1 Peter: An Introduction and Study Guide Reading Against The Grain 9781350008915, 9781350008946, 9781350008939

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Map of Asia Minor (Modern Day Turkey)
Introduction: How Do You Approach 1 Peter?
Chapter 1: Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter
Chapter 2: Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible
Chapter 3: Reconstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated
Chapter 4: Exploring the Meaning of 1 Peter for Today
Instead of a Conclusion
Key Terms
Timeline
Bibliography
Index of Authors

Citation preview

T&T CLARK STUDY GUIDES TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

1 PETER

Series Editor Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the Holy Cross, USA

Other titles in the series include: 1&2 Thessalonians: An Introduction and Study Guide 1 Peter: An Introduction and Study Guide 2 Corinthians: An Introduction and Study Guide Colossians: An Introduction and Study Guide Ephesians: An Introduction and Study Guide Galatians: An Introduction and Study Guide James: An Introduction and Study Guide John: An Introduction and Study Guide Luke: An Introduction and Study Guide Mark: An Introduction and Study Guide Matthew: An Introduction and Study Guide Philemon: An Introduction and Study Guide Philippians: An Introduction and Study Guide Romans: An Introduction and Study Guide The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Study Guide The Letters of Jude and Second Peter: An Introduction and Study Guide

T&T Clark Study Guides to the Old Testament: 1 & 2 Samuel: An Introduction and Study Guide 1 & 2 Kings: An Introduction and Study Guide Ecclesiastes: An Introduction and Study Guide Exodus: An Introduction and Study Guide Ezra-Nehemiah: An Introduction and Study Guide Hebrews: An Introduction and Study Guide Leviticus: An Introduction and Study Guide Jeremiah: An Introduction and Study Guide Job: An Introduction and Study Guide Joshua: An Introduction and Study Guide Psalms: An Introduction and Study Guide Song of Songs: An Introduction and Study Guide Numbers: An Introduction and Study Guide

1 PETER

An Introduction and Study Guide Reading Against The Grain

By Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015. This edition published 2017 © Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, 2017 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: PB: 978-1-3500-0891-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-0893-9 ePub: 978-1-3500-0892-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: T&T Clark Study Guides to the New Testament, volume 18 Cover design: clareturner.co.uk Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents Acknowledgments vii Map of Asia Minor (Modern Day Turkey) x Introduction: How Do You Approach 1 Peter? 1 Chapter 1 R hetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 19 Chapter 2 Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 34 Chapter 3 R econstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated 48 Chapter 4 Exploring the Meaning of 1 Peter for Today 62 Instead of a Conclusion 78 Key Terms 82 Timeline 90 Bibliography 92 Index of Authors 98

Acknowledgments You probably have purchased and/or are reading this volume in the Phoenix Guides to the New Testament in order to learn something about the writing called 1 Peter. Bible commentaries like this seek to aid in the study of Scripture by providing explanations and interpretations of a biblical text. Hence, you may be reading this Guide with the unconscious or conscious assumption that this is a commentary to 1 Peter. This assumption is correct but it is not the whole story, since this is not just a commentary but also a reading guide. Commentaries focus on background information about the text: authorship, history, setting and theme of the writing—that is, ‘correct’ information about the author, the text, the translation, the context, the recipients and the the*logy of 1 Peter. In short by thinking of ‘commentary’, you, the reader, may presuppose that this Guide communicates all the information necessary to understand the text. This presupposition rests on a positivist understanding of commentary. However, the title of this series promises a ‘guide’ to the N*T! This does not just mean ‘commentary as explanation’ of the text but rather as a mapping of the text and its interpretations. It not only refers to the text but also to the author who is writing the commentary as a ‘guide’. In a commentary context authors are expected to articulate their interpretation on methodological grounds, be they philological, historical or literary, but rarely to articulate and elaborate their hermeneutical perspective and interests. They rarely raise questions of the rhetoric and ethic of interpretation. Advertisements of biblical commentaries assure readers that the guides/authors of such commentaries are well-known and well-trained scholars who are able to explain the text in a scientific way but they rarely (except for traditional orthodox theological commentaries) elaborate their presuppositions, frameworks, rhetorical goals and interests for interpreting the text. They focus on the authors of biblical texts but rarely on the perspectives and interests of the commentary writer or the actual readers/hearers of a text such as 1 Peter in the present or in the past. Moreover, it is ironic that most biblical commentaries of biblical writings seek to engender reading and studying these ancient and, for many readers also still, sacred texts. However, they do not guide readers to find meaning by discussing how such reading for meaning could take place and to what

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end. In short, they do not raise the hermeneutical questions that need to be asked. Since many potential readers may not see why I included a chapter on a conscientizing feminist reading process, let me explain from the start that I did so because this is not just a commentary but also a ‘guide’ to 1 Peter. In short, this commentary seeks to be a guide to 1 Peter in both senses of the word ‘guide’: a guide to the text and the author(s) in antiquity and today as well as to the readers/audience of the rhetoric of 1 Peter in the present and in the past. It seeks to interpret the text as rhetorical argument of the author(s) and the audience of 1 Peter, as well as its commentaries in the past and in the present. In order to assist you in understanding the substantive arguments of 1 Peter in the past, we have added a map of Asia Minor (Modern Day Turkey) which corresponds roughly to the ancient Roman imperial territory of Asia Minor. We also have added a Timeline as an appendix to the book to assist you in understanding and integrating the historical information for understanding the rhetorical historical situation of 1 Peter. Although the internet provides easy access to the explanation of terms and historical figures, we have added a glossary or list of Key Terms at the end of the book that seeks to enable a better understanding of this Guide to 1 Peter. I hope readers will find the glossary helpful for critically exploring not only the chapters of this book but also the letter called 1 Peter itself. Please consult it as often as needed (words included in this glossary will be in bold when they appear for the first time). Finally, in order, to startle you into thinking about issues and questions of interpretation and hermeneutical frameworks, I am using the asterisk (*). The asterisk (*) seeks to startle you into thinking: ‘Why?’, ‘What does this mean?’, ‘I need to think more about it’. The asterisk (*) functions as an interruption and as a means of conscientization. It is unsettling and seeks to compel you to question and rethink! Last but not least, acknowledgments are due. Although the author’s name is on the book, books are always products of collaboration and teamwork. Hence, I want to thank all those whose work and care has greatly contributed to the completion of this small exploration of the meaning of the letter called 1 Peter in the present and the past. Thanks go first of all to my colleague and the editor of this series, Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew. His feedback and work as the editor of the series was invaluable. I am grateful to him for being always encouraging while patiently waiting for the manuscript as well as for supervising the publication of it. The edition of this text has greatly benefitted from the work of my research assistant, Ms Kelsi Morrison-Atkins. She polished my style, standardized the bibliography, proofread the whole manuscript, and developed the Key Terms as well as the Timeline.



Acknowledgments ix

I also want to thank David Clines and Ailsa Parkin for shepherding the book through the production process. Finally, I want to thank the students in my courses on ‘How Do You Read?’, ‘Introduction to N*T Interpretation’, ‘Diversity and New Testament Interpretation’ and ‘Feminist Biblical Interpretation’, especially Sonia David and You Jeong Jeon (Rachel), for their critical questions, reflections and arguments in their explorations of the content of this commentary, as they sought clarifications and contributed to its conceptualization.

