Proverbs 14 Series, a Preface

Suzanne McCarthy first drew me into biblioblogging with her BBB series on Psalm 68.  She drew several of us in (as you can see here under "Hebrew Bible" in Tim Bulkeley's Biblical Studies Carnival XXII).

So now nearly four years later, I'm wanting to start a series on Proverbs 14.  Maybe it'll draw you in.

This first blogpost is just the preface to the series.  So why proverbs?  And why Proverbs 14?

I'm blogging proverbs because they are universal.  Even the Proverbs of the Hebrew Bible are "universal," according to translator Robert Alter.  Every culture has proverbs.  You yourself have probably grown up with proverbs.  You should find a way to enjoy a series on proverbs; and it's my hope that you'll feel like you can participate, whatever your background and whatever your present experience.  Everyone of us is somewhat experienced with proverbs, regardless of our race, our sex, our religion, our culture, our family.

We're also familiar with hearing proverbs in translation, regardless of our first language.  In the translation, we'll understand the literal meaning but can figure out the figural also.  For example, if I were to share with you a Vietnamese proverb and give you its literal meaning, you would likely be able to give me its meaning in your own terms, in some figure of speech.

Take this one:  "Ăn có nhai, nói có nghĩ."  Literally, in English, that's "Eating has chewing, talking has thinking."  So what's that mean to you if you're not Vietnamese or don't speak the language?  The English language dynamic equivalent of this, for you, might be:  "Chew on things, think about them before you speak." Such a proverb is probably good advice for us bloggers.

And...

right now, I'm chewing on Alter's The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary .  At the same time, I am ruminating on John Balaban's book, Spring Essence: the Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương, in which he translates her proverbs from her written Vietnamese and from quốc ngữ, the modern way of writing Vietnamese.  In addition, I've been taking a few bites from Mineke Schipper's, Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World.  Before I blog on any of these, I'd love to savor, to digest, what I'm reading and thinking.  I'd love to have conversation around proverbs, the Proverbs, and Proverbs 14.

So why Proverbs 14?

For me, there are many reasons.  Maybe I'll get to more later.  For now, here's one.  Proverbs 14 is one of the first proverbs I remember hearing.  I sort of heard this one verse in three different versions in a relatively short amount of time.

Here's how.  When I was much younger, in Vietnam, my mother was watching me and said, "Be patient, Kurk."  But in a flash of three-and-a-half-year-old fidgety fussiness, I replied, "I don't wanna be patient!"  So, my father grabbed me up and quoted to me Proverbs 14:29 - "He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly."  Then, not moments later, I think somebody took the following photo which was posed (which may have been what prompted my impatience to begin with).

The proverb my daddy quoted me was later reinforced a second time not long after.  Here's how.  When my parents were away in language school, my nanny, Chị Năm, took my little brother and me down to the market in the Lambro.

As I expressed some childish impatience, she chewed on that a bit.  Then I expressed my little-kid anger.  So, rather patiently, she not only handed me a dried sweet-and-salty Xí Muội, but she also - at the same time - spoke the Vietnamese dynamic equivalent of Proverbs 14:29.  As I plopped the fruit-candy in my mouth, I heard Chị Năm say:  "Ăn kỹ no lâu, cày sâu tốt lúa."  And the whole proverb, literally, goes something like this in English:  "Eat slowly [to be] full awhile, plough deeply [for a] good rice-crop."  So I thought about that.  I thought about that for a little-kid long time.  And it was quieter in the Lambro for a good long time.  But when my two-year-old little brother started crying and when our nanny couldn't quiet him and really got flustered herself, an older even wiser beetle-nut chewing woman managed to calm down my brother and to reassure our nanny.  Picking him up and kissing him with her nose with repeated affections, the elder woman was able to get my sibling to be silent.  Then the elder reminded the younger woman of the wisdom of taking things in stride, in patiently letting things flow.  Through contented beetle-nut stained teeth, she said:  "Gái chưa chồng trông mong đi chợ."  ["It's the girl without the husband who just can't seem to wait to get to the market."]  Then the long Lambro ride down to the market didn't seem so long after all.  

(So is the proverb in English that my daddy quoted me a good translation of the Bible's proverb?  Is this proverb he was later able to quote in Vietnamese a good translation:  "Kẻ nào chậm nóng giận có thông sáng lớn; Nhưng ai hay nóng nảy tôn lên sự điên cuồng"?  I'm interested in the translation of wisdom, of wise sayings, of proverbs.  Hope you will enjoy this series and will add to its enjoyment.  Will it draw you [further] into bible blogging?)

how do you read the Bible now?

