Women in Ugarit and Israel

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O U D T E S T A M E N T I S C H E
STUDIEN
O L D T E S T A M E N T S T U D I E S
p u b l i s h ed o n b eh a l f o f
t h e So c i e t i e s fo r O ld Tes t am en t S tu d i e s i n
T h e N e t h e r l a n d s B e l g i u m a n d S o u t h A f r i c a
by
J O H A N N E S C . D E M O O R
KAMPEN
A D V I S O R Y B O A R D
H A R R Y V A N R O O Y M A R C V E R V E N N E
P O T C H E F S T R O O M L E U V E N
V O LU M E X LI X
AND ISRAEL
T H E I R S O C I A L A N D R E L I G I O U S P O S I T I O N
I N T H E C O N T E X T O F T H E A N C I E N T N E A R E A S T
Y
H E N N I E J M A R S M A N
6 8
B R I L L
L E I D E N

2003
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PR IN TED IN TH E N ETH ER LA N D S
1.2 T he Synchronic Ap proa ch 12
1.3 T he Diachronic App roach 22
1.4 M ethodological Co nside rations 31
2
43
2.1 W om en in th e Fam ily 47
2.1.1 W ife 49
2.1.1.1 T he Choice of a Pa rt ne r 49
2.1.1.2 Co urts hip 73
2.1.1.3 M arriage 84
2.1.1.3.1 T he Legal Basis of M arriag e 84
2.1.1.3.2 W as M arriage a Religious Ins titu tio n? 107
2.1.1.4 M arr ied Life 122
2.1.1.4.1 Hu sba nd and W ife 122
2.1.1.4.2 A W ife's Ow n World 153
2.1.1.5 T he Dissolution of M arriag e 168
2.1.2 M oth er 191
2.1.3 Sister 243
2.1.5 W idow 291
2.2 W om en in Society 324
2.2.1 W omen of th e C ou rt 325
2.2.1.1 Q ueen 325
2.2.1.3 Royal W ives and Con cubine s 370
2.2.1.4 Pri nce ss 381
2.2.2 Non-royal W omen 389
2.2.2.1 Legal Ow nership of Imm ovable Pr op er ty 389
2.2.2.2 Busine ss 400
2.2.2.4 Slavery 437
473
3.3 Ge neral Conclusions 613
4
4.1.2 T he Le tters from Israel 639
4.1.3 T he Lette rs from Eleph antine 642
4.2 Seals an d Bu llae 643
4.2.1 Seals fro m Ug arit 643
4.2.2 Seals an d Bu llae fro m Israel 643
4.2.3 Seals and Bullae from Ele pha ntine 659
4.3 Legal Te xts 659
4.3.1 Legal Te xts from Ug arit 659
4.3.2 Legal T ex ts fro m Israel 676
4.3.3 Legal Te xts from Ele pha ntin e 676
4.4 Ad min istrat ive Texts 679
4.4.1 Adm inistrat ive Texts from Ugari t 679
4.4.2 A dm inistr ativ e Te xts from Israel 688
4.4.3 Ad min istrat ive Texts from Eleph antine 689
4.5 Co nclusion s 690
5
5.3 Ep ilogue 737
Inde x of Te xtu al References 764
Preface
Theology is a caleidoscopic field of study. There are so many inter-
esting angles one might explore that it is almost a pity to make the
inevitable choice for any particular specialism. Yet at an early stage
of my study of theology at the Kampen Theological University I be-
came intrigued by the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, as it
is commonly called in the christian tradition. The stories fascinated
me, their strangeness as well as their down-to-earth soberness. In the
course of my studies I became aware of questions regarding women in
the Bible, and those regarding feminist exegesis. I also became aware
of an often unvoiced presupposition: that the position of women wor-
shipping the God of Israel was worse than that of women worshipping
Ishtar, Asherah, or any other goddess. According to this presupposi-
tion, women would have been better off worshipping a goddess.
This was the start ing point of my dissertat ion which induced me
to study a wide variety of subjects, for studying the position of bib-
lical women is as broad as studying the Bible as a whole. Many people
offered thei r guidance, critique, su pp or t and frien dship . I am grea tly
indebted to Prof. J.C. de Moor for his inspiring and professional su-
pervision. I also thank Prof. C. Houtman for his co-supervision and
helpful comments and Prof. K.M.L.L. De Troyer of Claremont School
of Theology (USA) for her stimulating and critical remarks.
I wish to thank the Theologische Universi tei t Kampen for creat-
ing favourable conditions, including financial ones, for writing this
dissertat ion. I am indebted to the personnel of the Kampen theolo-
gical libraries of Oudestraat and Broederweg for their kind assistance.
I am grateful to the Stichting Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk (Am-
ste rda m ) for their financial su pp ort in publishing this dis serta tion.
Thanks are due to Carol ina Koops and Jo landa Paans-Spoels t ra
for their assistance in some of the bibliog raphica l research. I am th an k-
ful to Dr Denise Dijk and D r Doro the a Erb ele-K ueste r for discussing
a previous dra ft of chapter 1 with me. To Jea net Aa rtsen a nd Yvo nne
van den Brake, who critically read the text with a feminist eye, I wish
to express my warmhearted grat i tude. I also thank Dr Leslie McFall
(Cambridge) for correcting my English. For any errors that remain I
bear full responsibility.
During the years in which I wrote this dissertation I had the priv-
ilege to work in the team of the Sectie Semitica of the Theologische
Universiteit Kampen. I thank my colleagues for their friendship and
encouragement. I am indebted to Frans de Boer-Knegt, David Kroeze,
for their assistance in making the indixes.
I th an k my family and friend s for offering their in terest in my
research. The continuous support of my parents during the years of
my study and writ ing were extremely important to me and I therefore
wish to dedicate this book to my mother, Dina Marsman-Hasewinkel
and the blessed memory of my father, Derk Jan Marsman. Finally,
deep feelings of love and gratitude concern my husband, Aart ten
Have, who encouraged me and supported me in innumerable ways.
Hennie J . Marsman
ampen, March 2003
Chapter 1
Int roduct ion
Biblical arguments have played a major role in the discussion regard-
ing the social and religious position of women. During the first fem-
inist wave
women who demanded their r ights were confronted with
biblical arguments in order to keep them in a subordinate position.
They in turn used biblical arguments to plead for matters such as
education for women and suffrage. In the first section I will give a
brief overview of the early feminist biblical interpretation.
The hermeneutical arguments used by biblical exegetes in the first
fem inist wave were used again in the second wave. The re was, however,
an important difference, namely, a critique of ideology, which was of
major importance in the second feminist wave. Both in synchronic
and diachronic analysis this critique was used. In the second section
five hermeneutical approaches will be discussed that combine biblical
criticism with the experience of women from a synchronic point of
view. In the third section I will discuss the diachronic analysis with
special at tention to the earl ier work of Rosemary Radford Ruether, in
which she points to male monotheism as the major cause for the social
repression of women. This will lead us to the main question of this
study: whether the social and religious position of Israelite women was
worse, equal or better than those living in neighbouring polytheistic
cultures. In the fourth section I will deal with the methodological
considerations required to answer this question.
1.1 Ea rly Feminism and th e Bible
In the years of the first wave of feminism,
2
1
Feminism is often divided into two 'waves' , the first starting at the end of
the nineteenth century and the second in the sixties of the twentieth century. O.
Banks,
Faces of Feminism: A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement
, Oxford
1981, discerns three intellectual traditions in feminism: that of evangelical Chris-
tianity, of Enlightenment philosophers, and of communitarian socialism. See also
J .J . Dijk,
Een beeld van een liturgie: V erkenningen in vrouwenstudies liturgiek,
met bijzondere aandacht voor het werk van Marjorie Procter-Smith, Gorinchem
1999, 26-30.
2
In this section we will focus on the first feminist wave. In the United States
1848 is generally regarded as the beginning of the first wave. In that year the first
Women's Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls. Feminist women in Europe
started to organize themselves some twenty years later. The publication of John
Stuart Mill 's Subjection of Woman in 1869 is often taken as the start ing point
in Britain. F. Dröes, 'Vrouwen gepromoveerd in de theologie in Nederland', in:
to counter interpretat ions defending the subordination of women were
used .
3
The first approach was the use of opposing proof texts, a
method by which women countered certain biblical passages with oth-
ers that were thought to be supportive of their case. The second ap-
proach was the study of female biblical characters. In this case women
were identified with either their moments of glory or their suffering.
The third approach was the most radical in that i t advocated cutt ing
loose from everything that was considered patriarchal
4
The subordination of women, and its defence using biblical ar-
guments, has a long history. Although arguments against the subor-
dination of women in some degree or other have been expressed over
just as long a period, their history is less well-known. Medieval female
theologians sometimes raised modest protests to the then prevail ing
male-dom inated in terpreta t ion of Scr ip ture .
