On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds. Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Edited by Jane Schaberg, Alice Bach, and Esther Fuchs. Pp. vi + 254. New York and London: Continuum, 2004. isbn 0 8264 1589 X (hardback) and 0 8264 1582 2 (paper). $29.95

Abstract

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is one of the founders of feminist biblical interpretation. The founding of the ‘Women in the Biblical World’ section of the Society of Biblical Literature, together with her many publications, has shaped a generation of feminist biblical scholars. This collection of essays gives a flavour of the way in which she has inspired many others writing in this field. Some of the essays explore Schüssler Fiorenza's influence directly. So Fuchs (pp. 1–20) notes the ways in which Schüssler Fiorenza's major theories (such as feminist biblical historiography, the hermeneutics of suspicion, and critique of the ‘malestream’) resonate with her own work. Elizabeth A. Castelli (pp. 36–52) explores the idea of the Ekkle-sia of women in feminist utopian thought, and Joseph (pp. 53–68) compares the writing of Schüssler Fiorenza with an influential Indian biblical exegete, George M. Soares-Prabhu. Other essays use Schüssler Fiorenza's work as a springboard into further exploration of feminist biblical interpretations. The result is a rich variety of material. It includes those who employ her hermeneutics in their own studies of the text, such as Tina Pippin (pp. 143–53), who uses a ‘hermeneutics of creative imagination’ to reinterpret the story of the woman who anoints Jesus, and Athalya Brenner, who adopts a hermeneutics of suspicion in order to reread the marriage metaphor in Hebrew scriptures, alongside those who use her life as an inspiration. For example, Ute E. Eisen (pp. 154–70) uses Schüssler Fiorenza's own crossing of many boundaries as an inspiration for reading Acts 10:1–11:18.