Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

254
Journal of Biblical Literature
use of that text was a misappropriation of NT ideas because the network of discourses
that prompted the original advice is no longer in place. 4 In addition, the
women addressed in the Petrine Haustafel deserve closer analysis; because the
exhortations have received so much attention, the women themselves have
rarely been discussed. As women negotiating problematic familial and social
boundaries, they offer a valuable example of an ancient hermeneutic of resistance.
I
1 Peter is already an embattled book, having endured many rounds of
exegetical and hermeneutical debate. Controversies have centered on the unity
of the letter, the genuineness of its epistolary form, the status and ethnicity of
its addressees, its relationship to Pauline letters, and the character of its parenesis.
5 But scholars have long agreed that the theme of the epistle is suffering:
the word pavscw and its derivatives occur more times in 1 Peter than in any
other biblical book. The author, who is most likely not the apostle Peter, writes
to prevent the loss of faith and unity in Christian communities that were facing
harassment by neighbors and family members. 6 But only in the past two
decades have feminist scholars begun to confront the Petrine material that has
implications for the study of the lives of early Christian women. 7 Nearly all of
4 By “misappropriation” I have in mind the attempt to use the text absolutely rather than
hermeneutically, without any regard for the original context of the construction of meaning. Sharyn
Dowd uses this term in the same way in her comments on 1 Peter (see “1 Peter,” in The Women’s
Bible Commentary [ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe; Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 1998], 463).
5 Troy Martin ably reviews the extensive and confusing previous literature regarding the
epistle (Metaphor and Composition in 1 Peter [SBLDS 131; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 3–39).
6 This is the major thesis of John H. Elliott in A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis
of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981). I am deeply indebted to
Elliott’s work and closely follow his argument that 1 Peter writes to encourage the cohesion of the
Christian community and its distinction from the “other” non-Christian world. More recently his
extremely thorough commentary on 1 Peter in the Anchor Bible series offers a good summary of
the issues involved in the interpretive struggle over the Petrine household code (1 Peter: A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 37B; New York: Doubleday, 2000]).
7 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 260–65; Kathleen Corley, “1 Peter,” in Searching
the Scriptures, volume 2, A Feminist Commentary (ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza; New York:
Crossroad, 1993), 349–60; Deborah F. Sawyer, Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries
(London: Routledge, 1996); Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s
Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992); Elizabeth A. Clark, Women and Religion: The Original Sourcebook of Women
in Christian Thought (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).