Feminist Rhetorical Hermeneutics in Understanding Biblical Texts from the Perspective of Phyllis Trible

Phyllis Trible, a feminist scholar of biblical texts, believes that a rhetorical hermeneutical approach to biblical texts can inspire women and pave the way for the reconstruction of a biblical theology. In her view, the biblical text interprets itself, and in this self-disclosure, it possesses an internal hermeneutic that allows for multiple possibilities of reading. The clues by which an interpreter can determine which meaning to adopt in order to attain a coherent understanding of the biblical text are identifiable within the text itself. For Trible, these clues are the metaphors, stories, imagery, and central themes of the Bible, by reference to which one must resolve the internal contradictions of the text. The biblical texts depict two conditions for women: subordination and equality. By appealing to the metaphor of the womb, the creation story of man and woman, the imagery of humanity being created in the image of ‘ha-adam’, the recovery of the stories of significant women in the Bible, and similar elements, Trible identifies the equality approach as the primary reading. In her interpretation of the passages concerning the subordination of women, she considers them to belong to the period after sin and the expulsion from the Garden. This state was not part of God’s original design and is viewed as an inauthentic condition from which woman and man, by overcoming sin and “disobeying disobedience,” must emerge to become co-equal companions and, together, the image of God. She considers the God of the Old and New Testaments to be one, and uses the Hebrew language as the primary source for understanding the biblical texts.