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| The Birthday Girl and me on a sunny day this summer |
In honor of my mother, Betty Gowler's, 84th birthday, a continuation of my post about Elsa Tamez's Jesus and Courageous Women (my mother should be added as one of those "courageous women"):
Tamez argues that even grassroot interpretations usually
ignore such difficult biblical texts, soften their oppressive content, or say
that the marginalization of women in the ancient world reflected in these texts
is simply not relevant for the modern world (1994: 193). Tamez counters that
the central message of the Bible is profoundly liberating. Interpreters must
not ascribe too much importance to the patriarchal ideology that is found in
some “peripheral texts,” such as Genesis 3: “the gospel’s spirit of justice and
freedom . . . neutralizes antifemale texts” (194). Therefore, biblical texts
that reflect patriarchy, including the inferiority of women and their
submission to men, are not normative, just as texts that legitimate slavery are
not normative (195).
The first step is to distance oneself from established
interpretations and to come to the text almost as a first-time visitor with
little or no presuppositions about what a text means. The second step is to
read the text with the understanding that God is on the side of the
oppressed—the “hermeneutic key” found in Scripture itself (198). The third step
is to read the entire Bible (i.e., not just texts that include or involve
women) from a woman’s perspective, a step that involves including other
oppressed “sectors” besides the poor. In this way, interpreters come “closer”
to the Bible, being able to apply these texts to their daily lives. This new
way of reading the Bible should result, Tamez declares, not only in
experiencing God but also in a practice of justice and caring for other human
beings (Tamez 1989: 4, 150).
Tamez demonstrates this approach in an innovative book, Jesus and Courageous Women (2001), in
which she uses a fictionalized version of Lydia (Acts 16:11-15, 40) to narrate
stories of courageous women who follow Jesus. Tamez hopes that such stories
will motivate readers “to rethink our lives in relation to the church and to
society” (vii). These testimonies of women are part of the “counter-movement”
to the dominant Roman Empire that was an essential element of the Jesus
movement within Palestine and the Christian movement beyond Palestine. The
narration of these women’s stories and the courage reflected in them highlight
the liberating force of the early Christian movement, because it also includes
liberation from the oppression of patriarchy.
“Lydia” begins by noting that the active participation of
women in the early church and in the stories of Jesus is “usually not taken
into account” (1):
The stories I have heard about the
women followers of Jesus tell me two important things: first, that Jesus has a
special inclination for those people at the marginalized sectors of society,
such as women, the poor and the sick, and all those who are discriminated
against; and second, that we women have found in the movement of Jesus the hope
and vision that things can be different for us . . . (2).
. . .
Jesus believed there must be room
for all in society—women and men, the poor, the sick, and the ignorant. The
Kingdom of God, the central proclamation of Jesus, is an ideal realm in which
there is no war, no domination of one people over another, no hunger, no
discrimination, for all people are viewed as precious, loved, and valued in
God’s eyes (4).
Next: Tamez's interpretation of the parable of the Importunate Widow/Unjust Judge.
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