Luke, Widows, Judges, and Stereotypes by Febbie C. Dickerson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Luke, Widows, Judges, and Stereotypes by Febbie C. Dickerson F. Scott Spencer febbie c. dickerson, Luke, Widows, Judges, and Stereotypes (Womanist Readings of Scripture; Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019). Pp. 223. $95. This work marks the first installment of a new series, Womanist Readings of Scripture, edited by Mitzi J. Smith and Gay L. Byron. Dickerson’s volume, an outgrowth of her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University, treats Jesus’s parable of a widow and judge in Luke 18:2–5. D. provides a critical, multilevel analysis of this story, attending to (1) Luke’s context in 18:1–8, (2) the broad history of interpretation, and (3) particular African American readings. In chap. 1, D. challenges common stereotypes, both ancient and modern, of the helpless widow and heartless judge. In short, “[a]ll widows are not vulnerable and needy, and [End Page 138] all judges are neither uncaring nor impervious to justice” (p. 3). The parable’s brevity and limited character descriptions warrant resisting stock presumptions that foreclose wider interpretive options. In chap. 2, D. delineates a set of nine critical “problems” that this parable raises: The Problem of Place: Which City?; The Problem of a Judge with No Respect for People; The Problem of the Stereotyped Widow; The Problem of the Widow’s Question: Vengeance or Justice?; The Problem of Interior Monologue; Another Problem of Translation: A Threat of Violence or a Misunderstanding?; The Problem of the Inscribed Subject and Redaction Criticism; The Problem the Text Creates for Theodicy; Problems with the Text in African American Church Traditions. I list these headings in full because of their clear focus and comprehensive scope. Such issues pertaining to setting, characters, translation, rhetoric, readers, theology, and ethics provide a model framework for investigating other parables and other parts of Gospel narratives. In the next two chapters D. considers the parable’s reception history. Chapter 3 tracks reading trends across the patristic (Ephrem of Syria, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria), medieval (Venerable Bede, Hugh of St.-Cher), Reformation (Erasmus, Luther), and modern eras. Overall a dominant stereotypical pattern emerges: “The increasingly common portrayal of the widow as desolate—whether as the desolate church, or the desolate soul— eventually becomes, for the modern interpreter, the widow as epitomizing the desolate socially vulnerable” (p. 50). In this prevailing image of the widow as a “desolate” victim, she seeks justice rather than vengeance (ἐκδικέω, used in Luke 18:7, allows both meanings) through virtuous rather than violent means. A few modern scholars, however, have dared to challenge this helpless-widow pigeonhole, such as Wendy Cotter, who marshals evidence of wealthier, more self-sufficient women, including widows, representing themselves in ancient courts (“The Parable of the Feisty Widow and the Threatened Judge [Luke 18:1–8],” NTS 51 [2002] 323–43), and Barbara Reid, who sees the parable’s widow as a God-figure in Luke’s narrative (“A Godly Widow Persistently Pursuing Justice: Luke 18:1–8,” BR 45 [2000] 25–33). Both Cotter and Reid, however, still view the judge in wholly negative terms—another stereotype that D. aims to shake, if not shatter. To this end, she calls attention to Charles W. Hedrick’s provocative study of the legal system underlying the parable (Parables as Poetic Fictions: The Creative Voice of Jesus [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994]). In Hedrick’s view, the judge’s absent “fear” of God and others reflects objectivity and impartiality, qualities of a “thoroughly honest man” (Hedrick, p. 197); conversely, the widow’s “demand for vengeance violates Torah” (Hedrick, p. 102), and her disrespect for the court makes her a dishonorable character. Chapter 4 zeroes in on the first and most formative interpretation of the parable—that of Luke’s Gospel—which D. regards as a tendentious, constrictive reading against the wider grain of Jesus’s original story. In short, via the introduction in 18:1 and Jesus’s commentary in 18:6–8, “Luke’s narrative frame turns the widow into a prayerful petitioner” and “turns the judge into a negative image of the divine . . . a bad judge who yields to prayer” (p. 88). Such counter-“turning” fits Luke’s overall gendered stereotypes of widows...