Salty Wives, Spirited Mothers, and Savvy Widows

Capable Women of Purpose and Persistence in Luke's Gospel

F. Scott Spencer

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781467436847
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Engaging feminist hermeneutics and philosophy in addition to more traditional methods of biblical study, Salty Wives, Spirited Mothers, and Savvy Widows demonstrates and celebrates the remarkable capability and ingenuity of several women in the Gospel of Luke. While recent studies have exposed women's limited opportunities for ministry in Luke, Scott Spencer pulls the pendulum back from a negative feminist-critical pole toward a more constructive center. Granting that Luke sends somewhat "mixed messages" about women's work and status as Jesus' disciples, Spencer analyzes such women as Mary, Elizabeth, Joanna, Martha and Mary, and the infamous yet intriguing wife of Lot -- whom Jesus exhorts his followers to "remember" -- as well as the unrelentingly persistent women characters in Jesus' parables.

1. Toward Bluer Skies: Reducing the Threat Level and Resurrecting Feminist Studies of Women in Luke

In our post–9/11 world (I draft this a few days after the ten-year anniversary), we have become all too familiar with warnings of terrorist threat levels, accompanied by various scanning and stripping probes in airports and other public venues. Although the labels have recently changed to the simpler dual options of either “imminent” or “elevated” risks of danger (we mustn’t overwhelm an already stressed-out, panic-stricken society, though allowing nothing less than an “elevated” threat is not exactly comforting), the original five-stage, color-coded advisory system (see p. 2) seems more vividly suited for the complex “war on terror.” Forget the colored beads of the Jesus Seminar assessing the authenticity of Jesus’ words. This is really critical, life-and-death business, right now! Oh, for some “bluer” skies under which we remain cautiously “guarded” about our security (mustn’t ever completely let down our guard) but generally optimistic about the future and snug and cozy in our beds at night. It’s probably too much to hope for nothing but “green” pastures in our perilous world, but we’ll settle for clear skies.

In the world of NT scholarship concerning Luke’s treatment of women — which again scarcely equates to the crisis of global terrorism, though women can be deeply affected, even oppressed and damaged, by misguided biblical interpretation — the threat level has been rising since the 1990s through the investigations of highly trained, trenchant FBI agents, that is, those engaged in frontline Feminist Biblical Interpretation.¹ Whereas Luke was long regarded as the NT writer most supportive of women’s interests, largely because of the sheer number of women characters in the Third Gospel and Acts and a major literary pattern of pairing male and female figures, closer analysis of what Lukan women actually say (not much) and do (primarily serve men) began to raise some disturbing red flags. But isn’t that just a product of feminists’ extremist tendencies to “see red” in everything, in the present case to push Luke’s terrorist threat level against women to “red” and all but call for Luke’s canonical defrocking? Who are the real fanatical terrorists here: Luke or feminist scholars? We might concede the evidence of some truly horrifying “texts of terror” in the OT, such as those chillingly exposed by Phyllis Trible in her classic feminist work,² but not in Luke, surely. Luke has nothing approaching the slave-girl mistreatment (Hagar), rape-assault (Tamar), daughter killing (Jephthah), or dismemberment (Levite’s concubine) Trible uncovers in OT narratives. Luke’s Jesus heals several women and shows special care for widows, for goodness’ sake.

RED
SEVERE
Severe Risk of Terrorist Attacks

ORANGE
HIGH
High Risk of Terrorist Attacks

YELLOW
ELEVATED
Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks

BLUE
GUARDED
General Risk of Terrorist Attacks

GREEN
LOW
Low Risk of Terrorist Attacks

Without a doubt Luke’s terrorism toward women, if in fact present in his two volumes, is of the more subtle variety, with the exception of the shocking drop-dead story of Sapphira (and husband Ananias) that Luke candidly admits is cause for “great fear” (Acts 5:5, 11). But subtle terrorism is no less insidious and may be even more threatening for its camouflage. That’s precisely why we need skilled feminist critics to see through the subterfuge and expose the danger. But do these critics themselves (like all critics) not run the risk of being blinded by their own biases and seeing spooks that are not really there? In other words, is Luke really as bad as all that for women?