Let this be a biblioblog. Let this be a biblioblog post. Let it encourage you to read the Bible in the month of March.

How, you might ask.

So I’d ask you to clarify:

How let this post encourage you? Or how do you read the Bible?

And I’d just insist:

How do you read the Bible?

How if you are one of the 8 men of the “February 2011 Top 10 Biblioblogs”?

or

How if you’re one of the 48 men with a “Biblioblog Top 50 for February [2011] (by Alexa Rank)”?

or

How if you’re one of the 69 men whose 182 posts [of 70 individuals whose 183 posts] were featured in the “February 2011 Biblical Studies Carnival”?

How do you read the Bible as if it’s centered on males on International Women’s Day in Women’s History Month? And if you so read the Bible, then how will you position yourself? At the top again? In the center or at the margins of the Bible? How will you be most encouraged? How can you encourage others? With all of the objectivity you can muster, how do you read the Bible now?

a (gendered bibliloblogger) conversation

Since Jeremy posted "the top 50" bibliobloggers of March 2010, there's been quite a long discussion about how and why women are so absent from the list.  Some so far are wanting to unsubscribe (namely Luke Muehlhauser of Common Sense Atheism and Sabio Lantz of Triangulations, the "newcomer on the list this month debuting" at #36).  I do think it's inadvertently rude of some of us to go on and on over at Jeremy's blog.  Let me offer this blog and this post here as a place to continue the conversation for those who want to do so.  (I'm certainly not preventing anyone who wants to continue the conversation at Jeremy's blog from doing so.)  Yes, and likely our talk here won't necessarily get the attention it may have there, but at least it spares the ones who don't want to hear it or to participate in it. 

congrats again to Joel, but...

Obviously, congrats again to Joel L. Watts for maintaining the #1 read biblioblog.

But has no one noticed that there’s not one single woman blogger in this “the top 50″? Thanks to Matthew there’s Madeleine and to Calvin there’s Mandy and to Daniel there’s Tonya – but really what do these Alexa Traffic Ranks in March tell us about what we read and, importantly, who we read? Can someone claim there’s not a male bias here (once again)? 

"I used to think that because April DeConick was an academic that she would be accepted as one of the guys."
http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2009/09/womens-voices.html

Thanks to Jeremy Thompson (@ #4 in March) for continuing to compile the list -- and even more thanks to him for (finally) posting this comment of mine at his blog and that link to Suzanne's Bookshelf (see above).

the Evangelical Caste System

The "evangelical caste system" is what Jocelyn Andersen calls an ecclesiastical and household construct based on "old arguments traditionally used to keep men and women enslaved in illegitimate bondage based on sex." After conducting "extensive personal research into the Patriarchy movement" and after reading the Bible carefully for herself with respect to the Patriarchy, Andersen is coming out with a book entitled Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System.

The last time I heard anyone use the word caste to refer to any part of the Christian church was toward the end of last year.  This raised an eyebrow, I imagine, but was hardly the passionate, provocative declaration that Andersen is making, and that she has to make, because she's a woman, a woman with an all too common story this late in human history.

In November last year, blogger Peter Kirk called the historical teaching that has promoted "Church leadership by a special caste of pastors or priests" a "deeply de-Christian doctrine."  In other words, the notion and practice of a caste system is not to be seen as Christian at all.  Kirk, an Anglican, doesn't look at the systematic construct of an ecclesiastical caste in relation to gender so much, and he casts blame for such a doctrine on the Christian appropriation of "the values of the world." Nonetheless, he sees as another "deeply de-Christian doctrine" the idea that "Leadership is male"; that's a "concept," he says, "which also seems to have been imported into the church from the surrounding culture." One of Kirk's responders, Gary Simmons, commented to speculate that pragmatism and not the assimilation of culture values is the source: "I agree there should be no formal 'caste,' but as an American of Protestant background from the Bible Belt, I will tell you that having no clear authority structure (like a caste) has its drawbacks and frustrations."  They, and none of Kirk's other responders with him, further discussed male leadership as part of the caste and how that, as biblical teaching, might be outdated or de-christian or damaging to women, men, and children.  Perhaps other things were more interesting to them in the conversation because they are not women and are men.

