Towards a Feminist Biblical Hermeneuties: Biblical Interpretation and Liberation Theology

To discuss the relationship between liberation theology and biblical interpretation in general, and to ask for the function of the Bible in the struggle of women for liberation in particular, is to enter an intellectual and emotional minefield. One must detect and lay bare the contradictions between historical exegesis and systematic theology, between value- neutral scientificinquiry and "advocacy” scholarship, between universal- objectivist preconceptions of academic theology and the critical partiality of liberation theologies. To attempt this in a short paper entails, by necessity, a simplification and typologization of a complex set of theological problems. To raise the issue of the contemporary meaning and authority of the Bible from a feminist theological perspective, and to do this from the marginalized position of a woman in the academy, is to expose oneself to triple jeopardy. Establishment academic theologians and exegetes will reject such an endeavor as unscientific, biased, and overly conditioned by contemporary questions, and therefore unhistorical, or they will refuse to accept it as a serious exegetical or theological question because the issue is raised by a woman. Liberation and political theologians will, at best, consider such a feminist theological endeavor as one problem among others, or at worst, label it as "middle class” and peripheral to the struggle of oppressed people.