ABSTRACT
The ekklesia gynaikon — ‘women-church’ — is the hermeneutical centre of feminist biblical interpretation as expressed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. The contemporary ekklesia can reclaim the ekklesia of women in the first century as its own biblical forebear; the Jesus movement can be contextualized within the ekklesia’s feminist vision. Ekklesia, then, as the locus of feminist biblical interpretation, must be situated at the centre of public-political institutions and discourses. Ekklesia is ‘a public feminist countersphere’ from which critical reading practices can emanate. The most pressing questions which arise with relation to the interaction between her biblical hermeneutics and her theology circulate around the question of authority. ‘Recognizing these harmful effects of the early Christian struggles over canonization as a means to the kyriarchal co-optation of the ekklesia, feminist biblical scholarship cannot remain within the limits drawn by the established canon.’ The ekklesia must claim its spiritual authority, assessing biblical texts in light of a critical hermeneutic of liberation.
