Strategies of Recovery and Resistance

Abstract

Two contrasting hermeneutical strategies, recovery and resistance, seek respectively to reassert the autonomy of a text over against a history of misreading, and to expose a text's oppressive tendencies. The narrative of Genesis 1-3, read within a feminist perspective, is paradigmatic in this respect: it can be read both as a patriarchal text to be resisted and as an egalitarian text to be recovered from a long history of distorted reading. Within a Christian context, the framework for interpreting this passage was established by certain Pauline statements which use it to promote patriarchy within the Church. While the Genesis narrative does not prescribe these interpretative state ments, it is nevertheless open to them. Resistance may therefore be the more appro priate strategy.