MAp of AsIA MInor (Modern dAY turkeY)

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RomanEmpire_117_recoloured.svg

Introduction: How Do You Approach 1 Peter? The New*Testament writing called 1 Peter is probably not known to many readers, as it is seldom read in the liturgy or preached on from the pulpit. Potential readers are often not much interested in studying 1 Peter because the letter is not considered to be a culturally influential and religiously important biblical text. In contrast, 1 Peter has become an exciting field of study in biblical scholarship in the last 30-40 years. The study of this short letter is not only historically and the*logically rich but also methodologically innovative and challenging. Although this brief letter is not widely read, it is a text with rich historical, cultural, and religious meanings. As a reader of this Guide you may have come across the First Letter of Peter when seeking references to suffering as a Christian calling or to elaborations on the priesthood of all believers. Or you may have looked for a biblical reference to wo/men’s clothing and jewelry or biblical teachings on marriage. This epistle is especially interesting because it mentions marginal persons such as resident aliens, house-slaves or wealthy married wo/men as figures of the*-ethical concern. In the midst of the protests against police violence against young black people, you may have asked: Does G*d really want the suffering that the letter preaches by pointing to the sufferings of Jesus Christ? Or, is G*d on the side of those protesting against such police brutality? Is Jesus with them protesting in the streets? The letter carries the name of the apostle Peter and is written to ‘resident aliens’ who live in the Roman Province of Asia Minor. They are represented as a marginalized group that experiences harassment and suffering. It is a cultural document written a long time ago, in the first century ce, and in a culture and world that is quite different from our own. However, it is at one and the same time a biblical book, and as such a part of Christianity’s sacred Scriptures. Reading this Guide to 1 Peter requires that one keeps both of these areas, the cultural-social and the ethical-the*logical in mind. It means understanding the letter as both a document of the first century and as Scripture read by people today. The Jewish feminist writer Asphodel Long has likened the Bible to: a magnificent garden of brilliant plants, some flowering, some fruiting, some in seed, some in bud, shaded by trees of age old, luxurious growth. Yet in the very soil which gives it life the poison has been inserted… This

2

1 Peter poison is that of misogyny, the hatred of women, half the human race (Long 1992: 195).

To see Scripture as such a beautiful garden which also contains poisonous ivy requires that one identify and name this poison and place on all biblical texts the label ‘Caution! Could be dangerous to your health and survival!’ A critical feminist interpretation for wellbeing seeks to ‘flag’ such texts. To avoid the dangerous aspects of Scripture, one needs to conceptualize the Bible as an open-ended prototype rather than as a congealed archetype that has to be repeated unchanged and solidified in every generation. Such a conceptualization does not understand 1 Peter as an immutable archetype but as an historical prototype of Jewish or Christian community and life. Through such a critical reading of the letter, one seeks to identify the nourishing bread of divine wisdom inscribed in it that enables us today to struggle against violence and injustice. We will begin our journey with the letter and its rich understandings by exploring the work of interpretation or reading that one engages in when trying to comprehend such a writing. Moreover, we will attempt to assess the power relations inscribed in the letter and ask whether its symbolic universe advocates a world of justice and love that seeks to equalize unequal power relations or whether it ‘naturalizes’, or the*logically legitimizes, power relations of domination and subordination as the word and will of G*d. While the body of this Guide wrestles with how to read 1 Peter in its socio-religious contexts, in this introduction we will start our journey of interpretation by exploring the strategies of reading and the assumptions we make when interpreting a biblical text such as 1 Peter. Ways of Reading: Theories of Language To understand 1 Peter in a critical-constructive way requires a different understanding of language and text. Students of semiotics have pointed to two very different understandings of language, which they have dubbed ‘the model of transmission’ and ‘the rhetorical-performative model’. Hence, it might be helpful to explore them briefly here. A literalist understanding of 1 Peter works with a transmission model of language and text that involves the translation, or ‘encoding’, of an idea (suffering) into a signal (text) by a sender (Peter), as well as the transmission of this signal to recipients (historical biblical readers and readers of today), and the decoding of the signal into a message (religious dogma, history, ethics, etc.) by the receivers. This ‘transmission’ or ‘conduit’ model of reading for the most part determines our understanding of communication. Language functions like a conduit that transfers thought literally from one person to another. Authoritative discourses such as those in and about biblical texts, including 1 Peter, assume that utterances and their meanings are fixed once and for all as they come



Introduction 3

into contact with new voices and new situations. Instead of functioning as a generator of new meaning, therefore, a religiously authoritative text such as 1 Peter demands our respectful exploration, careful decoding, and hard work in order to understand its meaning. In contrast to the understanding of the univocal function of language and text, a second theoretical model, the rhetorical-performative model of text, conceives of language and text not as a conduit but as dialogic and argumentative. Language is not a passive link in transmitting some constant information or univocal message between sender and receiver or speaker and hearer but language functions to generate new meanings. In this second understanding of language and text, the Bible can be viewed as a performative ‘utterance’ which not only inscribes the voices that produce it but also the voices to which it is addressed; not only the voice of the author(s) but also that of the audience. In the formulation of an utterance, a voice responds in some way to previous utterances and anticipates the responses of other, succeeding ones. When it is understood, an utterance comes into contact with the ‘response’ of those who hear it. Thus, understanding 1 Peter (and all biblical texts) using the rhetorical-performative model of language and text rather than the semiotic conduit model allows readers to acknowledge new meanings created by the multiplicity and heterogeneity of biblical voices and their ‘unheard responses’, both ancient and contemporary, produced in biblical interpretation. This Guide seeks to assist readers in reading 1 Peter as such a performative utterance. However, I do not want to suggest that there is only one way of reading or teaching the ‘correct’, single meaning of the text or to persuade readers to accept my interpretation of the letter as the only correct one. Rather, I invite you to listen for and imagine your own ‘counter words’ and those of readers/hearers in first-century Asia Minor. Ways of Reading: Interpretive Paradigms Our interpretation of biblical texts such as 1 Peter, however, is not only determined by our understanding of language but also by the paradigms of reading and interpretation which we have been taught and, consciously or not, bring to our readings of 1 Peter. Thomas Kuhn’s categories of ‘scientific paradigm’ and ‘heuristic model’ have provided a theoretical framework (Kuhn 1962) for comprehending theoretical and practical shifts in the selfunderstanding of biblical studies. A paradigm expresses ‘the shared commitment by the members of a scientific community to a particular form of scientific practice’ (Belsey 2010: 522) and is characterized by conceptual coherence and common intellectual interests. It articulates a common ethos and constitutes a community

1 Peter

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of scholars formed by its institutions and systems of knowledge. At the same time, a paradigm restricts the work of scholars by ‘blinding scholars to potentially important problems that are literally invisible to their normal science’ (Macey 2001: 290). A paradigm thus can be envisioned as an intellectual and social space and scholarly home. Over the years I have discussed, outlined, and renamed in Democratizing Biblical Studies (2009: 51-84), Bread not Stone (1984: 23-42) and The Power of the Word (2007b: 239-66) the following four paradigms of reading and interpretation: 1. 2. 3. 4.

the scriptural-the*logical paradigm the critical-scientific paradigm the cultural-hermeneutic paradigm, and the emancipatory-rhetorical paradigm

Such disciplinary paradigms constitute different ways of reading and constructing the*logical, historical, cultural, and literary interpretations of 1 Peter. These models invite a critical evaluation of the text and transformation of the reading process in order to seek out its vision of a more just and loving religious and political world. The Scriptural-The*logical Paradigm The first paradigm is the scriptural-the*logical paradigm. For centuries, this was the dominant paradigm of Christian and Jewish biblical interpretation and reading. It understands the biblical record as sacred Scripture and explores what it means to say that, as Scripture, the Bible is the revealed, authoritative Word of G*d. Under ‘the*logical interpretation’, Douglas Knight lists the following approaches focused on the authority of the Bible: canonical criticism, apocalypticism, evangelical biblical interpretation, Hebrew Bible and New Testament inner-biblical interpretation, inspiration of the Bible, orthodox biblical interpretation, biblical the*logy and Hebrew Bible and New*Testament the*logy (Knight 2004: 209-74). This paradigm of biblical interpretation is at home not simply in biblical communities of faith but also in institutional religions and in the academy. Like the second academic paradigm, which has been practiced by a class of elite educated gentlemen, it was and is the domain of learned clergymen. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, wo/men and other marginal people had been explicitly excluded, by both law and custom, from this paradigm as well as from the subsequent scientific-modern paradigm. The ancient and medieval Christian method of interpretation sought to establish a fourfold sense of Scripture: It would engage in a literal (historical), a tropological (moral), an allegorical, and an anagogical (futureoriented) reading of 1 Peter. Jewish hermeneutics developed a similar but distinctive method of interpretation that was called PaRDeS (Paradise):



Introduction 5

Peshat seeks for the plain sense of the text, Remez means the implied or allegorical sense, Derush involves legal and narrative exegesis—comparing terms from different places—and Sod is the mystical sense of a text. Beginning with humanism and the time of the Protestant Reformation, this openended, dynamic but doctrinally-controlled mode of medieval interpretation changed. The Reformation taught, on the one hand, that Scripture can be understood by everyone and, on the other, that ‘Scripture alone’ (sola scriptura) is self-interpreting and that it alone is the foundation of faith. The commentary series Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible is a modern Protestant example of the scriptural-the*logical paradigm. It advertises that the series offers ‘a fresh and invigorating approach’ that builds on a wide range of sources from biblical studies and the Christian tradition (see belief.wjkbooks.com). Noted scholars concentrate less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a the*logically focused commentary that considers the contemporary relevance of Scripture texts. The commentary on 1 Peter in this series, written by the*logian and church historian Catherine Gunsalus Gonzáles, focuses on the guidance the letter gives to the young church as it faced a variety of issues, both internal to the church’s life and external in relation to its social and political culture. It helps us ‘to focus on the essential character of the church’ as well as the importance of congregations in the church’s life and raises basic issues of authority, how Christians should live, and how diverse views should be considered. It clearly offers a dogmatic lens, which comes to the fore in Gunsalus Gonzáles’ conclusion of her introduction: A final word: for many Christians the doctrine of the Trinity is a strange item of Christian thought that has little relevance to the Christian life. In studying this letter, make note of how the relationship of God the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is described or how the various persons are understood to affect the life of the congregation and the Christian (Gunsalus Gonzáles 2010: 11).

The Critical-Scientific Paradigm The second, critical-scientific paradigm has until recently been the dominant paradigm of reading, and in many introductions to the N*T still is the main approach to writing commentaries. Hence, it is likely that if you attended ‘Sunday School’ or its equivalent that you have been trained in this form of reading and interpretation without realizing its theoretical framework and presuppositions. The spirit of this paradigm is best expressed in the following lengthy quote of M. Eugene Boring: First Peter was not written to us. The first principle of authentic biblical interpretation is to acknowledge that nothing in the Bible was written directly to us, and that we are bound seriously to misunderstand it if we read our own situation and ideologies into it. We are neither residents

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1 Peter of Cappadocia (1.1), nor subject to the emperor (2.13), nor does our social situation include slavery and the patriarchal family (2.18-20; 3.1-7), nor do we anticipate the soon coming of the Lord (4.7). In order to hear what 1 Peter might say to us we need to hear it within its context… To understand such a text (rather than simply use it for our own purposes), it is necessary to come within hearing distance of its own historical setting (Boring 1999: 19).

While I appreciate Boring’s insistence on a historical reading defending against a dogmatic the*logical reading, I can not forget the reaction of an African American student who was outraged by his statement that ‘our social situation [does not] include slavery and the patriarchal family (2.1820; 3.1-7)’. This assumption is not only false, she argued, but it also prohibits any inquiry as to the function of the text in today’s culture and prevents any ethical evaluation. Critical introductions to 1 Peter are usually situated in this second paradigm of reading, pretending to be able to abstract themselves from their socio-cultural-political situation. They usually begin with a discussion of authorship and date, of the historical recipients and their location, point to the problem of pseudonymity, and the letter’s the*logical tradition. All these questions have received quite different answers which are all hypothetical and controversial. The dating of the letter is still debated. Those scholars who assume that it is written by the apostle Peter, who was one of the original disciples of Jesus, date the letter in the time of the Neronic persecution in the mid60s ce. Such a historical establishment of Petrine authorship as genuine is the*logically important because it allows us to know not only the authentic voice of a companion of Jesus but also avoid the problem of pseudonymity, which in modern times is judged harshly as offense against copyright and carries with it the contemporary notion of intellectual property fraud. Those scholars who doubt the apostle Peter’s authorship date the letter in the 90s of the first century or the beginning of the second (see Timeline) and argue that we have no evidence that the emperor Nero’s persecution spilled over into the Roman Provinces. The situation portrayed in 1 Peter seems better to fit the situation in Asia Minor under the reign of the emperor Trajan (98–117 ce) and his appointed governor, Pliny the Younger. The situation of persecutions seems to correspond to that described in a letter of Pliny to the emperor Trajan inquiring as to how to deal with those accused of being Christianoi (Messianists). Rejecting the apostle Peter’s authorship of the letter and dating the letter to the end of the first and the beginning of the second century ce, these scholars point out, is also supported by the very good Greek of the letter which hardly could have been written by the Galilean fisherman Peter. In order to defend Petrine authorship, other scholars point out that Silvanus is credited with writing and disseminating the letter (5.12). In this view,



Introduction 7

Silvanus, as Peter’s secretary, edited Peter’s dictation and transformed it into the letter’s excellent Greek. The affinity of the letter to the Pauline letters is therefore due to the skillful grafting of the letter by Silvanus/Silas who, according to the tradition of Acts 15.22, was a companion of Paul. To the contrary, other scholars argue that the association of the letter with Silvanus speaks for a later date and an author associated with the Pauline and Post-Pauline tradition, especially since the letter has aspects in common with the so-called ‘household code’ tradition. A later date is also confirmed by the greetings from ‘her’ (a woman or an ekklēsia [‘assembly’]) ‘who dwells in Babylon’ (5.13). As in the book Revelation, Babylon seems to be a codename for the Roman Empire after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (70 ce, see Timeline), which echoed the Babylonian Empire’s destruction of the holy city Jerusalem in 587 bce. However, as far as I know, scholars have not discussed the language and date of 1 Peter in conjunction with the Third Jewish Revolt in the provinces. While my discussion of the authorship and date of the letter in this introduction and my commentary in the subsequent chapters is based on the later dating and pseudonymous authorship of 1 Peter, readers may want to keep in mind this discussion on authorship and dating of the letter when reading my interpretation in other chapters. In any case, I hope to have indicated with this short debate on authorship and dating that no ‘scientific’ certainty about historical provenance, dating, and authorship of the letter is to be had. Rather, the results of such attempts cannot be ‘proven’ once and for all but must be discussed as arguments that are engendered by certain assumptions, theoretical frameworks, and historical information which are culturally and politically conditioned. Literary-Cultural Paradigm This result on dating positions my discussion already for the third, literarycultural paradigm of reading and interpretation which underscores the rhetorical character of knowledge and acknowledges the symbolic, multidimensional power of biblical texts. It either ascribes personified status to the text in order to construe it as a dialogue partner or it sees the text as a multicolored tapestry of meaning. This third cultural-hermeneutical paradigm likens the reading of the Bible to the reading of the ‘great books’ or classics of Western culture, whose greatness does not consist in their accuracy as records of facts, but depends chiefly on their symbolic power to transfigure human experience and symbolic systems of meaning. When reading 1 Peter in terms of the literary-cultural paradigm, one is not so much concerned, for instance, to investigate the christological teachings of 1 Peter or to establish the ‘historical fact’ that the apostle Peter wrote the letter. Rather, one seeks to understand the epistle’s literary argument and cultural location. One does not assume that the text represents a

1 Peter

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given divine revelation or a window to historical reality. One also does not understand 1 Peter as a historical source text—as data and evidence—but sees the letter as a perspectival discourse constructing a range of symbolic meanings. Since alternative interpretations of 1 Peter’s symbolic world engender competing meanings, they should not be reduced to one single, definitive meaning. Therefore competing interpretations of 1 Peter are not simply either right or wrong. Rather, they constitute different ways of reading and constructing the historical and religious meanings of the letter. This is the case because texts have a surplus of meaning that can never be fully mined. Hence, in order to assess different interpretations of 1 Peter, one has to ask: • •

• • •

Does the interpretation demonstrate a careful reading of the text from the perspective of genre, theme, character, narrative point of view, structure, imagery, and style? Does the interpretation engage in literary analysis and cultural interpretation for understanding 1 Peter? Is it concerned with the integration of form and content? Does it pay attention to the relationship between thematic content and socio-historical context? Does the interpretation discuss how 1 Peter fits into larger social, historical, cultural, and aesthetic traditions? Does the interpretation of 1 Peter effectively compare themes, issues, and artistic treatments across texts and across cultural traditions? Does a commentary on 1 Peter demonstrate knowledge of theories and approaches to critical interpretation?

One of the most influential debates in 1 Peter studies has been the debate between David L. Balch (1981) and John H. Elliott (1981) on the cultural context and its influence on the argumentative strategy of the letter. Balch reads the strategy of the letter in terms of acculturation or assimilation of a minority culture living in a dominant culture, which is different from their own. The letter counsels adaptation and conformity to this culture for the sake of survival. Elliott, in contrast, argues that nothing in the letter speaks for social assimilation but rather seeks to foster internal social cohesion of the church consisting of aliens and strangers in the Asian-Roman society in which they lived. For these immigrants the church becomes a ‘home’ and a place of belonging that enables them to avoid assimilation. Warren Carter (2004) in turn argues that this counsel to conformity presents a strategy of survival in a situation where the readers of the letter have very little power. David Horrell seeks to assess this debate on cultural assimilation and conformity as survival strategy on the one hand and distinctiveness and resistance on the other, and argues that the author(s) seek(s) to articulate a path between conformity and resistance to Asian culture and



Introduction 9

Roman imperial power (Horrell 2008: 77-86). However, this debate does not recognize that Elliott’s reading does not present an alternative to that of Balch because as ‘church as a home for the homeless’, the letter argues that the Christian community should be patterned after the dominant imperial household and culture. This ethical-cultural-political question is the central question of the fourth paradigm of interpretation. Emancipatory-Rhetorical Paradigm: Hearing the Silenced into Speech (Morton 1985) Whether you are a faithful Bible reader or a reader who appreciates historical information or values 1 Peter as a cultural treasure, the fourth, emancipatory-rhetorical, paradigm invites you to become a feminist decolonizing reader who listens for the ‘counter-words’ in the text. Since my reading method is ‘feminist decolonizing’, it becomes necessary to explain how I understand the hotly debated ‘f-word’, feminist, which might have already provoked a negative reaction in your mind. Since the early 1970s, I have developed a critical feminist hermeneutics of liberation in theoreticalmethodological terms. Such a critical feminist theory and hermeneutic of liberation seeks to articulate a systemic analysis of the intersecting structures of oppression that focuses not only on the liberation of wo/men but also maintains that a constructive emancipatory theory and hermeneutic must be articulated from the perspective and standpoint of those wo/men who struggle for survival and justice on the bottom of the kyriarchal pyramid of domination and subordination, oppression and exploitation. The rhetoric of our textual sources and their scholarly interpretations is not just androcentric, that is, male centered, but kyriocentric, that is, elite male centered. Hence, andro-kyriocentric texts must be read against their andro-kyriocentric grain. Biblical texts as they are read by individuals or heard in the liturgy of the church perpetuate the elite male bias and exclusiveness of Western culture and language. Without question biblical language is androcentric, but is it deliberately exclusive of wo/men? For instance, 1 Peter does not use the Greek word ekklēsia, which is usually translated as church, for its community of readers but rather the Greek word adelphōtēs, which means ‘brotherhood’. Does this mean that wo/men were not members of these communities? Obviously not, since wo/men are explicitly addressed in 3.1-7. Or to give another example: When readers are asked where wo/men are mentioned in the text, they instantly point to 1 Peter 3 but not to 1 Peter 2. Does this mean that only male house slaves (oiketēs) but no wo/men slaves belonged to the community? This is also not very likely! Hence, the grammatically andro-kyriocentric text of 1 Peter must be read against the grain, since such andro-kyriocentric texts eradicate the presence of wo/men. When texts like 1 Peter mention wo/men, these references

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1 Peter

must be read like the tip of an iceberg, indicating how much has been lost to historical remembrance and religious-cultural consciousness. Hence, it is important not to overlook the andro-kyriocentric character of the language of biblical texts in general and that of 1 Peter in particular, since such a neglect of andro-kyriocentric language leads to grave historical and the*logical misreadings and cultural-religious prejudice. Andro-kyriocentric texts are parts of an overall puzzle and design that must be fitted together in creative, critical interpretation. It is crucial, therefore, that we challenge the blueprints of andro-kyriocentric design and assume instead a feminist lens of reading, one that allows us to place wo/ men as well as men into the center of attention. Such a feminist critical method could be likened to the work of a detective insofar as it does not rely solely on historical ‘facts’ nor invents its evidence, but is engaged in an imaginative reconstruction of cultural-religious life. Or to use the metaphor provided by the poet Adrienne Rich: in order to wrest meaning from androcentric texts and history we have to ‘mine’ ‘the earth-deposits of our history’ in order to ‘bring the essential vein to light’, to find the ‘bottle amber perfect’, ‘the tonic for living on this earth, the winters of this climate’ (Rich 1978: 60-67). Such a feminist hermeneutical method and process for entering an old text such as 1 Peter from a new critical direction is not just a chapter in cultural historical-religious reading but an act of feminist transformation. Such a transformation depends, however, on a critical re-appropriation of classic texts. Women, looking to the most prestigious texts of the Western tradition, confront misogyny, idealization, objectification, silence. The absence of female consciousness from that tradition challenges a feminist interpretation to look beyond and through the texts. The absence anchors one term of a double meaning. The silences, all the more difficult to restore because of the circuitous interpretation they call for, offer clues to the willed suppression of women. But to translate silence into meaning requires a critical distance from the tradition as well as an immersion in it (Fox-Genovese 1979/80: 10; emphasis added).

Yet a feminist critical analytic focus on wo/men alone will not suffice. With its methodological framing, the topical, thematic approach to the analysis of ‘woman in the Bible’ has already adopted a theoretical approach and an analytical perspective that marginalizes wo/men, since only wo/men but not men become the objects of critical inquiry and the*logical discussion. What is therefore necessary is not just a feminist analysis of biblical texts but also a metacritique of the andro-kyriocentric frameworks adopted by biblical scholars without any critical reflection on their systemic presuppositions and implications. The systemic andro-kyriocentrism of Western culture is evident in the fact that nobody questions whether men have been historical subjects and



Introduction 11

revelatory agents in religion. The role of wo/men, and not that of men, becomes problematic because maleness is the norm, while femaleness constitutes a deviation from this norm. Whenever we speak of ‘man’ as the scientific and historical subject, we mean the male. For the Western understanding and linguistic expression of reality, elite male existence is the standard of human existence. According to Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but relative to him. She is not regarded as autonomous being. He is the subject, the absolute; she is the other’ (de Beauvoir 1953: 10). In and through language, our societal and scientific structures define wo/ men as derivative and secondary to men. This androcentric definition of being human has determined (and still does) not only the scholarly perception of men but also those of wo/men. In such an andro-kyriocentric worldview wo/men must remain historically marginal. The androcentric scholarly paradigm can thematize the role of wo/men as a societal, historical, philosophical and the*logical problem but cannot question its own horizon, which relegates the ‘woman question’ to the periphery of scholarly concerns, a trivial issue not worthy of serious attention. The historicalthe*logical marginality of wo/men is therefore generated not only by the original biblical sources but also in and through the andro-kyriocentric interpretations of scholarship. Creating a Radical Democratic Space of Interpretation As we have seen, there are different ways to approach a text, book, or another form of knowledge transmission. The following four models are hegemonic models of reading and knowledge acquisition. These four malestream modes of learning, I suggest, must be complemented and replaced by a feminist radical democratic model of interpretation, since feminist biblical inquiry has as its goal not primarily to produce specialists of antiquity but to enable citizens in society and religion to actively participate in self-determining decision-making processes of learning how to interpret Scripture texts. The Banking Model of Reading The first approach or model of learning and acquiring knowledge is the traditional transmission, factual ‘accumulation’ and ‘absorption’ model. In this communicative pedagogical model, authors/teachers are the experts who collect and deposit all the available knowledge and facts in the pages of their book or lecture on 1 Peter. Readers/students are not valued as partnervoices but are supposed to absorb the knowledge of the expert by accepting and internalizing it through memorization. Readers of 1 Peter ‘store’ this knowledge intellectually or spiritually for use whenever they need it. The

