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1) "Just as non-western cultures must seek to liberate the white, Western interpretations of Scripture and theology so that they are heard anew in different cultures and subcultures, women must seek to liberate the interpretation of God's Word from male bias.
This is a task initiated by women of deep Christian conviction, women who believe that sexism is a sin because it declares one half of the human race inferior because of their biology." page 15
2) "The first assumption is of the "alien" nature of the texts of the Scripture. By their language, world view, and the social and historical situations in which they developed, they are foreign to me as a woman living in contemporary America. The methods of historical and literary criticism are demanded, then, in order to allow the texts their own objective reality and integrity and yet to recover an understanding of what happened, and, more importantly, what that meant to the authors and their communities." page 35
3) "the Jesus movement was not an exclusive, but an inclusive, group. Jesus did not call into his fellowship righteous, pious, and highly esteemed persons but invited tax collectors, sinners, and women to be his followers and friends." page 52
4) "Women accompanied Jesus as disciples in his ministry in Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem (Mark 15:40 and parallels) and witnessed his execution as a criminal on the cross. They were not afraid to be known as his followers. Moreover, women were, according to all criteria of historical authenticity, the first witnesses of the resurrection, for this fact could not have been derived from contemporary Judaism or invented by the primitive church." page 52-53
5) "Church authority was vested in elders, deacons, and bishops. Criteria for their election from the male members of the community were that they must be husbands of one wife and must have demonstrated their ability to rule the community by the proper ordering of their households and the successful upbringing of their children (I Tim 3:1 - 13; Titus 1:5-9)" page 54
5) Suggestions for Interpreting Androcentric Texts of the Bible
2. Since biblical texts are rooted in a patriarchal culture and recorded from an androcentric point of view, a careful analysis from a feminist perspective might unearth traces of a genuine "her-story" of women in the Bible. . . .
3. Since biblical androcentric texts are recorded and told from an patriarchal point of view, it will be helpful to retell the androcentric Biblical stories from the women's point of view. . . .
4. Biblical texts are not only recorded but also translated and interpreted from a male perspective since most exegetes are not aware of the feminist perspective. . . .
5. Biblical revelation, and truth about women are found, I would suggest, in those texts which transcend and criticize their patriarchal culture and religion. Such texts should be used to evaluate and to judge the patriarchal texts of the bible. A Biblical interpretation which is concerned with the meaning of the bible in a post-patriarchal culture has to maintain that solely the non-sexist traditions of the bible present divine revelation if the bible should not become a tool for the oppression of women. Such an interpretation dose not suggest a "modernizing" of ancient texts, but it is a necessary corrective if we do not want to give the impression that we worship a sexist God and thus an idol who is made in the image of males." page 60-61
"And if God was later acting through Moses to deliver the people, then God first of all acted through these women to deliver the people. Women as well as men are God's agents of salvation an, in the story of the exodus, god's first agents.
II Kings 22:1 to 23:3 In the preceding passage we reread the stories of the midwives and the women concerned with the birth of Moses. In doing so, we found that the women were the central characters of these stories, bringing about the deliverance of Israel." page 65
7) Referring to Mark 7: 24-30 and Matthew 15:21-28, the story of the Syro-Phonecian women who asks Jesus to cure her daughter and says "even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
". . . the woman by aggressive use of her intellect to get what she wanted. And this is the only instance in all the canonical stories about Jesus where anyone gets Jesus to change his mind about what to do." page 72
8) Referring to Mark 3: 31-35: "The point of the teaching is evident: the true kindred of Jesus are those who associate with Jesus, who do the will of God, not those who are related to him by blood ties. " page 73
9) "Yet in this instance he ignores his blood mother and calls the women who are presumably among the crowd sitting around him his "mother." There is something more important than the parental relationship.
Secondly, in defining his true relatives as those who do the will of God, Jesus includes "sister" and "mother" - that is, women - equally with "brother" men." page 74
10) ". . . he takes it for granted that women, equally with men, can do the will of God, and thereby be his true kindred." page 75
11) "In Jesus' teaching, the biological role of mother does not in itself give a women status or honor. What is important for any woman, as for any man, is to do the will of God, and in so doing, she, like her brother, is a true relative of Jesus." page 75
12) Suggestions for Reading Biblical Passages
2. Whenever there is a woman or women in a Biblical passage, always reread or retell the story from the viewpoint of the woman. . .
3. Look for what is omitted in a text, as well as what is included. . .
4. Pay attention to the context of a passage. . .
5. Knowledge of social and cultural environment, particularly of the role- or non-role - of women in the times in which the bible was written, can be very helpful in understanding and interpreting texts. . . .
6. Standard commentaries should be used with discretion and compared with interpretations such as those provided in the Notes and Additional Resources in this book." pages 80 -81
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Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.