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Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation - Book Review
Currents in Theology and Mission, Feb, 2003 by Amy Amonnette
Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. By Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. 229 pages. Paper. $20.00.
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a leading scholar in feminist biblical interpretation, is the Krister Stendahl Professor of Scripture and Interpretation at Harvard Divinity School. According to her, "this book does not just want to answer the question of 'how to exegete' or 'how to read' the bible. Rather, it is concerned with the question of how to interpret the bible from a feminist perspective and in an emancipatory way" (p. 17).
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This book seeks to not only deconstruct and challenge, as Schussler Fiorenza states, the "male-stream" of biblical interpretation but to then also give a method of reading and interpreting biblical texts that is liberating not only for women but also for those marginalized throughout the world.
Schussler Fiorenza's central theme is to understand wisdom/Wisdom and to use its concept in biblical interpretation. This means, according to Schussler Fiorenza,
Wisdom is a state of the human mind and spirit characterized by deep understanding and profound insight. It is elaborated as a quality possessed by the sages but also treasured as folk wisdom and wit. Wisdom is the power of discernment, deeper understanding, and creativity; it is the ability to move and to dance, to make the connections, to savor life and to learn from experience.... Wisdom, unlike intelligence, is not something with which a person is born. It comes only from living, from making mistakes and trying again and from listening to others who have made mistakes and tried to learn from them. (p.23)
Using wisdom/Wisdom to interpret biblical texts is the practice of learning, seeking, questioning, understanding, erring, and succeeding. Her use of a dance metaphor to describe one's commitment to the biblical text encourages this concept of wrangling with the text.
Throughout my reading of this book, I had to constantly keep the phrase "in the way of wisdom" in the back of my head, or I would get lost in the academic methodology for deconstructing and then reconstructing a methodology for biblical interpretation. It is a practice that truly will not allow for the empowerment of the powers of domination in either the text or the tradition of interpretation.
Her focus upon a radical democratic reading of the text, meaning that the text is never to be read alone or only with people from similar social locations, speaks to the author's recognition that she comes from a European, upper-middle-class, academic setting in which wo/men are marginalized, but certainly not to the extent of other wo/men in the world. It is because she recognizes her inability to divorce herself from her identity that she rather than subtract from herself, advocates adding other voices. In addition, she speaks of women using the term "wo/men" to illustrate the non-unitary status of wo/men. These concepts alone are reason to read the book!
COPYRIGHT 2003 Lutheran School of Theology and Mission
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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