Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

THE CHALLENGE OF STUDYING WORKING WOMEN | 47
originated in ideological dissatisfaction with the current political system, and it
was used for the purpose of challenging it.
Biblical criticism has therefore a double character: it is a means simultaneously
for creating ideology and for ideological critique ... Critical methods were
crucial to the self-assertion of the middle class because they gave it ammunition
to fight the claims of the older authoritarian aristocratic cultures that they were
the natural and necessary order of things. Instead, as critical methods could be
used to demonstrate, the feudal order was grounded in aristocratic and
monarchal self-interest and fostered a way of life now outmoded in and
restrictive of an industrial society. Of course, Marx was going to turn critical
methods against the bourgeoisie itself. 67
On the other hand, Newsom acknowledges also its post-modern character:
“While it is true that ideological criticism in general begins as a phenomenon of
high modernism (in its early Marxist forms), it is now practiced with a deep
sense of the contextualized nature of truths and of the way in which all texts can
be deconstructed to reveal conflicting claims and implicit contestations for
power.” 68 Ideological and other forms of post-modern criticism have thrived in
the last years because of the increasing dissatisfaction of scholars with historical
criticism, and because of the increased pressure on the part of minority groups to
uplift voices other than the dominant one, to prevent the taming of the text, and
to call attention to the use of ideology also by those who defend the monopoly
of a specific biblical interpretation.
The point here is that biblical texts are also social productions, that is, they
emerge out of very particular social and material settings, and as a result they
simultaneously preserve and promote certain views about power relationships
and social identity. In short, biblical texts take sides in ideological debates,
debates which usually center around issues of power where literature becomes
a form of public discourse seeking either to challenge or to defend the way in
which people are socially constituted. 69
Like all sub-disciplines of biblical exegesis, ideological criticism looks at
the general picture from a particular standpoint, namely, one intended to
67 S. Briggs, “The Deceit of the Sublime: An Investigation into the Origins of Ideological Criticism
of the Bible in Early Nineteenth-Century German Biblical Studies,” in Ideological Criticism of the
Bible, 2.
68 Carol A. Newsom, “Reflections on Ideological Criticism and Postcritical Perspectives,” in Method
Matters: Essays on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David L. Petersen (ed. Joel
M. LeMon & Kent Harold Richards; Resources for Biblical Study; Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 542.
69 Renita Weems, “‘The Hebrew Women Are Not Like the Egyptian Women’: The Ideology of
Race, Gender and Sexual Reproduction in Exodus 1,” in Ideological Criticism of the Bible, 26.