[Author’s Note; I am going back to feminist reinterpretations of the Bible, this one focusing on the work of Alice Bellis. I especially love her reexamination of Ruth. I remember watching the movie on TCM when I was in middle school, and it stuck with me. Even in the movie, made in 1960, Ruth is an active character, choosing her destiny and not passively accepting men’s plans for her. That is a definite lesson many interpretations of the story leave out, focusing instead on Boaz as the hero and YHWH’s protection.]
While we can name many female figures in the Bible, often, we ascribe names to unnamed women, not realizing until we go back and read the story that we have been taught wrong. While growing up Catholic, I remember being told that Mary Magdelene was the adulturass woman who was to be stoned in John 8: 1-11. Even when she wasn’t being called Mary, we were told she was a prostitute. But, rereading the passage, all we know is that she had committed adultery.
That is not the same as prostitution, adultery being a crime reserved for married persons. She might have been recast as a prostitute because, in our contemporary world, cheating, while never good, is not that big of a deal to many. When a spouse or partner cheats, there are excuses, and blame is thrown that the other person wasn’t meeting their needs, but aside from negating a prenup, there are no legal consequences. Long gone are the days when women could be thrown into asylums for hysteria or nymphomania. So when adultery lost its social stigma, a new crime had to be ascribed to the woman.
However, prostitution is still a crime, and prostitutes are looked down upon by the self-righteous; prostitutes are viewed as dirty, irredeemable, and used by many men and thus worthless to society. As a young person, you don’t ask why a woman is a prostitute; now, with study, we know women can be victims of trafficking, abusive partners, can have lost their jobs, be supplementing their incomes, or become addicted to substances—all caveats which can apply throughout time, not just in contemporary America.
by Henry Ossawa Tanner, Wikimedia Commons
Another unnamed woman, identified as Mary Magdelene or as a prostitute, is the woman who washes Jesus‘ feet at the home of the Pharisees Luke 7:36-50. Again, while in Church and Bible study, we were told the woman was a fallen woman, and sometimes she was described as the woman Jesus saved from stoning. But we don’t know what she did. All we know is that the host described the woman as a sinner, and to our contemporary minds, anything sexual is sinful. But we need to remember that in Jesus‘ time, there were a lot of behaviors that were considered to be sinful. Eating bacon, not going to the temple, wearing too much makeup or jewelry, wearing garments of different materials, sleeping with a woman or man out of wedlock, etc.
The stories of the Bible that have named women or unnamed women as central characters garner a lot of attention from feminist authors because we are looking for female figures to look up to and aspire to be. Or to give ourselves a place in biblical literature beyond women’s relationships with male figures. Often overlooked, however, are passages that discuss women’s actions. In “Daughters of Your People,” Nancy Bowen, a professor of the Old Testament, draws our attention to a little-studied passage that can greatly impact our understanding of women’s power and responsibilities in Ancient Israel.
While feminist biblical scholars have reinterpreted many books and Bible passages, one text that has not received much attention is Ezekiel 13:17-23, which deals with female prophets. Written during the time of the Babylonian exile the common biblical interpretation is that these women were witches who cast harmful spells which hurt the people of Israel. However, Bowen offers a different interpretation of the women and their place in Israelite society.
She first reminds us that distinctions between religion, magic, divination, and prophecy are modern and should not be put back into a society in which there were no such distinctions. In fact, the idea of the witch is fairly modern. Historically, a person who wielded magic and performed rituals and spells could use their power to help or hurt, depending on how the petitioner or community treated them. In American Folk Magic traditions, there are very few references to people who solely do evil, and these people are the ones you have to draw attention to yourself and make them want to curse you. There were not people who randomly cast curses and hexes because of general misanthropy; rather, you angered them, and they made you regret your actions.
In the passage, Ezekiel rails against women who prophized from their own imaginations. Not because they act as oracles, but because they were charlatans, claiming to speak for YHWH. Bowen writes that this passage “…is not telling us anything about the beliefs and practices of Israelite female prophets.” And she is correct; nowhere in the condemnation is sorcery or prophecy denounced, only liars whose lies have caused deaths in the community. To a contemporary reader, it seems more like a warning to those who preach the prosperity gospel and ask followers to send them money that it is against an astrologer or tarot reader.
In fact, when Ezekiel describes the actions of these women, their roles appear to have been very important, including acting as decision-makers in legal matters. Bowen argues that these women were part of an old established practice and that is what drew condemnation from Ezekiel. The exile was seen as punishment from YHWH for Israel’s breaking of the covenant, and the only way to seek the forgiveness of YHWH was by abandoning the old ways of the people and embracing a stricter set of teachings.
Women who acted as oracles, healers, and leaders were part of the old ways, so to Ezekiel, “…the presence of these female prophets…belongs to the former way of life, which must be destroyed.”[1] So, instead of this text of the Bible being a license to hunt down witches and women acting as healers, it can instead be viewed as an attempt by one man to justify his strict religious interpretation and condemnation against diverse religious practices. This gives us an insight into how important the role of women was in Isrealite society prior to the exile and allows us to read this importance back into earlier texts.
[1] Bowen, 431.