Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

This is the tenth-anniversary edition of theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's groundbreaking work in which she reexamines the origins of Christianity through the lens of contemporary feminist assumptions.

A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins

In Memory of Her

Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation seeks to interrupt the rhetorics and politics of meaning which in the past decade have compelled the proliferation of popular and scholarly books and articles about the historical Jesus, and which have turned Jesus into a commodity of neo-capitalist western culture. In this spirited book, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza continues her argument begun in Jesus: Miram's Child, Sophia's Prophet (Continuum, 1995), now with a focus on the politics of Jesus scholarship. It is no accident, she maintains, that scholars in the U.S. and Europe have rediscovered the historical Jesus at a time when feminist scholarship, critical theory, interreligious dialogue, postcolonial criticism, and liberation theologies have pointed to the interconnections between knowledge and power at work in positivistic scientific circles. It is also no accident that such an explosion of Jesus books has taken place at a time when the media have discovered the "angry white male syndrome" that fuels neo-fascist movements in Europe and the U.S. The answer to this commodification of "Jesus" is not a rejection of critical scholarship and Jesus research but a call for their investigation in terms of ideology critique and ethics. By claiming to produce knowledge about the "real" Jesus, Schussler Fiorenza points out, malestream as well as feminist scholars deny the rhetoricity of their research and refuse to stand accountable for their reconstructive cultural models and theological interests. Hence, she calls for an ethics of interpretation that can explore such a scholarly politics of meaning, rather than continue its ideological discourses on "Jesus and Women" that are fraught with bothanti-Judaism and anti-feminism.

Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation

Mary Shawn Copeland

Feminist Theology in Different Contexts

Vision of a Just World

Revelation

"Biblical interpretation, according to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, is best understood as searching for Divine Wisdom. In Wisdom Ways she invites readers to join her on a journey of discovery." "Addressing both feminist students and all those who wish to understand the exciting field of feminist biblical interpretation, she offers a review that is not merely informative but liberating. While challenging mainstream reading strategies, she empowers students to think critically and enter creatively into the life-transforming "way of wisdom"."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation

Wisdom Ways

una ricostruzione femminista delle origini cristiane

In memoria di lei

Ephesians is a “mystery” text that seeks to make known the multifarious Wisdom of G*d. At its heart is the question of power. In this commentary, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza examines the political understandings of ekkl­esia and household in Ephesians as well as the roles that such understandings have played in the formation of early Christian communities and that still shape such communities today. By paying close attention to the function of androcentric biblical language within Ephesians, Schüssler Fiorenza engages in a critical feminist emancipatory approach to biblical interpretation that calls for conscientization and change, that is, for the sake of wo/men’s salvation or wellbeing.

Ephesians

Laura Nasrallah

While scholars of the New Testament and its Roman environment have recently focused attention on ethnicity, on the one hand, and gender on the other, the two questions have often been discussed separately-and without reference to the contemporary critical study of race theory. This interdisciplinary volume addresses this lack by drawing together new essays by prominent scholars in the fields of New Testament, classics, and Jewish studies. These essays push against the marginalization of race and ethnicity studies and put the received wisdom of New Testament studies squarely in the foreground.

Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies

Prejudice and Christian Beginnings

David Tracy

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Hearing the testimony of radical negation / Susan Shapiro -- In our terrible age : the tremendum of the Jews / Arthur Cohen -- Interruption of the forgotten / Rebecca Chopp -- "Facing the Jews" : Christian theology after Auschwitz / Johann-Baptist Metz -- Holocaust and political theology / Gregory Baum -- Holocaust and contemporary christology / John Pawlikowski -- Anti-Judaism in the New Testament / Luise Schottroff -- Contribution of church history to a post-Holocaust theology : Christian anti-Judaism as the root of anti-Semitism / Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz -- Holocaust in theology and philosophy : the question of truth / Mary Knutsen -- Holocaust writings : a literary genre? / Mary Gerhart -- Holocaust as interruption and the Christian return to history / Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and David Tracy.

The Holocaust as Interruption

"SchuÌˆssler Fiorenza addresses such questions as, What are the educational practices and procedures that are advocated by traditional educational models, and how can they be changed? What kinds of educational and communicative practices do biblical studies need to develop in order to fashion an emancipatory democratizing rhetorical space and a forum of many voices? To envision, articulate, debate, and practice a radical democratic ethos of biblical studies, she identifies emerging didactic models that can foster such a radical democratic style of learning"--Pbk. cover.

