Mothers on the Margin?

The Significance of the Women in Matthew’s Genealogy

E. Anne Clements

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625640635
  9781498267557
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877866
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The Gospel of Matthew opens with a patrilineal genealogy of Jesus that intriguingly includes five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, "she of Uriah," and Mary. In a gospel that has a strongly Jewish and male-orientated outlook, why are women incorporated? In particular, why include these four Old Testament women alongside Mary? Rejecting traditional as well as feminist views, Anne Clements undertakes a close literary reading of the narratives to discern how each woman is characterized and presented. All are significant scriptural figures on the margins of Israelite society. From this intertextual world established by Matthew, Clements explores why Matthew may have named these women in the opening genealogy and what implications their inclusion may have for the ongoing gospel narrative. Mothers on the Margin? argues that Matthew's Gospel contains a counter narrative focused on women. The presence of the five women in the genealogy indicates that the birth of the Messiah will bring about a crisis in Israel's identity in terms of ethnicity, marginality, and gender. The women signal that Matthew's Gospel is concerned with the construal of a new identity for the people of God.

Part One

The Five Mothers of Matthew’s Genealogy

1

Introduction

The Genesis of a Thesis

Why Women?

This thesis grew out of an initial observation. Within the first few verses of Matthew’s patrilineal genealogy that opens his Gospel, four women are referred to: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “she of Uriah.” Why, I wondered, did Matthew choose to include four Old Testament women in the annotations of his genealogy and why these particular four women? This question is not a new one and in part my work is a response to a long-held, traditional view that has collectively labeled these woman as sinners or sexually scandalous. Other explanations have also sought for one denominator common to all four women to explain their inclusion. Invariably one woman does not “fit” and arguments are marshaled to force the women into one category (chapter 2). Unhappy that the reductionist view does not take seriously each woman’s narrated history, I have chosen to employ a narrative methodology to discover whether a thorough narrative reading of each woman’s individual Old Testament story might indicate why Matthew chose to include each woman within the opening verses of his Gospel (chapters 3–6). This has led to questions concerning the fifth woman of the genealogy: Mary. She is also the first named woman in the narrative of the prologue. How does she stand in relation to the four Old Testament women? Continuing to use a narrative analysis I have sought to establish how she is presented by the Matthean narrator and in what ways she might relate to the other four (chapter 7). Having considered the women’s individual significance in part 1, I have then moved on to consider the collective significance of the women for Matthew’s Gospel. Sensitivity both to their narratives and their placement within the genealogy has led to three groupings of the women. It is under these three configurations that I have considered their collective significance for the ongoing gospel narrative in part 2.

• The first three women of the genealogy—Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth

All women were originally outsiders to Israel yet all three exhibit characteristics that are essential to the covenant relationship between YHWH and his people, characteristics that are key virtues of Matthean discipleship (chapter 8).

• Two clusters—

• Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth

• “she of Uriah” and Mary

All five women initially occupy places on the margins and consequently represent both those who are outsiders to Israel and those on the margins within Israel. The inclusion of these women serves to signal the importance of those on the margins in the ministry of the Messiah and to anticipate Matthew’s rhetoric concerning the broadening of Israel’s boundaries to include Gentile outsiders (chapter 9).

• All five women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, “she of Uriah,” and Mary

As a gender category it will be argued that these five women are significant in establishing Matthew’s rhetoric regarding women. Reading Matthew from a gendered point of view I argue that, in contrast to the dominant male focused narrative, there is a counternarrative that focuses on women. Their inclusion is the first indication of a positive gynocentric1 counternarrative that, it will be demonstrated, runs throughout the Gospel (chapter 10).

Hermeneutical Stance and Reading Strategy

Reader response theory has brought to the fore the subjectivity of the individual reader who approaches the text. It is only as readers come to the text that meaning is created. The reading process is complex and multifaceted. Carter provides a helpful summary of what readers do as they formulate meaning from the text:

We notice features of the text. We construe words and fill gaps. We supply content and understandings that the text assumes of us. We attend to actions, conflicts, characters, setting and point/s of view . . . We discern and evaluate different points of view, different behaviours and values. We link scenes, attend to settings, construct sequences, identify causality, determine temporal relation, and create unity.2

No individual is value free; all possess ideologies and adopt particular stances (even if not recognized or acknowledged) as they come to the text. As they read, they create meaning from the text in the light of all that makes them who they are. Consequently, contrary to apparent modernist assumptions, there is no such thing as an interest-free, innocent reading that is completely objective in its interpretation. Individuals make up communities and interpretative communities also determine meaning. Since no reading is innocent, I will start by outlining my position. I come to the biblical text as a reader from within the Christian ecclesial community (I am a Baptist minister) and as a woman. As a woman from within the Christian ecclesial community, I adopt the position of approaching the text not with distrust and suspicion but with an essential trust that desires to be open to the text, alongside an awareness of its patriarchal ideology. I do not accept the position held by many feminist readers, that to engage with the text is to enter a struggle for power between the conflicting ideologies of text and reader, or that one’s task is simply to uncover and critique the androcentric3 language and patriarchal ideology of the biblical stories. Rather the text gives us an invitation to an encounter, to “respond to what is there.”4 I accept Vanhoozer’s proposal that we are called to respond to the textual “covenant of discourse” with an ethics that attends “to the text’s overture of meaning.”5 Vanhoozer argues that “our duty to receive the textual stranger as a welcome guest is an obligation implied in the covenant of discourse.”6 As a counter to a hermeneutics of suspicion so often employed by feminist critics,7 I will employ what I shall call a “hermeneutics of hospitable awareness,” a hospitality that welcomes not just the friend but the stranger and even the perceived enemy. By this I am referring to the nature of the biblical text, which, for example, at points portrays the woman as evil.8 I come to the text firstly with a desire to understand the illocutionary force of the text. I read the text not in an uncritical way that accepts everything at face value but with a desire for an encounter. My hospitality to the text is not naïve (although in Ricoeur’s terms it might be called a second naïveté), but seeks to move beyond a hermeneutics of suspicion, which has a place within the interpretative process but which should not determine the whole.

Beirne expresses this approach well:

In a broadened feminist exegetical approach, it may be best to avoid starting at the signpost “be suspicious,” and adopt instead Ricoeur’s recommendation that the first step ought be “a naïve grasping of the meaning of the text as a whole,” followed by the critical, interpretative stage, and concluding with a return to the text with what is now a “sophisticated, empathic understanding.” Within this...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• Part One: The Five Mothers of Matthew’s Genealogy
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Matthew’s Genealogy
• Chapter 3: Tamar
• Chapter 4: Rahab
• Chapter 5: Ruth
• Chapter 6: “She of Uriah”
• Chapter 7: Mary
• Part Two: The Collective Significance of the Women for the Ongoing Gospel Narrative
• Chapter 8: Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth
• Chapter 9: Others on the Margin in Matthew’s Gospel
• Chapter 10: Women in Matthew’s Narrative Life
• Chapter 11: Conclusion: Mothers on the Margin?
• Bibliography