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Brazilian educator Paulo Freire has dubbed this model of reading the ‘banking’ model because it treats knowledge like monetary funds (2008). The author/teacher owns the assets and deposits knowledge. Readers/students are passive receptacles of authorial knowledge. Knowledge can be owned, sold or stored as capital. The author/teacher of a commentary on 1 Peter is the authority that guarantees the value of the knowledge that readers/students receive and bank in their memory. Examinations make sure that readers and students can accurately repeat the knowledge stored in textbooks or lecture notes. Study plans and curricular requirements vouchsafe that all the knowledge that is deemed essential and necessary is transmitted and memorized. If you are using this book as a textbook that contains all that you need to know about 1 Peter, then you probably are ready to take notes and to make sure that you cover all the main topics in order to be prepared for your next test or paper. That is, you engage in the banking model. You also will expect time-charts of the first century, maps of Asia Minor or a glossary to be provided. The Master-Apprentice Model of Reading The second model is the master-apprentice model. In this model of learning/reading, the author/teacher is the expert on 1 Peter whose interpretation serves as a model for his/her readers/students. This model is widespread in graduate courses and seminars and you may have picked up this book because you trust the expertise of the author. Students/readers will expect, for instance, that authors/teachers not just present the theoretical outline of issues, but that they also ‘apply’ interpretive methods and theories when analyzing and interpreting a text such as 1 Peter. They believe that they will learn the skills of interpretation by imitating the ‘master’. In this model of reading, students/readers do not focus so much on the content of a text such as 1 Peter, as is the case in the first model. Rather, they are interested in the technologies of exegesis and explanation. These methods are understood like rules and norms which if followed guarantee that they will find the true meaning of a biblical text such as 1 Peter. Students/readers believe that the truth can be nailed down. If one knows the right methods and is trained to use them cleanly and skillfully, then one can know the historical-cultural situation of the communities in Asia Minor to whom the letter is written. The author/teacher is the ‘master’ or expert who controls the methods and knows the solutions to debated questions in 1 Peter research. If you are working in this mode of learning/reading, then you will expect that this Guide to 1 Peter teaches you how to engage in feminist interpretation of 1 Peter in an expert way so that the true historical, literary , the*logical or feminist meaning of the text is established. You will be trained in adversarial debate in order to establish the correct, scientific interpretation of a historical text such as 1 Peter.



Introduction 13

The Consumer Model of Reading The third reading approach is best dubbed as the ‘consumer’ or ‘smorgasbord’ approach. In this model, readers/students pick and choose what they think is useful. They buy books or subscribe to courses as they would buy cars or clothing, either for utility or entertainment. At Harvard Divinity School, for instance, we start every semester with a ‘shopping period’ during which students move from class to class as readers move from shelf to shelf in bookstores in order to select the most interesting, the easiest or the most palatable fare. Authors/teachers must not only act as experts or masters but also as salespersons who are skilled in advertising their wares. Just as the semester begins with a shopping period, so it ends with students filling out (consumer) evaluations detailing how well the teacher/author performed, whether the reading material was adequate, or whether the demands were too high. Books as consumer products are judged on how much they have sold or how long they have been on the New York Times bestseller list. If you are operating in this mode you might have purchased this book because for one reason or another you find it useful to know something about 1 Peter or you are curious as to how a feminist reads 1 Peter. A major disadvantage 1 Peter has in a consumer market model is that the letter is less known and not considered to be a central and important biblical writing. The Therapeutic Model of Reading The fourth reading approach or learning model is the therapeutic model. In this edifying model, books or courses are selected and evaluated as to whether they make you ‘feel good’ or inspire you spiritually. Books, courses or workshops should not be too demanding but should satisfy the needs of their readers/consumers. Especially religious books or events are often judged by whether they are spiritually edifying or aesthetically pleasing. The passages of 1 Peter are frequently used in spiritual exhortation and in motivation to accept suffering. Hence, books about all kinds and forms of spirituality abound. According to the demands of this model, guides to biblical readings, as this one, must address individuals and gratify their spiritual wants and longings. They are to give security and certainty in an ever-changing world and alienating society. Books and courses on how to pray and meditate with the Bible are much preferred over those that seek to foster a critical engagement with it. 1 Peter becomes an oracle for spiritual guidance that helps its readers to accept and submit to the demands of everyday life. If you are interested in this book because you want to satisfy your emotional and spiritual needs you may be disappointed in it, because it critically interrogates 1 Peter rather than seeks to persuade you to accept the the*logy of the letter.

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A Feminist Emancipatory, Radically Democratic Approach to Interpretation All four mainstream reading and learning approaches can also be analyzed in terms of gender. In the first two paradigms of reading, knowledge production is coded in culturally masculine terms insofar as they stress mastery, expertise and control of the text. Both reading paradigms are at home in the malestream academy and church that until very recently have excluded wo/ men from authoritative knowledge production. These first two paradigms of reading not only construct the author/master in masculine terms but also construe readers/students in culturally feminine terms. In contrast, the last two paradigms of reading, the consumer and therapeutic models, are coded in feminine terms. They construe agency in a culturally feminine code that privatizes and commodifies knowledge in general and biblical-the*logical knowledge in particular. They construct readers/ students as consumers or patients who purchase religious knowledge for their own private use, enjoyment and edification. However, none of these approaches engenders a critical liberating reading experience. While we all have engaged in these four reading approaches at one or another time, in this book I want to invite you to move to a different model of reading/learning that is able to integrate the positive aspects of all four of these models without falling victim to their self-alienating and distorting powers. Instead of seeking to give the power of interpretation to so-called ‘nonexpert’ readers, authors/scholars often deny them the tools for investigating the ideologies, discourses, and pieties that shape their self-identity and determine their lives. Instead of empowering non-expert readers as critical thinkers, the media in general and biblical commentaries in particular often contribute to their self-alienation and adaptation to the values and mores of hegemonic kyriarchal societies and religions. A critical feminist emancipatory approach is not so much interested in helping readers to internalize traditional biblical teachings of and about 1 Peter and malestream scientific historical or cultural knowledge about the letter as in fostering critical thinking on it. Its basic assumption is that knowledge is publicly available to all who can deliberate and that everyone has something to contribute to knowledge about 1 Peter if one is willing to work and wrestle with the letter. Thus, feminist liberationist biblical study seeks to foster the critical examination not only of biblical texts such as 1 Peter but also of one’s own presuppositions, traditions and social locations. It searches for recognition of bias and prejudice, and seeks to replace them with critical arguments that appeal to both reason and the emotions. It wants to foster self-scrutiny and the ability to think what it would be like to be in the shoes of someone different from oneself and to see the world from the point of view of another who is both like and unlike oneself. It requires one to make sure



