Feminism, Bible, Texts and Terror – A Feminist Reflection

On Fairness and Accuracy in the Academy:A Brief Response to Wim Vergeer's Use of Terminologies, and Some Simplifications, in the Article "The Redeemer in an 'Irredeemable Text' (1 Timothy 2:9–15)" Maretha M. Jacobs The reason for this brief response is that, in the above-mentioned article, Wim Vergeer dealt with my work, and with that of another scholar (Gerald West), inaccurately. More precisely, he ascribed to us an expression that neither of us used in the form quoted by him (Vergeer 2016, 84). Although the most visible problem is the incorrect quotation, more than a mere quotation is at stake, as will become clear. Since an academic discourse is an open one, this matter is discussed here in the openness of the same academic journal in which his contribution was published. Although I only write on behalf of myself, for the sake of fairness I briefly refer to the article by West. Already in the abstract of Vergeer's article (2016, 71), the term "irredeemable texts of terror" is used and dealt with as if it is an existing expression with which he links up. At this stage, he merely ascribes it to "some" who "branded" this passage in this way, without providing names. Having read the article, I realised that Vergeer did not link up with an existing expression, but coined it himself by conflating two separate terms, used by two different authors—one by me and the other by Gerald West. Instead of making it explicit that he himself coined the term, thus taking responsibility for it, he ascribes it to both West and myself. On p. 73, he does keep the terms "irredeemable" and "texts of terror" separate, and places them between quotation marks, but he fails to link each term to a specific person's name. In the hermeneusis (p. 84), he explicitly ascribes the conflated term, which neither of us created, to both of us. The term "texts of terror" is, of course, a term that is used by feminist biblical scholars, although I have never used it myself. It is probably derived from Phyllis Trible's book, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (1984), in which she undertook a close reading of the tragic stories of four abused women in the OT, reinterpreting them in the process. Gerald West used the term in the title of a 2004 article. Contrary to the un-nuanced way in which his work is referred to by Vergeer, West's is a theoretically well-informed article that not only brings into focus specific [End Page 359] contemporary examples of how the passage has been abused to the detriment of women, but also makes meaningful suggestions for interpreting the passage in a more life-giving way. By not taking the content of the article seriously, and merely relating the term "texts of terror" to its history of reception (Vergeer 2016, 84), the nature of the article is distorted. I did use the term "irredeemable" between quotation marks in a 2005 article: "On 1 Timothy 2:9–15: Why Still Interpret 'Irredeemable' Biblical Texts?" (Jacobs 2005a).1 However, I carefully qualified and therefore nuanced it (2005a, 85). By not taking this into account and by removing the quotation marks from the term, in both the abstract and the hermeneusis of his article, this nuance was completely lost (Vergeer 2016, 71, 84). His linking of the term "irredeemable," as used by me, solely with the passage's "depressing history of reception," as he calls it (2016, 84), is also not correct. In my article, I specifically paid attention to the problematic nature of the passage itself, embedded as it was in the Greco-Roman patriarchal culture of the time, in which males spoke and wrote about females and the latter did not have the authority to speak for themselves, where and when it mattered, specifically in the public sphere (Jacobs 2005a, 88–89). The passage itself, based as it was on the values of the hierarchical Roman household (Martin 2008, 278), gave rise to abuse against women. Part of the issue addressed by my article was whether or not it is really possible to...

Sexual violence has become a topic of significant interest for biblical interpreters. This is perhaps not surprising; after all, the Hebrew Bible contains many examples of sexual violence, including rape, rape threats, sex trafficking, gender-based violence in warfare, femicide, and other forms of sexual exploitation and violence. While early work on the topic was often part of larger studies of women, gender, or violence, more recent work tends to focus specifically on sexual violence. Feminist biblical scholarship has played a significant role in elevating sexual violence as a matter of importance for study. More recently, the #MeToo movement and increased popular awareness of rape culture have influenced the development of the field. “Rape culture” refers to the idea that rape is not an isolated or individual event, but rather part of a larger continuum of forms of sexual violence that encompasses both everyday microaggressions and extreme acts of sexual violence. Along with “rape culture,” “rape myths”—the false cultural assumptions about rape that uphold rape culture—often appear in these discussions. Following broader trends in feminist and womanist scholarship, many analyses of sexual violence also explore postcolonial, anti-imperial, and intersectional perspectives. Key texts for scholarship on sexual violence include the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34), the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13), the gang-rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19–21), Bathsheba and David (2 Samuel 11), the “marriage metaphor” in the prophetic books (especially Hosea 1–3, Jeremiah 3, and Ezekiel 16 and 23), and the rape of Daughter Zion (Lamentations 1 and 2). Texts describing the treatment of female captives in warfare and other intersections of sexual and martial violence also draw significant attention, as do the laws regulating rape. However, scholarship is not limited to these texts, as the bibliography shows. The study of sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible is a dynamic, important, and still-growing field, and it should prove of interest to all attentive readers of biblical texts.

Reviewed by: Claiming Her Dignity: Female Resistance in the Old Testament by L. Juliana M. Claassens Brandon Grafius l. juliana m. claassens Claiming Her Dignity: Female Resistance in the Old Testament (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016). Pp. xxvi + 165. The last several decades have seen an increasing interest in biblical texts that depict violence against women, what Phyllis Trible famously labeled the "texts of terror." Claassens's most recent monograph offers a contribution to this area of study, dealing with the methods that biblical females use to resist the violence that is perpetrated against them. By focusing on these acts of resistance, C. hopes to transform these texts from texts of terror into texts of hope. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, C.'s book is divided into four main chapters, each covering a different type of textual violence. Each chapter follows the format of introducing the form of violence (with some theoretical background), discussing two texts that exemplify this form of violence, and offering concluding remarks. Claassens groups Rizpah and Abigail together under the violence of war and sees their resistance as, respectively, lamenting and offering hospitality. In her discussion of Rizpah, C. uses the brief note in 2 Sam 21:10 regarding Rizpah's lament in 2 Sam 21:10 as a starting point and argues that lament is a powerful tool for women across a variety of cultures. As evidence that this is true also in the biblical text, C. points to this lament's "profoundly transformative effect on King David" (p. 15). She then uses the story of Abigail in 1 Samuel 25 to discuss how "nourishing food and wise words" can become "powerful tools" that, at least temporarily, halt potential violence (p. 29). In the second chapter, C. moves to the violence of rape, as depicted in the stories of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) and Susanna (from the Old Greek additions to Daniel). C. finds specifics in the text indicating that Tamar attempted to resist her brother's rape in the midst of the act, and she also argues that Tamar continued this resistance afterwards through her acts of mourning. This section, in particular, would have benefited from more dialogue with C.'s earlier section on mourning; instead, the two are constructed as largely independent essays. In her essay on Susanna, C. finds admirable "Susanna's ability to take a stand" (p. 64), in spite of the fact that it is actually Daniel who saves the day. For the third chapter, C. adopts Carol Meyers's term "heterarchy" as an analytical tool [End Page 115] for exploring multiple layers of power structures that may be present simultaneously, moving beyond the more limiting concept of "patriarchy" (pp. 69-70). C. returns again to the lament as an act of resistance in her reading of Jephthah's daughter but finds the primary power of the story to lie in its ability to name the "tragic reality" of Jephthah's socio historical circumstances. In a similar manner, C. sees the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27) as victims of a repressive social environment, but one that they successfully change (at least in a limited sense). Even though the daughters' case is successful, C. engages with the troubling reality that this narrative provides an image of "a God that hands out land grants to the chosen people as God pleases," ignoring the land rights of prior inhabitants (p. 90). In the final chapter, C. explores the violence of "precarity," using the stories of Sarah/Hagar and Ruth/Naomi as test cases. C. reads Hagar's tears and Sarah's laughter both as causing God to transform their situations. In the final section, C. discusses the story of Ruth and Naomi in conjunction with that of Tamar (Genesis 38), as stories that involve foreign women in dehumanizing situations who "resist the persons and forces that seek to diminish their worth as human beings" (p. 125). She sees both Ruth and Tamar as trickster figures. While much of this ground has been trod before, C.'s collection of essays is still a helpful resource. It would be best suited for an audience of advanced undergraduate or beginning seminary students. Brandon Grafius...

This paper discusses how faith-based advocacy organizations, such as the Texas Pastors Council, have used Genesis 1:27 to argue against the existence of a transgender identity and to defend the proposed (sb6) Texas Bathroom Bill. Highlighting the contemporary reception of this biblical text, the paper explores how Genesis 1–2 operates as a queer “text of terror.” This analysis proceeds in three parts. The first part examines how queer biblical scholars have interpreted this Genesis creation story. The second part builds on Deryn Guest’s argument, that Judges 3 is a “text of terror,” arguing that Genesis 1–2 may also lead to violence against the transgender community. The third section proposes a reading of Gen. 1:27 that contests the heteronormative gender identity endorsed in the narrative. This way of “reading forward” combats the normalizing discourse around human sexuality and reproduction often articulated in political and social arguments that use this text.

