1.
HOW TO RE-READ THE BIBLE
Lot’s Wife
Gen. 19:15-29
Sunita Noronha
Introduction:
Women from many parts of the world have been
re-reading the Bible with new eyes. As we seek to understand
God's liberating word in the midst of our particular experience, women
are finding wisdom, courage and fresh insights to share with each other.
Biblical interpretation by women has a long
history. The path breaking publication of the Woman's Bible took
place in 1895. More than half a century elapsed before scholarly
feminist interpretation of the Bible emerged in the USA in the 1960s as
a result of the combination of struggles of women for liberation,
equality, freedom and humanization, and the emergence of a cadre of
women Biblical scholars. It was born out of the concrete
experiences, realities and possibilities of women's lives.
How does the Bible serve as resource for Christians
who are also feminists?, committed to equality between women and men,
created in the image of God? What approaches to the Bible are
appropriate for us as women who locate ourselves within the Christian
community in India?
The answers to these questions lie in the feminist
re-reading of the scriptures. Some methodological steps are:
1. Text in its Context:
A necessary starting point is to recognize that the
world and times of the Bible are foreign and different from our
own. The Bible was written by men in the Hebrew and Greek world
over 2000 years ago. So we must take care not to make direct
application to our time without first working to understand the text in
its own context.
2. Reclaiming the Text:
This is done in the form of reinterpreting texts
that have been