Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters Through the Centuries by Joy A. Schroeder and Marion Ann Taylor

Abstract

Reviewed by: Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters Through the Centuries by Joy A. Schroeder and Marion Ann Taylor Amanda Brobst-Renaud Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters Through the Centuries. By Joy A. Schroeder and Marion Ann Taylor. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022. 355 pp. The authors pursue the voices of women biblical interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, throughout the centuries. They identify many firsts among women interpreters and reveal the lengths to which women went to express their understandings of scripture in [End Page 200] various media, including diary entries, pamphlets, commentaries, devotional writings, and art. The book identifies the ways women interpreters have striven for justice and liberation, and deftly critiques places wherein women's interpretations have promoted racist, colonialist, or paternalistic ideologies. While the authors readily admit that their collaboration does not address every opportunity for examination (281), their volume draws together the voices of female biblical interpreters across the centuries, setting the stage for future projects. The work of the earliest women biblical interpreters has, by and large, been lost. The authors' "imaginative strategies to retrieve the lost voices" (2) may leave their readers wishing for firmer ground. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence to see the early tendences of women interpreters. Among these are efforts to "protect the delicate egos of male clergy" by giving a male credit for interpretations (22). Similarly, Hildegard of Bingen "use[s] diminutive language and references to her feminine 'weakness'" (30), and Margery Kempe presents herself as "unlettered" (51–52). The tendency for women interpreters to soften or diminish their interpretations to avoid suspicion or scrutiny becomes a consistent theme throughout the book. By contrast, there are also women interpreters who assert their abilities as exegetes, insisting that their work is not idle chitchat (69). Christian women used the Bible to defend their ability to interpret it, arguing that women are the paragons of discipleship in the Gospels (75) and that responsibility for the fall belonged to Adam primarily and Eve secondarily (101). Women interpreters also engaged in spreading their interpretations through pamphlets in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Some defended male interpreters, as in the case of Marie Dentière's defense of John Calvin (74), while some demonstrated their own interpretive prowess, as in the case of Rachel Speght, who argued for muzzling men rather than women (102) in response to misogynistic interpretations of the Bible. Women also set the stage for feminist and anti-colonialist movements. Margaret Fell asserted women's capacity as preachers in 1666 (130). Rikvah bat Meir's interpretations garnered her recognition as an adept interpreter of scripture [End Page 201] and as "a female rabbi" (80). African women in the seventeenth century anticipated resistance to colonialism and anti-colonialist interpretations. Walatta Petros was known as an "archdeaconness" (118), and Kimpa Vita argued that it was wrong to install images of a white Jesus in churches (120). Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved West African woman, spread her interpretations through poetry, condemning the slave trade and arguing for the full dignity of African bodies, anticipating Jarena Lee's preaching in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book is an accessible and well-researched volume that demonstrates women interpreters' voices have not been silent, even if their contributions were lost, diminished, or ignored. Although this work focuses on interpreters through the early modern period, the authors trace the developments of access to education, ordination, and the ways women's interpretations made way for new critical analyses of the Bible in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times, modern women interpreters have been unaware of their historical antecedents (279). This volume reminds one that, though women's interpretive journeys may be lonely and isolating, their paths are not untrodden. The gift of this book is that it models the ways marginalized voices might be brought to prominence while simultaneously holding readers responsible for their privilege, blind spots, and prejudice. Amanda Brobst-Renaud Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.