Voices Long Silenced

Women Biblical Interpreters through the Centuries

Joy A. Schroeder, Marion Ann Taylor

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781646982318
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Hundreds of women studied and interpreted the Bible between the years 100–2000 CE, but their stories have remained largely untold. In this book, Schroeder and Taylor introduce readers to the notable contributions of female commentators through the centuries. They unearth fascinating accounts of Jewish and Christian women from diverse communities—rabbinic experts, nuns, mothers, mystics, preachers, teachers, suffragists, and household managers—who interpreted Scripture through their writings. This book recounts the struggles and achievements of women who gained access to education and biblical texts. It tells the story of how their interpretive writings were preserved or, all too often, lost. It also explores how, in many cases, women interpreted Scripture differently from the men of their times. Consequently, Voices Long Silenced makes an important, new contribution to biblical reception history. This book focuses on women's written words and briefly comments on women's interpretation in media, such as music, visual arts, and textile arts. It includes short, representative excerpts from diverse women's own writings that demonstrate noteworthy engagement with Scripture. Voices Long Silenced calls on scholars and religious communities to recognize the contributions of women, past and present, who interpreted Scripture, preached, taught, and exercised a wide variety of ministries in churches and synagogues.

1. Melania’s Lost Notebooks

Retrieving the Voices of Jewish and Christian Women in Late Antiquity

The Roman aristocrat Melania the Younger (ca. 383–439) lived a life of self-denial in a monastery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, devoting herself to the study of Scripture. Fluent in Greek and Latin, Melania kept handwritten notebooks to record the fruits of her study. Her biographer Gerontius (d. 485), an eyewitness and friend, praised Melania for her studiousness and handwritten compilations:

She was by nature gifted as a writer and wrote without mistakes in notebooks. She decided for herself how much she ought to write every day, and how much she should read in the canonical books [of Scripture], how much in the collections of homilies. And after she was satisfied with this activity, she would go through the Lives of the fathers as if she were eating dessert.¹

According to Gerontius, Melania devoured the Scriptures and spiritual writings and acquired as many books as she could.

The blessed woman read the Old and New Testaments three or four times a year. She copied them herself and furnished copies to the saints. She performed the divine office in company with the virgins with her, reciting by heart on her own the remaining Psalms. So eagerly did she read the treatises of the saints that whatever book she could locate did not escape her.²

Melania the Younger’s grandmother Melania the Elder (325–417) was equally voracious in her biblical studies. An eyewitness reported that the elder Melania had read three million lines from the works of Origen of Alexandria (185–254) and four and a half million lines from other scriptural interpreters.³

Unfortunately, Melania the Younger’s notebooks have been lost. All that remain are tantalizing references in Gerontius’s account. The reader can only wonder: Did the notebooks contain only scriptural quotations and selections copied from male commentators, or did they also contain Melania’s own comments?

Melania’s lost notebooks are emblematic of the challenge of retrieving the voices of female interpreters from late antiquity (ca. 150–500 CE). Only four major works of women’s biblical interpretation have survived: the prison diary of the martyr Perpetua (d. ca. 203); the Holy Land travel narrative of Spanish pilgrim Egeria (ca. 381–84); Faltonia Beltitia Proba’s Cento (ca. 360s), a poetic retelling of biblical themes stitched together from phrases of the Roman poet Vergil; and Empress Eudocia’s (ca. 400–460) Cento, which draws on Greek verses from Homer. Remnants and echoes of several other women’s words survive, embedded within the writings of men. Granted the limited availability of sources, this chapter will examine the extant works of female interpreters and use imaginative strategies to retrieve the lost voices of ancient Christian and Jewish women.

Ancient Women’s Access to Scripture

In late antiquity, most Christian and Jewish women gained access to Scripture through hearing it read aloud during worship and listening to sermons. Another context for scriptural instruction was the catechesis of women preparing for baptism. Literacy rates for both men and women averaged less than 10 percent. Relatively few women were educated or had access to written texts.⁴ Yet, in a culture attuned to experiencing literature aurally, women actively reflected upon Scripture and shared their insights orally with their communities. The North African writer Tertullian (ca. 145–ca. 240), who became part of the New Prophecy (Montanist) movement in the early 200s, mentioned an unnamed woman prophet in his community: “Now to be sure, just as the Scriptures are read, or Psalms sung, or addresses delivered, or prayers offered, so themes are furnished from these for her visions. She doesn’t speak during the service, but she shares them afterwards to those who wish to listen, and also to submit them to the community for testing.”⁵ This woman engaged in interpretive work that she imparted to her community. Her social status is unknown; there is no indication whether she was literate.

Elite Greek and Roman families sometimes provided for their daughters’ education at home by their mothers, private tutors, or literate servants or slaves. Tutors, hired to educate boys in the household, sometimes provided a “bonus” education for the girls in the family at a small additional cost. Some Roman grammar schools admitted female students, who attended while accompanied by a servant or slave.