5
Prom the period just be-
fore the En lightenm ent, A nna M aria van Schurm an, a well-educated
D utc h wo ma n, may be mentione d as an examp le. In 1641 she pub -
lished a dissertatio on the right of wom en to engag e in science.
6
Her
J . Bekkenkamp et al. (eds), Proeven van vrouuienstudies theologie, dl. 1 (IIMO
Research Publication, 25), Leiden 1989, refers to 1870 as the beginning of the
first feminist wave in the Netherlands. In that year the pamphlet
Gelijk recht voor
alien. G eschreven d oor Eene vrouw
[pseud, of G. Feddes] was published. Dröes
regards 1919, the year in which women obtain ed suffrag e in the Ne therlands, as
the end of the first wave. Around the 1920s women had acquired the right to vote
in most Western countries and this signaled the end of the first wave. Even today
there are still a few countries in the world where women are denied suffrage.
According to some writers the designations 'f irst ' and 'second' wave are inap-
propriate. At the end of the eighteenth century several female writers formulated
their criticism on the social position of women in pamphlets and novels. Mary
Wolls tonecraf t 's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, is
among the most well known. Most of these female writers did not operate within
an organization, but acted individually. Also the fact that some of these women
played a major role during the French Revolution has lead historians, such as An-
nie Romein-Verschoor, to the conclusion that it would be better to speak of three
feminist waves, the first starting around 1780. Cf. A. Romein-Verschoor,
Vrouwen-
(Synopsis), Amsterdam
1981, 271-2.
Feminist P erspectives on
Biblical Scholarship (SBL Cen tennial Publica tions) (Biblical Scholarship in North
America, 10), Chico CA 1985, 4-5.
4
For a discussion on the definition of patriarchy, see section 1.3.
5
C f. Ε Gössmann, 'History of Biblical Interpretation by European Women',
in: E. Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.),
Searching the Scriptures
, vol. 1: A Feminist Intro -
duction, London 1994, 27-40; G. Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness:
From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy
(Wom en an d History, 2), New York &
Oxfo rd 1993, esp. ch. 7, O n e Th ous and Yeaxs of Fem inist Bible Criticism '.
6
stud y was wr it ten in response to those who argued against w omen par-
ticipating in science. According to her opponents God made females
submissive to the will of males because of woman's sin in eating from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:6). Combining this
argument with that of the duty of women to be si lent and to be sub-
or di na te (1 Co r. 14:34-35; 1 T im . 2:11-14) th ey w ere of th e opinio n
that women did not need to study the sciences in order to do their
task, viz. housekeeping.
Van Schurman opposed this by means of a
scholarly rebuttal in which she stressed the equality of all souls before
God.
the status of women, including the question whether women should
be allowed to study, received some attention in Western Europe and
America. The majority of the scholars who showed an interest, how-
ever, stressed the nature of women - bearing and caring - which kept
most women from engaging in studies. Only a few women in privi-
leged positions were able to learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew, to discuss
theological and philosophical matters, and to give a feminist reading
of biblical texts.
A more radical protest against men who justified their own priv-
ileged position by invoking biblical arguments had to wait until the
struggle for women's political rights began. In 1790 Judith Sargent
M urray w rote an essay enti t led O n the E quali ty of the Sexes ' , in
which she made a plea for more educational opportunit ies for Amer-
ican women. She appended a letter to the essay which she had writ-
ten a decade earlier to a male friend, responding to his claim for
male superiority. Since he based his claim on scriptural evidence, Sar-
gent Murray, who 'had believed tha t "argum ents from na tur e, reason
Muliebris ad Doctrinam, Meliores Litteras Aptitudine.
A pirate edit ion with
the slightly different title
et Andr. Rivetum de Capacitate Ingenii Muliebris ad Scientias
appeared in 1638
in Paris. Since women were not allowed access to university in the Low Countries,
she could not officially defen d her thesis in aca dem ia. A n English tra ns lat io n of
the Dissertatio app eared in 1659 entitled The Learned Maid. Cf. C. van Eck, 'Het
eers te Nederlandse feminis t ische traktaat? Anna Maria van Schurmans verhan-
deling over de geschiktheid van vrouwen voor de wetenschapsbeoefening', in: M.
de Baar
et al.
Anna M aria van Schurman (1607-1678): Een uitzonderlijk
geleerde vrouw, Zutphen 1992, 49-60 [Engl, transi.: C. van Eck, 'The First Dutch
Feminist Tract? Anna Maria van Schurman's Discussion of Women's Aptitude for
the Study of Arts and Sciences', in: M. de Baar et al. (eds), Choosing the Bet-
ter Part: Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678)
(AIH I, 146), D ordr ech t 1996,
43-53].
7
Am-
and experience" were sufficient to make her point ' , came to recognize
the necessity for adducing scriptural arguments in favour of women's
equal posit ion.
Hence, when her opponent invoked the traditional argument of Eve's
disobedience in the Garden of Eden as the cause of the Fall, with
the consequent subordination of females to males, she replied with
her own interpretation. She valued Eve's deed more positively, since
it was motivated by eagerness to gain knowledge. In Sargent Mur-
ray's view the biblical accounts were capable not only of conveying
different levels of meaning but also of bearing more than one possible
interpretat ion. For her opponent, and to a large extent most of Amer-
ican society, the Scriptures contained only one meaning, in the case of
Gen. 3:16 one th at just if ied wo ma n's subordin ation to ma n. However,
Sargent Murray 's male friend, and other tradit ional scholars , not only
felt offended by her metaphorical interpretation, but also by the fact
that she, being female, criticized the conventional interpretation of
the Scriptures which had been a male preserve up until that time.
The male clergy considered her contribution to be inappropriate.
9
In the early years of the nineteenth century American women con-
tinued the struggle for equal schooling rights.
10
When the goals set
out by Sargent Murray began to be implemented and girls were al-
lowed to participate in education, it became clear that women were
still supposed to respect the 'proper' spheres for males and females.
As the profession of school teacher opened up for women, their role
as a moral arbiter was stressed. The responsibility of women for chil-
dren 's moral upbringing was extended from the private home to the
school and the Sunday school.
11
1 2
8
Cf. C. De Swarte Gifford, 'American Women and the Bible: The Nature of
Woman as a Hermeneutical Issue', in: Yarbro Collins (ed.),
Feminist Perspectives
1 0
On the European continent a similar struggle was going on, though results
came to fruition a few decades later in some countries. In the Netherlands, for
example, girls were excluded from secondary education. Inspired by what she had
seen in the United States, Anna Maria Storm-Van der Chijs argued in favour of
vocational training and secondary schooling for girls. During 1865-1870 she gave
several lectures on the topic. Her words struck a sympathetic note in many quar-
ters, altho ugh there was still much opposition. B ut durin g the sixties and seventies
of the nineteenth century schooling opportunities for females in the Netherlands
gradually improved. Cf. W.H. Posthumus-van der Goot, A. de Waal (eds),
Van
moeder op dochter: De maatschappelijke positie van de vrouw in Nederland vanaf
de Franse tijd,
1968, 41-56.
1 1
Although the argument of woman as moral arbiter was used by those who
Quaker women speaking against slavery, began to extend their role
as moral arbiters beyond their prescribed sphere, the tension between
that role and the ideal of woman's domestic sphere became visible
in the clash that the Grimké sisters had around 1837 with the Mas-
sachusetts clergy. The crucial issue in the conflict between the Grimké
sisters and the Massachusetts clergy was the allocation of the public
realm to men and the private realm to women. The content of the
matter for which the Grimké sisters fought - abolition -
w s
of no
interest in the argument. The fact that the sis ters had overstepped
the boundary of the private sphere to which God had confined women
w s
of prim e impo rtan ce to the clergy and they co ndem ned it
s
un-
Throughout the nineteenth century women who did not keep within
the bo unda ries of the private sphere were charged with unn atur alne ss.
New Te sta m en t pas sage s such as 1 Cor. 11:3-12; 14:34-35; E ph . 5:22-
24; 1 T im . 2:9-15 and 1 Pe t. 3:1-7 were cited as proof t ex ts for th e sub -
ordination of women and the circumscription of their proper sphere.
Th e G rimké sisters and their fellow com bata nts cou ntered these tex ts
with passages such as Acts 2:17-18 and Gal. 3:28. In addition, they
pointed to biblical women like Miriam, Deborah, Jael, Huldah, Eliz-
abeth, Anna, the Samaritan woman and Mary the Mother of Jesus
as models for their own public activity.
14
Attacking each other with
opposing proof texts seems to have been the main issue of the con-
flict on the position of women in the light of the Bible. However,
many participants in these discussions realized that different criteria
for interpreting the Scriptures were underlying the choice of proof
texts. The position of the Massachusetts clergy, for instance, is, as
wanted to confine women to the (extended) private sphere, the same argument
was also used by some Christian women to build their case in favour of schooling.
