But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation

For centuries, the Bible's meaning has been defined and interpreted for us by the minds and the mouths of men. Women have been silenced and excluded, never allowed authority to say what the Bible means. If the hold of "malestream" biblical interpreters is to be relinquished and the power of the Word released for all, Schussler Fiorenza tells us, then women and other marginalized people must learn to read the biblical stories differently. Like the foreign woman in the Gospel story who challenges Jesus with "Yes, Lord, but," women must understand their reading and interpreting as profoundly political efforts to transform patriarchal structures, in biblical times and in our own. Building upon the acclaimed 1984 volume Bread Not Stone, But She Said examines the social locations and political contexts of biblical interpretation in the United States. Schussler Fiorenza shows us how a feminist practice of biblical interpretation can empower women of all colors and classes to rethink the Bible's meanings. Each of the book's carefully articulated chapters invokes the name of a woman who embodies the struggle to break through marginalization and silence – Miriam, Arachne, Mary of Magdala, Justa, Sophia, Prisca, and Sheba. The names of these "women of wisdom and valor" remind us of the resistance that women have always met when they have sought to read and interpret the Bible on equal terms with men. But She Said will inspire all women to approach the Bible with a critical eye toward the patriarchal meanings and politics encoded in its stories, and to find there a hopeful vision of the liberating power of the Word.