Breaking the silence
Reviving the voices of long-forgotten women interpreters of the Bible
Marion Taylor is professor of Old Testament at Wycliffe College. With a PhD from Yale, she arrived at Wycliffe in 1986 and today teaches a variety of Old Testament courses. Most recently she has focused her research and publishing on forgotten women interpreters of the Bible. Patricia Paddey conducted this Q&A with Professor Taylor.
Tell us about your work on women interpreters of the Bible.
MT: I was trained as an OldTestament scholar. All the books that I read during my coursework were written by men. Even my doctoral thesis focused on the great ideas and writings of men.Women’s writings on the Bible were just not on the radar of scholars.
One day a student in class asked if she could do a paper on a woman interpreter of the Bible. “What a great idea,” I thought, but I didn’t know of any prominent women interpreters before 1970. My student’s question led me on the most significant academic journey of my life. With the help of colleagues and students, I started researching women interpreters and soon we had hundreds of names of women who had published books on the Bible that nobody knew about. In the 19th century, for example, there were 30 women who published commentaries on Revelation alone. We found foremothers of the faith, many of whom were evangelical women, who are exciting models for women today.
You have published a lot – including your Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012). What is firing your passion?
MT: I love research. I am never so happy as when I find a new forgotten interpreter.We are finding the history that we never knew we had. Now we know that we have foremothers of faith who were scholars, teachers, preachers and evangelists, and it’s exciting. We can stand on their shoulders.
Scholars in every discipline are going back over history to recover the ideas, thoughts and stories of women. It’s a big job to retell our history. But it’s important because in that history are answers to some of the questions that we are asking today about women’s nature and women’s roles in the home and church.
What would you most want the Church today to know?
MT: Women had a more significant role in the Church than the way Church history is remembered and what is more, women often interpreted Scripture differently than men because they read it through the lens of their experiences as women. It’s not surprising then that women were especially drawn to the stories of women in the Bible.
You’ve recently launched a new podcast called Breaking the Silence that’s all about uncovering the forgotten voices of Christian women in history. How are you feeling about diving into the deep end of this relatively new medium?
MT: It’s an opportunity to get information out to people who might not otherwise hear it. I’m energized by the subject. Their stories are our stories, and we can claim our foremothers of faith now as the mentors and relatives we never knew. It’s recovering the roots of our faith.