Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that there is a continuing need for biblical hermeneutic proposals and frameworks which emerge from the fields of both feminism and Christian theology. It identifies two primary principles for interpretation: remembrance and destabilization. This is a strategy which enables both materialist and post-structuralist perspectives to be set into play, each of which has vital contributions to make to feminist enterprises. The book provides the resources for an ontological model radically disruptive of metaphysics of presence, and in which it is possible to discern the traces of God. It considers the relationship of this ‘imagined community’ to the Christian Church and to scripture, to ethics and to gendered identity within logic of equity. Indeed, the field of feminist biblical hermeneutics more generally is so large and heterogeneous that surveying it would be a major undertaking in itself.