Tired of seeing their holy texts used to justify the subjugation of women, a group of feminist theologians from across the Protestant-Catholic divide have joined forces to draft A Women’s Bible.
As the #MeToo movement continues to expose sexual abuse across cultures and industries, some academics of Christianity are clamoring for a reckoning with biblical interpretations they say have entrenched negative images of women.
The women we know from translations and interpretations of Bible texts are servants, prostitutes or saints, seen dancing for a king or kneeling to kiss Jesus’ feet.
Photo: AFP
However, while many feminists have called for the Bible, Christianity and religion altogether to be cast aside, an eclectic group of theologians instead insists that if interpreted properly, the Good Book can be a tool for promoting women’s emancipation.
“Feminist values and reading the Bible are not incompatible,” said Lauriane Savoy, one of two University of Geneva theology professors behind the push to draft Une Bible des Femmes (A Women’s Bible), which was published last month.
The professor at the university’s Faculty of Theology, which was established by the father of Calvinism in 1559, said the idea for the work came after she and her colleague, Elisabeth Parmentier, noticed how little most people knew or understood of the biblical texts.
“A lot of people thought they were completely outdated with no relevance to today’s values of equality,” the 33-year-old said, standing under the towering sculptures of Jean Calvin and other Protestant founders on the University of Geneva campus.
In a bid to counter such notions, Savoy and Parmentier, 57, joined forces with 18 other woman theologians from a range of countries and Christian denominations.
The academics have created a collection of texts challenging traditional interpretations of Bible scriptures that cast women characters as weak and subordinate to the men around them.
Parmentier points to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus visits two sisters, Martha and Mary.
“It says that Martha ensures the ‘service,’ which has been interpreted to mean that she served the food, but the Greek word diakonia can also have other meanings, for instance it could mean she was a deacon,” she said.
They are not the first to provide a more women-friendly reading of the scriptures. In 1898, US suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 other women drafted The Woman’s Bible, aimed at overturning religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.
The two Geneva theology professors say they were inspired by that work and had initially planned to simply translate it to French.
However, after determining that the 120-year-old text was too outdated, they decided to create a new work that could resonate in the 21st century.
“We wanted to work in an ecumenical way,” Parmentier said, adding that about half the women involved in the project are Catholic and the other half from a number of branches of Protestantism.
In the introduction to A Women’s Bible, the authors said that the chapters were meant to “scrutinize shifts in the Christian tradition, things that have remained concealed, tendentious translations, partial interpretations.”
They take to task “the lingering patriarchal readings that have justified numerous restrictions and bans on women,” the authors wrote.
Savoy said that Mary Magdalene, “the female character who appears the most in the Gospels,” had been given a raw deal in many common interpretations of the texts.
“She stood by Jesus, including as he was dying on the cross, when all of the male disciples were afraid. She was the first one to go to his tomb and to discover his resurrection,” she said.
“This is a fundamental character, but she is described as a prostitute ... and even as Jesus’ lover in recent fiction,” she said.
The academics also go to great lengths to place the texts in their historical context.
“We are fighting against a literal reading of the texts,” Parmentier said, pointing for instance to letters sent by Paul to nascent Christian communities.
Reading passages from those letters, which could easily be construed as radically anti-feminist, as instructions for how women should be treated today is insane, she said.
“It’s like taking a letter someone sends to give advice as being valid for all eternity,” she said.
The theologians’ texts also approach the Bible through different themes, like the body, seduction, motherhood and subordination.
The authors say they consider their work a useful tool in the age of #MeToo.
“Each chapter addresses existential questions for women, questions they are still asking themselves today,” Parmentier said.
“While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite,” she said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious