Chapter 18: Reading Against the Grain
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as Phyllis Trible sat in the basement library of Union Theological Seminary, surrounded by Hebrew lexicons and commentaries that stretched back centuries. It was 1973, and she was preparing what would become a groundbreaking paper on the book of Ruth for the Society of Biblical Literature. As she traced her finger across the Hebrew text, she noticed something that generations of male interpreters had missed: the word used to describe Ruth's commitment to Naomi (dabaq) was the same verb used in Genesis to describe a man's bond to his wife. Yet commentary after commentary had interpreted Ruth's loyalty as simple feminine devotion rather than recognizing the text's radical portrayal of women's covenantal relationship.¹
Trible's insight would help launch what scholars now call feminist biblical hermeneutics, but her discovery was part of a broader movement emerging across religious traditions in the late twentieth century. Women scholars were asking new questions of ancient texts: What if the silence around women's voices was not natural but constructed? What if contradictions in sacred texts revealed not divine mystery but human editorial choices? What if reading more carefully might recover voices that had been systematically overlooked?
This approach, known as "reading against the grain," does not reject sacred texts but interrogates the layers of interpretation that have accumulated around them. It treats omissions and marginalizations not as accidents but as meaningful editorial decisions that reflect the social locations of those who preserved and transmitted religious traditions. Most importantly, it operates from the conviction that sacred texts are not only what has been preserved but also what has been missed, overlooked, or deliberately suppressed.
The Hermeneutical Revolution
The emergence of feminist, womanist, and liberation approaches to scriptural interpretation in the late twentieth century represented a fundamental shift in how religious communities understood the relationship between text and meaning. Rather than treating traditional interpretations as neutral or inevitable, these new approaches asked how the social position of interpreters shaped their understanding of sacred texts.
Jewish Feminist Reinterpretation
The transformation began in Jewish contexts with scholars like Judith Plaskow, who famously declared that she could not "go back to the Torah and find myself there." Rather than abandoning tradition, Plaskow chose to engage in midrash (interpretive storytelling), reimagining biblical narratives with women at the center.² Her approach in Standing Again at Sinai called for recovering women's experiences that were present in the text but marginalized by centuries of male interpretation.
Other Jewish feminist scholars developed sophisticated methods for reading biblical texts through women's perspectives. Rachel Adler's analysis of Tamar in Genesis 38 revealed how the narrative portrays a woman using legal knowledge to claim her rights within a patriarchal system.³ Tikva Frymer-Kensky's work on biblical goddesses demonstrated how feminine divine imagery was systematically suppressed in the editing of Hebrew scriptures.⁴ These scholars showed that careful attention to Hebrew grammar, narrative structure, and comparative ancient Near Eastern literature could recover dimensions of women's agency that traditional interpretation had obscured.
The method extended beyond biblical texts to rabbinic literature, where scholars like Judith Hauptman uncovered evidence of women's participation in legal discussions that had been minimized by later editors.⁵ By examining variant manuscript traditions and analyzing the social contexts in which rabbinic texts were compiled, feminist scholars revealed that women's exclusion from Jewish learning was a historical development rather than an eternal principle.
Womanist Biblical Interpretation
In African American religious contexts, womanist theologians developed distinctive approaches to biblical interpretation that centered the experiences of Black women. Scholars like Renita J. Weems and Delores Williams recognized that feminist approaches developed by white women often failed to address the intersection of racial and gender oppression that shaped Black women's encounter with scripture.⁶
Williams's revolutionary reading of Hagar in Sisters in the Wilderness reframed the Egyptian slave woman not as a failed matriarch but as a prototype of Black women's survival strategies under conditions of sexual and economic exploitation.⁷ By reading Hagar's story alongside African American women's historical experiences, Williams revealed dimensions of divine solidarity with the oppressed that traditional interpretation had ignored.
Womanist scholars also developed new approaches to apparently problematic biblical texts. Rather than dismissing or explaining away passages that seemed to endorse slavery or female subordination, womanist interpreters like Clarice Martin and Cain Hope Felder examined how these texts had been used to justify oppression while simultaneously identifying resources within scripture for resistance and liberation.⁸
The womanist approach emphasized that biblical interpretation must be accountable to community experience rather than abstract scholarly principles. This led to innovative reading strategies that brought together historical-critical methods with oral tradition, personal testimony, and collective discernment.