In the 1860s Elise van Calcar-Schiotling, for example, stressed the need for girls to
become educated in the 'science of motherhood' in order to become good mothers
and good teachers as well. Cf. J.H. Sikemeier, Elise van Calcar-Schiotling: haar
leven en omgeving, haar arbeid, haar geestesrichting,
H aarlem 1921, 381-2, 410-
11. This illustrates the fact that various persuasions existed within the feminist
movement.
The Creation of Feminist Conciousness,
160-3. Lerner notes that Sarah Grimké was a member of various denominations
during her lifetime, the Quakers being one of them.
1 3
Cf. De Swarte Gifford, 'American Women', 14-5. For some black women be-
coming aware of the questionable use of the Scriptures in their repression, see
K. Baker-Fletcher , 'Anna Julia Cooper and Sojourner Truth: Two Nineteenth-
Century Black Feminist Interpreters of Scripture' , in: Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.),
Searching the Scriptures, vol. 1, 41-51.
1 4
Carolyn De Swarte Gifford observes, 'an example of an interpretation
of scripture that took as a guiding principle or criterion the notion
that God from creation intended that females be subordinate to males
and th at they inha bit different spheres ' .
1 5
The biblical interpretat ion
of feminists such as the Grimké sisters and, half a century later, the
temperance advocate Frances Wil lard ,
1 6
contrasted sharply with this .
To them the central message of the Scriptures was one of liberation
from oppression.
According to both Sarah Grimké and Frances Willard, the concept
of subordination of women was based on a false interpretation of the
Bible, a fun da m en tal and wilful misu nders tanding of male trans lators
and in terpreters .
Therefore, incorrect t ranslat ions and biased tradi-
t ional interpretat ions needed to be replaced with what these feminists
held to be th e original biblical message of freedom and equality. H ence,
women needed to study Hebrew and Greek in order to translate the
Bible themselves.
1 8
During the nineteenth century most women in-
volved in the struggle for equal rights, like Grimké and Willard, be-
lieved that if the Bible were interpreted correctly, it would reveal
God's intention that women be equal to men.
In this respect the impact of higher criticism of the Bible seemed
very promising. By the end of the nineteenth century this method
had become an accepted approach , bo th in Eu rope and the. Un ited
States, even though a fundamentalist use of the Bible was never fully
replaced by it .
Biblical criticism, with its presuppositions, brought
into question the plenary inspiration of the Bible. The notion that
the Bible, although containing the Word of God, is in its entirety
15
1 6
W illard was president of the Wom en's Chris tian Temperance U nion (W TC U)
in America from 1879 till her death in 1898. In 1883 she founded the worldwide
WTCU and was its first president. Besides temperance she also was an advocate
of woman suffrage and improvement of working conditions regarding safety for
women. Cf.
NEBrit.Mic,
vol. 12, 664. On W illard and other ninete enth-c entury
Evangelical feminists, cf. Ν .A. Hardesty , Wom en Called to Witness: E vangelical
Feminism in the 19th Century Nashville 1984.
1 7
A n exam ple of this is the tra nsla tion of Gen. 3:16. De Swarte G ifford, Am eri-
can Women , 20, mentions that Sarah Grimké and others . . . had pointed out that
with an altern ative tr ansla tion of verb forms - from 'shall ' to 'will ' - the passage
could be read as God's prediction of women's lot in a fallen creation rather than
God's t imeless commandment for women' .
18
Cf. De Swarte G ifford, 'Am erican W ome n', 19-26; D.C . Bass, 'Wom en's S tud-
ies and Biblical Studies: An Historical Perspective' ,
JSOT
TRE,
J . Kraus,
Neukirchen
3
not the Word of God, but articulated in historically limited and cul-
tural ly condit ioned human language, was an assumption shared by
biblical critics and feminists.
Feminists could refer to a growing
number of publications on new approaches to the Bible that could
also be used in support of their case. However, as Dorothy Bass puts
it, 'the sociology of scholarship precluded an alliance
1
between biblical
scholars trained in higher criticism and the advocates of a feminist
hermeneut ic .
2 1
Although the lat ter were disposed towards adopting
the tools of higher criticism, these tools were under the guardianship
of traditional biblical scholars, among whom were very few women.
22
M arie-Theres Wacker suggests tha t tho se few women w ho were active
in what she calls 'Männerexegese', i .e. traditional exegesis, did not
have the same goal as those striving for women's rights. The latter,
she argues, aimed ult imately at undermining the divine authori ty of
the Bible, whereas the former might have had no further goal than to
edu cate women according to scientific s ta nd ard s at th e newly estab-
lished women's colleges.
difficult to establish.
Of interest in this respect is the dissertation of Constance Ger-
lings, the first Dutch woman to obtain a doctorate in theology.
24
The
2 0
Cf . De Swarte G ifford, 'Am erican W om en', 21; E. Schüssler Fiorenz a,
In Mem-
ory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins
, London
2 2
Writing on women's history in the Society of Biblical Literature, Bass reports
that the first female member of the SBL was admitted in 1894. The few women
who were SBL -mem bers were mostly teachers at w ome n's colleges. Th is career p at-
tern, according to Bass, continued into the 1940s. Women were generally excluded
from teaching at theological and university faculties. Bass, 'Women's Studies ' , 10,
states: 'Women SBL members have been active for women's causes, but as far
as I can tell they did not combine this commitment with scholarly activity to
produce a unified, feminist reading of the Bible. Until the 1970s, it was necessary
to seek feminist hermeneutics outside the SBL'. On the history of female biblical
scholars see further C. Halkes, 'Towards a History of Feminist Theology in Eu-
rope', in: A. Esser, L. Schottroff (eds),
Feministische Theologie im europäischen
Kontext (Yearbook of the Euro pea n Society of Wom en in Theological R esearch,
1), Kampen & Mainz 1993, 11-37; D.J.A. Clines, 'From Salamanca to Cracow:
What Has (And Has Not) Happened at SBL International Meetings ' , in: Idem,
On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 1967-1998
(JSOT.S, 292),
vol. 1, Sheffield 1998, 158-93; Idem, 'From Copenhagen to Oslo: What Has (And
Has Not) Happened at Congresses of the IOSOT', in: Idem,
On the Way to the
Postmodern, vol. 1, 194-221.
lagen', in: L. Schottroff et al. (eds), Feministische Exegese: Forschungserträge zur
Bibel aus der Perspektive von Frauen,
Darmstadt 1995, 5.
Ams te rdam
theme of her thesis, woman in the early Christian communities, was
strongly connected with her own personal struggle to get admitted to
the ministry.
2 5
In a research article on Gerlings, Freda Dröes points
to the fact that in her dissertation she did not use any literature pub-
lished in feminist circles. Feminist authors like Barbara Kellison and
Lydia Stöcker who, like Gerlings, drew on the status of women in
the Early Church to make their case, and others like Matilda Joslyn
Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who accused Christ ianity of con-
tributing decisively to the subjection of women, were not mentioned
by Gerlings. Dröes assumes this can be partly explained by the fact
that these women did not have an academic education.
2 6
2 5
In her dissertation Gerlings first gives an overview of the position of women
in the Greek, Roman and Israelite world, and opposes this with Jesus
1
univer-
sal message of the Kingdom of God. According to her, Jesus broke with Jewish
tradition by treating women and men equally (73). - On the dangers of such a
dualistic approach, see the criticism on revisionists below. - In the Early Church
women had a position equal to men, though sometimes their participation was re-
stricted by social and cultural circumstances. Both women and men administered
the sacraments of baptism and communion in the first Christian congregations
(194-214). With the development of the Catholic church, however, woman's role
became restricted. 'When the Lord's Supper degenerated into Mass, and hereby
the sacrificial service actually was introduced anew in the Christian church, one
took the Old Testament position again, and exclusion of woman was a direct
consequence' (214, transi, HJM).
2 6
The only woman Gerlings did refer to was Anne Dacier (1647-1720), who
published a number of source editions of Greek philosophers that are of scientific
value even today. Cf. F. Dröes, 'Dr. Constance Gerlings: De ontwikkeling van
een geëngageerd theologe', in: F. Dröes
et al.
Proeven van vrouwenstudies
theologie, dl. 3, (IIMO Research Publication, 36), Leiden 1993, 97-166, esp. 131-7.
Gerlings dissertation was influential in her struggle to get adm itted to the ministry.
Beginning in 1905 she wrote several requests to the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk
(Dutch Reformed Church) concerning this matter. But time and again she was
turned down, partly on dogmatic-biblical, and partly on practical grounds. Then
in May 1913, shortly before taking her doctoral degree, she again put in a request,
together with four other female students of theology. This was discussed in some
detail in the meeting of the synod in July 1913. By then she was already a Doctor
of Divinity and this was of some influence in support of her request, as was the
content of her dissertation. Although her request was again turned down, only
one member of the synod had objections on theological grounds. The others put
forward ob jections on practical grou nds only. Cf. Dröes, 'Dr. Co nstance Gerlings' ,
110-2, 119-23,127, 154-6.