Introduction 15

that books—even biblical texts such as 1 Peter—and authors/teachers do not become unquestioned ‘authorities’. A radical democratic model of reading 1 Peter engages in critical questioning and debate in order to be able to arrive at a deliberative judgment about the values inscribed in the letter. It is about choice and deliberation and the power to take charge of one’s own interpretation, rather than about control, dependence and passive reception. Its style of reasoning is not combative-competitive but deliberative, engaging in conversations about values and beliefs with authors and co-readers that are most important to us rather than retreating into distant objectivism, dogmatism or relativism that avoids engagement with differences and uncertainties. In the model of reading advocated in this Guide, reading and studying 1 Peter should be problem-oriented rather than positivistic or dogmatic, perspectival rather than relativistic, and contextual-collaborative, recognizing that our own perspectives and knowledge are limited by our social-religious location and that differences in interpretation enrich our thought and life. Truth and meaning are not a given fact or hidden revelation but are achieved in critical practices of questioning and deliberation. Page duBois has warned that the traditional modes of inquiry share in a mode of reasoning that is competitive and combative. Its preferred mode of ascertaining truth is adversarial debate and the honing of arguments that can withstand the most acerbic assault (duBois 1991: 113). In contrast, a radical egalitarian feminist model of reading seeks to foster a style of learning/ reading that does not undermine democratic thinking. Instead, it seeks to support and strengthen democratic modes of reasoning by recognizing the importance of experience, plural voices, emotions and values in the reading process. With Alicia Suskin Ostriker, who identifies herself as ‘critic and poet, as Jew, woman, and (dare I say) human being’ (Suskin Ostriker 1993: 30), I also argue for a critical re-visionist reading of 1 Peter that no longer posits a simple adversarial relationship between male text and female readers but rather points out that wo/men’s re-imaginings of biblical texts such as 1 Peter are both forbidden and invited by the very text and tradition wo/ men are challenging. In Suskin Ostriker’s view, such a revisionist reading consists of ‘three sometimes overlapping forms: a hermeneutics of suspicion, a hermeneutics of desire, and a hermeneutics of indeterminacy’ (Suskin Ostriker 1993: 165). She reasons that a hermeneutics of desire, which she characterizes as ‘you see what you need to see’, has always been practiced by traditional biblical exegesis and maintains that a hermeneutics of indeterminacy which fosters plural readings will be most significant for the future. According to Suskin Ostriker: Human civilization has a stake in plural readings. We’ve seen this at least since the eighteenth century when the notion of religious tolerance was invented to keep the Christian sects from killing each other. The notion of

16

1 Peter racial tolerance came later… Most people need ‘right’ answers, just as they need ‘superior’ races… At this particular moment it happens to be feminists and other socially marginal types who are battling for cultural pluralism. Still, this is an activity we’re undertaking on behalf of humanity, all of whom would be the happier, I believe, were they to give up their addiction to final solutions (Suskin Ostriker 1993: 122-23).

A Public Democratic Space of Interpretation Hence, it is necessary to take biblical reading out of the private, spiritual realm of the individual solitary reader and constitute a forum, a public space where the ekklēsia, the radical democratic assembly, can debate and adjudicate the public meanings of the Scriptures. While Christian biblical interpretation tends to be individualistic and solitary, traditional Jewish interpretation as practiced by feminists provides a radical democratic model for biblical interpretation. According to rabbinic understanding, study and interpretation of Scripture lead to the redemption of the world because they bring G*d’s presence into it. Hence, investigating, arguing and interpreting are sacred activities. In order to reflect on their experience after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as well as to construct a system of meaning, the rabbis used the Bible as a language. Some believed that the Torah was written in black fire on white fire and that the white spaces around the black letters hold meanings that still must be discovered. As Naomi Hyman points out, this belief provides a space for feminist interpretation. She states, Jews of today write Midrash for the same reasons our ancestors did: It is our prayer, our plea and our affirmation. It is the way we insist that our voices be heard while at the same time giving honor to a tradition that has sustained us even as it pushed us aside. We write because we want our children to have stories that are both Jewish and feminist. We write because in the writing, we find places for ourselves in the white spaces between the black letters (Hyman 1998: xviii).

We usually think of reading and interpretation as a passive reception and an individualistic act of self-contemplation rather than as a way of communication and communal identification. Traditional Jewish Torah study, called Havruta, requires a social context. Torah/Bible reading is not, as in the modern tradition, something individualistic and private. Torah speaks only to groups of people who together ‘turn the text again and again’ in order to discover not only ever new meanings in their own historical contexts but also what it means to live ‘the good life’ and to walk in the way of wisdom. 1 Peter’s meaning must be questioned, debated, adjudicated and reformulated again and again.



Introduction 17

Reading 1 Peter in a Radical Democratic Forum Hence, I suggest that you work with this Guide to 1 Peter in a group or forum that constitutes a feminist radical democratic public space of critical debate, creative imagination and substantive conversation. Such critical group discussions should have two focal points: your own social-religious location and interests, and the text of 1 Peter and its possible meanings. The goal of such debates and exploration is not to ascertain the true, single meaning of a passage in 1 Peter as a given ‘fact’ but to render problematic both texts and interpretive perspectives, in order to adjudicate how much texts and interpretations foster values and mindsets of domination or mentalities and visions of liberation. Therefore, I recommend that you team up with a study partner, set aside a regular time for study, choose a text, and identify the perspective with which to look at the text of 1 Peter. It is important that each of you has a copy of the text. Take turns reading it aloud, and discuss what you have noticed or the questions you want to ask, and remember, there are no right or wrong answers. Such a feminist study approach of conscientization needs to be distinguished from wo/men’s consciousness-raising groups. In such wo/men’s groups, the individual and her experience stand in the center of attention. In order not to undermine her self-confidence, no critical questions interrogating her experience are allowed. Not critique and debate but affirmation and solidarity are the goals of such groups. In comparison, Latin American groups of conscientization are not focused just on individual affirmation but much more on critically exploring systemic oppression and the paths to liberation. A radical democratic forum is also different from traditional Bible-study groups, which often have as their goal the inculcation and acceptance of biblical texts and traditions. Insofar as they start from the assumption that 1 Peter is the revealed word of G*d, they begin with a hermeneutics of empathy and obedience rather than with a hermeneutics of suspicion and critical debate. Such groups are also different from academic study groups that focus on biblical texts and use discussions and questions in order to inculcate malestream scientific methods and attitudes of reading. For the sake of objectivity, academic study groups often prohibit any critical reflection on experience and social location of the biblical interpreter or on the contemporary significance and impact of biblical texts such as 1 Peter. The first task, then, before you continue reading this Guide is to initiate such a partnership and group-forum for critical debate and the*-ethical assessment. If you are already working in a group, you might want to discuss whether your assembly constitutes such an ekklēsia, or assembly of critical debate and creative vision. If you are working in a class that does not require group work, get together with some of your classmates and form

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1 Peter

such a group. If you are a professor, try to develop a group-centered syllabus focused not only on questions of biblical specialization but also on generating a critical dialogical exploration of the issues at stake in the interpretation of 1 Peter. In so doing, you may attempt to foster a democratic citizen consciousness and action for changing structures of domination and violence. If you are an individual reader you may want to call up some of your friends or neighbors to form a study partnership. Or you might want to get on the internet and initiate a ‘virtual’ feminist study-team or a discussion group for forming such a radical egalitarian forum for interpreting 1 Peter. If you are not able to do any of this, make sure that you constitute such a virtual forum in your own imagination and stage a running argument and continuing conversation between the different voices and perspectives that populate your mind. One-dimensional thinking must be replaced by a radical democratic form of thinking that cultivates different perspectives and creative imaginations. Essential for the constitution of such a radical democratic egalitarian forum is the presence of true differences in social location, religious confession, political outlook and feminist persuasion. Although such a critical articulation of differences makes group work often difficult and full of tension, it is crucial for the success of radical democratic feminist practices to articulate emancipatory knowledges. Such radical democratic approaches question the dominant mode of reasoning and knowledge production in the Eurocentric malestream paradigm of knowledge that separates reason from feelings and emotions in order to produce detached impartial knowledge. Contrary to this paradigm of knowledge production, a feminist decolonizing reading approach enables us to read 1 Peter critically and ethically. It builds on traditional notions of introduction but is not limited by them.

