of losing the thrust of what I say because people have heard that one thing and stopped listening).

“So it was that when Jesus used the word spirit in his native Aramaic he used a feminine word;  when it was translated into Greek for general readership it took the form of a neuter noun and later, when Latin became the universal language of the Church, the masculine term spiritus took its place “ (Marriage 1989:65).

“First, Sophia appears in the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible:  she is always imaged as divine female – hence the reams of literature evoked on Sophia as feminine or feminist face of God. But why did Sophia come comparatively late into biblical literature?  (She does not appear at all in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses.)  One suggestion is that she enters at a moment, namely, the loss of the monarchy, when the prophets were inviting the Jewish people to understand the mercy of God in a more universalist way-beyond the narrow confines of their own people. Hence the imagery of Sophia setting a table, summoning people to the feast from the highways and byways (Prov 9; Isa 55) followed by the New Testament imagery of the messianic banquet” (Grey 2001:103).

 “With the advent of Christianity, the notion of female Wisdom was subsumed into Jesus Christ, subsequently into the Third Person of the Trinity, the holy Spirit, and eventually into ‘Mother Church’. Although in the last two named some semblance of the female remained attached for a while, the Christian religion in all its various forms became totally male-dominated with the church acting as the bulwark of male supremacy” (Long cited in Grey 2001:105).

Sophia as linking with women’s experience: “Sophia can be the image of a strong, wise woman, ageing, elderly or old, thus liberating women from enslavement to fashion, the idealizing of youth and slimness, and the fear and revulsion of old age and death. As such Sophia as Wise Woman has appeared in female trinities, for example, the Celtic Trinity, consisting of the young girl, the Mother and the Crone” (Grey 2001:106).

“If we accept Wisdom as another way of addressing the Holy Spirit, then we will find fruitful material in the Wisdom books which will help us understand that, although the disciples of Jesus might have been taken over by the Holy Spirit in a rather new and unexpected way, there was nothing very new about the presence of the Holy Spirit in God’s world” (Marriage 1989:70).

“In post-biblical times Wisdom has been celebrated and revered more in the Eastern Church than in the Western Church, both in the dedication of churches and cathedrals and in the iconography of manuscripts, where the female personification of the deity, often accompanied by Mary, through whom God was incarnate” (Marriage 1989:71).

Psalm 139 - a woman’s psalm Emily Nabholz SCN
You have searched me and know me.
I am a woman...on a journey through life
I am searching for my innermost self to claim who I am as a woman
I am going beyond reflection
I am a woman on an inner search
This inner search leads me to stop running away from you
- to trust your ever abiding presence
- to trust your inner workings in me as a woman
I am a woman     full of light and shadows
        full of love and fear
        full of hope and despair
But you are there to lead me - to help me
You are the light of my life
I could ask the darkness to hide me
You call me out of darkness
Darkness and light are all the same to you
You accept me just as I am
A woman of light and shadows; love, fear; hope and despair
As I look around and remember your goodness to me my heart is glad
As a woman, I ever seek you in all your ways
You created every part of me
You put me together in my mother’s womb,
In the womb of life, I am nurtured and nourished, protected and loved
I praise you for the gift of life - for the gift of being a woman
I am a woman of remembering, I am a woman of reflection
I realize the days you give me are all recorded in your book
Your thoughts are so above my thoughts, your knowledge of me is too deep
It is beyond my understanding
Examine me, O Lord, and know me through and through
Let me be naked and open before you, for you are my God
I am a woman in awe and praise of you
Teach me to pray
Pray within me, my Lord and my God

References:
Jann Aldredge Clanton (1990). In whose image?  London:  SCM.
Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J Evans (2002). The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary. Downers Grove:  IVP.
Mary Grey (2001). Introducing Feminist Images of God. Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press.
Cheryl A Kirk-Duggan (1998) “What difference does difference make in feminist hermeneutics?  A personal essay” in Harold C Washington et al eds. Escaping Eden. Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press.
Emmanuel Y Larty  (1997). In living colour  London: Cassell
Alwyn Marriage (1989). Life-Giving Spirit. London:  SPCK.
Nicola Slee (2004). Praying like a woman. London:  SPCK.
Pamela Thimmes (1998) “What makes a feminist reading feminist?  Another perspective” in Harold C Washington et al eds. Escaping Eden. Sheffield:  Sheffield Academic Press.
Hannah Ward, Jennifer Wild, Janet Morley (1995). Celebrating Women. London:  SPCK.
Kathryn Woodward (ed) (1997). Identity and Difference  London:  Sage/Open University
Brian Wren (1989). What language shall I borrow?  London: SCM
Satoko Yamaguchi (2002). Mary and Martha  Women in the World of Jesus. Maryknoll:  New York.

Comments

[jo fitzsimmons]

Sally, i really loved this! Thank you for your work on this.

[Irene Hayes]

Me too. I loved the little girl's prayer and as a lay preacher I'm trying to use 'God' instead of 'he' but it is a struggle!