In a recent related post at another blog, John Hobbins defends Christians in general and bashes what he calls "standard-issue feminists" in particular (as if there's a necessary divide between the two beyond his own thinking); the former but not the latter, he says, have reduced the global gendercide reported by the Economist.  Hobbins asserts that "Korean Christianity remains strongly complementarian [i.e. the male is the leader] in the pulpit and the home" to suggest that such teaching and practice "stands in contradiction to femicide" but that, in contrast, "democratic capitalists and feminists ... have failed" [in opposing male-over-female hierarchies] to so stand against gendercide.  Hobbins is "an ordained pastor in the Waldensian Church" and a prolific blogger.

In a responsive post today at yet another blog, Suzanne McCarthy points out that male bible-bloggers who are the most read, Hobbins included, create a very odd position for female bible-bloggers.  It's not just the strong assertions, like Hobbins's, that complementarianism (i.e. the caste-like teaching and practice) is actually helping women in the church around the world but it's also the censorship that a powerful male bible-blogger engages in (albeit at his own well-read blog) that limits women in the conversation about the very caste system that silences many.

However, perhaps Andersen's new book will get more of us talking and will allow women to talk with men and with one another.  The comparisons of a caste with some domains of evangelicalism (along the lines of gender and slavery) should have more of us considering whether and how we rank.

about biblioblogging...? Jacqueline Jones Royster's voices

I don't know why you read my blog. It's a strange mix of feminisms, translation stuff, rhetorics, and because of that sometimes often it's bibliobloggish. I know, doesn't make sense much to the pure or the purists of any sort.

So let me offer at least 2 reasons why you might read this particular post:  1 - you might have read something yesterday here about April DeConick sounding rather like Moses (moses, the male, I mean) when I was hoping she might just also speak with another voice of hers;  2- you might be holding me to my promise (sort of) that I'd say something more about why afrafeminist Jacqueline Jones Royster has very much influenced how I read the bible.

1- DeConick does not disappoint.  Look at the whole post What is it about biblioblogging...? But at least read two central paragraphs:

As for the historical-critical approach and feminism. There is nothing anti-feminist about the historical approach in and of itself. What is anti-feminist is its application which has been controlled by white (mainly European) males since only recently. So the kind of history that has been recovered and written has been the history of the dominant group, and it is the history that justifies and sustains that group. Here again we are talking about white males who are in power and who wish to remain so. When our histories, whether religious or social or political, have been written and put into text books and taught to our children, it is the history of the dominant group - their master commemorative narrative - that we are disseminating. Now this is not new news. It is ho-hum by now and I imagine you are yawning.

So what have we done about this now that we have recognized it because feminist scholarship and literary critical methods have brought this to our attention? We have gone back and added a paragraph about important women in our textbooks and we have minted coins with Anthony's face on it, coins that we never use! But we haven't rewritten our histories to reflect what we are learning about the hidden histories and the marginalized past nor have we commemorated it as a society (this is especially true of our religious histories - which is why I am writing Sex and the Serpent). Why not add a paper dollar to those we use already, and put Anthony on it? Why not make a government holiday commemorating the Suffrage movement? Why not rename important boulevards with the names of women we wish to commemorate? Etc.

Doesn't she sound wonderfully like Patricia Bizzell?  And if you're a (feminist) rhetorician you should know how she sounds.  For example, in her speech and in her writing (“Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?”), Bizzell asks,

Have [Jacqueline Jones] Royster, and other feminist scholars for whom she has now more completely articulated methodologies already in practice, departed radically from the rhetorical tradition?

So Bizzell answers:

Yes, and no. No, because their work relies upon many of the traditional tools of research in the history of rhetoric. No, because the rhetors they have added to our picture of the history of Western rhetoric seem to me to be working within this tradition and enriching it, rather than constituting utterly separate or parallel rhetorical traditions. But yes, because in order to get at activities of these new rhetors, researchers have had to adopt radically new methods as well, methods which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, her body, her emotions, and dare one say, her soul, into the work.  From my [Bizzell's] perspective as editor of an anthology called The Rhetorical Tradition, contemplating the major changes in scholarship over the last ten years, these new methods have made all the difference.

2 - Now you've noticed my little segue into talking about Royster.  I don't think I can say more really than Bizzell has.  I do think Royster herself has lots to say.  The best place to start, if you're starting to read Royster, is her essay, "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own."  There, she talks about her many voices, and she does so using her "academic voice."  She's writing (also) as a woman, as an African American, as one often talked about by other experts on african american women, experts who themselves are neither women nor african americans.