Reviewed by: Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories Judith R. Baskin Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories, by Tikva Frymer-Kensky. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. 446 pp. $28.95. In her lucid and accessible new book, Tikva Frymer-Kensky applies her skills as a deeply learned biblical scholar, her training as an Assyriologist, and her personal approach as "a feminist who loves the Bible" to an original and elucidating study of representations of women in Hebrew Scriptures. Frymer-Kensky does not apologize for the fact that the Hebrew Bible, an androcentric text written by men about male matters, reflects a patriarchal society in which women had limited abilities to determine events. As in her earlier book, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (1992), she argues that we must look beyond the gender-based inequity common to all ancient societies and recognize that biblical writers do not represent women as lesser creations who are other than men in their basic human qualities. In fact, the underlying theme of this volume is that women figure prominently in so many biblical narratives because they often serve as a metaphor for Israel itself. Thus, "The Bible's view that women were socially disadvantaged without being essentially inferior provided a paradigm through which biblical Israel did not have to equate its own powerlessness with inferiority" (p. xxii). Frymer-Kensky reads biblical literature closely and on its own terms, eliminating the layers of traditional interpretation that often influence how people understand biblical stories and characters. Her careful analyses, based on her own translations, explore the nuances of the original Hebrew and also place the passage at hand in its larger cultural context. While Frymer-Kensky includes references to traditional biblical exegesis and contemporary feminist scholarship in notes to each chapter, this book is not primarily aimed at an academic audience. It is directed to general readers who are interested in what these stories and characters "might mean to us in our own culture today, when the lives of most women are dramatically different from the lives of the biblical figures who have so fascinated us throughout the millennia" (p. xxvii). [End Page 158] Reading the Women of the Bible is not intended to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of all biblical women. Significant female figures such as Eve, the Matriarchs, and Miriam are not discussed or are mentioned only in passing. Frymer-Kensky's goal is to reveal the meaning of what she calls the "women-stories" as a group and to elucidate the concept of "woman" in the Hebrew Bible; she does so by demonstrating that overall patterns and recognizable themes begin to emerge when biblical narratives are read closely and in relation to one another. Thus, her book is organized according to the four categories into which Frymer-Kensky believes most of the Hebrew Bible's narratives about women fall. These thematic divisions consider women as victors, victims, virgins (and potential brides), and voices of God. "Victors" are those biblical women whose actions had a decisive impact on Israel's destiny. These powerful women come from different social levels and include heroines and villains, Israelites and foreigners. Among the forces for good whose stories are explicated in detail are Rivka, the midwives of Exodus, Zipporah, Rahab, Deborah, Yael, and the Shunammite woman of second Kings; the malefactors include Potiphar's wife, Delilah, and Athaliah. Frymer-Kensky notes that the triumphant stories of the "Victors" may also be read as tales of national survival, since narratives about dynamic women who succeeded despite their marginalized place in society must have conveyed a powerful and paradigmatic message to a people who felt weak, small, and vulnerable. The biblical "Victims" Frymer-Kensky discusses all appear in Judges or 2nd Samuel. She notes that Judges tells "texts of terror" in order to indict a chaotic political system that could not prevent abuses of powerless women or, on a larger scale, of any Israelite. As Frymer-Kensky points out, "The narrator underscores the paradigmatic nature of the stories of Jephthah's daughter and the Levite's concubine by...

It is widely recognized that the Hebrew Bible is filled with rape and sexual violence. However, feminist approaches to the topic remain dominated by Phyllis Trible’s 1984 Texts of Terror, which describes feminist criticism as a practice of “telling sad stories.” Pushing beyond Trible, Texts after Terror offers a new framework for reading biblical sexual violence, one that draws on recent work in feminist, queer, and affect theory and activism against sexual violence and rape culture. In the Hebrew Bible as in the contemporary world, sexual violence is frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky. Fuzzy names the ambiguity and confusion that often surround experiences of sexual violence. Messy identifies the consequences of rape, while also describing messy sex and bodies. Icky points out the ways that sexual violence fails to fit into neat patterns of evil perpetrators and innocent victims. Building on these concepts, Texts after Terror offers new feminist strategies and approaches to sexual violence: critiquing the framework of consent, offering new models of sexual harm, emphasizing the importance of relationships between women (even in the context of stories of heterosexual rape), reading biblical rape texts with and through contemporary texts written by survivors, and advocating for “unhappy reading” that makes unhappiness and open-endedness into key feminist sites of possibility. Texts after Terror also discusses a wide range of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen 34), Tamar (2 Sam 13), Lot’s daughters (Gen 19), Bathsheba (2 Sam 11), Hagar (Gen 16 and 21), Daughter Zion (Lam 1 and 2), and the Levite’s concubine (Judg 19).

Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? Wrestling with Troubling War Texts.

This essay’s semiotic and feminist approach proposes a re-reading of the ‘daughters of Zion’ poem (Isa. 3.16-4.1) as a rape text. Analysis of such a text (including intertextuality with Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock) with deleterious effects for a rape culture reveals the interplay of satire with its poetics of rape, the misogynist biases actuating the sexual violence of its rape rhetoric, and the necessity to re-inscribe valuation of the feminine in such a text of terror vis-à-vis a rape culture. This poetic satire possesses no ideological neutrality as its androcentric nature (en)genders the (male) poet and Yhwh to (circum)(in)scribe the ultimate fate of these women as rape victims after having mocked them with sexist stereotypes. Nonresistance to this textual marginalization of Woman as ‘other’ tacitly succumbs to this text’s power to interpellate female readers as immasculated victims and male readers as salacious voyeurs, thus coopting readers in the perpetual ethos of violence against the feminine. The resistant act of re-reading such a textual act of violence, however, empowers by unveiling it as an abuse of power and liberates by voicing advocacy for the suffering silent demeaned, devalued, and dehumanized.

his article is an analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and its implication for HIV/AIDS as a gendered epidemic in Zimbabwe. The aim of this study is to examine the role of this text in perpetuating attitudes that precipitate susceptibility of women to HIV/AIDS infection. It employs a desk research method and African feminist framework as lenses to examine the text for its applicability in the African context. The study comes to three conclusions. First, if the behaviour prescribed for women in the text under examination is applied in today’s context, it exposes women to HIV infections. Second, the Bible and some of the Zimbabwean cultures collude in the subjugation and manipulation of women. Third, there is a need to liberate both the biblical text and the receiving culture in an effort to protect women from vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections, including susceptibility to HIV infection. The article concludes by asserting that, though 1 Timothy 2:11–15 is often categorised as a “text of terror”, it can be an asset in curbing HIV/AIDS in men as well as women if it is read and interpreted in a liberating way – a gender-sensitive and HIV/AIDS-aware reading and interpretation. Keywords: Emancipation, Gendered Epidemic, Gender-sensitive, HIV/AIDS Pandemic, Vulnerability

Feminism

This article considers the ways in which military women’s rights campaigns have linked the “epidemic” of sexual violence to the struggle for military women’s equality. I analyze the approaches of the National Organization of Women (NOW) and Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) in order to trace a partial history of military women’s rights organizations built on liberal feminist ideals. I argue that understanding military sexual violence as a result of women’s inequality does nothing to explain sexual violence against men, as well as occludes global victims of US sexual and imperial violence. Ultimately, I argue that organizations such as SWAN are emblematic of a neoliberal feminist approach that problematically prioritizes women’s equal access to the military over a critique of US militarism.

Jephthah's Daughter: Interrogating the Text, Interrogating our Lives grew out of the experience of teaching a course in Women and the Bible. It explores the relationships among a biblical “text of terror,” student reactions to it and feminist methodology and hermeneutics. Unwilling to simply set aside the scripture even with its violence, the author suggests that the application of feminist biblical hermeneutics to biblical texts illuminates not only the texts themselves but also the lives of contemporary women. The story of Jephthah's daughter resonates with the experience of many women who have suffered at the hands of a male relation, and can have liberating possibilities in the present if it is read as a profound critique of male power and its abuse.

The Tearfund report Silent No More (2011) challenges the worldwide church to respond to sexual violence in conflicts. This article argues that a church response should have pastoral, biblical and theological dimensions. Starting with the Silent No More report it examines the prevalence of sexual violence in conflict and the silence of the churches on this subject. Building on feminist readings of sexual violence in biblical narratives it then explores sexual violence referenced in the death of Saul (I Samuel 31) alongside news reports of the death of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011. It also suggests that sexual violence is a key to understanding the scandal of the cross and the death of Jesus of Nazareth. It concludes that if biblical scholars and theologians give more attention to sexual violence within the bible they can offer positive help towards a more constructive response to sexual violence by the churches.