It was only in 1967 that women were admitted to the ministry in the Ned-
erlandse Hervormde Kerk and two years later, in 1969, the synod of the Gere-
formeerde Kerken in Nederland (Reformed Churches in the Netherlands) opened
the ministry to women. Some of the smaller Dutch denominations were much
earlier, the Doopsgezinde Sociëteit (Mennonites) already admitted women to the
ministry in 1905. Yet some of the Reformed sister churches over the world still
Many feminists of the nineteenth century were convinced that
somehow the Bible would prove to contain expressions of a non-
patriarchal faith. If only educated women applied the tools of higher
criticism to the Scriptures, they would be able to prove that such a
non-patriarchal fai th had been normative in true bibl ical rel igion.
27
In this way they were able to combine their t radit ional Chris t ian be-
lief with their feminist views. However, not all feminists held this -
in hindsight somewhat naive - conviction. For a few leaders of the
women's r ights movement , notably El izabeth Cady Stanton, the pa-
triarchal faith of the Bible and feminism were ultimately irreconcil-
able.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is probably one of the foremost represen-
tatives of feminist biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century.
28
Al-
ready in 1848, at the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls
(NY) she protested against male claims that the Scriptures contained
a divine mandate for restrict ing women's act ivi t ies .
29
Moreover, she
dedicated most of her lifetime to the struggle for equality for women
and the abolition of slavery. When she was well into her seventies she
wrote the work by which she is now most widely remembered. To-
gether wi th the 'Revis ing Commit tee '
3 0
Bible
in 1895 and 1898. Her reaction was pro m pted by the pre par at io n
of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible by an all-male committee
betw een 1881 and 1885.
31
ferred cooperation of 'Hebrew and Greek scholars, versed in Biblical
exclude women from the clergy; cf. M. Bakema, L. Sluis-Sluis, Een ander ambt:
Vijfentwintig jaar vrouwen in het ambt in de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland,
Ka mp en 1994, 75-91; L.A. W erkm an, O p eigen wijze?: De geschiedenis van de
vrouw in het ambt
Predikant in Nederland (1800
tot heden) (Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands Protestantisme na
1800, 5), Kampen 1997, 254-73. Antoinette Louisa Brown is usually considered to
be the first woman minister in the United States. She was ordained in 1853.
2 7
2 8
The Woman's
vol. 1, 12, wh o note s th e risk
of singling out
The Woman's Bible
milestone in the history of women's
biblical interpretation'. This risk also holds for the main author of the Woman's
Bible, Cady Stanton.
The Woman s Bible,
part
1-2, repr., Seattle 1974, vi (first impr. 1895-8; also reprinted: Salem NH 1986).
3 0
The Committee consisted of twenty woman suffragettes, among whom three
Universalist ministers and several prominent free-thinkers; cf. Bass, 'Women's
Studies', 10.
3 1
C De Swarte Gifford, 'Politicizing the Sacred Texts: E. Cady Stanton and
The Woman s Bible ,
1, 52-63 (56).
cri t icism', but that these dis t inguished women had declined because
' they were afraid that their high reputat ion and scholarly at tainments
might be compromised by taking part in an enterprise that for a t ime
may prove very unpopular ' .
And unpopular i t proved to be indeed.
Cady Stanton received much cri t icism on The Wom an s Bible, both
from the c lergy and from the women's emancipat ion movement .
33
Realising how profound the political influence of the Bible was -
for it w s being used s a weapon against wom en's s truggle for l ibera-
t ion - Cady Stanton proposed a revision of the Scriptures.
34
Treat ing
the Bible as a l i terary work and repudiat ing i ts divine authori ty, the
authors of
commented on those passages in both
Testaments that referred direct ly to women and on those in which
women were 'made prominent by exclusion' .
35
Against the doctrine
of verbal inspirat ion Cady Stanton emphazised that the Bible w s
wri t ten by men and w s the expression of a patriarchal culture.
3 6
9. This seems to illustrate Bass's state-
ment that the sociology of scholarship precluded an alliance. Yarbro Collins
supposes that the female biblical scholars invited by Cady Stanton 'may have
declined because they had been socialized to value objectivity more than com-
mitment' , commitment versus objectivity being the most striking difference be-
tween nineteenth-century feminist interpretation of the Bible and historical-
critical scholarship. Cf. Yarbro Collins, ' Introduction' , in: Idem (ed.), Feminist
Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship, 3. In agreement with this see also Wacker,
'Grundlagen ' , 5 .
3 3
Many women's rights leaders repudiated the book for the alleged harm it did
to the women's cause; cf. Cady Stanton, The Woman s Bible, 215-7; De Swarte
Gifford, 'American Women', 30; Idem, 'Politicizing the Sacred Texts' , 57-59. Nei-
the r were the clergy particularly happ y ab out it , to say the least. According to one
clergyman the book was ' the work of women and the devil ' . To this Cady Stanton
com men ted tha t 'his Satanic M ajes ty was not invited to join the Revising Com-
mittee which consists of women alone'; cf. Cady Stanton,
The Woman s Bible,
On reactions from the side of conservative evangelicals and premillennialists, cf.
Β .Α . D eB e rg , U ngodly Wom en: G ender and the First Wave of American Funda-
mentalism , M innea polis 1990, 1. Af ter pub licatio n The Woman s Bible only had a
short period of effectiveness; cf. Wacker, 'Grundlagen', 6. It was only about three
quarters of a century later that it received renewed attention, when, äs a conse-
quence of the 'second feminist wave' it was reprinted in 1974. In the 1990s the
centennial of
was celebrated by means of publication of two
worthy 'daughters ': C.A. Newsom, S.H. Ringe (eds), The Women's Bible Com-
mentary
, Lon don & Louisville Κ Y 1992 and Ε . Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.),
Searching
3 4
5, 12. Wacker points to the fact that
relatively much attention is given to texts that were used by opponents in the
USA to legitimize legal inequality of women, in particular Pentateuchal texts; cf.
Wacker, 'Grundlagen', 5-6.
the work progressed, Cady Stanton became convinced that patriarchy
was the foundation of Christianity as it had evolved over time. No
pointing to false translat ion s, inte rpreta t ions a nd symbolic mea nings
could change the fact that the Bible was a patriarchal book which
did not contain a message of equality from God to the women of the
nineteenth century. Further, if the results of biblical criticism would
be applied to the biblical position of women, this would shake the
theological basis of orthodox theology. As Cady Stanton concludes in
the second part of The Woman's Bible:
T h e r ea l d i f f i cu l ty in w om an ' s cas e is th a t the who le fo un da t ion o f the
Ch r i s t i an r e l ig ion r e s t s on he r t e m pt a t io n an d ma n ' s f a l l, hen ce th e
necess i ty of a Redeemer and a p lan of sa lvat ion . As the ch ief cause of
t h i s d i r e c a l a m i t y , w o m a n ' s d e g r a d a t i o n a n d s u b o r d i n a t i o n w e r e m a d e
a necess i ty . I f, however , we acce p t th e Dar wi n ian theo ry , th a t th e r ac e
has been a gradual growth f rom the lower to a h igher form of l i fe ,
an d t h a t th e s to r y of the f a l l i s a my t h , we can ex one ra te t he s nake ,
e m a n c i p a t e t h e w o m a n , a n d r e c o n s t r u c t a m o r e r a t i o n a l r e l i g i o n f o r t h e
n ine teen th cen tu ry , and thus e s cape a l l t he pe rp lex i t i e s o f the J ewis h
my tho lo gy as of no m ore imp or t an ce th an tho s e of th e Greek , Pe r s i an
a n d E g y p t i a n .
3 7
In Cady Stanton's view, women needed a different belief system. Ac-
cording to her, the Judeo-Christ ian belief system was based funda-
mentally on the oppression of women. As a daughter of Enlightenment
liberalism, she thought this to be an inadequate expression of the
ideals of liberty, justice and equality. Many women, however, stepped
back from Cady S tan ton 's far-reaching conclusions.
38
Still , Cady Stan-
ton did not totally reject the Bible, for she thought it contained valu-
able teachings, but she advocated i ts expurgation.
3 9
In 1902, just
months before her death, she envisioned a Bible from which all pas-
sages detrimental to women would have been removed.
40
Cady Stanton 'recognized the interdependence of social s tructure
and ideology as well as the role of the Bible in the construction of that
ideology'.
41
Although women had gained more opportunit ies in edu-
impress of fallible man, and not of our ideal great first cause, "the Spirit of all
Good" ' .
3 8
Cf . De Swarte Gifford, 'Am erican W ome n', 30; Schüssler Fiorenza ,
In Memory
of Her,
4 1
E.M. Wainwright ,
Towards a Feminist Critical Reading of the G ospel accord-
ing to Matthew
cation and the right to vote, the fabric of society did not change. Fem-
inist criticism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century mostly
concerned equal rights for women. It was only with the 'second wave'
42
of feminism that a critique of ideology became a basic feature.
