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Feminist Hermeneutics

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Submitted By megancardenas
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Megan Cardenas
Mr. Chae
Christian Scriptures TR 3:30
06 October 2015
Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies

The article “Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies,” written by Phyllis Trible, is a tribute to the different ways feminists have approached and interpreted the portrayal of women in the Bible. The first approach talks about the Bible making it seem like women are men’s property, the second approach focuses on challenging traditional culture and reinterpreting certain biblical verses to find a divine woman identity, and the third approach retells biblical stories that highlight the sympathy felt for abused women. Each approach connects to the other through the main idea that traditional interpretations of the Bible neglect females and therefore affects the way human beings behave towards them. Trible takes different approaches to question the longstanding belief no one speaks about: the association of Scripture with sexism and the dehumanization of women.
Trible questions this belief that the traditional Bible is sexist by providing textual examples to support his arguments. For example, the first approach documents the case against women. He uses several examples from scripture to support this approach, including how a daughter is less desirable than son, how a father chooses his daughter’s husband, how daughters always had to submit to abuse, and how the Levite from Ephraim and other males betrayed, raped, murdered, and dismembered their own concubine. Trible uses powerful examples to truly portray how large the societal gap between men and women is and how traditional Scripture may seem to support this gap. He even includes citations, like when he talks about how women are defined as the property of men in Deuteronomy 5:21. Throughout all of the three approaches, Trible uses strong and somewhat heartbreaking examples to portray the plight

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