Reading the Bible as Women

The Impact of Male Authorship, Male Dominance and Female Absence in the Text

*Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

In contemporary culture, references to the ‘plain meaning’ of the Bible are alarmingly common. The phrase ‘the Bible is clear’ is also quite common and carries the same message. This message is that the Bible should only be understood in one limited way, that often neatly applies to whatever social event or progression is occurring at any given moment. However, scholars of the Bible know that the text is anything but clear. In fact the Bible is poly-vocal, contradictory, drawn from a range of historical times and perspectives, and written in ancient languages that most people access in translation only. The bible is not clear and it does not carry plain meanings. Rather it is an inexhaustibly rich text that carries the faith wrestling of peoples from long ago.

The Bible can only be known through interaction with the text. When we read (or hear) the Bible, we understand it through the lens of our own contemporary context, and we bring our own ideas and understandings into a conversation with the text. A ‘pure’ reading is not possible, because all knowledge is parsed through the cognitive frameworks our brains are constantly forming and reforming that allow us to make sense of the world around us. This is not a bad thing because it allows us to continue a conversation with the text that began many years ago. In entering this conversation, we stand on the shoulders of our forebears and ancestors who were also having a conversation with the text, which was also informed by their own cultural and social context. As long as people are reading the Bible, this conversation will continue.

Another contemporary issue is that of identity. As different groups draw attention to the way their identity impacts lived experience, new ways of reading the biblical text have emerged in scholarship. That is to say, new ways of reading the biblical text have become more acceptable. Feminist, womanist, mujerista, queer and other readings have drawn attention to the way elements of identity interact with readings and understandings of the biblical text as they are heard within specific social groups. The text has always been read in these communities, but the intentional examination of the interaction between the shared lived experience of specific groups with the biblical text allows the reader to understand how identity interacts with an understanding of the text. This article aims to look at this interaction with respect to reading, the bible and women.

In this article, the idea of reading will be explored as a hermeneutic which, rather than being a self-evident behavioral act, is an active conversation between the reader and the text. In this case, the text is one that has been designated as holy and as scripture, and so it carries authority that other texts do not. The power that is contained in these claims to divinity and assumed to be communicated within the text means that the responsible reader must remain cognizant of how their own biases influence their reading of the text.