To conclude, three approaches were used in the early years of
feminist biblical interpretation. First, by opposing proof texts women
countered certain biblical passages with others that supported their
cause. Secondly, by studying female biblical characters, women could
identify themselves with either the moments of glory or the suffering
of these biblical women. Thirdly, and most radically, by advocating
to cut loose from everything that was patriarchal in the Bible, women
tried to free themselves from male subordination . All three m etho ds
continued to be employed in the twentieth century.
1.2 T he Synchronic A ppro ach
43
The different approaches to biblical hermeneutics that were employed
dur ing th e first fem inist wave were also employed in the tw enti eth cen-
tury. In the firs t decades emphasis was put mainly on understanding
the transmitted text . From the nineteen sixt ies onwards not only was
the Bible considered a source for doing theology, but also the experi-
ence of women, although scholars differed in their view on the hier-
archy of these sources. These different views can be outlined in five
approaches: the loyalist, rejectionist, revisionist, sublimationist and
liberationist approach. All of them are mainly synchronic in method.
Applying the tools of higher criticism and marking passages as
4 2
The 'second feminist wave' started in the 1960s. During that decade several
protest movements manifested themselves and several women who were active in
these movements became feminists. Books by Simone de Beauvoir, La deuxième
sexe,
The Feminine Mystique,
New York
1963, were of great influence to the feminist movement. 1967 is generally regarded
as the beginning of the second feminist wave in the Netherlands. In that year Joke
Kool-Smit published an article that was to have a great impact, 'Het onbehagen
bij de vrouw',
4 3
For the outline of feminist hermeneutical alternatives in this chapter I am
highly indebted to C. Osiek, 'The Feminist and the Bible: Hermeneutical Alter-
natives ' , in: Yarbro Collins (ed.), Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship,
93-105, and M.-Th. Wacker, 'Geschichtliche, hermeneutische und methodologis-
che Grun dlag en', in: L. Schottroff
et al., Feministische Exegese: Forschungserträge
zur Bibel aus der Perspektive von Frauen,
Darmstadt 1995, 34-46. I am aware of
the fact that a classification like this does not do credit to the individuality of
authors. Some feminist biblical scholars might apply one method in connection
with another, or they might work according to different modes of interpretation
during various periods. However, the use of categories is necessary to clarify the
differences of emphasis and basic assumptions.
approach in most academic circles of the nineteenth century. However,
to consider passages to be secondary with respect to content, because
certain texts were not regarded as belonging to the genuine biblical
message, as some feminist critics stated, was not deemed acceptable
to the main stream of biblical scholars. The price for such radicalism
was scholarly and ecclesiastical isolation.
By the turn of the century some male scholars showed an interest
in the position of women in Israelite religion. Thus, e.g. 'Women in the
Ancient Hebrew Cult ' was published by Ismar Peritz in 1898
44
4 5
Soon it was realised
that also the social position of women had to be taken into account,
as was done in studies by Georg Beer
46
gaarden.
It seems warranted to assume this interest was influenced
by the first feminist wave, especially since attention for the position of
women in ancient Israel decreased after the 1920s. In an article that
focuses on a bibliographical introduction of the theme, Phyllis Bird
states that scholarly interest in the position of Israelite women was
sporadic between ca. 1920 and 1970.
48
correct to assume hardly any publications appeared, though perhaps
not all of them were qualified for the criterion 'scholarly'.
4 9
Most female writers on the subject of the position of women in the
Bible continued to concentrate on a better understanding of the trans-
mitted text by taking into account the experience of women, without
questioning the authori ty of the Bible.
50
4 4
I. Peritz, 'Women in the Ancient Hebrew Cult ' , JB L 17 (1898), 111-48
4 5
M. Lohr, Die Stellung des W eibes zur Jahwe-Religion und -Kult, Leipzig 1908.
4 6
G. Beer, Die soziale und religiöse Stellung der Frau im israelitischen Altertum,
Tübingen 1919.
4 7
W.D. van Wijngaarden ,
De sociale positie van de vrouw bij Israel in de voor-
en na-exilischen tijd,
Leiden 1919.
4 8
P.A. Bird, 'Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Ancient Israel ' , in:
Biblical Research
vol. 1: Women
in the World of Hebrew Scripture, (ATLA Bibliography Series, 38), Lanham MD
1995, 19-155. The topic 'social and religious position' indeed did not get much
attention during the above-mentioned period. More interest was shown in 'women
of the bible' and family matters like marriage. In the discussion on the ordina-
tion of women to the ministry, a much debated topic during the 1950s in the
Netherlands, the main focus was not on the Hebrew Bible but on the New Testa-
ment. An exception to this was C.M. van Asch van Wijck, Tweezaam is de mens,
Amsterdam
2
5 0
One of the Dutch examples of such an approach was A.M. de Moor-Ringnalda,
Vrouwen als u en ik, Utrecht 1959. Also a dissertation defended in 1968 at the
Free University of Am sterda m by C.J. Vos - a male author - may be characterized
in the period that preceded the second feminist wave. When a cri t ique
of ideology bec am e a basic featu re of fem inist biblical scholarsh ip, this
method continued to be used, mainly in orthodox and evangelical cir-
cles.
51
loyalist.
The foundat ional premise
of this m eth od is th e essential validity and goo dness of th e biblical
tradition as Word of God, which cannot be dismissed under any cir-
cums t ance .
Hence, to loyalists, the Bible is a prescriptive expression
of divine authority; being the Word of God, it cannot be oppressive.
Therefore the interpretat ion may be at fault , but not the text i tself .
Scholars who work according to the loyalist approach treat passages
that are problematic to women today in two ways. Firs t , by showing
thro ug h cri tical exegesis th at tex ts which seem to oppo se w om en s
rights in fact do not contradict each other, and the explanation for
this is found in the principle of hierarchy of truth.
5 3
The second way
consists in pointing out the limited validity of ancient Israelite civil
and ceremonial law over Chris t ians l iberated by Chris t .
5 4
With regard to the subordination of women, the loyalis t approach
means that the tradit ional argumention, s tressing the necessi ty of or-
der through hierarchy, is accepted in a restricted sense. Subordination,
loyalists argue, needs to be understood as necessary leadership of one
and followership of the other as the only and divinely intended way
to un ity and harm ony in society .
55
This hierarchical order is misun-
derstood if i t is seen as a relation of dominance and submission.
56
It is understandable that in opposit ion to this rather ambiguous
app roac h, others picked up Cad y Sta nto n s radical ism again, but went
in this way, cf. C.J. Vos, Wom an in Old Testament Worship, Delft 1968.
5 1
All We re M eant to Be: A Bib-
lical Approach to Wom en s Liberation,
Waco TX 1974; V.R. Mollenkott,
Women,
Men and the Bible, Nashville 1977; M. Suu rmo nd-V onke m an, Een evangelische
waa xdering van en kritiek op de feministische theolog ie ,
Soteria 4
(1987), 16-24;
M.E. Suurmond-Vonkem an, J . -J . Suurm ond, Een tandem relat ie van Woord en
Geest , Mara 2/2 (1989), 56-62.
5 2
Cf . Osiek, Th e Feminist and th e Bible , 99.
5 3
A BD
5 4
O n t he de bate of anti-J uda ism in wom en's studies, see furth er below (criticism
of the revisionst strategy).
5 5
Cf. Osiek, 'The Feminist and the Bible' , 100. A somewhat different interprets
tion is that which, while holding on to the authority of the Bible, stresses mutual
submission before God. Thus e.g. Mollenkott, Women, Men and the Bible.
56
Ac cordin g to W acker, 'Grun dlag en', 36, the weakness of the loyalist view point
is that it lacks possibilities of feminist analysis of patriarchalism. 'Frauendiskri-
minierung kann in diesem Rahmen nur entweder wegerklärt oder als akzidentelle
Abweichung von einer guten und zeitlos gültigen Ord nung v erstande n w erden'. For
this reason she denies the designation 'feminist ' to this method. On her definition
of feminism, see Wacker, 'Grundlagen', 34.
a step further in total ly rejecting the Bible 's authori ty as i t is imbued
with patriarchalism. This approach may be called
rejectionist.
One
57
She rejects a distinc-
tion between the essence of the biblical message and the accidents
of its expression in culturally and sociologically determined language.
According to Daly, the androcentric language of the Bible is not acci-
dental, but essential to it; the medium is the message.
58
Her a t t empt
to formulate a post-Christ ian fai th that would go beyond patriarchal
religion and transcend into a sisterhood as cosmic covenant met some
harsh criticism, even from feminist writers.
5 9
feminists who, following Daly's lead, have developed a religious belief
system based solely on the experiences of women. In their thealogies
they offer theories of the Goddess.
