Phyllis Trible | |
---|---|
Born | |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Doctoral advisor | James Muilenburg |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Biblical studies |
Sub-discipline | Old Testament studies |
School or tradition | Christian feminism |
Institutions |
Phyllis Trible (born October 25,1932) is a feminist biblical scholar from Richmond,Virginia,United States. [1] Trible's scholarship focuses on the Hebrew Bible and she is noted for her prominent influence on feminist biblical interpretation. [2] Trible has written a multitude of books on interpretation of the Hebrew Bible,and has lectured around the world,including the United States,New Zealand,Australia,Japan,Canada,and a number of countries in Europe. [1]
Born in Richmond,Virginia,Trible received her bachelor's degree at Meredith College in Raleigh,NC in 1954,and her doctoral degree from Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University in 1963. She wrote her doctoral dissertation at Union under James Muilenburg,who had generated a method of studying the Hebrew Bible based on form criticism that became known as rhetorical criticism,and whose approach Trible developed and applied throughout career,adding her own pioneering Christian feminist perspective to biblical scholarship. [3] : 158–159 [4] [5]
Trible taught at Wake Forest University (1963–1971) and Andover Newton Theological School (1971–1979) before returning to Union Seminary,where she was appointed the Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature in 1980. [6] [7] She left Union in 1998 to become Associate Dean and Professor of Biblical Studies of the then-new Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem,North Carolina. [8] She served in those roles until 2001,when she was appointed University Professor at Wake Forest,and served in that role until she retired in 2012. [4]
Trible served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1994. Athalya Brenner named her one of the "prominent matriarchs of contemporary feminist bible criticism," and claimed that Trible's 1973 article "Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation" ought to "be considered as the honoured mother of feminist Song of Songs scholarship." [9] According to John J. Collins,"Phyllis Trible,more than any other scholar,put feminist criticism on the agenda of biblical scholarship in the 1970s." [10]
In 1998,Trible donated her papers to The Burke Library's Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship at Columbia University;her papers formed the foundation of the collection. [4] In recent years,Trible has served as a Visiting Professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She taught a class in the fall of 2018 called "Entrances to Exodus."
Trible’s work is based on rhetorical criticism,examining the interpretation of biblical texts. [11] She is known for her analysis of biblical narratives,particularly with regard to gender. [11] According to P.K. Tull,there are two major themes that are central to all of her work:her respect for biblical text,and her commitment to equality for women. [12]
Phyllis Trible’s interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve is one of her most notable works. A major theme within “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation” is Trible’s argument that the Bible has existed in a sexist context for centuries,which has distorted interpretations of the text. [13] Trible writes that the Bible,when read against the contemporary patriarchal context,can be liberating for women. [12] Another major takeaway from Trible’s most notable work is her agreement with some ancient Jewish Talmudists that—when analyzed using rhetorical criticism—language in the Bible suggests that Adam is androgynous until the female Eve is created. [13] This argument has also been made by Riffat Hassan,a Pakistani-American theology professor,who also noted in her own writing that the language used to describe Adam within the biblical story is non-gendered. [13] This understanding was a part of traditional Jewish Biblical exegesis going back to 300-500 C.E.,and including Judaism's leading historical Biblical exegete,Rashi (1040-1105).
John J. Collins said in a response to Trible’s work that interpreting a text without the cultural context that it lives in may not even be possible. [14]
Ann M. Vater said that "central figures always bear some cultural heritage." [15]
Michael Carden,looking at who is left out in Trible’s advocacy for traditionally oppressed peoples in Christianity, [16] said that in Texts of Terror, Trible fails to explain the treatment of homosexuals in Genesis 19. [16]
Dianne Bergant said that Trible's readings come from a contemporary point of view,and that the idea of an androgynous Adam seeks to solve gender parity,and does not actually look at what is written in the text. [17]
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Jainism,Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, studying images of women in the religions' sacred texts, and matriarchal religion.
Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretations of virtually any text, including not just religious texts but also philosophy, literature, or virtually any other genre of writing. The phrase Biblical exegesis can be used to distinguish studies of the Bible from other critical textual explanations.
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible, with Bible referring to the books of the canonical Hebrew Bible in mainstream Jewish usage and the Christian Bible including the canonical Old Testament and New Testament, respectively. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from ancient history, historical criticism, philology, theology, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, mythology, and comparative religion.
