Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

258
Journal of Biblical Literature
the ancient period and today. Feminists consistently argue that there is nothing
usable in the Haustafel suffering model, no liberating example, and that it is
therefore useless and, from a feminist perspective, dangerous. 20 Therefore,
Schüssler Fiorenza writes, we have an ethical responsibility NOT to interpret
the text in any way that might seem to legitimate the suffering of women. 21
These feminists have rightly pointed out the problematic nature of this
text and its vastly destructive influence on the behavior and self-understanding
of Christian women; but they have failed to distinguish between the patriarchal
(mis)interpretation of the letter over the years and the possibilities of interpretation
it may have offered for the original readers. A reexamination of the form
and content of the Petrine Haustafel and the social circumstances of the firstcentury
Christian communities demonstrates that exhortations to the women in
1 Peter did not expressly encourage assimilation but addressed specific situations
of persecution, may have encouraged forms of antipatriarchal activity in
which the women were already participating, and potentially offered a means
of resistance to the suffering that was already occurring. Finally, I will argue
that the Petrine women’s situation of marginalization and persecution was so
different from situations of domestic abuse today that inflexible modern interpretations
of the text (either feminist or fundamentalist) should not be imposed
on the ancient women. 22 They must be allowed their own possible ancient
hermeneutic.
20 Elliott takes Schüssler Fiorenza and others to task for what he deems an “ahistorical” interpretation
and insists that the ancient texts must be interpreted in their own contexts rather than
ours. He writes, “We cannot restore the biblical past, so it is pointless to adore the biblical past. It is
likewise pointless to deplore the past as incongruent with the values and vision of the present”
(1 Peter, 599).
21 Personal communication, July 20, 2001.
22 I would like to offer in this article a constructive critique of what I believe to be “fundamentalist
feminism”—feminism that argues that the goals of women must be the same across time
and culture. Mary McClintock Fulkerson has argued, for example, that feminist theology, which
protested the perception that male experience was universal experience, sometimes falls into the
trap of creating a universal woman (see Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and
Feminist Theology [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1994], 63). This issue was first raised in the 1980s by
African American women such as Katie Cannon and Emilie Townes and has since been seconded
by women scholars of other classes, races, and cultures, for example, Ada María Isasi-Díaz. Buddhist
feminist scholar Rita Gross writes that feminism partakes of “the deeply entrenched tendency
in Western thinking to turn differences into a hierarchy” (Feminism & Religion: An Introduction
[Boston: Beacon, 1996], 50). Hindu and Muslim women still do not articulate the Western feminist
vision (ibid., 58). Ancient women are another group of women whose voices are too easily manipulated
by feminist scholars. Because these women cannot speak for themselves, scholars can put any
meaning into their mouths, turning them into ciphers for our own political purposes (even though
those political purposes are often quite admirable). What I do here is try to suggest possible ancient
meanings of the text in order better to understand those real ancient women.