60
In between the two extremes, loyalism and rejectionism, at least
three other hermeneutical options may be discerned. One is the re-
visionist strate gy of interp reta t ion.
6 1
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation,
Boston 1973; Idem,
Boston
1979.
5 8
In her 'Feminist Postchristian Introduction' to the second edition of The
Church and the Second Sex,
Daly II (postchristian) imagines a conversation with
Daly I (Ca tholic F em inist): ' "Profe ssor Daly," I would say, "do n't you realize
that where myths are concerned the medium
is
the message? Don't you see that
the effo rts of biblical scholars to reinterpre t te xts, even thoug h th ey m ay be cor-
rect within a certain restricted perspective, cannot change the overwhelmingly
patriarchal character of the biblical tradition?" ' Cf. M. Daly,
The Church and
the Second Sex,
New York
2
1975, 21. The first edition was published in 1968. Cf. further Schüssler
Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 22-3.
5 9
Ra dfo rd R ueth er, for exam ple, criticises Da ly's work as neo-Gn osticism, 'built
on the dualism of a transcendent spirit world of femaleness over against the de-
ceitful anticosmos of masculinity'; cf. R. Radford Ruether,
Sexism and God-Talk:
and the Bible' , 98-9; Wacker, 'Grundlagen', 37.
6 0
E.g. the thealogian Carol P. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Wom en Writ-
ers on Spiritual Quest,
Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on
a Journey to the Goddess, San Francisco 1987. On Goddess worship and thealogy
cf . fur ther E. Erwin Culpepper , 'Contemporary Goddess Thealogy: A Sympa-
thetic Critique', in: C.W. Atkinson et al. (eds), Shaping New Vision: Gender and
Values in American Culture
(Studies in Religion, 5), Ann Arbor MI 1987, 51-71;
N.R. Goldenberg, 'The Return of the Goddess: Psychoanalytic reflections on the
shift from theology to thealogy',
SR
16 (1987), 37-52. It should be noted that
not all thealogians reject the Bible, some endorse the viewpoints of the sublimist
approach (see further below).
6 1
Cf. Osiek, 'The Feminist and the Bible', 100-1; E. Schüssler Fiorenza,
But She
Said: Feminist Practices o f Biblical Interpretation, Bo ston 1992, 21-4; W ack er,
'Grundlagen', 38-41.
patriarchalism that shaped the biblical tradition is a historical, not a
theological dete rm inan t. Th e patriarcha l characteris tics are not intrin-
sic to the tradition; their human form needs to be distinguished from
the biblical revelation, the core of which would be non-patriarchal.
Thus, the patriarchal accidents can be separated from the non-pat-
riarchal essence.
To demonstrate the legitimacy of this distinction,
revisionists show by various methods that the biblical world is not
completely patriarchal .
6 3
and negative categories is common. Sometimes a third category of
ambivalent texts is added. The texts labeled negative are considered to
be historically conditioned and their authority restricted to their own
time, whereas texts labeled positive are considered to have enduring
authori ty .
6 4
The danger of such a dualistic approach within a Christian con-
text i s demonstra ted by Bernadet te Brooten .
6 5
66
anti-Judaism in his presentat ion.
6 7
6 2
Cf. Wacker's description of the revisionist strategy in 'Grundlagen', 38: 'Die
'revisionistische' Hermeneutik nimmt, da sie historisch-kritisch arbeitet, durch-
weg deutlicher als die 'loyalistische' die geschichtlich bedingten Brechungen des
Gotteswortes in Menschenwort auch für das Neue Testament wahr, unterschei-
det die faktisch patriarchale Prägung der Bibel jedoch gleichsam als 'Schale'
(Menschenwort) von einem nicht-patriarchalen 'Kern' (Gotteswort) der biblischen
Offenbarung'. Schüssler Fiorenza's description of the revisionist strategy in
But
She Said,
23, is slightly different from Wacke r's. She sta tes th at accord ing to revi-
sionists only the interpreters of the Bible are to blame for patriarchalizing texts,
the biblical texts themselves are not misogynist. Although this is true for some
feminists writing from an evangelical perspective, not all revisionist authors agree
on this. Cf. for instance P. Trible in 'Depa triarchalizing in Biblical Inte rpre tatio n',
J AAR
41 (1973), 48: 'For our day we need to perceive the depa triarch alizin g p rin-
ciple, to recover it in those texts and themes where it is present, and to accent
it in our translations' [emphasis HJM). Hence, according to Trible, the depatriar-
chalizing principle is not present in all the parts of the Bible.
6 3
6 5
Cf. B.J. Brooten, 'Early Christian Women and Their Cultural Context: Is-
sues of Method in Historical Reconstruction', in: Yarbro Collins (ed.), Feminist
Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship,
in Feminist Christian Interpretation', in: Schüssler Fiorenza (ed.), Searching the
Scriptures,
Philadelphia 1979.
6 7
Brooten, 'Early Christian Women', 76: 'Especially striking about Swidler 's
outline is th at , whereas passages from the Hebrew B ible and extracan onical Jewish
writings do fall under the category "negative," on the Christian side, all of the
New Testa me nt falls into "positive" or "ambivalent," a nd it is only the Christia n
versus Jewish-negative reading are those in which the influence of the
Greek-Roman or of the Canaanite culture are held responsible for the
negative traditions. Another danger of the revisionist approach is its
subjective procedure of distinguishing between essence and accidents.
With regard to the Hebrew Bible the work of Phyllis Trible is prob-
ably the most widely known revisionist example.
6 8
Using rhetorical
criticism, her hermeneutic is twofold. She discusses texts that show
a depatriarchalizing principle and, separately from this, tells tales
of terror with women as victims. It should be noted that although
revisionists distinguish between an outdated historical skin of patri-
archalism and a universal essential core in the Bible they seldom pay
attention to the historical reality of Israelite society or the historical
process of shap ing th e Bible. Trible, for exam ple, recognizes the essen-
tial nature of the diachronic dimension of the text, but immediately
assigns it a secondary importance,
Such cons ide ra t ions a s h i s to r i ca l background , s oc io log ica l s e t t ing , com-
pos i t iona l h i s to ry , au tho r i a l in t en t ion , and l ingu i s t i c and a r chaeo log ica l
da ta a r e e s s en t i a l in the to ta l exege t i ca l en te rp r i s e , bu t in l i t e r a ry ana l -
y s is t h e y a r e s u p p o r t i n g r a t h e r t h a n p r i m a r y c o n c e r n s. T h e e m p h a s i s
he re i s a r t fu l compos i t ion .
6 9
Such a statement by no means disqualifies the 'total exegetical enter-
prise', but it definitely tends to restrict the importance of historical re-
search to the role of handmaid of literary analysis. Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza is doubtlessly right when she sees it as a weakness in Trible's
approach that the text is abstracted from its cultural-historical con-
text . The lat ter is considered extrinsic to interpretat ion.
7 0
Therefore
it may be said that also the revisionist approach, at least as voiced
by Trible, is basically synchronic.
In some penetrat ing studies Esther Fuchs has demonstrated that
revisionists tend to idealize passages in which women seem to be
honoured for their courage, independence or perseverance in seeking
motherhood. In her opinion the patriarchal ideology pervades even
fathers who are placed in the negative category. The New Testament canon, with
the exception of the "(and Some Negative)," is thus kept within the boundaries
of the positive and the ambivalent
1
(OB T, 2), Phila delph ia 1978, and
Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings o f Biblical Narratives
(OBT, 13),
Philadelphia 1984.
7 0
C f. Ε Schüssler Fiorenza, In Mem ory of Her: A Feminist Theological Recon-
struction of Christian O rigins,
London 1983, 20.
7 1
Yet she,
too, refers rather loosely to the inferior social status of women, with-
out ever at tempting to establish whether this was true in actual fact
or not.
Whereas revisionist authors hold that a non-patriarchal revelat ion
of divine reality is still recognizable in the Scriptures, despite all an-
drocentr ism, sublimationist au tho rs argue for a different concep tion
of the divine reality. Marie-Theres Wacker describes their position as
follows:
Nur wenn auch d ie Bibel auf e in Göt t l iches verweise , das wesent l ich in
Symbo len des Großen Weib l i chen zu f a s s en i s t , nu r wenn d ie mens ch -
he i t s ges ch ich t l i ch wie ind iv idua lps ych i s ch a l s u r s p rüng l i ch pos tu l i e r t e
Großen Gö t t in , d i e a l l e in den Grund e ine r den gegenwär t igen Heraus -
f o r d e r u n g e n e n t s p r e c h e n d e n T h e a - l o g i e u n d S p i r i t u a l i t ä t z u b i l d e n v e r -
m ö g e , a u c h d i e G o t t - R e d e d e r B i b e l b e s t i m m e , k ö n n e d i e s e s D o k u m e n t
h e u t e w e i t e r h in G e l t u n g b e a n s p r u c h e n .
