THE ‘SENSE’ OF FEMINIST BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP FOR CHURCH AND SOCIETY

In trying to identify the possible wider influence of feminist biblical scholarship, two matters receive attention: the dualisms characteristic of patriarchal culture and feminist scholars’ questioning and overcoming of these, and the Bible in feminist discourses. With regard to the former, special attention is paid to the dualism between mind and body, reason and emotion, which is fundamental to much of mainstream academic discourse, and to attempts to redefine the knowing subject in the direction of ‘wholeness’. In the section which deals with the Bible in feminist discourses the search for the one and only meaning of biblical texts and the uncritical reading of texts oppressive against women are problematised. A few suggestions are then made as to why the insights of feminist biblical criticism should trancend the boundaries of academic discourse and how this could happen