Islamic Feminist Hermeneutics
Muslim feminist scholars developed parallel approaches to Quranic interpretation that distinguished between the text itself and the patriarchal assumptions that had shaped centuries of male commentary. Scholars like Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas, and Kecia Ali demonstrated that careful attention to Arabic grammar and Quranic context could support egalitarian rather than hierarchical understandings of gender relations.⁹
Wadud's Qur'an and Woman provided systematic analysis of Quranic passages dealing with women, showing how traditional interpretation (tafsir) had often projected patriarchal assumptions onto texts that actually affirmed women's spiritual equality and social agency.¹⁰ Her work on Quran 4:34, often translated as giving men authority over women, demonstrated how the Arabic word qawwamun could be understood as referring to economic responsibility rather than male dominance.
Barlas's "Believing Women" in Islam developed a comprehensive hermeneutical framework that read the Quran as an anti-patriarchal text whose egalitarian message had been obscured by male-dominated interpretive traditions.¹¹ By examining the Quran's treatment of specific women like Mary, Khadijah, and the Queen of Sheba, Barlas showed how the text consistently affirmed women's spiritual authority and intellectual capacity.
These Muslim feminist scholars faced significant institutional resistance but also found support from male scholars who recognized the validity of their interpretive methods. Their work contributed to broader discussions within Islamic scholarship about the relationship between revealed text and human interpretation, demonstrating that feminist hermeneutics could strengthen rather than weaken religious commitment.
Buddhist Textual Recovery
Buddhist feminist scholars, particularly through the international Sakyadhita movement, developed methods for recovering women's voices from texts that had been shaped by centuries of male monastic interpretation. Scholars like Rita Gross and Karma Lekshe Tsomo traced contradictions in early Buddhist texts between statements affirming women's capacity for enlightenment and later additions that suggested female spiritual inferiority.¹²
Gross's Buddhism After Patriarchy demonstrated how careful analysis of Pali and Sanskrit sources could distinguish between the Buddha's original teachings about gender and later editorial additions that reflected the patriarchal assumptions of monastic compilers.¹³ By examining variant manuscript traditions and comparing early Buddhist texts with contemporary Jain and Hindu sources, Gross showed that women's spiritual equality was original to Buddhism while restrictions on female religious authority represented later developments.
Tsomo's work on the Vinaya (monastic rules) revealed how regulations governing Buddhist nuns had been systematically elaborated over time in ways that restricted women's autonomy while similar restrictions were not applied to male monastics.¹⁴ Her comparative analysis of different Vinaya traditions showed that women's subordination was not inherent to Buddhist monasticism but reflected specific historical and cultural circumstances.
These Buddhist feminist scholars also recovered neglected texts like the Therigatha (Verses of Elder Nuns) and female-authored commentaries that had been marginalized in traditional curricula. Their work contributed to contemporary movements for full ordination of Buddhist women and the recovery of feminine imagery in Buddhist iconography and meditation practices.
Global Perspectives and Non-Scriptural Traditions
The methods developed by feminist religious scholars have been applied beyond written scriptures to oral traditions, liturgical practices, and indigenous knowledge systems. These applications reveal that the process of reading against the grain has global relevance and can illuminate women's roles in religious traditions that may not center written texts.
Indigenous and Oral Traditions
Native American scholars like Inés Hernández-Avila and Paula Gunn Allen have developed methods for recovering women's voices from oral traditions that were distorted by European colonial interpretation.¹⁵ Their work examines how ethnographic accounts by male anthropologists often minimized women's spiritual authority or reinterpreted egalitarian gender relations through patriarchal frameworks.
Allen's The Sacred Hoop demonstrated how attention to indigenous women's perspectives could reveal alternative understandings of spiritual power, governance, and cosmic order that had been obscured by colonial misinterpretation.¹⁶ By reading ethnographic texts against the grain of their colonial assumptions, indigenous feminist scholars have recovered traditions of female spiritual leadership that inform contemporary efforts to revitalize native religious practices.
Similar approaches have been developed by African scholars working with oral religious traditions. Mercy Amba Oduyoye's analysis of Yoruba religious texts showed how written transcriptions of oral traditions often reflected the gender assumptions of male transcribers rather than the original teachings.¹⁷ By working with female religious practitioners and examining variant versions of traditional stories, scholars have been able to recover more balanced understandings of gender in African religious systems.
