Faith, Feminism, and the Forum of Scripture: Essays on Biblical Theology and Hermeneutics

Faith and feminism unite in these essays to explore the theology of the Hebrew Bible as testimony to the faith of ancient Israel and as a source for Christian theology and ethics. Each chapter in Faith, Feminism, and the Forum of Scripture approaches the Bible as a site of theological reflection in which multiple voices are heard (in chorus and debate), as a forum that invites readers to join the conversation and extend it. Acknowledging the patriarchal world of the Bible and the androcentric distortions of its views of both human and divine, they identify foundations and directions that point beyond the cultural frames of the texts. Individual essays present the possibility of an Old Testament theology that integrates feminist insights and concerns into the full range of theological subjects; discuss the theological anthropology of the Hebrew Bible and its root texts in the Genesis creation accounts; outline a proposed new understanding of the authority of the Bible consonant with its nature as a historical, multivocal, and multivalent document; and offer a critical and constructive appraisal of the Old Testament's contribution to current debate on the place of homosexual persons and relations in the church.

Phyllis A. Bird is Professor Emerita of Old Testament Interpretation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. She is the author of Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities (1997), Feminism and the Bible (1994), and The Bible as the Church's Book (1982).