ABSTRACT
I was having trouble with the class I was teaching. They had proven to be resistant to certain critical, interpretative strategies. The trouble began as early as the conquest narratives in Joshua and Judges, but was fully manifested in our discussion of Isaiah 7:14-was it "virgin" or "young woman"? Then, the day in which we discussed the servant songs in Isaiah, my fellow teaching assistant Grace Imathiu (an ordained Methodist minister and New Testament scholar) took over my class. She spent an hour arguing about the identification of the servant with Jesus. Grace's point was the same as mine: this text meant something quite different to its original audience and that meaning is legitimate, then and now. In addition to this, there are details in the songs that do not correspond to Jesus at all. The suffering servant is ambiguous, open to a variety of interpretations, unable to rest comfortably in anyone reading. After class, Grace and 1 were standing in the hall comparing notes. We were approached by a woman in my class. She thanked Grace for leading the discussion group and then said, "Youknow, when Jennifer says things like that I don't believe her, but since you said it, I guess it must be true."
