‘Women’s Bible’ for MeToo era released by feminist theologians
A GROUP of Protestant and Catholic feminist theologians has released a “Women’s Bible”, arguing that the Holy Book is not misogynistic and can be a tool for female emancipation.
Many feminists have accused the Bible, Christianity and religion in general of bolstering a sexist view of society that casts women as subservient.
They argue that female figures in translations of Bible texts are prostitutes, servants or saints, whose most positive roles are seducing a monarch or kissing Jesus’s feet.
But authors of Une Bible des Femmes (“A Women’s Bible”), published in October, say that view is often down to a misinterpretation of the Holy Book by patriarchs and sexists.
They said they hoped their work would prove useful in the age of MeToo, the movement against sexual harassment and abuse that spread following allegations against Hollywood
Flour power
excutive Harvey Weinstein. The book aims, they write in the introduction, to “scrutinise shifts in the Christian tradition, things that have remained concealed, tendentious translations, partial interpretations”.
In particular, they sought to counter “the lingering patriarchal readings that have justified numerous and bans on women”.
“Feminist values and reading the Bible are not incompatible,” Lauriane Savoy, one of two Geneva professors behind the book, told The Sunday Telegraph.
The 33-year-old professor at the University of Geneva’s theology faculty, said she and colleague Elisabeth Par- restrictions mentier decided to write the book to redress ignorance over the texts.
Joining forces with 18 other female theologians from a range of countries and Christian denominations, they have collected a string of texts to challenge traditional interpretations that depict women as weak and submissive to men.
A prime example was Mary Magdalene, whose role had been wrongly interpreted in a number of recent works, they said. “She stood by Jesus, including as he was dying on the cross, when all of the male disciples were afraid,” Prof Savoy said.
“This is a fundamental character, but she is described as a prostitute, and even as Jesus’s lover in recent fiction.”
The pair were inspired to write the book by the work of American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 other women who, in 1898, drafted The Woman’s Bible.
“While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite.”
‘While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite’