Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

Bauman-Martin: Women on the Edge 277
Moreover, the context of the Christian reinterpretation/renaming of suffering
as valuable would have given the women opportunities to exert more
power over their situations and self-identities. By rejecting the major premise
of their kuvrioi that force and intimidation should change their behavior and
beliefs, the women of 1 Peter could make at least one part of their lives their
own. We do not know how many women took this advice, but as early as 111
C.E., some twenty years after the composition of 1 Peter, we have evidence
from the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan that Christian women and
men in the same geographical area were willingly enduring suffering and death.
The advice to the Petrine women should be left to the first century; the women
are an example of courage in a situation that no longer exists. The instructions
are an example of confusion and compromise in the face of serious persecution
and gender trouble. They both reinforce and undermine the ancient system of
patriarchy and domination.
Furthermore, this passage should encourage us to remember that the
meanings of suffering can be created only personally and contextually. The
goals of relief and the means of resistance have to be determined by the sufferer,
who is the one who authentically interprets the constellations of power.
Theologies of suffering can offer only general guidelines for understanding suffering
and should allow for the greatest diversity in interpretation and reaction.
To use the Petrine exhortations as a universal behavioral standard, as some
priests and pastors do, or to condemn the text as universally destructive
because it has been used destructively in the past, as some feminists do, is to
ignore a positive example of the courage of ancient women and to indulge in
the timeless, absolutist hermeneutic most scholars reject.
It is encouraging that some churches are finally catching on and leaving
the Petrine advice behind. One pastor in the Los Angeles Times article concluded,
“A church needs to be relevant to the people we’re ministering to,”
referring to their newly established program to combat domestic violence and
support abused women. 88 It may be necessary that the brave, suffering women
of 1 Peter be forgotten. But with a cautious historically situated interpretation
of the Petrine Haustafel, we should be able to give them the recognition they
deserve while preserving the safety and sanity of their modern counterparts.
APPENDIX
The Imperatival Participle in 1 Peter
Eight of the participles in the Petrine Haustafel are imperatival, in that the author
used the participial grammatical form in the place of a finite imperative. The author uses
88 Watanabe, “Domestic Violence,” B9.