In 384 CE, the scholarly monk Jerome (347–420) wrote to the aristocratic Roman matron Laeta regarding education for her daughter, Paula the Younger. He proposed that Paula follow the same biblical reading program used by male Christian youths, beginning with Psalms and Proverbs, followed by New Testament books, the prophets, the Heptateuch (Genesis through Judges), historical books (Kings and Chronicles), and finally the Song of Songs—a book whose sensuality posed risks for inexperienced readers who might not realize that its subject was spiritual marriage with Christ.⁶ Jerome assumed that Laeta’s daughter had access to the entire range of biblical texts.

Ancient Christian documents reveal that women kept collections of Scripture and other writings in their homes. When the Greek martyr Irene (d. ca. 304) was arrested, authorities confiscated her substantial hidden cache of “many tablets, books, parchments, codices and pages.”⁷ Interrogated by the authorities, Irene reported that when she and her companions Chione and Agape had gone into hiding in the mountains, their greatest trial was separation from their beloved books: “[The books] were in our house and we did not dare to bring them out. In fact, it caused us much distress that we could not devote ourselves to them night and day as we had done from the beginning until that day last year when we hid them.”⁸

An early fourth-century papyrus letter discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, was addressed to an unnamed Christian woman and attests to women owning, lending, and exchanging books: “To my dearest lady sister in the Lord, greetings. Lend the Ezra, since I lent you the Little Genesis. Farewell from us in God.”⁹ (“Little Genesis” is the book of Jubilees. Fragments of this work were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.) This “sister in the Lord” may have borrowed it not only to study but also to copy for her personal collection.

John of Ephesus (ca. 507–86) praised women’s literacy in his Syriac account of Euphemia, an ascetic widow who lived in Amida (in SE Turkey): “She took up a regulated life of devotion and wore the garb of a religious, while learning the psalms and teaching them to her daughter, who had been thoroughly instructed since her early youth in psalmody, the Scriptures, and writing.”¹⁰ An account of the martyrdom of Febronia (284–305), possibly written by an anonymous nun in Nisibis (in SE Turkey), acclaimed the holy woman for her extensive learning. When afflicted by temptations, Febronia “would open the Bible and lovingly meditate on its living and spiritual words.”¹¹ In fifth-century Persia, regulations for Syriac-speaking churches required each town to support women’s choirs for public worship—“an order of sisters” who were “educated in doctrine” and “instructed in the scripture lesson.”¹² Theologian Jacob of Serug (d. 521) told of their public teaching ministry singing hymns that interpreted Scripture and making “their chants instructive melodies.”¹³

Women copyists were also involved in the production of biblical commentaries and transmission of biblical texts. Historian Eusebius of Caesarea (263–339) mentioned, approvingly, that Origen of Alexandria employed skilled female calligraphers to make copies of his exegetical writings.¹⁴ There is an intriguing story about a woman who copied a manuscript and amended a misogynistic comment she found in a letter attributed to Clement of Rome (fl. 96). According to ancient tradition, the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus, a Greek Bible, was copied by an Egyptian noblewoman named Thecla. Her name had been written on a final page that was torn off and lost due to disrepair; however, medieval Arabic notations in the margins of the second page also attribute it to Thecla.¹⁵ Codex Alexandrinus includes the two letters of Clement, regarded as scriptural by many ancient Christians. The Alexandrinus version of 1 Clement varies from other extant versions. In all other early versions of this text, which probably represent the original wording, Clement exhorts women: “Let them make manifest the gentleness of their tongues by their silence [sigēs].”¹⁶ Alexandrinus reads: “Let them [the women] make manifest the gentleness of their tongues by their voice [phōnēs].”¹⁷ This may be an instance of a woman copyist “correcting” the scriptural text to give women a voice.

Papyri offer glimpses into the familiarity of non-elite women with Scripture and their personal appropriation of biblical phrases and concepts. In her study of Greek papyri authored by Egyptian women (some texts perhaps penned by women and others dictated to scribes), historian Erica Mathieson argues that “the women’s use of biblical vocabulary and imagery is consistent ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Restore Me That Am Lost
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Melania’s Lost Notebooks: Retrieving the Voices of Jewish and Christian Women in Late Antiquity
• 2. A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Female Interpreters in the Middle Ages
• 3. Not Women’s Chitchat but the Word of God: Women in the Reformation Era
• 4. Defending Eve and All Her Worthy Daughters in the Early Modern Period
• 5. A Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Female Interpreters of “the Long Nineteenth Century”
• 6. Persistent Barriers: Gender, Religion, Race, Class, and Tradition, 1918–70
• 7. A Great Company of Women Embracing Diversity, 1970s–2020
• Primary Sources: Works Written before 1970
• Secondary Sources: Works Written in 1970 and Later
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Names of Women Biblical Interpreters
• Index of Subjects