Disrupting Patriarchal Narratives: A Hermeneutics of Suspicion Reading of Genesis 38:15-24 through the Voice of Tamar

Despite the apparent contemporary irrelevance of the Old Testament, the Adam and Eve narrative in Genesis 2–3 is a deeply engrained element within Western cultural mythology. As such it virtually demands a feminist critique, because its common interpretation as a narrative demonstrating women's inferiority and legitimizing their subordination has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the patriarchal world-view that still pervades much of Western culture. A feminist reading of Genesis 2–3 highlights the difficulties with the traditional subordinationist reading, and suggests other possibilities for interpretation that relativize the absolutism of patriarchal authority claims, thereby making it possible to envisage, and work towards, a different world-order.

This chapter examines the relationship between sexual transgression and political disorder in several of Shakespeare’s history plays and tragedies. Whereas in Henry V the discovery of a counsellor’s sodomitical betrayal preserves King Henry and England, in Troilus and Cressida Paris’ sexual abduction of Helen leads to the destruction of Troy. At the same time, Achilles’ indulgence of his affection for Patroclus jeopardizes the military campaign of the Greeks. In the three Henry VI plays, internal political dissent is exacerbated by King Henry’s doting on Queen Margaret, who is in an adulterous relationship with the ambitious Duke of Suffolk. Another unruly woman, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, goads her husband to regicide, thus fulfilling the prophecy of the ‘weird sisters’, a queer trio living on the margins of Scotland’s patriarchal society. Titus Andronicus and Anthony and Cleopatra depict how adulterous interracial affairs destabilize the Roman Empire from within.

ABSTRACTArden of Faversham (1592) endorses the association between female speech and lasciviousness and dislocates the link between silence and chastity in the figure of Alice. This domestic tragedy shows that the subversion of the patriarchal authority enacted by Alice and her accomplices are contained as an ultimate manifestation of the masculine status quo. Following the critical line of presentism, I argue that Alice’s appropriation of the domestic sphere as a subjective space of murder and adultery undermines the Palestinian representation of the house as a nurturing place of order and harmony and complicates the Palestinian, nationalist discourse that figures out the domestic sphere as a sacred nationhood. In both the fictional world of Arden and contemporary Palestine, gossip renders the household subject to the gaze, tongue, and judgment of the public. The containment of Alice’s transgression eclipses the possibility of a feminist emancipation from patriarchal authority in contemporary Palestine.

The creation narrative in Genesis 1-2 provides a key theological framework for contemporary sustainable development. The purpose of this study was to explore the theological principles embedded in Genesis 1-2 and their relevance to contemporary sustainable development. The research focused on demonstrating how the biblical themes of stewardship and dominion inform ecological conservation and sustainable resource management, examining their relevance to contemporary environmental ethics, and proposing practical applications for sustainable development. Using a desk review methodology, the study analyzed existing theological and biblical literature to develop a framework for sustainable development rooted in the theology of creation care. Key theological concepts, such as imago Dei, stewardship, and dominion, were evaluated to show how they provide a moral and ethical basis for environmental conservation. The findings revealed that the narrative of dominion in Genesis 1:28, often misinterpreted as a mandate for exploitation, should be understood as a call for responsible stewardship of the earth. The study revealed that humanity’s role as caretakers, outlined in Genesis 2:15, calls for a balance between cultivating and preserving the environment, which is linked to modern sustainability principles. The study also established the interconnectedness of creation as a guiding principle for ecological harmony, drawing attention to the importance of biodiversity and equitable resource distribution. Given the findings, the study concludes that the creation narrative in Genesis 1-2 presents a theological foundation for sustainable development, encouraging faith-based communities to actively engage in environmental conservation. It noted that while the theological interpretation supports sustainable development, practical applications remain limited in theological discourse. The study thus recommends the adoption of creation care principles by religious communities and policymakers to create environmentally responsible behavior. Additionally, future research should explore empirical applications of theological frameworks in environmental conservation and investigate how other religious traditions can contribute to global sustainability efforts.

The subtitle of Erika Gasser's Vexed with Devils: Manhood and Witchcraft in Old and New England might more appropriately be Gender and Witchcraft-Possession in Old and New England. Gasser uses gender as a category of analysis to examine early modern English and colonial cases of possession between 1564 and 1700. Using published pamphlets of demonic possession and obsession almost exclusively, Gasser argues that gender, particularly issues of manhood, was integral to how both demoniacs and those accused of causing the possession were treated. Among other things, Gasser identifies the pamphlets written about possession cases as forums for determining who had authority about the meaning and treatment of possession. Her secondary argument is that there was more similarity than difference in concepts of manhood and patriarchy on both sides of the Atlantic.Historians of early modern England, as well as scholars of witchcraft and magic, will be familiar with the territory Gasser covers. Her sources and case studies are well-known and have been explored extensively by other scholars, but she introduces a new perspective by examining the gendered aspects of the discourse surrounding possession and dispossession, and by interpreting the “gendered cultural meanings” of the pamphlet literature (8). This augments the previous work done by historians on the religious and political motivations of the pamphlet authors, such as Anne Reiber De Windt's “Witchcraft and Conflicting Visions of the Ideal Village Community” (1995), Marion Gibson's Possession, Puritanism and Print (Cambridge, 2006), and Mary Beth Norton's In the Devil's Snare (Vintage, 2002). To my knowledge, there is no new archival research. Private correspondence of the pamphlet authors and their readers, if available, would have added a further dimension to her analysis.For nonspecialist readers, Gasser carefully outlines the characteristics of the possessed, providing many examples and quotations. Detailed explanations, combined with the absence of dense gender theory, make her work equally accessible to undergraduates and the interested public. Typical demoniacs displayed convulsive fits, demonstrated extraordinary strength, spoke in strange voices and in languages unknown to the demoniac, saw apparitions, had aversion to prayer and other religious elements, and vomited bizarre items such as pins and nails. The “possession script” that was developed by the discourse, in turn, affected the performance of possession (9). Gasser points out that the performance of possession was culturally constructed, but without giving the reader any hints as to how that performance evolved. How much was the development of that discourse affected by gender?The male authors of the pamphlet literature were interested in providing moral instruction at the same time that they were reinforcing their own personal views of Protestantism and politics. Similar to those who wrote pamphlets in conjunction with witchcraft trials, the writers of possession pamphlets used the events to put forward their own political or religious platforms. That gendered language was employed by the authors, both implicitly and explicitly, is no surprise when one considers that all of the pamphlets were written by educated males who had a strong interest in upholding the patriarchal authority of the era. As Gasser points out, “power, patriarchy, and claims to legitimate authority” were embedded in the narratives surrounding possession. In fact, she seems surprised to see that “where we do not expect to see manhood” we learn “that gender fed the languages of power and authority” (9, 12). But patriarchy, by definition, is gendered. This is even more relevant when one takes into consideration the exclusive male authorship of the literature and the fact that 65 percent of the demoniacs investigated were young females.Information on what it meant to be a man in the seventeenth century is interwoven into the several case studies. A reader new to the subject of gender might find it more helpful to have some of this information up front to more fully understand what was at stake in the maintenance of patriarchal authority at this moment in time. For the most part, Gasser assumes that her reader is familiar with the intricacies of early modern manhood and broader gender issues. At one point, Gasser refers to “gender's malleability” without delving further into this fascinating aspect of early modern gender (11).The book contains five chapters, some of which provide general background information, whereas others focus on specific cases. Chapter 1, “Discerning Demonic Possession and Witchcraft-Possession in Early Modern England,” examines the possession scripts as documented in the pamphlets. Gasser maintains that the authors had an interest in a happy ending to possession cases, thereby restoring patriarchal authority to an otherwise disorderly experience.Chapter 2 offers a clear and concise narrative of the well-known witches of Warboys case. Gasser convincingly argues that John Samuel, who along with his wife and daughter was accused of witchcraft, was unmade as a man in order to convict him as a witch. His roles as head of household, husband, and father were undermined by Robert Throckmorton, the father of the afflicted girls. Disruptions of gender and social order were common to cases of possession, and the struggle between Samuel and Throckmorton effectively presented the former as a less-than-proper man, which supported his guilt as a witch. Samuel's authority over his wife and daughter was contested and ultimately transferred to Throckmorton, but Gasser downplays the role that Throckmorton's higher social status played in this drama. Paradoxically, the destruction of individual family patriarchy actually reinforced the broader patriarchy of society.Chapter 3 offers a close reading of the literature surrounding the war of words between the Puritan minister John Darrell, who engaged in the dispossession of demoniacs in England, and Samuel Harsnett, an Anglican chaplain ranting against both Puritans and Catholics. Gasser examines their pamphlet war's gendered use of language, with which each of the two men attempted to challenge the manhood and manly authority of the other. Verbal attacks were based on unruly passions, references to unmanly occupations, comparisons to Catholic exorcists, and association with weak women and youths. Gasser's presentation of gender as an element of (male) social order as opposed to (female) disorder adds another dimension to the previous assessments of this case in terms of politics and religion, and it contributes a nuanced interpretation to Harsnett and Darrell's competition for patriarchal authority.In chapters 3 and 4, Gasser revisits transatlantic continuities in New England in relation to the renowned Salem witchcraft trials. Chapter 3 focuses on the former minister of Salem Village, George Burroughs, who was accused and hanged as a witch. Gasser highlights how accusers and the men who recorded the affair used issues of manhood to transform Burroughs from a minister into a witch. His failure as a husband, in both lack of care and excessive control of his wives, contributed to his image as a failed minister who did not provide sufficient care to his flock. His position as a male authority made his shortcomings even more pertinent to his guilt. Gasser points out that wife beating in and of itself was not a provocation for accusations of witchcraft, but once the suspicion of witchcraft was raised, elements that were antithetical to proper manhood were added to the mix—similar to how aspects of improper womanhood were raised after initial charges of maleficium were made in witchcraft cases.Chapter 4 reviews the conflict between Cotton Mather, who supported the decisions made in the Salem trials, and Robert Calef, a Boston merchant who was skeptical about Mather's beliefs in possession as well as in his right to interpret the afflictions. Gasser highlights how issues of credit, trade, and manly honor were employed in attempts to unman the opponents. Mather's attempts at forwarding his “superior reputation, learning, and authority” were ultimately used to reinforce the unmanly attributes of “immoderation, arrogance, and ambition” (149–50).The pamphlets discussed also inform the reader about female bodies and who had power over them. On more than one occasion, Gasser raises the issue of “unruly bodies” and the contest to determine who had authority to discipline them, but more information on the leaky bodies of female demoniacs and how and why that threatened the men in charge would have been welcome. The treatment of the victims, whether to prove fraud or for their deliverance, was often penetrative and sexual. In the case of Joan Jorden, for example, one of the male authorities attempted to open her clenched jaw with his dagger and a key. A stiff rush was thrust into her nostril up to her brain and water was poured into her mouth. Martha Brossier was pricked with long pins. Mary Glover had a long pin, which had been heated over a candle, shoved up her nose. In other cases, the young women were tied to chairs and physically held down by several men at a time. Gasser does not offer any gendered analyses of these psychological rapes of victims by male physicians and clergy. In the Warboys case, the author directs our attention to the aspect of scratching a witch to neutralize her power, commenting that “the efficacy of the scratching test resided in the truths held and revealed by the women's bodies,” but she does not elaborate on what those truths were or how or why they operated (52).In some instances, Gasser confuses the difference between the agency of the performer of possession and the mandate of the author of the pamphlet. For example, fourteen-year-old Margaret Hurdman obsessed about luxurious undergarments while possessed, which Gasser refers to as a pedagogical performance. She argues that the author of the published narrative, George More, chose to include this element of Hurdman's fits as an example of female pride. But the actual performance was designed by Hurdman. Where is the evidence that the men involved were directing Hurdman's actions? Gasser focuses on the religious aspects of the situation and ignores the sexual undercurrents of Hurdman's detailed description of petticoats and farthingales. Likewise, the narrative of Mary Glover's performance is considered an opportunity for the men in charge to restore proper order, but the actions were her own. Possibly Glover's return to normal social expectations was more important to her reputation as a female than it was to the male actors' interest in patriarchy. Also of interest, but insufficiently discussed, is Glover's apparent need to cooperate with patriarchal authority. Gasser acknowledges that Glover's body “became a battleground” but holds back from a deeper analysis concerning “the power to control and declare bodies' meaning” and how that reflects on manhood (36).Gasser consistently presents the performance of the afflicted demoniacs as fraudulent and staged, which could be viewed as limiting the cultural understanding of possession and the spirit world in general, as the authors of the pamphlets were not only establishing their manhood in relation to the demoniacs and other men but also to the male demons who invaded the bodies of the young women under their control. In the current political climate, this understanding of gender as the foundation of (patriarchal) authority and legitimacy is particularly relevant to what is at stake for political players and, more importantly, to what is at stake for the broader citizenship who still suffer the repercussions of the performance of manhood.

