The New Testament, historically, has been foundational in constructing the identities, rituals, ethics, and beliefs of its readers. Its origins are pluralistic and international. Centuries of peoples have searched its pages to find meaning for their lives, their families, and their countries. It has spawned rituals for birth, death, and marriage. Many place the Bible at the center of their family activities, trying to adapt their lives to its moral guidelines; they use interpretations of the New Testament to enlighten difficult ethical dilemmas. There are others who use the Bible as a tool to enhance their own power over others. Monarchs, popes, and ecclesiastical authorities, as well as unlikely political alliances, have governed people in the name of the God of the Bible. Yet in spite of this theocratic dominance throughout the history of the world, there were dissenters who sought to promulgate or discover their own interpretations. This rich and diverse tapestry should be center stage when we open the pages of the Bible for our students.

Conversations with the Academy

My career has entertained not only conversations with the majority of feminist scholars in the academy, but it has also turned to the works of scholars that have been marginalized. As early as 1981, I thought that the typical academic discussion about the documents was too narrow. I found that I had to work overtime identifying primary sources to be used in the classroom that demonstrated pluralism and relevance to the cultures and peoples of the world.

Two of the papers I was privileged to read at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in the mid-1980s urged listeners to broaden their perspective of the documents. At the meetings in l985 and 1986 we discussed "Teaching New Testament in the Twentieth Century," and "Surface Exploration, Stratigraphy, and Digging up the Future." I encouraged listeners to add readings and assignments from the Bacchae, Eleusinian Mystery Religions, The Book of Enoch, Hymns from the Goddesses, and other non-Christian and Jewish Apocryphal literature.

Hoping to make the argument for relevancy, I suggested using newspaper articles as case studies on current topics whose historic basis was in the Bible, especially in developing countries. I pointed participants in the direction of assignments where students interviewed people from multiple denominations about their faith. I gave examples of how I used archaeology and art to interpret and explain biblical passages and how I allowed my students to interpret a passage of the New Testament through any creative means. They used art, created music, videos, poetry, puppet shows, and other outlets. As I was helping students to appreciate the cultural diversity of the first century, they began to recognize that the documents contained violence, racism, and sexism. The consensus at the end of these papers by hearers was that I was asking too much of them. They could not use the tools or the ideas because there was not enough time.

My scholarship throughout the twentieth century investigated the abusive language that I detected in the New Testament. I studied violent language in the gospels and came to the conclusion that Luke-Acts was an etiological legend that legitimized violence as a way of conquering the non-Christian world. I recognized this same attitude of religious superiority in many of my colleagues and argued with my sisters who were working on feminist articles that they were falling into the same trap.

Faint Voices from the Edge

For several decades faint voices within the academy have raised the issue of a multiplicity of interpretations, audiences, and methods related to teaching the New Testament. In the first edition of my textbook, The New Testament: A Timeless Book for All Peoples, I attempted to address the purposeful neglect of international scholarship by developers of New Testament textbooks. Each chapter considered non-traditional approaches to studying the documents under the headings of Ethical Issues, Interpretative Focus, and Global Interpretation. I included views from people of varying shades of color, Eco-feminism, Native American Interpretation, readings from the Quran, and reflections upon people such as Dorothy Day who have embodied their beliefs. I focused upon people who synthesize their religious traditions such as Hindu-Christian, same-sex partners, Promise Keepers, Latin American views of James (see query). It included excerpts from the Cotton Patch Gospel version of the texts, and the issues of alienation, violence, and pornography, to name only a few. The second edition was reorganized in a more traditional way without omitting the emphasis on pluralism and internationalism.

Historical-Critical Trap

The dominant methodological strategies used by most biblical scholars have consistently failed, in my view, to address the multiplicity and diversity of the origins, meaning, relevance, and development of the texts. Many of the most popular introductions to the New Testament are steeped in a Euro-Protestant-mythological interpretation that focuses not on pluralism but on a singular way of looking at history and of appropriating the documents. When I read it, it reminds me of my days at college when there was only "one" answer and one "interpretation."

Many popular textbooks reaffirm the traditional hegemony that has dominated biblical interpretation for most of the twentieth century. They reflect a monistic, hierarchical, ego-centered and self-aggrandizing approach to studying the Bible. There is an implicit appeal to superiority that some would term "biblical imperialism." It sidelines the revolutionary aspects of the Bible for a strategy that bolsters the author's own cultural standards, religious beliefs, and practices.

Many biblical scholars are caught in this historical-critical-mythological trap. And I think the basis for this trap finds its origins in the belief systems of the researchers. The locus of revelation for them is in the historical reconstruction of the situation of the texts. Finding the exact place and moment when Paul penned a letter to Corinth is the same quest that has been going on for what seems like a century by the people who want to discover the exact movements and words of Jesus. Our study and teaching of the documents must evolve out of the ideological into the cultural, creative, oral, socio-economic, and political realm. To maintain the rigid practice of rehearsing historical reconstructions only serves to avoid the present real-time and ignores the relevancy of the documents to a worldwide audience.

