Kathy Ehrensperger

Shayna Sheinfeld

Juni Hoppe

This volume examines questions concerning the construction of gender and identity in the earliest days of what is now Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Methodologically explicit, the contributions analyze textual and material sources related to these religious traditions in their cultural contexts. The sources examined are predominantly products of patriarchal elite discourses requiring innovative approaches to unveil aspects of gender otherwise hidden. This volume extends the discussion represented in the volume Gender and Second-Temple Judaism (2020) and highlights the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary research beyond anachronistic discipline distinctions.

Constructions of Gender in Religious Traditions of Late Antiquity

There has been a revolutionary shift of thinking in Pauline Studies, fundamentally changing the image of Paul. Postmodern literary criticism of Paul's epistles and sociorhetorical criticism of his letters has created a New Perspective approach to Pauline studies. At the same time, feminist criticism of the Pauline corpus has been growing. Unfortunately there has been hardly any interaction and exchange of research results between these different strands of scholarship. The result of this is that in Pauline studies scholars are hardly aware of feminist perspectives. Similarly, feminist interpretations of Paul, not fully conversant with the most recent strands of Pauline research, are often based on traditional images of Paul. Ehrensperger's analysis of feminist commentaries on Paul thus contains a rather negative depiction of theological thinking. However, both strands of research, feminist and those of the New Perspective, provide fresh and illuminating insights that emphasize similar aspects from different perspectives. Ehrensperger advocates a closer interaction between these two schools of Pauline studies. She analyzes Romans 14-15, exploring the results of recent research in both Pauline schools. Pauline studies from the New Perspective emphasize the Jewish context and texture of Paul's thinking. She sets these in dialogue with feminist theology, which focuses on issues of identity, diversity, and relationality. Her study results in a perspective on Paul which views him as a significant dialogue partner in the search for a theology beyond anti-Semitism and misogyny, beyond force and domination. Kathy Ehrensperger studied theology at the Universities of Basel and Berne, and was a pastor for sixteen years in Switzerland. She is currently a Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

Feminism and the New Perspective in Pauline Studies

That We May Be Mutually Encouraged

Firmly rooted in his ancestral Jewish traditions, Paul interacted with, and was involved in vivid communication primarily with non-Jews, who through Christ were associated with the one God of Israel. In the highly diverse cultural, linguistic, social, and political world of the Roman Empire, Paul's activities are seen as those of a cultural translator embedded in his own social and symbolic world and simultaneously conversant with the diverse, mainly Greek and Roman world, of the non-Jewish nations. In this role he negotiates the Jewish message of the Christ event into the particular everyday life of his addressees. Informed by socio-historical research, cultural studies, and gender studies Kathy Ehrensperger explores in her collection of essays aspects of this process based on the hermeneutical presupposition that the Pauline texts are rooted in the social particularities of everyday life of the people involved in the Christ-movement, and that his theologizing has to be understood from within this context.

Kathy Ehrensperger

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