Toward an Emancipatory Educational Space

Democratizing Biblical Studies

One of the world's leading feminist theologians demonstrates how reading the Bible can be spiritually and politically empowering for women. "Schüssler Fiorenza challenges us to destroy the dominant models of biblical interpretations that have held some people in subordination and to construct models that foster emancipatory faith communities."-National Catholic Reporter

Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation

But She Said

het androcentrisme maakt vrouwen monddood en onzichtbaar in het leven en denken van de kerk

Vrouwen, onzichtbaar in theologie en kerk

More than ten years after it was first published, this book is as important and influential as when it first appeared. By way of celebration, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza has written a new introduction, surveying responses and developments over recent years and the issues which arise from them, and commenting on her own intentions. This gives added value to what is already a classic.

Cynthia Briggs Kittredge

Shelly Matthews

Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre

World-renowned scholars honor Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in this Festschrift.

Essay in Honor of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Walk in the Ways of Wisdom

In this major study, leading feminist biblical critic Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza focuses on Paul and his interpreters. She questions the apolitical ethos of biblical scholarship and argues for an alternative rooted in a critical understanding of language as a form of power. Modern biblical criticism, she reasons, derives much of its methodology and inspiration from an outdated notion of modern science. It professes value-neutrality and detachment from the world of politics and history. Yet, Schussler Fiorenza maintains, this posture belies an objectivity that fails to engage the sociopolitical context of both the text and today's reader. It also does not recognize the rhetorical character of biblical texts and readings. If language is understood in the sense of ancient rhetorics as a form of power that constitutes reality, then an ethics of interpretation is called for. The task of biblical studies is to identify and assess the ethical resources and moral visions of biblical religions. "Only then," Schussler Fiorenza contends, "will bibical studies be a significant partner in the global struggles seeking justice and well-being for all."

The Politics of Biblical Studies

Rhetoric and Ethic

ausgewählte Aufsätze

Grenzen überschreiten: der theoretische Anspruch feministischer Theologie

Rev. ed. of: The book of Revelation--justice and judgment. c1985.

Justice and Judgment

The Book of Revelation

Elizabeth S. Schussler

'An important contribution to feminist christological conversation."- Toronto Journal of Theology "Essential for anyone grappling in depth with issues of biblical christology." -Anglican Theological Review

Critical Issues in Feminist Christology

Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet

In Wo/men, Scripture, and Politics, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, brings to bear years of trailblazing scholarship of feminist thought and hermeneutics onto the current political and cultural landscape. In this book, she seeks to articulate and use biblical interpretation as intervention into the failure of the democratic cultural-political imagination. Although such an intervention is often taboo for supposedly neutral academic scholarship, Schüssler Fiorenza argues that it is politically necessary because political argument today so often utilizes biblical rhetoric in the public square. e biblical-political analysis and suggestions of this book are developed in four chapters, each focusing on the role of the Bible in struggles over women's leadership in the present, touching on the cultural "double bind" of women in politics, sexual abuse, power, and the #MeToo movement. Schüssler Fiorenza's insights and arguments not only lead to the development of reimagined cultural biblical imprints of women in the political arena, but they also encourage her readers to add their own biblical examples to inspire them in their struggle for a biblical vision of "women in the public square." is is an insightful, challenging book written for our time by someone who has always seemed to be ahead of hers.

Exploring the Cultural Imprint of the Bible

Wo/men, Scripture, and Politics

Chart the development of feminist approaches and theories of interpretation during the period when women first joined the ranks of biblical scholars This collection of essays on feminist biblical studies in the twentieth century seeks to explore four areas of inquiry demanding further investigation. In the first section, articles chart the beginnings and developments of feminist biblical studies as a conversation among feminists around the world. The second section introduces, reviews, and discusses the hermeneutic religious spaces created by feminist biblical studies. The third segment discusses academic methods of reading and interpretation that dismantle androcentric language and kyriarchal authority. The fourth section returns to the first with work that transgresses academic boundaries in order to exemplify the transforming, inspiring, and institutionalizing feminist work that has been and is being done to change religious mindsets of domination and to enable wo/men to engage in critical readings of the Bible. Features: Essays examine the rupture or break in the malestream reception history of the Bible Exploration of the term feminism in different social-cultural and theoretical-religious locations Authors from around the world present research and future directions for research challenging the next generation of feminist interpreters

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

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