Daoist and East Asian Traditions
Feminist scholars of Chinese religions have applied similar methods to Daoist and Confucian texts, revealing how women's religious authority was systematically marginalized in the process of textual compilation and commentary. Catherine Despeux's work on female Daoist practitioners showed how women's spiritual achievements were often attributed to male teachers or reinterpreted as exceptional cases that proved the rule of male spiritual superiority.¹⁸
Scholars like Suzanne Cahill have recovered evidence of women's participation in Daoist literary culture, showing how female poets and religious practitioners contributed to the development of Daoist philosophy and practice in ways that were later minimized by male editors.¹⁹ Their work reveals that careful attention to manuscript variants and historical context can uncover women's intellectual contributions even in traditions that are often assumed to have excluded female participation.
Liturgical and Devotional Texts
Reading against the grain has also been applied to liturgical traditions, where scholars have discovered evidence of women's participation in the creation and transmission of religious practices. Caroline Walker Bynum's analysis of medieval Christian liturgy revealed how women's devotional practices influenced the development of Eucharistic theology and Marian devotion in ways that were not acknowledged by official ecclesiastical sources.²⁰
Similar work has been done on Islamic devotional literature, where scholars have uncovered evidence of women's contributions to Sufi poetry and mystical practices. Th. Emil Homerin's work on women's religious poetry in medieval Egypt showed how female mystics developed distinctive approaches to spiritual expression that influenced broader Islamic literary culture.²¹
Methods and Challenges
The practice of reading against the grain requires sophisticated methodological approaches that balance historical criticism with hermeneutical sensitivity. Scholars working in this tradition have developed various tools for recovering marginalized voices while avoiding the danger of reading contemporary concerns into ancient texts.
Textual and Linguistic Analysis
Careful attention to original languages remains fundamental to feminist biblical and Quranic scholarship. Hebrew and Arabic grammatical structures often contain information about gender that is lost in translation, while variant manuscript traditions may preserve readings that were later suppressed or harmonized. Scholars like Amy-Jill Levine have shown how attention to Aramaic and Hebrew wordplay can reveal dimensions of women's agency in gospel narratives that are invisible in English translation.²²
Comparative linguistic analysis has also proven valuable for understanding how gender assumptions shaped textual transmission. Francesca Stavrakopoulou's work on ancient Hebrew texts has shown how feminine divine imagery was systematically masculinized in the process of textual editing, often leaving traces that can be recovered through careful philological work.²³
Social and Historical Contextualization
Understanding the social contexts in which religious texts were compiled and transmitted is crucial for identifying how gender assumptions shaped their final form. Scholars like Ross Kraemer have shown how attention to women's actual social roles in ancient Mediterranean societies can illuminate the significance of their presence or absence in early Christian texts.²⁴
This approach requires interdisciplinary work that brings together textual analysis with archaeology, social history, and comparative religious studies. The goal is not to read contemporary gender equality back into ancient texts but to understand how ancient assumptions about gender shaped textual production and interpretation.
Hermeneutical Frameworks
Reading against the grain also requires sophisticated theoretical frameworks for understanding the relationship between text and interpretation. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's concept of a "hermeneutics of suspicion" has been influential in developing methods that can identify patriarchal bias in traditional interpretation while remaining committed to the authority of sacred texts.²⁵
This approach recognizes that all interpretation occurs from particular social locations and that acknowledging interpretive bias can lead to more faithful rather than less faithful readings of sacred texts. The goal is not to eliminate all interpretive perspective but to ensure that marginalized perspectives are included in the interpretive process.
Institutional Responses and Ongoing Debates
The development of feminist and liberation approaches to scriptural interpretation has generated varied responses from religious institutions, ranging from enthusiastic adoption to active resistance. Understanding these responses illuminates both the potential and limitations of reading against the grain as a strategy for religious change.
Many progressive religious communities have embraced feminist hermeneutics as a means of recovering neglected dimensions of their traditions. Reform and Conservative Judaism have incorporated feminist biblical scholarship into seminary curricula and liturgical development, while several Christian denominations have used womanist and feminist interpretation to support women's ordination and leadership.²⁶
However, traditional religious authorities have often viewed these approaches with suspicion, arguing that they impose contemporary political concerns onto sacred texts. Conservative religious scholars have developed alternative approaches that acknowledge women's roles in religious history while maintaining traditional interpretive frameworks.²⁷
These debates reflect deeper questions about the nature of scriptural authority and the relationship between historical scholarship and religious commitment. They also reveal the ongoing significance of textual interpretation in contemporary religious communities and the stakes involved in determining who has authority to interpret sacred texts.
