Faith and Feminism

Ecumenical Essays

Phyllis Trible, B. Diane Lipsett

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781611645354
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Essays

Faith and Feminism brings together leading voices in biblical studies, inter-religious encounters, theology and ethics. Originally delivered as part of the Phyllis Trible Lecture Series at Wake Forest University School of Divinity (2003-2013), these essays demonstrate the breadth of feminist interpretation on compelling topics: interpretation of sacred texts; Judeo-Christian and Islamic perspectives; gender and sexuality; race and cultural identity; and ecology and religion. An international group of writers, both established scholars and new voices, contribute. Readers can explore the impact of feminisms on faiths and faiths on feminisms.

Chapter 1

Testimonies in Tongues

B. DIANE LIPSETT AND PHYLLIS TRIBLE

Faith and Feminism unlocks storehouses of words old and new. The subtitle Ecumenical Essays indicates that these words, these tongues, belong to women of faith around the world—women who speak in diverse settings and situations. Though all the contributors claim the noun “feminism,” their developments of it range widely.¹ To present their testimonies and engage the results marks the purpose of this book. Where dissonance and harmony intersect among writers, there readers confront choices, which, in turn, become their own testimonies.

Two biblical stories, often associated with each other, provide orientation for reading: the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1–9 and the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1–13. In choosing to begin with these stories, we editors write from within our own scholarly disciplines and our own faith commitments.² For us, these stories offer entry into storehouses of words old and new. Even as the stories may confuse, they also clarify and challenge faith and feminism.

THE TOWER OF BABEL

The Tower of Babel, as traditionally labeled, concludes a series of five stories (with intervening content) that probe the mythical beginnings of humankind: creation and expulsion from the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:4b–3:24); fratricide as Cain kills Abel (4:1–16); mixed marriages of heaven and earth (6:1–4); Noah and the flood (6:5–9:28); and, at last, the Tower (11:1–9). A classic interpretation traces the motifs of sin, judgment, and grace throughout these stories, until the last.³ The God who let Eve and Adam live, who put a protective mark on Cain, who countered the breach of boundaries in mixed marriages to find favor in Noah and save him and his family—that God offered no grace in the story of the Tower. Instead, announcing judgment upon sin—the pride of one people striving to make a name for themselves and take over heaven—God punished them. So runs the classic view. Recent interpretations, however, have sought to uproot it.⁴ With variations, they offer a positive reading of the story, one in which God corrected the stated desires and actions of the people by decreeing cultural differences, not as judgment and punishment but as virtue and value.

Internal features of the Tower Story—its design, content, and gaps—may well produce conflicting interpretations. A balanced structure yields two episodes (11:1–4 and 6–9) linked by a transitional verse (11:5). In episode one the narrator and all the people of the earth speak. No God is present. The narrator identifies the generic people as linguistic creatures, with “one language (sepah) and the same words.” They migrate to the land of Shinar (Babylon), settle there, and speak to one another about building projects. Two human speeches ensue (vv. 3, 4), each introduced by the invitational particle and phrase, “Come (habah), let us . . .” The people first make bricks, and then they propose to make a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” Their reason is to “make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (v. 4). One people seek identity through unity of language and location. Are pride and fear intertwined in their words?

At this juncture comes the transition (v. 5). YHWH enters the story through the narrator. Whether intentional or not, irony takes over. The deity “came down to see the city and the tower”—surely, then, not with “its top in the heavens.” The report becomes the link to episode two (vv. 6–9). It features direct speech of the deity. Taking no account of the city or the tower, YHWH observes human and linguistic unity, to follow it with a judgment about human power: “See (hen), one people and one language (sepah) to all of them, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they will propose to do will now be impossible for them” (v. 6). Do these words suggest that YHWH is threatened by the power of the people?

The Hebrew word translated “language” (sepah) is literally “lip” (cf. v. 1). It connotes common speech. Prefacing both it and the noun “people” with the adjective “one” reinforces the connection. Unity of people in language (and location) appears undesirable in YHWH’s purview, indeed a threat. But a threat to whom? Or to what? As one people in all the earth, speaking one “lip,” surely the people cannot be threats to themselves. Is YHWH threatened by human unity and language? Is heaven threatened by “all the earth”?

Whatever the answer, YHWH announces a decision in the heavenly court. Its introductory word, “come” (habah), parallels the introductory word in the earlier speeches of the people (cf. vv. 3, 4). The emphasis on language continues as the Hebrew word sepah (lip) appears twice more in the divine speech, “Come let us go down and confuse their language there so that they will not understand one another’s language” (v. 7). What is the intent of this divine decision—to punish? correct? promote diversity? Whatever the motive, the divine words render judgment as they provide an etiology for linguistic diversity. The language of YHWH decrees the confusion of human “lips” to achieve lack of understanding.

The divine words cease. The narrator takes over, reporting a second divine act accompanying the worldwide scattering of all the people. Repetition underscores the action. An inclusio begins and ends with the words, “So YHWH scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth …” (vv. 8, 9b). In the center of the inclusio the narrator reports the termination of the people’s urban goal: “and they left off building the city” (v. 8b). Then the narrator incorporates an etymological note, with words used earlier by YHWH: “Therefore it was called Babel, because there YHWH confused the language of all the earth” (v. 9a).

Five times, in five strategic places, the word “language” (“lip”) has appeared: once in the opening narrated sentence (v. 1); three times in divine speech (vv. 6, 7); and once in the closing narrated speech (v. 9). From beginning to end, language has moved, along with the motif of scattering, from singularity to multiplicity, from unity to confusion.

