The Acorn Underfoot: 'Bad Girls:' Weaving the Fabric of Women

I just started reading Eve's Bible: A Woman's Guide to the Old Testament by Sarah S. Forth - thanks to my husband who saw it while browsing in the library - and though I don't agree with some of her assertions, I'm certainly intrigued by her emphasis on women "weaving ourselves into the fabric of biblical history" (41). I am reminded of many of the readings from my Feminism and Christianity class that served to do this very thing, uncovering the (often) 'invisible' women of the Bible. Many of us who heard Bible stories as children and attended Bible School rarely heard about the fascinating women of biblical times, or we were introduced to them as Bad Girls of the Bible (a book I actually studied in youth during high school). Instead, the great men of the Bible served as examples for Christian discipleship, even though there are countless women who stand as powerful examples for Christian women (I've - sadly - only recently become acquainted with them while reading through Women of the Bible by Ann Spangler and Jean E. Syswerda, and many other empowering articles from the F/C class).

Forth continues Judith Plaskow's call to Christian women, "to reevision the biblical tradition [and] claim our place in the collective memory" (34). In her chapter, "Putting Women Back into Sacred History," she writes,

While camped in the shadow of Mount Sinai, Moses called together the 'people of Israel' and instructed them to prepare for what would be the signal event of their forty years in the desert: receiving the laws of Yhwh (Yaweh). After telling them to wash their clothes and to not approach the mountain from which God would speak, Moses added, 'Prepare for the third day; do not go near women' (Ex. 19:15).

'At the very moment when Israel stands trembling waiting for God's presence to descend upon the mountain, Moses addresses the community only as men,' writes the Jewish scholar Judith Plaskow. 'Women are invisible.'

Plaskow calls upon women . . . 'to stand again at Sinai.' By this she means to assert that women were there - at Sinai and all other junctures of sacred history (34).

Forth describes three ways that women can 'stand at Sinai' and remember that women were part of the fabric of Biblical history: (1) "excavate historical women," find their stories and tell them (this was something our professor of Feminism/Christianity urged of us as well, to share women's stories with our friends, children, family, anyone who would listen), (2) "reinterpret the historical record," take back the stories that have been used against as part of patriarchy in the Church, only viewing women as 'bad girls' and (3) imagine the experiences of these biblical women, 'using our creativity and imagination . . . to shape a new history for ourselves" as women, using "music, our bodies, paint, cloth, clay, or any other means at our disposal" (43).

"In our history-making, [Elizabeth] Schussler Fiorenza urges us to reject the violence and alienation [that have come about because of patriarchal interpretations of the Bible] (43). Here is one example of what Fiorenza calls a 'narrative amplification' of an existing story: 'Miriam's Song' by Julia Stein, taken from her book Shulamith, a collection of poems about biblical and modern Jewish women. Stein supplies a missing viewpoint by assuming the voice of Miriam to describe the ten plagues that preceded the Israelites' release from bondage in Egypt" (41).

I've included only excerpts of the poem, but I thought it was absolutely beautiful!

Miriam's Song

I swept the house through nine plagues,
swept when Moses turned the river into blood,

swatted at frogs all day in Egyptians' kitchen,
chased frogs in the bedrooms, whacked at them

on the beds, jumped after frogs in the kitchen. Next
I cleaned off the lice from the heads of the Egyptians . . .

Before the tenth plague I swept once more,
then roasted lamb and cut up bitter herbs we ate

remembering four hundred years of slavery
that terrible night the Angel of Death screeched

and screamed as he flew over our houses
on his bloody way to kill the Egyptians' sons . . .

I wanted to smash the pyramids.
We'd built them well. They'd last. A pity.

At the Red Sea, after we climbed onto the land and
saw Pharaoh lead his chariots into a gap

riding between two huge cliffs of water when
mountains of water crashed down on them,

I called the women who came with cymbals and drums,
'Come dance now for we are flying into freedom.'