Chapter 1

Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter To give you a comprehensive introduction for reading 1 Peter, I will engage in a critical rhetorical analysis. Such an analysis attempts to read this letter as a ‘worldly’ text, understood in the sense of Edward Said who states, Texts are worldly, to some degree they are events, and even when they appear to deny it, they are nevertheless a part of the social world, human life, and of course the historical moments in which they are located and interpreted (Said 1983: 4).

To read 1 Peter as a ‘worldly’ text means to read the letter as a text that is part of the world and symbolic universe of its own time as well as our own, and to do so by carefully analyzing it as a communicative argument. In a rhetorical model, world is understood not only as a reservoir of signs and of meaning (as in a semiotic model) but also as a field of power and of action. By carefully analyzing the rhetoric of the text, we are able to hear the author(s)’s arguments, but not those of the audience. In order to be able to hear the voices of the audience and to understand the whole communication, we must read ‘against the grain’ of the text’s rhetoric. 1 Peter and Its Readers Discourse theory and reader‑response criticism, combined with the insight into the rhetorical character of texts, represents a contemporary revival of ancient rhetoric. In the introduction to her anthology of reader-response criticism, Jane Tompkins points out that reader-response criticism’s view of language as a form of action and power is similar to that of the Greek rhetoricians. She also argues that by relocating meaning first in the reader’s self and then in the interpretive strategies that constitute it, reader-response critics ‘assert that meaning is a consequence of being in a particular situation in the world’ (Tompkins 1980: xxv). The net result of this epistemological revolution is to politicize literature and literary criticism again. When discourse is responsible for reality and not merely a reflection of it, then ‘whose discourse prevails makes all the difference’ (Tompkins 1980: xxv). Since we no longer have direct access to

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1 Peter

the actual historical persons and situations by which a text is shaped and to which it is addressed, it is important to carefully trace the rhetoric of a text. For marking the distinction between textual and actual sender-recipient/ message-argument/symbolic-social world/rhetorical problem-situation, I prefer to use ‘inscribed’ rather than ‘intended’ or ‘implied’ author/reader, in order to indicate the textual character of the author/reader. How then can one utilize rhetorical criticism for reading a historical text in such a way that one moves from the ‘world of the text’ of 1 Peter to the inscribed possible worlds of the communities addressed? In order to make this move, I argue, the rhetorical critic must distinguish between at least three levels of communication: the historical argumentative situation, the implied or inscribed rhetorical situation, and the rhetorical situation of contemporary interpretations, which again can be either actualized or textualized. We can no longer read the letter of ‘Peter’ in isolation but are compelled to read it within the framework of the canonical collection and reception that constitutes its present context. This is true not just for readers in divinity schools but also for students in religious studies because the canon establishes not just a the*logical but also a literary context. Hence, I propose that a critical rhetorical analysis of 1 Peter must move through at least four stages: It begins by identifying the rhetorical interests, interpretive models, and social locations of contemporary interpretation; then it moves in a second step to delineating the rhetorical arrangement, interests, and modifications introduced by the author(s) in order to elucidate and establish, in a third step, the rhetorical situation of the letter. In a fourth step it seeks to reconstruct the common historical situation and symbolic universe of the writer/speaker and the recipients/audience. True, such a rhetorical reconstruction of the social‑historical situation and symbolic universe of this N*T letter is still narrative‑laden and can only be constituted as a ‘sub‑text’ of 1 Peter’s text. Yet this ‘sub‑text’ is not simply the story of the sender. It is, rather, the story of the audience to which the letter’s rhetoric is to be understood as an active response (Jameson 1982: 68-91). Therefore, it becomes necessary to assess critically 1 Peter’s the*logical rhetoric in terms of its function for early Christian self‑understanding and community. The nature of rhetoric as political discourse necessitates critical assessment and the*logical evaluation. In what follows, therefore, I would like to combine a critical analysis of the rhetorical arguments of 1 Peter with such a reader-response analysis. In The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne Booth distinguishes between the actual author/reader and the implied author/reader (1983). The implied author is not the real author, but rather the image or picture that you as reader will construct gradually in the process of reading the work. The actual reader is involved in capturing and developing the picture of the inscribed author and inscribed reader, but in so doing the reader assumes the role dictated



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 21

by the author. In other words, in the process of reading 1 Peter, we as readers follow the directives of the implied author (who is not identical with the ‘real’ author) as to how to understand the addressed communities in Asia Minor. That readers follow the directives of the implied author to understand the implied readers as ‘audience’ of the letter who are in need of correction becomes obvious when one considers that almost all interpreters assume that, like contemporary readers, the historical recipients of the letter were Christians. In short, reader‑response criticism distinguishes between the actual author/reader and the implied author/reader, a distinction which that can help us elucidate 1 Peter’s rhetorical intention as it is constructed in the act of reading/interpretation today (reception hermeneutics). The implied author and reader encompass the contemporary interpreter who constructs the inscribed author and reader in the process of reading. Since many things are presupposed, left out or unexplained in a speech/ letter, the audience must ‘supply’ the missing information in line with the rhetorical directives of the speaker/writer in the process of listening/reading. Historical-critical scholars seek to ‘supply’ such information generally in terms of the history of religions, including Judaism, while preachers and Bible‑readers usually do so in terms of contemporary values, life and psychology. Hence, it is important at this point to discuss the terms and criteria used when reading this text. Cultural-Historical Context Scholarship on 1 Peter tends to ‘supply’ such information about the addressed communities either with reference to the symbolic universe of contemporary Judaism, of pagan religions (especially the mystery cults), philosophical schools, Hellenistic Judaism or developing ‘Gnosticism’. The studies of the social setting or ‘social world’ of ‘Petrine Christianity’, in turn, do not utilize religious, doctrinal models of interpretation, but supply the missing information in terms of ‘social data’ gleaned from the N*T letter collection, Acts, the Gospels and non-Christian ancient sources. This so-called ‘data’ is then organized in terms of sociological or anthropological models, especially that of ‘honor and shame’. As diverse as the interpretations of 1 Peter and their implications for the understanding of the communities in Asia Minor are, they almost always follow the author(s)’s rhetorical strategy without questioning or evaluating it. A cursory look at scholarship on 1 Peter indicates that it tends to assume the author(s) to be rhetorically skillful, able to reach the goal of persuading the letter’s audience throughout the centuries that its view of the world is right and those of the audience need to be corrected. The difference in interpretation of the letter is more a difference in degree than a difference

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1 Peter

in interpretational model. The resulting interpretation therefore depends on which directions encoded in the letter exegetes choose to amplify historically and the*logically. Moreover, insofar as Christian New*Testament scholars read 1 Peter as a ‘canonical, inspired text’, we often uncritically accept the implied author(s)’s claims to apostolic authority as historically valid and effective. However, we must ask whether the interpretation of 1 Peter would have developed different interpretive models if, for example, 1 Peter was believed to be written by a Valentinian gnostic or a Jewish rabbi appealing to a Christian audience. In other words, we need to ask: Does 1 Peter’s power of persuasion rest on its assumed canonical authority? Did it have the same effect in a historical situation in which such canonical authority cannot be presupposed? Although interpreters of 1 Peter seek to read the letter as a historical-cultural document, we inevitably read it also as a part of the canon of the New*Testament. Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter The rhetorical arrangement or disposition of the addressed communities in Asia Minor not only establishes the rhetorical strategies the letter employs for persuading the communities in Asia Minor to act according to its instructions, but also indicates the intended or inscribed audience of the letter. Since the first level of communication—the historical level of author(s), audience and world of 1 Peter—is only accessible to us in and through the text, I begin by sketching a critical rhetorical analysis of the text with its inscribed argument, author(s), reader/hearer and world. Sender and Recipients Most critical exegetes agree that the letter is pseudonymous and was written at the end of the first century ce, long after the apostle Peter’s execution. The letter claims to be authored by the fisherman-apostle Simon/Peter from Galilee, but this is not likely the case, because the letter is written in polished Greek and evidences a high level of rhetorical competence. Hence, the letter is probably a pseudonymous communication that rhetorically claims the authority and tradition of the apostle for its content. (Pseudonymity was widely used in antiquity and did not carry the negative meaning of plagiarism we associate with it.) To assure its authority, the letter’s rhetoric also appeals to the authority of Paul insofar as it is cast in terms of the Pauline letter form and claims that both Silvanus and Mark, who are known associates of Paul, are involved in sending the letter. Hence, some scholars have surmised that the letter is written by a group or school that was concerned with keeping Petrine and Pauline traditions alive. In any case, 1 Peter is clearly