Biblical scholars who reject the application of the terms rape and rape culture in the study of the Hebrew Bible stress the Sitz im Leben of biblical texts and the need for neutrality and objectivity in interpreting ancient sources. Some scholars argue that, because there is no lexical equivalent for the word rape in Biblical Hebrew and consent is immaterial to its authors, applying the terms rape and rape culture to biblical texts is anachronistic. Others acknowledge the prevalence of sexual violence in the Bible—particularly against female characters—and suggest that biblical authors indeed possessed a “concept of rape.” In this article, I describe how rape and rape culture emerged as salient terms in feminist discourse and biblical scholarship. I then present three forms of Sitz im Leben arguments that reject the terms rape and rape culture outright or qualify their use, demonstrating that each argument unwittingly aligns with harmful ideologies of the Hebrew Bible and reveals the retrojection of troubling assumptions grounded in contemporary hegemonic masculinities and today’s rape cultures. I conclude that interrogating the literary culture of the Hebrew Bible as a rape culture is both an ethical and a necessary academic project.

Reviewed by: Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800 ed. by Anne Greenfield Marta Kvande Greenfield, Anne, ed. Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800. The Body, Gender and Culture: 14. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. 200 pp. This ambitious collection of essays aims to survey sexual violence in an enormous range of manifestations — both in historical context and in literary and artistic depictions — over the course of the Restoration and the eighteenth century. It establishes not only the persistent recurrence of depictions of rape in literature and art but also the fact that sexual violence functioned as an ideological nexus in the period because it “reflected so many other . . . ideas, values and anxieties” (4). As such, it offers important contributions to the scholarly conversation on the history of rape as well as to the field of Restoration literature. While many of the essays in this collection center on texts published after 1700, several do consider texts and contexts from the period 1660–1700, and those essays will be the main focus of this review. Greenfield’s introduction to the volume sets the stage by sketching out the prevalence of images of rape and sexual violence across the period and discussing the many ways in which the trope was used. She points out that the “astonishing flexibility” (2) of the trope meant that it could be used for political purposes as well as to titillate audiences and to raise issues relating to “gender, the legal system, inheritance, the passions, the body, resistance to authority, the family, [and] social hierarchies” (3). After highlighting the significant differences between the Restoration and eighteenth-century definition of rape, which was quite narrow, and the twenty-first-century understandings of the term, which can be much more inclusive, the introduction then sets out the collection’s particularly useful approach to sexual violence: while maintaining strong historical awareness of how the idea was understood in the period, the collection defines sexual violence broadly and inclusively in order to consider a wide range of actions and victims. Such an approach is an excellent model for how to remain true to the historical context while bringing to bear what’s most useful in modern scholarship. Much of the rest of the collection lives up to this standard. Two of the essays offer [End Page 83] descriptive summaries that point toward more critical work that remains to be done. Julie Gammon’s essay, “Researching Sexual Violence, 1660–1800: A Critical Analysis,” opens the collection by identifying a set of recurring questions that runs through the scholarship of the last twenty years, briefly describing the debate on most of those questions, and considering a few related topics. Gammon concludes by gesturing toward topics that need further study. This essay might serve as a guide to further research by introducing new scholars to a few of the important topics in the field. Similarly, Anne Marie Byrd’s essay, “Violently Erotic: Representing Rape in Restoration Drama,” surveys depictions of rape in three genres of Restoration theatre: comedies of manners, tragicomedies of intrigue, and Restoration tragedies. As she notes, depictions in comedies tend to be more comedic while those in tragedies tend to be more tragic, and all of these depictions place the focus squarely on the body of the actress. Like Gammon’s essay, Byrd’s offers a point of access for scholars who might pursue further the issues raised by these plays. Gammon’s piece is followed by two essays that offer important and useful historical context and understanding for the study of rape. Mary R. Block’s essay, “’For the Repressing of the Most Wicked and Felonious Rapes and Ravishments of Women’: Rape Law in England, 1660–1800,” points out how important it is to study legal treatises from the period because there were so few actual statutes on the books regarding rape and because these statutes did not define what counted as rape. Block shows that these treatises “consistently described rape as a crime of violence against the body of an individual woman and not as a property crime” (26), an especially important point given that the idea of rape as a property crime crops up repeatedly in other genres (and in much modern...