Inclusion and Internationalism

Feminist studies must embrace pluralism and internationalism as the most legitimate, fair, and honest way of studying the texts. Historical criticism and the children it has produced is/are only one small facet of biblical studies. The old methods can no longer dominate the future of our discipline.

Look at the kinds of scholarship that are coming out of Asia and the Americas such as the Mujerista interpretation being developed by Latina biblical scholars. The African Bible challenges us to open our eyes to the "color" of the characters in the Bible. Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Delores Williams bid us to consider the Bible from a black woman's or womanist perspective.

Post-colonial interpreters have begun dissecting traditional biblical scholarship and use words such as dehumanizing, pseudo-objectivity, color politics, Christian imperialism, legislative, exploitative, nationalistic, anti-Canaanite, anti-Jewish, combative, ideologically abusive, and fundamental, to describe popular-traditional-historical-critical scholarship. They want to decode what they term "imperialistic" texts of the Bible that have silenced multiple voices. They have experienced a kind of "savagery" perpetrated by the reigning elitist interpreters and writers. And that savagery has been extended to gays and lesbians who have had the courage to boldly look at the texts through the eyes of a non-heterosexual. The door that they are knocking upon must be opened.

Compassion for Our Audience

Thirty years ago it was "liberating" to highlight the injustices perpetrated against females in the academy and the workplace. But times have changed and feminists need to rethink their teaching strategies in the classroom. In my opinion, teaching only feminist interpretation of the documents is on very shaky ground in a state university. To impose a "Christian" feminist ideology on our students is close to the establishment of a "religion."

Students are beginning to resent the feminist ideological position. The situation in the life of a professor and her students has changed. Even in the Midwest the ethnic landscape is becoming more diverse. Over 10% of my students are from other countries. Most students have been influenced by religions but they are not steeped in the traditions of the western Bible. Many have never read it.

Where do we begin the discussion about the documents? And how ethical is it for a "successful" female professor to discuss the awful effects of patriarchy when male students and professors, gays and lesbians, remain unemployed and marginalized themselves? It remains a dilemma for me. And while I, even at this moment, feel the sting of the "patriarchy" in my own university, I am increasingly uncomfortable when I focus upon the singular issue of women. It seems to me that I am socializing my students into my own struggle, my own experience of abuse, and my own history of dealing with male supremacy.

Feminism must embrace — not distance or dominate— the "other." A politic of inclusion, pluralism, and empowerment for all peoples must guide our interpretative strategies if we are to make the case for relevancy of the biblical documents for all of our students.

Professor Selvidge teaches at Central Missouri State University and directs its Center for Religious Studies. The second edition of her textbook, Exploring the New Testament, was recently published by Prentice Hall.

Works Consulted

William L. Andrews, Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).



Mukti Barton, "The Skin of Miriam Became as White as Snow: The Bible, Western Feminism and Colour Politics," Feminist Theology 27(2001): 68-80.



Mark G. Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 2000).



_____, Ethnicity and the Bible (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002).



Musa W. Dube, ed., Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature and Geneva: WCC Publications, 2001).



_____, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis: Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000).



Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979).



Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation (New York: Orbis Books, 2001).



Sean Freyne and Ellen van Wolde, eds., The Many Voice of the Bible (London: SCM Press, 2002).



M. Esther Harding, Woman's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern (New York: Harper, 1971).



Ursula King, ed., Feminist Theology and the Third World, A Reader (London: Orbis, 1994).



Jean K. Kim, "'Uncovering Her Wickedness,': An Inter(con)textual Reading of Revelation 17 from a Postcolonial Feminist Perspective," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 73 (1999): 61-81.



Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).



Kwok Pui-Lan and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Women's Sacred Scriptures (London: SCM Press, 1998).



Ann Loades, ed., Feminist Theology: A Reader (London: SPCK, 1990).



Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1989).



Heikki Raisanen, Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Helsinki (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000).



Luise Schottroff, Silvia Schroer, and Marie-Theresa Wacker, Feminist Interpretation: The Bible In Women's Perspective (trans. Martin and Barbara Rumscheidt; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).



Marla J. Selvidge, Daughters of Jerusalem (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1987).



_____, Notorious Voices: Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 1500-1920 (New York: Continuum, 1996).



_____. Woman, Violence, and the Bible (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996).



_____. Luke the Feminist: A Study of Luke's Presentation of the Women in Luke-Acts (M.A. thesis, Wheaton College, 1973).



_____. The New Testament: A Timeless Book for All Peoples (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999).



_____. Exploring the New Testament (New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 2003).



_____. Woman, Cult, and Miracle Recital: A Redactional-Critical Investigation of Mark 5:24-34 (London: Bucknell University Presses, 1990).



R. S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible in the Third World. Precolonial, Colonial, and Postcolonial Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).



_____, ed., Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (New York: Orbis, 1991).

Citation: Marla J. Selvidge, " Feminism and the Future of Classroom Politics," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited Feb 2004]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=221