The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own.

Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own

By Cullen Murphy Houghton Miflin, $24, 302 pp.

Sara Maitland 

Repeatedly throughout this excellent book, Cullen Murphy argues that "feminism's encounter with religion" is profoundly radical and that the changes that it has wrought upon biblical studies constitute nothing less than "the next intellectual revolution." I rather doubt this myself: If there is indeed a true intellectual revolution afoot (or rather ahead, in both senses) it springs not from feminism's encounter with religion but from feminism itself. The religious intervention is simply a part of this larger phenomenon. Compared with, say, feminism's encounter with classical Marxism or feminism's encounter with theories of representation, its influence on religion has not been that significant. However, Murphy's case is strongly endorsed by the structure and style, as well as the content, of his book. This sort of book would simply be unimaginable without feminist theological methodology; it could not have been written ten years ago.

The Word According to Eve is not a history of ideas - the sort of book that traces the evolution of a particular way of reading the Bible. It is not a series of biographical sketches of feminist biblical scholars. And it is not "Bible stories for grown-ups." Murphy's book is a crafty combination of all three and therefore something new.

The subtitle - Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own - summarizes his approach. A key element in feminist theory is that it is impossible to write without a personal agenda - there is no abstract author, or abstract truth. The writer (or any other subject) is inevitably structured by a personal history, including gender. To admit this, to relate one's agenda to the matter at hand, is not only a question of honesty: it is the only way forward ("the personal is the political" was the classical formulation). The reasons why people arrive at certain sets of ideas will form part of those ideas. In short, it is not "special pleading," "emotionalism," or "bad scholarship" to study something of the scholar along with the scholarly handling of the scholar's subject matter.

Murphy therefore looks at the development of feminist hermeneutics (or Bible reading) through the lens of the women who are doing it. With a pretty discreet courtesy, he brings these contemporary scholars - and they are all academics, incidentally, which is interesting - into a human relationship with their readers, so as to bring their readers into a human relationship both with the women of the Bible and with the ways in which we might read that text.

I am making this sound complicated, and it is probably vital to add that not only could this book not have been written ten years ago but that it could only have been written by a skillful journalist (Murphy is managing editor of the Atlantic Monthly), someone with an eye both for the story and for the human-interest touches that illuminate the story. Murphy is extremely smart. There has been an explosion of approaches to the Bible over the last century, and these include not just traditional theological explorations but also anthropological, sociological, archaeological, historical, and literary (to name but a few) critical methods. The material is dense and complicated. Murphy does not so much pick his way through this dense forest as dance through it. To locate these women scholars he gives us thumbnail sketches of place, from university quads to Middle Eastern mountain tops. Careful quotation gives these women domestic voices as well as professional ones, and Murphy's own knowledge is displayed in such a way as to give the reader confidence in his selection rather than to overawe.

I suspect that some of the grace of this book - a grace which manifests itself, incidentally, in a considerable degree of both humor and self-revelation - comes from a genuine affection (if that is not too light a word) for the Bible itself. Murphy obviously has a real desire to come to terms with this impossible, demanding, impelling, and aggressively tricky text. The writer wants to know, he wants' to engage, he wants me, the reader, to engage. But to engage, not to submit. He is very clear that the Bible constitutes an unusually "open" text: It can be read in a very great number of ways, as well as approached through a great number of methods. While literary theory would now insist that there are multiple readings for any text, this is both more true and more obvious of the Bible (because of the long period over which it was constructed in its present form, because it has been a key text for three different, and frequently contesting religions, because it is not clearly genre-coded, and for other reasons).

Broadly, Murphy divides his book by methodologies, by ways of coming into relationship with the Bible. This makes sense and makes for a well-paced and variegated read. I personally found the archaeological chapters the most interesting; and over all found the Old Testament section more fascinating than the New Testament. This may be because I know more about the New Testament material and the New Testament scholars, and consequently became more conscious of what seemed to me like omissions. Where were the liberation theologians, the Socialist politicized readings of the Bible? Perhaps "not in the United States" is the answer, but from a European standpoint that seems interesting in itself. Where are the "imaginative," recreative biblicists who use both literary and classical preaching genres? Not in the academies is probably the answer.

But these are quibbles. The Word According to Eve is highly engaging and readable, regardless of your degree of knowledge. It is generous in spirit and open-minded, and it gives a valuable access to an important area of scholarship that is too often presented as inflammatory or trivial. We have a lot to thank Cullen Murphy for here.

Sara Maitland is a novelist and theologian. Among her more recent books is Angel Matter: The Collected Stories (Henry Holt).