Results: 5 (Female) Biblical Scholars who have most influenced us

I am not a "real writer." I am a writer. Without modification.

--Nancy Mairs, Voice Lessons: On Becoming A (Woman) Writer

"[I]f you still intend to do the meme or I have missed your post, send me the link," says Mike Koke earlier this week after he tallied the results of his meme.  So far, here the top 4 biblical ("female") scholars:

#1. The winner with 7 votes is Phyllis Trible.

#2. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, April DeConick and Paula Fredriksen received 6 votes.

#3. Frances Young recevied, Adela Yarbro Collins, Mary Douglas, Adele Berlin, Elaine Pagels and Carolyn Osiek 4 votes.

#4. Amy-Jill Levine, Susan Niditch and Marianne Meye Thompson received 3 votes. The rest received one or two votes. 

I'm not intending to tip the balance.  But maybe my late list can help in some way:

1.  Dr. Osiek directly influenced me with tremendous contributions to my own thinking and to my doctoral dissertation!  Her translation, Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary, was the work that much shaped my research. Although my project was not in biblical scholarship per se (but in feminisms, rhetorics and translation), she was the most proficient Greek reader on the committee and added helpful perspectives, struggling with me over the words, even continuing a dialogue she started in the defense by emailing me afterwards.  She announced retirement at the end of the last academic year, but she's still working I know.  The last email she sent was from a distant land where I know she's researching.  I told her that several in the blogosphere would love to see her there as a biblioblogger; alas, she's not going to start blogging and has her very good reasons.  (I should listen!)  It's thrilling to see so many of you influenced by Carolyn Osiek!!!  My very favorite work of hers is just a little article with a huge implications:  "It does no good to affirm the full dignity and equality of women with men if our language, our imagery, and our metaphors continue to perpetuate inequality." -- "The Bride of Christ : a problematic wedding - Ephesians 5:22-33" Biblical Theology Bulletin, Spring, 2002 - also available online in full for free here.

2.  Dr. DeConick has influenced a good many of us who blog.  Her scholarship is phenomenal!  My favorite books of hers are The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says and The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation: With a Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel .

3.  Dr. Berlin influences me to see translation from various perspectives. Her Biblical Poetry Through Medieval Jewish Eyes is just absolutely amazing. And I think I found myself quoting her again (in a blogpost) yesterday. 

4.  Dr. Phyllis A. Bird has a classic that deserves rereading many times over:  Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel.  (I'd recommend Bird's book to any rhetoricians reading who don't know it but who love Dr. Cheryl Glenn's Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance.)  And I think I found myself quoting Dr. Bird again (in that same blogpost) yesterday.

5.  Julia Evelina Smith had no doctorate and didn't work in a university teaching and researching.  But she's influenced many of us.  Most famously, she influenced Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Frances Ellen Burr, and the other editors of and contributors to The Women's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective.  Burr writes in an "Appendix" that "Julia Smith's translation of the Bible stands out unique among all translations. It is the only one ever made by a woman, and the only one, it appears, ever made by man or woman without help." What Burr doesn't go into are the exigencies surrounding Smith. She was not welcomed into the academy by those men of letters who finally endorsed her project; rather, Smith learned Hebrew, Greek, and translation from her father.  And the translator translated alone because none of the three teams of men translating revised versions of the English Bible at the time would welcome her assistance.  Her persistence paid off, I think, and places Smith in a long line of women (around the world), from Christine de Pizan to Laura Cereta to Ann Nyland, who are self-credentialed biblical scholars.  (Of course, they're also female.)

As you can see, I'm a bit biased towards and mostly influenced by bible scholars who are translators.  Didn't mean to get to Mike's meme so late but was slog blogging through a bit of elaboration on the lists for Ken's meme on those influences on my reading of the bible:

Homer, the LXX, Kenneth Lee Pike, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Philip Yancey; then Ruth Behar, Anne Carson, Cheryl Glenn, bell hooks, Gayl Jones, Anne Lamott, Nancy Mairs, Toni Morrison, Krista Ratcliffe, Alice Walker.

influences: on how I read the Bible

Here are 10 most immediate and lasting influences on how I read the Bible that were not named in the earlier post:

1. Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
2. Anne Carson, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
3. Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance
4. bell hooks, Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics
5. Gayl Jones, Corregidora
6. Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
7. Nancy Mairs, Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer
8. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
9. Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness
10. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
    

These writers and these works of theirs in various ways inform my readings of the Bible. Some of you wanted me to mention Willis Barnstone on jewish translation of the jewish new covenant; C. S. Lewis on second meanings and humble non-jewish christian reflections on the psalms; William Webb on hermeneutics and male, free, straight perspectives on women, slaves, and gays; Ann Nyland on classics and bible translation; Francis Schaeffer and my own son named at the end of postmodernist David Hopkins's essay rationalizing his own goatee; James K. A. Smith's fall of interpretation. And I really wanted to say something about Hélène Cixous and having to read her articles in translation only; and about Sherry Simon and Luise von Flotow and canadian feminist translating; and about Aspasia forgotten; and Maya Angelou's insistence on reading Aristotle. "Our Father has a bone to pick with this world," I want to quote instead; "... and oh, he picks it like a sore. Picks it with the Word. His punishment is the Word, and his deficiencies are failures of words as when he grows impatient with translation and strikes out precariously on his own, telling parables in his wildly half-baked Kikongo." (But then, if I did say that, you'd recognize I was quoting from "The Judges" of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and you might think it was one of Nathan Price's daughters.)

So far, a saga

So blogger David Ker, who once on a dare posted here once upon a time, calls me "impossibly verbose" and then dares me and some of his "friends" to play his write-your-life-in-fifty-words-as-a-saga meme.  He writes his but tells us to get our muse first from a writer in Narcotics Anonymous.

Since it’s the holidays and all, and because rape and heroin depress the hell out of me not to mention what they do to you, I went straight to “Xmas.” I’ve pasted the happy story here as the next paragraph. (And my impossibly verbose paragraphs here always have fifty words.)

Christmas is always a time of horror and misery for her. No family, a past that makes her wince and hang her head with shame, a future that fills her with fear and hopelessness. Walking past the Macy’s displays, she realizes she’d rather be a mannequin in the store window.

Maybe there’s a reason for all those words.  Maybe I feel shamed into doing it or something, but I’m more or less parroting the Lingamish’s story-structure.  You’ll "get" mine next, sort of. Why do I feel like I’m answering my dad the patriarchy?  Now I tag Jane, Rachel, Stefan, Bob, and Charlotte.

trong ngày có trận đánh mà mẹ 

bị nghiền nát với các con cái

Childhood in wartime

ia memboroskan uangnya 

dengan hidup berfoya-foya

Adolescence in godlessnonsense

Grown(ing) missionary kid 

meets match in 

grown(ing) preacher’s kid:

Life in love!

Peaceful rewards in recovery,

fuller in family, 

in friends:

οὐδείς σε κατέκρινεν?

I don’t know how to love him

I don’t know how to love him










It’s Corsicana, Texas, 1964, where and when the Jim Crow laws are still in effect. I’m a little white boy. Mother and Daddy are at church (also white and Southern Baptist), some meeting or something, where he’s the preacher. Nancy is a black woman, our nanny, at home. She’s telling us stories, my brother and me, until she can go home at the end of her day and tuck in her own kids, and tell them the stories, rightly resisting somehow. Somehow she’s teaching us: singing now, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and then “He Never Sleeps.” But we beg her to play the turn table, and this weird thing happens. She presses down a little 45 and lays on the needle. Through the cracklings we hear a choir of women singing, “We’ve a story to tell to the nations, that shall turn their hearts to the right, a story of truth and mercy, a story of peace and light, . . . for the darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noonday light, and Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth, the kingdom of love and light” (Side A). So we say “flip it, please, Nancy.” And the three of us listen, to a choir of men: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before. . .” The door opens; Daddy’s face flushes, “The children are not to play with the turntable.” “Yes, Sir,” we hear, and “Sir, I am sorry; please, they just wanted to hear a little of the songs of yalls church.”

It’s Fort Worth, Texas, 1969, Travis Avenue Baptist Church. Our family is standing in front of the congregation like the Von Trapp family. Except we’re singing in Vietnamese. (We’d seen “The Sound of Music,” in Sai Gon in late 1965, so I know what they felt like). We’re back for furlough from the mission field, South Vietnam. Our childhood friends, and enemies, had taught my brothers and me to rock fight—we did live in a war zone, after all—and some pretty choice words, the tones on which make for some good singing if you get the melody synced right. (Missionary hymns didn’t). And Chị Năm, our nanny, had taught us this little song, which makes for pretty weird worship in the USA: “Vì Đức Chúa Trời yêu thương thế gian, Đức Chúa Trời yêu thương thế gian, đến nỗi đã ban Con một của Ngài, là Jêsus, hầu cho hễ ai tin, hễ ai tin, hễ ai tin Con ấy, không bị hư mất bao giờ, không bị hư mất bao giờ, mà được sự sống, được sự sống, được sự sống đời đời, A-men!”

