En-gendered Readings of Healing in the Ancient World

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza uses the metaphor of a ‘dance’ to characterise feminist biblical interpretation as interpreters move between different biblical methodologies in order to return women to the history of early Christianity and to offer interpretations of\nancient texts which reclaim the stories of women within those texts. In this article, I wish to develop the aspect of interactive movement between feminist critical theory, biblical hermeneutics and rhetorics, and a variety of approaches from different disciplines inherent in Schussler Fiorenza’s metaphor of the dance. As Schussler Fiorenza uses the metaphor, it is clear that she seeks to evoke freedom of movement, creativity and a uniqueness of expression that characterises this metaphor as it is being employed within current feminist discourse. Miriam Peskowitz has, however, drawn attention to the need for feminist critical scholars ‘to continually interrogate the categories and definitions and traditions upon which we rely’. It is not the task of this article to take up such an interrogation of the dance metaphor. Rather, it will seek to demonstrate the value of an interactive methodological and hermeneutical approach as framework of analysis for the feminist critical project of exploring healing and gender in the ancient world

Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Epistemology · Feminism · Hermeneutics · Interpretation (philosophy · Interrogation · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Development, Ethics, and Society · Theological Perspectives and Practices · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy