Description: What is it about Paul's letters that women find so uninviting? Is it that they have been chauvinistically interpreted by a patriarchal tradition? Or is the person whose literary identity stands behind them really a misogynist? What is it about the texts that conveys these often subtle but strongly sensed disincentives to women? Do women who read the Pauline texts have to choose between reading them as students of scripture and reading them as women? Sandra Hack Polaski introduces readers to the letters and world of Paul, encouraging a critical appreciation of Paul and his writings that doesn't require a choice between commitment to the scriptures or integrity as a modern feminist. In conversation with the leading interpreters of Paul, Polaski explores a range of feminist responses to Paul-conformist, resistant, rejectionist, and transformational-forging her own theory of how to interpret Paul. She reads, emphasizes, and reinterprets overlooked, neglected, misintegrated, or differently interpreted Pauline texts, making visible the invisible or obscured women in Paul and challenging the accepted readings. Polaski uncovers both the ideologies behind the text and reveals the ideologies the text seeks to suppress. She looks at the prophetic nature of the texts by reading for their trajectories, tracing the trajectories toward their logical end. Such a program leads Polaski to find God's New Creation as the operative center of Pauline thought.

Please Wait