As it happens, as I have tried to engage sympathetically with feminist biblical scholarship over the past two decades, I have contributed to raising the threat level of Luke’s writings against women, particularly in exposing Luke’s lamentable reluctance to give women adequate voice after the promising start in Luke 1–2 (and the hopeful promise in Acts 2:17-18).³ I’m sad to say that overall Luke and Acts do not — without critical deconstruction and reconstruction — significantly advance the cause of women preachers and pastors, which remains a major issue in my ecclesiastical context. As with all parts of the Bible and all its interpreters (none of us comes to the Bible without thick layers of interpretive encrustation), we must approach Luke and Lukan scholars — and ourselves! — with due diligent caution and critical acumen. But we need not be Bible-phobic or put an XXX Poison label on Luke, and we must not be so rigidly reductionist as to deny the Bible’s enormous life-giving and right-making potential for millions across history to the present day — including millions of women, many on the lower end of society, who find their consciousnesses, whether pro-, anti-, or nonfeminist, comforted and strengthened by biblical faith — including that based upon Luke’s writings, which have particularly nurtured modern sociopolitical liberation causes.⁴

So, regarding the portrayal of women in Luke’s Gospel, I endeavor in this project to pull the pendulum back a tad from the feminist-critical pole toward the center, or to lower the threat level toward “bluer” hues — still GUARDED, still applying sharp feminist-critical analyses, but pressing through to more salutary results, to a somewhat sweeter concentration in Luke’s bittersweet, “mixed message” regarding women’s agency and action. Short of remixing Luke’s sound track, I see, or rather hear, no way to amplify women’s virtual silence (after the birth narratives) in this Gospel. And short of anachronistic revisionism, I see no rhyme or reason to profiling Jesus or Luke as first-century feminists, of which there were none any more than there were astronauts, nuclear scientists, or rap artists. But I do see room to expand our positive engagement with “capable women of purpose and persistence” within their Lukan literary and social worlds.

To use a major Lukan (and NT) theological image, I try to resurrect Luke’s presentation of women toward more life-enhancing ends. Though not cases I focus on in this book, the two incidents where Luke’s Jesus raises someone from the dead both involve restoring women’s capacities for full lives: resuscitating a widow’s deceased only son (and likely major source of her support) on his funeral mat (Luke 7:11-17), and the only daughter of her parents, a twelve-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood (8:40-42, 49-56). Moreover, the women disciples of Jesus remain most faithful to him to the end of his life (23:49, 55) and become the first witnesses to his resurrection. Of course, Luke also notes that the male apostles dismissed the women’s testimony as an “idle tale” until they could corroborate it for themselves (24:1-12). But corroborate it they did, which confirms the women’s priority and probity all along as “apostolic” witnesses. While the “idle tale” reference unfortunately lingers as a slight to women’s proclamation, the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel deconstructs it as men’s idle opinion about women’s idle speech: thus, two “idle’s” make a “capable.”

Without engaging a full history of contemporary scholarship on women in Luke, I situate my own work within a sample of salient studies from three major feminist critics, with particular attention to their perspectives on the resurrection narrative in Luke 24. I then close this introductory chapter with a brief preview of the cases treated in this book and the methodology employed.

Sampling the FBI Files

The closing decade of the twentieth century featured the landmark publication of two one-volume feminist commentaries on the entire NT, with substantial articles on the respective books written by leading feminist scholars. Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe (1992 [rev. 1998]), so named in honor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s monumental The Women’s Bible a century before, offers a provocative chapter on Luke by Jane Schaberg.⁵ The second volume of Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary (1993), edited by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, the most prominent “dean” of feminist NT criticism, presents the stimulating analysis of Luke’s Gospel by Turid Karlsen Seim.⁶ Both Schaberg and Seim also have separate monographs supporting their articles.⁷ Equally substantive and incisive during the same period, though not a part of the two one-volume commentaries, is the work of Barbara Reid, exhibited in Choosing the Better Part? Women in the Gospel of Luke (1996) and numerous articles.⁸ She is also the general editor of a massive new series in the making of full-scale feminist commentaries on every book of the Bible.⁹

Jane Schaberg and Luke’s “Oppressive Dynamics”

Schaberg opens her contribution to Women’s Bible Commentary under the heading of “Warning” with this “red” threat level advisory: “The Gospel of Luke is an extremely dangerous text, perhaps the most dangerous in the Bible.”¹⁰ While granting that Luke (when read critically) “also contains challenge and promise” and some “liberating elements” for women, particularly acknowledging Mary’s Magnificat as “the great New Testament song of liberation,”¹¹ Schaberg admittedly devotes most attention to exposing the “oppressive dynamics” driving this Gospel, which she regards as a “formidable opponent” of women’s rights.¹² The overall tone of her article is ominous and inimical, less concerned with negotiating Luke’s mixed message than with negating its malevolent manifesto keeping women in their subordinate, silent places.