Modern Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from the post-critical orientation of later scholarship; and from the multiple distinct schools of criticism into which it evolved in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the broader field of hermeneutics, which involves the study of principles of interpretation, both theory and methodology, for all forms of communication, nonverbal and verbal. While Jewish and Christian biblical hermeneutics have some overlap and dialogue, they have distinctly separate interpretative traditions.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
Harold C. Washington is the professor of Hebrew Bible at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. He holds both M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). He wrote the introduction and annotations for the books of Proverbs and Sirach in the third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV.
Gender and Jewish Studies is an emerging subfield at the intersection of gender studies, queer studies, and Jewish studies. Gender studies centers on interdisciplinary research on the phenomenon of gender. It focuses on cultural representations of gender and people's lived experience. Similarly, queer studies focuses on the cultural representations and lived experiences of queer identities to critique hetero-normative values of sex and sexuality. Jewish studies is a field that looks at Jews and Judaism, through such disciplines as history, anthropology, literary studies, linguistics, and sociology. As such, scholars of gender and Jewish studies are considering gender as the basis for understanding historical and contemporary Jewish societies. This field recognizes that much of recorded Jewish history and academic writing is told from the perspective of “the male Jew” and fails to accurately represent the diverse experiences of Jews with non-dominant gender identities.
Judy Klitsner is a contemporary Bible scholar, author and international speaker. She is a senior faculty member of the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where she has taught Bible and biblical exegesis for more than twenty years.
Daniel Patte was a French-American biblical scholar and author. Patte is, since 2013, professor emeritus of Religious Studies, New Testament and Christianity at Vanderbilt University where he taught from 1971.
Old Testament theology is the branch of Biblical theology that seeks theological insight within the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. It explores past and present theological concepts as they pertain to God and God's relationship with creation. While the field started out as a Christian endeavor written mostly by men and aimed to provide an objective knowledge of early revelation, in the twentieth century it became informed by other voices and views, including those of feminist and Jewish scholars, which provided new insights and showed ways that the early work was bound by the perspectives of their authors.
Letty Mandeville Russell was a feminist theologian, professor, and prolific author. She was a member of the first class of women admitted to Harvard Divinity School, and one of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church. After earning a doctorate in theology at Union Theological Seminary, she joined the faculty at Yale Divinity School, where she taught for 28 years.
Carol Ann Newsom is an American biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and literary critic. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor Emerita of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology and a former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She is a leading expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom literature, and the Book of Daniel.
Samuel Lucien Terrien was a French-American Protestant theologian and biblical scholar. A professor at Union Theological Seminary for thirty-six years, he is known for his biblical commentary, particularly for his scholarly contributions to the study of Job and the Psalms in the Old Testament and for his book, The Elusive Presence (1978), in which he presented a new theology of the presence and absence of God written largely in the context of cult, not covenant. It incorporated both Old and New Testaments in a broader ecumenical context and introduced a way for future theologians to ask how the presence of God is experienced by engaging the wisdom traditions to explore how ‘empirical observation can testify to a divine presence in human life just as visionary experiences can.'
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld is an American Old Testament scholar. She is Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary, having previously been William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis.
Gale A. Yee is an American scholar of the Hebrew Bible. Her primary emphases are postcolonial criticism, ideological criticism, and cultural criticism. She applies feminist frameworks to biblical texts. An American of Chinese descent, she has written frequently on biblical interpretation from an Asian American perspective. She is the first woman of color and Asian American to be President of the Society of Biblical Literature.
Jephthah's daughter, sometimes later referred to as Seila or as Iphis, is a figure in the Hebrew Bible, whose story is recounted in Judges 11. The judge Jephthah had just won a battle over the Ammonites, and vowed he would give the first thing that came out of his house as a burnt offering to God. However, his only child, an unnamed daughter, came out to meet him dancing and playing a tambourine. She encourages Jephthah to fulfill his vow but asks for two months to weep for her virginity. After this period of time, Jephthah fulfilled his vow and offered his daughter.
Wilda C. Gafney, also known as Wil Gafney, is an American biblical scholar and Episcopal priest who is the Right Rev. Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She is specialist in womanist biblical interpretation, and topics including gender and race.
Karen H. Jobes is an American biblical scholar who is Gerald F. Hawthorne Professor Emerita of New Testament Greek and Exegesis at Wheaton College. She has written a number of books and biblical commentaries. In 2015, she received the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's Christian Book of the Year Award for "Bible Reference" books. Jobes currently serves as the first female president of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Sarojini Nadar is a South African theologian and biblical scholar who is the Desmond Tutu Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape.
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