It’s Ba Ngoị, Việt Nam, 1971, at home. Bill Roberts, an American GI, is over and has brought a new record. He likes to taunt Daddy and Mommy with worldliness. It’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” but not weird worship at all, if you keep it out of the churches. Mary Magdalene or Yvonne Elliman is confessing, “I don’t know how to love him.” Bill looks at us kids and says, “She’s a prostitute, ya know.” Of course, we did know that English word. It came blurting out alongside those dressed up women on the streets in Số Chín (which the GIs called “Sue Chin,” a place they seemed to populate as well in broad daylight), on our drive to Cam Ranh. What’s really weird is this: the great worship song, the same year, was Elliman’s #28 chart hit and Helen Reddy’s #12 in the USA (with Reddy even titling her album after the song), and in Ireland, for Tina & Real McCoy, it hit #1. The next year, in the UK, for Petula Clark, it made #47. Less known is Angela Carrasco’s version en español “Es más que amor” and the Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps arrangement of it. You Aussies will remember Kate Ceberano’s #38 hit in 1992, when we in the US heard Sarah Brightman sing it here. You Brits have brought it back time and again, by Joanna Ampil in 97, Leanne Dobinson and Helena Blackman in 06 (on the reality television “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”), and Bonnie Tyler but also Sinéad O’Connor last year. But did anyone visiting LA in August 2006 see Yvonne Elliman’s one night come back, with the original Ted Neeley Jesus, but also Jack Black as Herod? Did I mention it is weird that the same churches allowing Mary Magdala in keep her great worship song out?

It’s Jakarta, Indonesia, 1976, Asrama Baptit (the missionary kid high school dorm), where the Kebayoran Baptist Church youth group meets. My hair is as long as they’ll let me grow it, a closet atheist aware of the penalties of getting caught doing certain substances and doing certain other things with certain types of people (all with long hair for some reason). We’re made to go, to youth group that is. And some sing: “Cotton candy clouds so fluffy and white, who put you there in a sky so blue, or do you just happen to float along, pretty and white, in a sky so blue?” There’s some weird lines too about “tall mountains, deep valleys, fast rivers, cool streams,” and I think the song is worshiping the “Master Designer,” although evolution, for us, is just a smoke screen argument for doing certain things (with smoke). If it’d been done right, the Beatles could have sung the song (and I always wondered about those lyrics to “Lucy in the Sky.”)

It’s Fort Worth, Texas, again but now 2008, at a church. The band plays like the Beatles sometimes, and hair is not such a huge thing now. And yet, there’s weirdness again: “We're gonna shout loud, loud until the walls come down shout loud, loud until the walls come down, loud until the walls come down, Because we've already won, And You don't have a chance. . . [on and on and loud].” The “You” isn’t the one who they started worshiping. I wonder what my kids are thinking. Anyway, is that five yet?

Can I just add three more things (before I tag anyone)?

First: thanks to Eclexia for her power of persuasion. Second: we could blame David Ker for weirder things I suppose. (But there’s enough of that from Miss “bitty” Wilson, which explains why he played dodgeball so long; may he get technorati ratings galore now.)

Third: one of my own teachers once said this thing.
I only know that because one of the other students translated it this way, so that even Aristotle and I could understand it:

προσέχετε δὲ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ὑμῶν μὴ ποιεῖν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων πρὸς τὸ θεαθῆναι αὐτοῖς εἰ δὲ μή γε μισθὸν οὐκ ἔχετε παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ ὑμῶν τῷ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς . . . σὺ δὲ ὅταν προσεύχῃ εἴσελθε εἰς τὸ ταμεῖόν σου καὶ κλείσας τὴν θύραν σου πρόσευξαι τῷ πατρί σου τῷ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ καὶ ὁ πατήρ σου ὁ βλέπων ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ ἀποδώσει σοι

My dynamic equivalent relevant translation of Matthew 6:1 . . . 6 is this:

“Woe, a Warning: worship is woefully weird in every way whenever and whereever one is waiting on someone, anyone, to watch. It’s not a dance for, it’s a dance with. At the risk of cliché, it’s not rules but a real good natural relationship. I’ll wait for you, but never overwhelm you. Unless you find me loveable, forget it. When you don’t know exactly how, then you’ve got it down.” (Keep reading because there’s a verse 7,8 warning about all us and yall who are goyim too).

now tagged:

Iyov, who like David Ker at first avoided my one and only meme, but who unlike Lingamish doesn't get his feelings hurt while waiting to be tagged. Wow, look he already did it.

The curiously quieter Voice of Stefan, who I must remind also, like Lingamish and Iyov, avoided that best teacher meme.

Molly, who has likely already been tagged, but for her Adventures in Mercy, we have to make sure.

Nathan, so he can take time out from his Greek lessons for something really weird. He said No, then Yes. (It was around his birthday, and he was working on saying how weird this really is.)

Sue, aka Suzanne for the incredible Suzanne's Bookshelf. She's so quick, maybe I tagged her after the fact.