This paper discusses the similarity and difference on female's resistance against patriarchal authority between poems "Diving into the Wreck" and "Daddy", which were written respectively by American women poets Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath.Having suffered in male authority and control, the female speakers made their efforts to strive to control their own life and be free of male domination, but in a way of sharp contrast.Rich made positive and optimistic practice, while Plath, more pessimistic and negative, went astray in self-destruction.Anyway, after the process of suffering and struggling, Rich and Plath have finally reached the freedom they want.

This article examines two Genesis narratives—the stories of Lot’s daughters (19.30-38) and Tamar (ch. 38). The female characters in these stories are tricksters, characters of low status who improve their situation through use of their wit and cunning. Comparing elements of the trickster narrative with elements of the comic reveals the trickster genre to be a comic one. Therefore, these narratives may be interpreted comically, a perspective that challenges some feminist biblical scholarship. Comedy’s function is escapism that offers a transcendent glimpse into another reality. In viewing these narratives through the subversive comic lens, the reader may see a new inverted reality where there are no tricksters, because there are no underdogs.

Conventionally, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's ”The Yellow Wallpaper” is often considered by critics as a representation of a woman's transformation under the patriarchal discourse of madness, especially as a medical case of female postpartum depression and the outcome of its ill treatment. This ”epidemic” reading indicates how female madness has been taken as nothing more than a psychiatric symptom defined by male authorities in the understanding of mental abnormality. However, this negative presupposition on women's abnormal behavior and their unorthodox creations are seriously problematic. Michel Foucault, in a lecture delivered in 1975, also expresses his concern for this academic ”psychiatrization” of abnormality. Therefore, we should take a different stance and critically reflect upon the too-easily-determined cases of mental illness, including those of madness that have been generally taken for granted in the reading of female aberration. Like the spread of rabies, what really circulates in society is not the disease itself, but the interpretations and misinterpretations of it. This article takes a more positive attitude to Gilman's ”The Yellow Wallpaper” and attempts to present the female narrator's techniques of herself in defiance of the patriarchal power-discourse of madness. Next, the article will further use the narrator's desire for companionship as a supplement to the weakness of the Foucaudian paradigm of self-technique. Finally, the article will briefly reflect upon the freedom in madness presented in ”The Yellow Wallpaper” and discuss the dilemma between power, personal freedom, and one's responsibility for others.