Royster, you may also want to learn, is an "English" academic professionally, not a bible scholar.  But as such she is a historian, a feminist, a rhetorician, a literary scholar.  Royster has a fabulous book she's entitled, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women. If you haven't caught on, then you might want to understand that Royster finds herself in the historical stream of women she's researching and writing about. This is objective but subjective stuff.  Two of my favorite paragraphs are these (from pages 254-55):

     My role as researcher has been to look theoretically and philosophically at the data, to bring meaning to it.  The very first order of business by necessity has been to establish an interpretive viewpoint that clearly places African American women at the center of our own story.  The assumption is that viewpoint matters.  As Anna Julia Cooper stated in 1892 in A Voice from the South, "What is needed, perhaps, to reverse the picture of the lordly man slaying the lion, is for the lion to turn painter!"  (1988:222).  In scholarly research and analysis, the question to be addressed is more than whether African American women occupy a passive position of object or an active position of subject.  Rather, the question, at the level of interpretation, is how--as objects or subjects--we are placed on a landscape or within a material reality.

     In this analysis, I rejected images of African American women that would position us interpretively as a mirror or a reflection of others, or as a room accessed by other people's doors and windows, or even as a backdrop against which other stories are told, invigorated, or clarified.  Instead, this analysis positions African American women as the "lions" in a "lion's tale."  My intent has been to consider African American women as the embodiment of our own dreams and aspirations, our own created and re-created selves, in a world with others, certainly, but without the need at critical points in the analytical process (that is, in the initial stages) to be filtered through the experiences of others, no matter how resonant or dissonant those experiences might be.  In making such a commitment to creating a working space amid dualities, I believe I have acquired an understanding of both scholarly positioning and knowledge production in this arena from which advice to others might be abstracted.  In choosing an appropriate mechanism for sharing advice in a more direct manner, however, without suggesting the notion of easy prescriptions, I realize once again that theory, like history, also begins with a story.

Let me quote three paragraphs more, and then say something about the bible and about my reading (and some blogging about) it.  Here's from Royster's preface to Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture (page x):

     Colleagues in mainstream and not so mainstream academic circles have learned to focus more acutely on what it actually means to carry out a research agenda that is defined and substantively directed by schemata (race, gender, culture) that have traditionally been marginalized and disregarded.  We have learned to adapt and invent research and teaching strategies, and we have struggled to negotiate the social and political dynamics of academic lives that are so clearly tied to traditionally devalued interests.  In the main, there have not been road maps by which to determine appropriate and worthy pathways, since these interests actually go against the grain of many traditional practices.  We hear tales of colleagues who have worked without advocates, mentors, or champions to run interference or to keep resources enabling structures in place.  Personally and professionally, many of us have felt on our own, isolated, and struggling against the odds.  These are the facts of many lives.

And here's from Royster's preface to Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (page vii):

     As complements to each other, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and A Red Record clearly state Wells's position on lynching, revealing the insight and perception with which she was able to launch the most successful of the early anti-lynching campaigns.  Wells's courageous analysis helps us to understand the told and untold story of this sinister thread in the fabric of American life.  The third pamphlet, Mob Rule in New Orleans, is a case study that dramatically details an individual incident as it escalates in the absence of law, order, and the application of justice to become yet another striking example of "southern horror."

     I have also sought to establish an appropriate framework for understanding the personal achievements of Ida B. Wells.  Born into slavery, Wells went on to garner a place of respect as a nationally and internationally prominent journalist and as a leader in the black clubwomen's movement.  Wells was one among a relatively small but growing number of "public" women in an era when public arenas were not considered the place for women.  Going against this grain, Wells earned a reputation as an outspoken and steadfast crusader for justice, and the three pamphlets presented here are testimony to her achievement.

Now it doesn't take an entirely careful reader to see how Royster, historian, finds herself in the history.  Nor does it take a woman, or an African American, or an AfricanAmericanwoman to appreciate what she's doing, and the authority with which she does it.  The marginal voices of the "traditional" history speak.  They do not demand to be heard.  They deconstruct and reconstruct their histories before an expert not in the stream of history (not that history anyway) can construct them otherwise.

So, the bible.  It is history, re-presentations.  And most today doing scholarship on the Bible come at it as lion slayers in the painting, not letting the silenced lions paint, not listening to the voices, not standing themselves in their own margins where they belong.  Since I am not a Jew of old, not even one of those who spoke for or as Thomas or Mary, then I do better, I think, to listen to the stories not always told.  Royster reminds me of the horrors of the silenced in the south.  She reminds me that rigorous historical criticism (even in biblical scholarship) is too often necessarily done "without advocates, mentors, or champions to run interference or to keep resources enabling structures in place."  There are many (yet) unheard and overlooked.  The subjective perspective is most important when "being" objective.