7 2
Hence, sublimationist authors relate the validity of the Bible to the
fact that it contains expressions of the Divine as the Eternal Feminine.
Some even go a step further, arguing that biblical sources, when read
closely, reveal that Israel originally had a matriarchal societal struc-
ture. Gerda Weiler, for example, develops a gynocentric world view
in which (mother)goddess, creation and cosmos coalesce. According
to her, every woman embodies the cosmic and creating power of the
Goddess .
In the sublimist approach the (human) feminine is considered to
op er ate by its own principles and rules, differing from the ma sculine.
74
The otherness of the feminine is stressed and cherished. According to
sublimationists, social roles of woman and man are fixed. With re-
gard to biblical studies sublimist scholars glorify the eternal feminine
in biblical symbolism.
7 1
E. Fuchs, 'The Literary Characterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in the
Hebrew Bible', in: Yarbro Collins (ed.),
Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Schol-
arship, 117-36; Idem, 'Who Is Hiding the Truth? Deceptive Women and Biblical
Androcentr ism' ,
Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative:
Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman (JS O T.S , 310), Sheffield 2000.
72
Stuttgart 1989, 70. Since
Weiler 's book is a mixture of diachronic and synchronic approaches, I mention
her here. See section 1.3.
7 4
75
for instance, and the feminine character of the Holy Spiri t .
7 6
A l t h o u g h
this approach may give women pos ibi l i t ies to unders tand themselves ,
i t incl ines towards separat ism and exclusivism on the social and po-
litical level.
77
Finally, in liberationist herm eneu t ics l ibera t ion theology is con-
nected with feminis t exegesis .
78
The bas ic assumpt ion of feminis t exe-
gesis from the viewpoint of l iberat ion theology is that women must be-
come the central subject of bibl ical revelat ion. Feminis t scholars work-
ing wi th l ibera t ionis t hermeneut ics regard the in terpre ta t ive commu-
ni ty of contemporary women as the centre of the i r hermeneut ics .
7 9
In
contrast to revis ionis ts , whose main interest is preservation of bibl ical
tradit ions, be i t texts that reflect the experience of women or texts
tha t a re misogynis t , the main in teres t of l ibera t ionis t hermeneut ics
is connecting exegesis with the practice of women's l iberat ion. They,
too, tend to neglect the his torical dimension of the Bible as irrelevant
to their s truggle.
An example of a l iberat ionis t approach is the work of Fokkelien
van Di jk-Hemmes. Founded on the theory of Pa t r ic in io Schweickar t
that some texts deserve a double hermeneutic - a negative as well as
a posi t ive - because of the Utopian moment they hold, and making
use of Mieke Bal 's theory of focalisat ion, Van Dijk-Hemmes reveals
a double voice in the texts she analyses .
8 0
In a way the work of Van
Dijk-Hemmes shows the inadequacy of a schemat ic descr ip t ion of the
broad field of feminis t hermeneutics . Van Dijk-Hemmes is cri t ical both
toward reading feminis t ideas into the Bible and toward writ ing off the
7 6
M. Monheim Geifert, 'Abschied vom himmlischen Vater?' in: Chr. Schaum-
berger, M. Maasser (eds), Handbuch feministische Theologie, Münster 1986, 169.
77
Osiek, 'The Feminist and the Bible' , 102, mentions identification with 'much
of the mystical tradition of Judaism and Christianity' and with aspects of Mari-
ology as well as association 'with one type of Jungianism' as positive aspects, but
concludes by criticizing: 'I ts response to the problems of patriarchy and andro-
centrism is not to join battle but by a kind of philosophical idealism to transcend
the conflict by ascribing greater importance to the world of symbols, and to assert
that the way to true freedom will be found only by following their lead'. Cf. also
Wacker, 'Grundlagen', 42.
Sporen van vrouwenteksten in de Hebreeuwse bijbel
(UTR, 16), Utrecht 1992 [Eng.: 'Traces of Women's Texts in the Hebrew Bible', in:
A. Brenner, F. van Dijk-Hemmes,
On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices
in the Hebrew Bible
De dubbele stem van
, verz. en ingel. door J.
Bekkenkamp en F. Dröes, Zoetermeer 1995. The double hermeneutic of Van Dijk-
Hemmes consists of an exposing mode of reading ( 'ontmaskerende leeswijze') next
to a liberating mode ( 'bevrijdende leeswijze') .
Bible because of its sexism. In her work she pleads for a coordination
of feminism and theology.
Nevertheless I regard the character of
her work to be more liberationist than revisionist, since a criticism of
ideology that aims at liberation impregnates her writings.
In dialogue with Van Dijk-Hemmes since 1985, the work of Athal-
yah Brenner may also be classified liberationist. A product of their
collaboration is On Gendering Texts, in which they uncover the gender
positions inherent in texts.
Although Brenner shares the perspective
of Van Dijk-Hemmes, she stresses the exposing mode of reading over
the liberating mode. Brenner usually does not express the liberation
she aims at. Yet in her work, too, the exposing mode eventually serves
liberation, even though she interprets liberation differently from Van
Dijk-Hem mes. This is i l lustrated by her art icle O n "Jeremiah" and
the Poetics of (Prophetic?) Pornography', in which she concludes:
. . . I wi s h to po in t ou t tha t whoeve r compos e d thos e pas s ages pe rce ived
women and men - no t to men t ion God - and gender r e l a t ions in a
ce r t a in way . T h a t v i s ion . . . i s po rn ogra ph ic . As a r eade r , I can r e s i st
th is fan tasy by cr i t ic ism and ref lec t ion . But I do so agains t odds , for I
mys e l f was r a i s ed and educa ted to comply wi th tha t f an tas y and adop t
i t as my very own. Like o ther F readers
8 3
, I de co ns t ru ct m ysel f by
hav ing to f igh t a wis h to r ec ip roca te o r even app rop r ia t e M fan tas y .
Fo r awarenes s i s pa r t i a l de fens e on ly .
8 4
Th us we may conclude tha t for Brenner l iberat ion is interprete d as de-
construction. In contrast with her work The Israelite Wom an (1985),
which she designated as 're-writing history', her later work is mainly
8 1
'Wanneer je op deze manier bijbelverhalen leest, niet krampachtig feminis-
tisch, wel met 00g voor de patriarchale elementen erin, doe je mijns inziens recht
aan de tekst en aar jezelf. Je voorkomt daarmee ook het de-bijbel-heeft-toch-
gelijk-s yndr oom , met alle intoleran te consequ enties van dien. .. . Ik ben geen fe-
minist omdat het in de bijbel staat, maar omdat ik dat een goede zaak vind.
Vanuit die opvatting ontdek ik dat veel bijbelverhalen ook nu nog erg inspirerend
en bevrijdend kunnen zijn, maar zeker niet alle verhalen hebben die eigenschap'.
,
8 2
A. Brenner , F. van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male
Voices in the Hebrew Bible
(BIntS, 1), Leiden 1993.
Brenner and Van Dijk-Hemmes discern female
and male voices in texts, which they symbolize as F (feminine/female) and M
(masculine/male) voices. Consequently, a text can be read from an F or M per-
spective, i .e. as an F or M reader. Cf. A. Brenner, 'Intr odu ctio n', in: Brenne r, Van
Dijk-Hemmes,
A. Brenner, 'On "Jeremiah" and the Poetics of (Prophetic?) Pornography',
in: Brenner, Van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts , 193.
into the background.
8 5
T h e liberationis t m ode of herm eneu tics offers the possibility t o
relate criticism on the subjection of women to a critical review of
social and political structures. Problematic, however, is its theology
of revelation. T ha t which restric ts or denies full hu m an ity t o wom en
cannot have authori ty - cannot reflect the divine. Thus, the danger
of creating a canon within the canon is present. What is left, then, is
a small selection of texts.
8 6
Looking back, it may be said that all hermeneutical approaches re-
viewed thus far are basically synchronic. The loyalist approach ends
up harmonizing the Bible or in simply ignoring the tensions within
the Bible which can only be explained plausibly with the help of a
diachronic hermeneutical model. If patriarchalism is rejected as a relic
of a different era and culture, as the rejectionist movement advocates,
this point of view is rarely reinforced with actual historical arguments.
Were women repressed in ancient Israel
87
pressed more than women in other ancient Near Eastern civilizations?
The discrimination between 'acceptable ' texts and patriarchal redun-
dant baggage by revisionists is an a-historical and highly subjective
procedure. T he dangers of approach es tha t hold early Israel ul t im ately
responsible for the discrimination of women in Judaism and Christian-
ity were realized too late when this deplorable form of anti-Judaism
had already cropped up in feminist writ ings. Emphasizing the sub-
lime femininity of God fails to convince other scholars because such
theories are not based on solid exegetical and historical research. Us-
ing the loyalist approach makes it possible to criticize the subjection
of women, yet it contains the danger of creating a canon within the
canon.