This paper focuses on Girish Karnad`s use of myth in his plays to express the bad conditions that women suffer from in the patriarchal society. It examines the role of Karnad in modernizing the mythological tales of India to express the modern situation of women. The paper clarifies the postcolonial feministic approach which is adopted by Karnad in his plays. Nagamandala is selected to show the use of myth the use of the postcolonial approach in Karnad`s work. Keywords: Myth, Postcolonial, Feminism, Girish Karnad, Patriarchal society

Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study (Studies in Theological Interpretation). By Markus Bockmuehl

Traditional approaches that have dominated the landscape of biblical studies in recent centuries have directed the interpretive task to historical understandings of textual meaning. These approaches have informed interests regarding theology and a given biblical passage or book, so that scholarly treatments in recent decades have focused mostly on theology as something to be found behind or in that text. Although the biblical canon provides general boundaries and categories within which biblical scholarship has done its work, a theological understanding of Christian canon has had a limited role within the arena of biblical interpretation and, in particular, the theological interpretation of these biblical texts. This essay asserts that the notion of Christian canon has a substantive role in the theological interpretation of the Bible. The first part considers issues in what may be called the "hermeneutics" of Christian canon. The second part considers three ways that this theological notion of Christian canon defines the task of theological interpretation. First, the Christian canon creates a different literary and interpretive context for the interpretation of these individual biblical books—a context that provokes potential intertextual and intracanonical connections in addition to intertextual connections available within the original reception context(s). Second, Christian canon assumes the Christian faith community as the place where theological interpretation occurs. Third, the notion of Christian canon assumes that the objectives behind reading and interpreting the Bible in its ecclesial context includes how the faith community lives out her interpretations of biblical texts in faith and practice.

Traditional approaches that have dominated the landscape of biblical studies in recent centuries have directed the interpretive task to historical understandings of textual meaning. These approaches have informed interests regarding theology and a given biblical passage or book, so that scholarly treatments in recent decades have focused mostly on theology as something to be found behind or in that text. Although the biblical canon provides general boundaries and categories within which biblical scholarship has done its work, a theological understanding of Christian canon has had a limited role within the arena of biblical interpretation and, in particular, the theological interpretation of these biblical texts. This essay asserts that the notion of Christian canon has a substantive role in the theological interpretation of the Bible. The first part considers issues in what may be called the "hermeneutics" of Christian canon. The second part considers three ways that this theological notion of Christian canon defines the task of theological interpretation. First, the Christian canon creates a different literary and interpretive context for the interpretation of these individual biblical books—a context that provokes potential intertextual and intracanonical connections in addition to intertextual connections available within the original reception context(s). Second, Christian canon assumes the Christian faith community as the place where theological interpretation occurs. Third, the notion of Christian canon assumes that the objectives behind reading and interpreting the Bible in its ecclesial context includes how the faith community lives out her interpretations of biblical texts in faith and practice.

Service and Advocacy: Matters of Faith?

In this paper we explore how education and religious practice influence gender ideology in Turkey, using survey data for 2003, 2008 and 2013. The two concepts of “male authority” and “female autonomy” are used as proxies for gender ideology, taking advantage of a set of statements intended to capture gender role attitudes among ever-married women 15-49 years. They were constructed using factor analysis. We then analyzed how attitudes to male authority and female autonomy differ by educational level and religious practice. In the ten-year period from 2003 to 2013 there has been a rapid increase in education while religious practice has remained high. We found that post-secondary education has a strongly positive effect on non-traditional gender attitudes, although declining over time, while the positive effect of not wearing headscarf mostly has remained high. Thus, the propagation of patriarchal religious values, which can be observed in Turkey since the turn of the century, promoting gender inequality and the confinement of women to the domestic realm, seems to be counteracting the positive influence of increasing female education on egalitarian views of women in Turkey.

Coles, A., Gray, L. and Momsen, J., editors, 2015: The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development. London/New York, NY: Routledge. 594 pp. £190. ISBN: 9780415829083 (Hardcover).