Certainty and uncertainty allow diverse interpretations of the Tower Story. For certain, language is paramount. For certain, the plans of the people for unity in location and for a “name” do not please YHWH. For certain, YHWH decrees that their language be confused so that they will not understand one another. For certain, YHWH scattered them and confused their language. Yet throughout, the divine motivation and intention remain murky. Does YHWH bring judgment, correction, or sanction for cultural differences? Whatever the answer, for certain, diversity pervades all the earth, with linguistic and interpretive confusion the identifying characteristics.

Whether prescriptive or descriptive, punitive or corrective, judgmental or confirmatory, this story describes well the world—to this day. And alongside the Tower stands its New Testament companion, the Pentecost Story.

THE PENTECOST STORY

From mythical Babel to historical Babylon and on, confusion of languages and cultures spread across the ancient Near East. As millennia passed, the linguistic scattering included Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, and Latin. One conquering people after another promoted their speech as they encountered the speech of others. Languages became tongues of power and promoted the power of tongues.

In time, aspects of the historical narrative focused on Jesus of Nazareth, who lived during the Roman occupation of the land of Judea. According to the Gospel of John (19:19–22), when Jesus was crucified, Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, had the inscription over the cross written in the three languages of Hebrew (Aramaic), Greek, and Latin. Pressured to revise the inscription from “King of the Jews” to “he says, he was king of the Jews,” Pilate refused. “What I have written, I have written,” he declared. Words mattered. One utterance (Pilate’s) overruled the tongues of those around him.

As the subsequent narrative about Jesus moved from crucifixion and resurrection to ascension and the aftermath, it focused upon a memorable occasion of language and location (Acts 2:1–47).⁵ The location was Jerusalem, where followers of the risen Jesus gathered after his ascension (1:12–26). Though men dominated (1:13, 15, 21–23), the gatherings included Mary the mother of Jesus as well as certain other women (1:14). Similar to the beginning of the Tower Story, on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the followers of Jesus are “all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). But the crowd that witnesses the strange, subsequent event is not one people. Nor do they actually dwell in one place. Unlike mythic and generic humankind, who wished to “reach heaven,” this wider group of characters is historically and specifically identified as “devout Jews from every nation under heaven in the city” (v. 5).

The story unfolds in three episodes (2:1–4, 5–11, 12–13). In narrated discourse, episode one (vv. 1–4) reports the occasion—its location and the events that transpire. A sound “from heaven” like violent wind fills the one room, and “divided tongues, as of fire” appear to rest on those gathered. Filled thereby with the divine spirit, the gathered begin “to speak in other tongues, as the spirit gives them ability to speak.” Repetition of the Greek noun “tongue” (glōssa) and the verb “to speak” (laleō) presage the genre of testimony. The adjectives “divided” and “other” indicate the diversity of languages (glōssais, v. 4) that emerge under the power of the spirit from heaven. With echoes of the Tower Story, heaven reaches down to earth. Language multiplies.

Introduced by the narrator, episode two (vv. 5–11) shifts focus from speaking to hearing, from testimonies to reception, from tongues to ears. Three times the verb “hear” (akouō) appears: near the beginning, in the middle, and at the end (vv. 6, 8, 11). Accordingly, hearing encloses speech to shape the outcome of the occasion.

In the beginning (vv. 5, 6), “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” gather at the sound, and they are “bewildered” (sunechuthē). Again similar to the Tower Story, a cosmic vantage point (heaven) intensifies the motif of sound. Further, the initial response, “bewildered,” echoes the confused tongues (“lips”) of Babel. But why the bewilderment? Hearing and speaking give the answer. “Because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” The confusion that reigns is truly “worthy of Babylon.”⁶ Yet again, however, circumstances and conditions differ. Whereas in the Tower Story God deliberately confused language so that humankind would not understand one another, in the Pentecost Story the bewilderment resulting from the heavenly sound (no explicit reference yet to God) yields a different outcome. The hearers understand the speakers. Whatever the speakers were speaking (glossolalia? xenologia? ordinary words?), the text does not say. Instead, it reports what the hearers hear. Testimony yields to reception.

In the middle of episode two (vv. 7, 8) the hearers take over from the narrator. “Amazed and astonished,” they ask, “‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?’” Next they pose a rhetorical question: “And how is it that we hear, each of us in our own language?” What they hear is “the native speech of each” (ta idia dialektō), discrete languages and dialects, perhaps even familiar accents, not confused tongues. Babel it is not. Is to hear in this way the embrace or the rejection of diversity? Is it assimilation or a unity that preserves difference? Has the language of the other been honored or domesticated?

Expanding the middle of episode two, the hearers elaborate on their amazement. Speaking as a collective character, a chorus, they follow their rhetorical question (“How is it that we hear?”) with a listing of the disparate nations and regions they represent—some fifteen (vv. 9–11a). Cultural, geographic, and linguistic diversity is paradoxically recited in unison. The crowd then expresses the testimony of the others: “. . . in our own languages,” they say, “we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (v. 11b).

At the close of this second episode, the word “tongue” (glōssa), which occurs twice in the first episode, reappears; the verb “hear” makes its third internal appearance; and the verb “speak,” which occurs twice at the end of the first episode, also reappears. Tongues speak and repeat. Testimonies matter as the story moves to its conclusion.

Episode three alternates between narration and direct speech (vv. 12, 13). It reports two verbal responses to the Pentecostal event. They posit tension within the crowd, now divided into “all” and “others.” The first response comes from the group described as the “all” who “were amazed” (cf. v. 7) and “perplexed.” Speaking to one another, they wonder what to make of the happening. “What is going on?” o...