Despite these necessary critical remarks it must be granted that
the synchronic feminist approaches were - and are - necessary. For
it is the Bible in its canonical form that was - and still is - used to
legitimize male supremacy in synagogues and churches, the tacit as-
sumption being that this inequali ty commanded by God corresponded
8 5
A. Brenner ,
The Israelite Wom an: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical
Narrative
8 6
8 7
With the term ' Israel ' I mean both the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms.
Cf. R. Albertz, 'Biblische oder Nicht-Biblische Religionsgeschichte Israels?' in: M.
Dietrich, I . Kottsieper (eds),
Alten Testament und zum Alten Orient,
Fs. O. Loretz, (AOAT, 250), Münster
1998, 28-30.
to historical reality throughout ancient Israel 's history. Understand-
ably a radical exposure and, where possible, rebuttal of this kind of
biblical patriarchal ideology was the first priority of the feminist ex-
egetes.
88
1.3 T he Diachronic A pproac h
As we have seen, the early feminist interpreters of the Bible yearned
for an alliance with literary and historical criticism of the Bible in
the hope that this would prove patriarchalism to be a non-essential
element which had developed only later on, presumably based on an
egalitarian motive. However, mainly for sociological reasons, no such
alliance was formed.
In the second wave of feminist studies of the Bible there was a
growing awareness that a historical-critical approach need not neces-
sarily lead to the radicalism of Cady Stanton. Thus, more and more
women raised the inevitable questions concerning the historical roots
of biblical androcentrism. Next to the synchronic approach feminist
scholars stressed the importance of a diachronic analysis and the need
for historical research that incorporated extra-biblical evidence.
It was recognized that quick and easy simplifications had to be
avoided. For example, what do we mean when we describe Israelite
society as 'patri arc ha l '? M arie-Theres Wacker defines patriarc hy as,
d ie kon kre te Her r s ch a f t des pa te r f am i l i a s üb e r s ein Hau s wes e n , d .h .
n ich t nu r s e ine l e ib l i che Fami l i e (Ehef r au und Kinder ) , s ondern auch
d i e L o h n a r b e i t e r i n n e n u n d S k l a v i n n e n .
8 9
However, as Sylvia Schroer points out, not all women took part in
this system in the same way. The historical reality was much more
complex than Wacker's definition indicates, since some men, and even
some women belonging to certain classes or groups, exercised power
over other men, women and children, regardless of the fact whether
or not they were family.
90
8 8
Cf. e.g., M.A. Tolbert, 'Defining the Problem: the Bible and Feminist
Hermeneutics ' , Semeia 28 (1983), 113-26, who point s to the fact th at reco nstruc -
tions of history cannot replace the canon and formulates the basic problem of
feminist hermeneutics as follows: 'we are faced with the issue of how a pervasively
patriarchal document can continue to communicate anything of value to those
who reject all such oppression' (125).
8 9
lagen', in: L. Schottroff
9 0
Cf. S. Schroer, 'Auf dem Weg zu einer feministischen Rekonstruktion der
With regard to the description of the social position of women,
this means that not only do we need to keep in mind the position of
women vis-à-vis the position of men, but also the social class to which
persons belong. Those belonging to the upper social classes will have
had more opportunities to exercise power than those of lower social
classes, i.e. women belonging to the upper classes of Israelite society,
such as queens and princesses, will have been more powerful than
women and men belonging to lower classes.
M oreover, it is question able w heth er th e whole issue of da ting te xts
can be omitted from the discussion. One of the first feminist schol-
ars who resolutely adopted a diachronical approach was Rosemary
Radford Ruether. Radford Ruether recognized the possibil i ty of can-
onization as a process which may have been aimed at marginalizing
and suppressing certain branches of the community,
At a ce r t a in po in t a g roup cons i s t ing o f t eache r and l eade r s emerges
tha t s eeks to channe l and con t ro l the p roces s , to weed ou t wha t i t
r e g a r d s a s d e v i a n t c o m m u n i t i e s a n d i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s , a n d t o i m p o s e a
s e r i e s o f c r i t e r i a to de te rmine the co r r ec t in t e rp re t ive l ine . The g roup
can do th i s by de f in ing an au tho r i t a t iv e bo dy o f wr i t in gs th a t i s the n
canon ized as the co r r ec t in t e r p re ta t ion o f the o r ig ina l d iv ine r eve la t ion
an d d i s t ingu i s he d f rom o th e r wr i t ings , wh ich a r e r ega rded e i th e r a s
he re t i c a l o r of s eco nda ry au th o r i ty . I n th e p roces s th e con t ro l l ing g rou p
ma rg ina l i ze s an d s uppre s s es o th e r b r a nch es of th e com mu ni ty , w i th
the i r own t ex t s and l ines o f in t e rp re ta t ion . The winn ing g roup dec la r es
i ts e lf th e p r iv i l eged l ine of t r u e (o r tho dox ) in t e rp re t a t i on .
9 1
Her solution is to examine other traditions for usable principles which
criticize the Biblical tradition. 'Heretical ' traditions, such as Gnosti-
cism, or ancient Near Eastern myths, like those from Ugarit, func-
tion as resources for doing feminist theology alongside the Hebrew
Bible.
92
Yet even those resources 'need to be "corrected" by the femi-
Geschichte Israels', in: Schottroff
et al., Feministische Exegese,
88. Schroer warns
against a too hasty comparison of ancient Israelite patriarchy with male domi-
nance in the European industrialized contemporary society (88-9). The danger of
enforcing views and values of our own time on Israelite society should be real-
ized, especially where it concerns a 'hot item' like this. See also, in more general
terms, T. Ishida, 'Adoniah the Son of Haggith and his Supporters: An Inquiry
Into Problems About History and Historiography', in: R.E. Friedman, H.G.M.
Williamson (eds),
(SBL
9 1
R. Radford Ruether , Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology,
London 1983 [
In her Womanguides Rad ford Rue ther wan ts
to broaden the basis for feminist theology by adding other sources
of historical tradition to the canon. 'Feminist theology must create a
new textual base, a new canon' .
9 4
Yet she notes that her selection of
texts is not a new canon, but only 'a working handbook from which
such a new canon might emerge' .
95
In her later work she modifies this
intention of broadening the canon. Other tradit ions may be used to
criticize the Bible, yet they only have the character of revelation in-
sofar as they promote the full humanity of women. She characterizes
her position as particularistic yet rejecting exclusivism.
96
Radford Ruether combines her critical principle of feminist the-
ology, i .e., th e pro m otion of th e full hu m ani ty of wom en, with the
prophetic principle of the Bible. Everything in the Bible that is patri-
archal must be denounced in accordance with the prophetic-l iberat ing
t rad i t ion .
9 7
Although this approach clearly helps to put the social po-
sition of Israelite women in a clearer perspective, it proceeds on the
tacit assumption that women may have fared better in non-biblical
texts whereas the consequences of an opposite finding, namely more
evidence of the same repressive tendencies, are hardly reflected on.
98
Moreover, the choice of theologically acceptable prophetical traditions
certainly helps to focus on the essentials, but is bound to be subjec-
tive, since - as Radford Ruether acknowledges - the male prophets
were also far removed from rejecting male sexual discrimination.
99
The solution to broaden the basis for doing feminist theology by adding other
sources can also be elabora ted differently, th at is, instead of adding 'non-o rthodo x'
texts from the period in which the canonization process took place, one chooses
texts that are contemporary to the theologian. In her dissertation Canon en keuze
Jonneke Bekkenkamp argues for the formation of female canons alongside the
Bible as sources for doing theology. Examining the posibilities of reading 'as a
woman' and 'as a theologian' she presents a reading model by which she analyses
Song of Songs together with the
Twenty-One Love Poems
of Adrienne Rich. Cf. J.
Bekkenkamp, Canon en keuze: Het bijbelse Hooglied en de Twenty-one love poems
van Adrienne Rich als bronnen van theologie
, Kampen 1993.
9 3
Radford Ruether ,
Wom anguides: R eadings Tow ard a Feminist Theology,
Boston 1985, ix.
21. This is the standpoint she also
takes in Gaia God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, London 1993,
(205-6), and in
London 1998.
9 7
Radford Ruether ,
RiC,
30-1.
9 9
Radford Ruether , Sexism and God-Talk, 29, 63. Cf. Tolbert, 'Defining the
Problem', 123; T.D. Setel, 'Feminist Insights and the Question of Method', in: A.
Yarbro Collins (ed.),
(SBL Centen-
Radford Ruether sees male monotheism as a major cause of the
social repression of women,
G od i s mo de led a f t e r th e pa t r i a r c ha l ru l ing cl a s s an d i s s een as a dd res s -
ing th is c lass of males d i rec t ly , adopt ing them as h is "sons ." They are
h i s r ep re s en ta t ives , the r e s pons ib le pa

Women in Ugarit and Israel

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