Some of the evidence Schaberg adduces resonates with others’ findings, such as the paucity of women’s speech in Luke (and Acts) compared to men’s and the tendency to confine women to supportive, serving roles in the Jesus movement rather than develop their leadership and decision-making capabilities. Other points press Luke’s antifeminist agenda further than the text seems to allow. For example, Schaberg too often grounds her arguments about women’s silencing in Luke not only in explicit narrative portrayals, but also in presumed silences or absences in Luke’s presentation compared to other Gospels (e.g., Luke’s omission of Mark’s Syrophoenician woman episode for supposed polemical reasons).¹³ As narrative criticism has demonstrated, redactional arguments from silence are methodologically weak in Gospel study: what we have to interpret is a finished narrative product, not a clear record of its literary history; probing an ancient author’s psychological motivation for not including this or that material remains a precarious enterprise.¹⁴ Also, when Schaberg decries women’s restricted roles related to speaking and leading (a concern I share), I think she devalues, on the other side, the valued listening and serving (“hearing the word of God and doing it” [cf. 8:21]) dimensions of discipleship exemplified by women — and Jesus! — and incumbent on all followers of Jesus, male and female. Instead of pressing women into passive silence and submission, the aural component always assumes in Luke capacities for active thought and practice: to hear necessitates reflection and response, deliberation and deed. Schaberg misses these connections in her reductive assessment: “Luke thinks of a woman’s proper attitude as that of a listener, pondering what is not understood, learning in silence.”¹⁵ As I will argue at some length in chapter 3, the repeated “pondering” of Mary of Nazareth, far from shutting her up or shunting her off to a quiet corner, accentuates her intelligent engagement with God’s revelatory word and precipitates her active — and creative — partnership in God’s redemptive work.

Perhaps Schaberg’s most extreme point concerns Luke’s implicit endorsement of domestic abuse: “Several passages from Luke’s Gospel if seen through the eyes of a battered woman can be read to condone violence.”¹⁶ Of course, any such reading should be staunchly deplored and resisted. But just because a text can be read a certain way (texts can be read and twisted in all sorts of ways, for good or ill) doesn’t mean that is the most cogent interpretation from either authorial or textual angles. Schaberg cites four main examples of potentially violent, misogynistic texts: (1) Luke 16:18 — which “omits Mark’s prohibition against divorce, but retains the prohibition of remarriage after divorce, with no exceptions,” thus proving deleterious to divorced women’s chances for security and sexual fulfillment; (2) Luke 6:27-29, 9:23, and 24:26 — which string together victim-glorifying notions of loving enemies, turning the other cheek, bearing “daily” crosses, and the “necessity” of suffering, all of which reinforce women’s common daily oppressive experiences; (3) Luke 4:18-20 — which sets forth, via Isaiah, Jesus’ programmatic liberating vocation, but is not enacted in the balance of Luke’s narrative on behalf of freeing women from physical, psychological, or spiritual bondage (Schaberg does admit, however, occasional scenes like Jesus’ deliverance of the bent-over woman bound by Satan [13:10-17], “which some women have read as allegories of their oppression and release”); and (4) Luke 10:29-37 and 15:11-32 — which present special Lukan parables of the Good Samaritan and prodigal son in which “the male experience is presented . . . as universal human experience” (male victim in the ditch; father’s dealings with younger and elder sons, with no mother in sight), exposing the “urgent need for women’s own parables, women’s own narratives.”¹⁷ In this last case, Schaberg curiously makes no mention of the parables of the baker woman (13:20-21), sweeper woman (15:8-10), or widow and unjust judge (18:1-8), the latter two of which will receive major attention in this book. Apart from suggesting lacunae where none exist, Schaberg again makes too much of certain real absences and omissions. But most problematic is that none of the texts Schaberg indicts in this section requires or even implies a particular abusive stance against women (except obliquely, perhaps, Jesus’ brief statement about divorce in 16:18). Jesus addresses his radical “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” message to “his disciples” (6:20), all of whom are male at this stage of the story (5:1-10, 27-28; 6:12-16); he in no way targets women here or in his cross-bearing requirement for discipleship later. And while we may wish for more Lukan scenes depicting women’s liberation, there is no reason to think that Isaiah’s redemptive agenda for the poor, the captives, and the oppressed adopted by Jesus is gender-restricted. It is indeed tragic and reprehensible when these texts are twisted to do violence toward women — but especi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Toward Bluer Skies: Reducing the Threat Level and Resurrecting Feminist Studies of Women in Luke
• 2. Can We Go On Together with Suspicious Minds? Doubt and Trust as Both Sides of the Hermeneutical “Coin” (Luke 15:8-10)
• 3. A Woman’s Right to Choose? Mother Mary as Spirited Agent and Actor (Luke 1–2)
• 4. The Quest for the Historical Joanna: Follower of Jesus, Friend of Mary Magdalene, and Wife of Herod’s Official (Luke 8:1-3; 24:10)
• 5. A Testy Hostess and Her Lazy Sister? Martha, Mary, and the Household Rivals Type-Scene (Luke 10:38-42)
• 6. A Hungry Widow, Spicy Queen, and Salty Wife: “Foreign” Biblical Models of Warning and Judgment (Luke 4:25-26; 11:31; 17:32)
• 7. The Savvy Widow’s Might: Fighting for Justice in an Unjust World (Luke 18:1-8)
• 8. A Capable Woman, Who Can Find? We Have Found Some in Luke!
• Index