Contemporary Implications
The practice of reading against the grain has implications that extend beyond academic scholarship to contemporary religious practice and social engagement. By revealing how human editorial choices shaped the transmission of sacred texts, this approach opens possibilities for more inclusive interpretation while maintaining respect for traditional authority.
Understanding that sacred texts have always been interpreted from particular social locations can liberate contemporary readers to engage scripture from their own contexts while remaining accountable to historical and linguistic evidence. This approach suggests that faithful interpretation requires not uncritical acceptance of traditional readings but careful attention to how social position shapes understanding.
Reading against the grain also reveals that sacred texts are more complex and multivocal than traditional interpretation often acknowledged. Rather than providing simple answers to contemporary questions, scripture emerges as an ongoing conversation between human communities and divine reality that requires continual reinterpretation in new contexts.
Most importantly, this approach demonstrates that the work of interpreting sacred texts is never finished. Each generation must engage in the task of understanding how ancient wisdom speaks to contemporary challenges, and this work requires the insights of all community members rather than a privileged interpretive elite.
The sacred texts have indeed remained unchanged across centuries of copying and transmission. But the questions we bring to them continue to evolve, and those new questions have the power to reveal dimensions of meaning that were always present but previously unrecognized. In learning to read against the grain, religious communities discover not different traditions but fuller understanding of the traditions they have inherited, enriched by voices that were always there but waiting to be heard.
Notes
- This account of Phyllis Trible's work is reconstructed from her retrospective comments in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), xi-xiv, and interviews cited in Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, "Feminist Perspectives on Bible and Theology," Interpretation 42, no. 1 (1988): 5-18.
- Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 1-12.
- Rachel Adler, "A Mother in Israel: Aspects of the Mother Role in Jewish Myth," in Beyond Androcentrism: New Essays on Women and Religion, ed. Rita M. Gross (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), 237-255.
- Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), 70-98.
- Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 1-25.
- On the development of womanist theology, see Katie Geneva Cannon, "The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness," in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Letty M. Russell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 30-40.
- Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), 1-28.
- Clarice J. Martin, "The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation," in Stony the Road We Trod, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 206-231.
- For an overview of Islamic feminist hermeneutics, see Asma Barlas, "Amina Wadud's Hermeneutics of the Qur'an," Muslim World 93, no. 3-4 (2003): 421-435.
- Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 25-67.
- Asma Barlas, "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 1-44.
- On Buddhist feminist scholarship, see Rita M. Gross, "Buddhism and Feminism: Toward Their Mutual Transformation," Eastern Buddhist 19, no. 1 (1986): 44-58.
- Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 73-134.
- Karma Lekshe Tsomo, "Is the Bhikshuni Vinaya Sexist?," in Buddhist Women Across Cultures, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 45-72.
- On indigenous feminist approaches, see Inés Hernández-Avila, "Relocations upon Relocations: Home, Language, and Native American Women's Writings," American Indian Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1995): 491-507.
- Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 13-29.
- Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995), 34-56.
- Catherine Despeux, Immortelles de la Chine ancienne: Taoïsme et alchimie féminine (Puiseaux: Pardès, 1990), 45-67.
- Suzanne E. Cahill, Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 78-102.
- Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 245-276.
- Th. Emil Homerin, "'Oh, Those Breasts!': Baha' al-Din Zuhayr and the Politics of Gender," in Meddling with Mythology, ed. Miriam Levering (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 67-89.
- Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 89-134.
- Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy (New York: Knopf, 2022), 234-278.
- Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 45-78.
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 28-36.
- On institutional responses, see Pamela Dickey Young, Feminist Theology/Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 67-89.
- For conservative responses, see Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004), 15-34.
Further Reading
Jewish Feminist Interpretation
- Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective
- Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses
- Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice
Womanist Biblical Interpretation
- Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness
- Renita J. Weems, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women's Relationships in the Bible
- Cain Hope Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation
Islamic Feminist Hermeneutics
- Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective
- Asma Barlas, "Believing Women" in Islam
- Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence
Buddhist Feminist Scholarship
- Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy
- Karma Lekshe Tsomo, ed., Buddhist Women Across Cultures
- Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism
Comparative and Global Perspectives
- Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
- Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her