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 23

authored and sent from the center of the Roman Empire and claims to be a document of colonized persons who came as migrants from Palestine to live in Rome. 1 Peter is not a writing concerned with inner-church polemics or orthodox beliefs, but as a circular letter it is a rhetorical communication between those who live in the metropolitan center of imperial Rome which is the*logically camouflaged as Babylon, and those who live in Asia Minor as colonial subjects. The inscribed geographical location and socio-political world of the recipients is that of Asia Minor. It is debated whether the place names given in the salutation (greeting) refer simply to geographical areas or whether they more likely refer to Roman provinces. In any case, Asia Minor had been colonized for centuries and had absorbed Hellenistic language and culture as well as Roman imperial commerce and religion. This communication sent from the imperial center presents itself as an authoritative letter of advice and admonition to good conduct and subordination in the colonial public of the provinces. As a communication from the metropolitan center, the circular letter is cast in what had become the traditional and authoritative Pauline letter form. Like the genuine Pauline letters, it elaborates the letter opening (1.12), which in its typical Hellenistic form consists in the simple salutation X sends greetings to Y. It enlarges the traditional greeting by qualifying the sender as ‘apostle of Jesus Christ’, and by characterizing the recipients not in communal-democratic terms as ekklēsia (assembly) but in politicalindividual group terms as ‘transients’ or ‘migrants’ who have been ‘elect[ed]’ through ‘the foreknowledge of G*d, the Father’, the ‘sanctification of the Spirit for obedience’, and the ‘sprinkling of the blood of Christ’. The letter also uses an elaborate, uniquely Pauline form of greeting (‘may grace and peace be with you in abundance’). As was customary in Hellenistic letters, the greeting is followed by a Thanksgiving (1.3-12), which, as in Pauline literature, is also more elaborate than the traditional Hellenistic form. In classical-rhetorical terms, the ‘Thanksgiving’ functions as a unit of praise (encomium). It is expressed in 1 Peter in a very long and complicated sentence that does not so much teach as celebrate and confess. G*d’s mighty acts on behalf of the letters’ recipients are praised as saving acts in the past, characterized as a time of faith in Jesus Christ and hope in the experience of Christians in the present, and finally as G*d’s mighty acts in the eschatological future. Even the prophets recognize the grace given to the recipients and even the angels seek to understand the salvation/imperial wellbeing (sōtēria) given to them (1.1012). Like the genuine Pauline letters, 1 Peter ends with a farewell address in 5.12-14 that summarizes the purpose of the letter as ‘to encourage’ the readers, ‘to testify to the true grace of G*d’, and to admonish them to ‘Stand fast in it!’ It mentions those who send greetings (‘the elect one in Babylon’,

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‘my son Mark’, and Silvanus the transcriber or the deliverer of the letter), and ends with the admonition to great each other with ‘the kiss of love’ and wishes all of them peace (5.14). It is debated, however, whether a woman is mentioned among the senders. The third person or figure mentioned in 5.13 is that of the ‘co-elect one in Babylon’ (en Babylōni syneklektē—a feminine form) which can be understood as referring to a communal representation of the Jewish ‘Christian’ community in Rome, to the Roman church, or to a well-known wo/ man leader in Rome. Just as exegetes construe the expression ‘elect lady and sister’ (eklektē kyria kai adelphē) in 2 John 1 and 13 as not referring to an individual wo/man, so also commentators of 1 Peter insist that the expression ‘co-elect in Babylon’ does not refer to an actual well-known wo/man leader in Rome but that it is a reference to the Roman church or to a figurative representation of this church. If exegetes read 5.13 as referring to an actual wo/man, they have tended to understand 5.13 as referring to Peter’s wife. Judith Applegate has carefully scrutinized the pro and con arguments for understanding 1 Pet. 5.13 as referring to a wo/man leader in Rome (1992). She points out that while scholars claim that it is ‘natural’ not to think of a particular wo/man leader, three out of five letter greetings to and from churches refer to an actual wo/man (1 Cor. 16.19; Col. 4.15; Rom. 16.6). Moreover, the expression ‘elect’ is never used in conjunction with the word ekklēsia but is used only with reference to individuals (cf. Rom. 16.13). Hence, Applegate concludes that the recipients must have known the wo/ man leader who was mentioned among those who send greetings. If this is the case, then 1 Peter, like the Neo-Aristotelian tractates on ‘household’ management (oikonomia), appealed to the authority of a well-known wo/man leader for legitimating its message of subordination. By not mentioning the name of the early Christian wo/man leader, this appeal remains general enough so that one could not argue against it. Moreover, it is not clear whether wo/men are included among the addresses since the letter uses masculine generic or gender-specific terms, both grammatically (eklektoi) and in terms of content (adelphoi), to characterize the recipients. If kyriocentric (lord, slave-master, father, husband, male-centered) language is used here in the generic, inclusive sense, then one can assume that wo/men in general and slave-wo/men in particular were included among the addressees. The reference to well-to-do wives in 3.1-6 supports such a grammatically generic reading because it indicates that ‘ladies’ were definitely part of the community. However, one could also argue for a gender specific understanding. Insofar as the behavior of slaves and wives is mentioned as a special case, the rest of the letter could be addressed to freeborn male citizens only, depending on how one understands the community’s self-understanding of ‘brotherhood’.



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 25

Temple or Household? If ‘House of G*d’ (oikos tou theou) in 4.17 is understood as household rather than as temple, then the ‘brotherhood’ is conceived at least by the author(s) as the household of G*d, whose head (paterfamilias) is G*d the father who is also the father of Jesus Christ (1.2-3) and whose members are ‘obedient children’ (1.14). The members of the ‘brotherhood’ have been ‘set free (ransomed like slaves)’ from ‘the traditions of their fathers’ (1.18) and are invoking now ‘the father who judges all people impartially’ (1.17). Although they are like ‘newborn infants longing for the pure spiritual mother-milk’, no mother of the family is mentioned. The recipients are addressed as ‘beloved’ (2.11; 4.12). They are characterized as those who love G*d whom they have not seen (1.8) but who cares for them (5.7). They are told to greet each other with the ‘kiss of love’. They are admonished to have ‘genuine mutual love and to love one another deeply’ (1.22). In 3.8, which concludes the ‘subordination’ section, five adjectives characterize the love-ethos of the ‘brotherhood’ or of the ‘house of G*d’: unity of spirit, mutual sympathy, brotherly (and sisterly?) love for each other, compassionate kind feelings toward one another, and humble mindedness. Those who are ‘beloved’ should become ‘zealots of doing good’, and above all maintain constant love for one another because ‘love covers a multitude of sins’ (4.8). Such love is expressed in hospitality, good stewardship ‘of the manifold grace of G*d’, service with all one’s gifts (charismata), and speaking the very words of G*d (4.9-11). The addressees are to break the vicious circle of violence and ‘not return evil for evil’ (3.9) but replace slandering and reviling with blessing, ‘for they were called to receive a blessing’, an expression at home in the language world of Judaism that is underscored by a lengthy quote adapted from Ps. 34.12-16. A different ‘honor code’ determines the ‘brotherhood’ community, insofar as it distinguishes ‘honorable’ behavior toward everyone and toward the emperor from ‘brotherly love’ which is required in the ‘brotherhood’. However, the dominant kyriocentric elite male ethos seems to prevail, insofar as the community is called ‘brotherhood’ although we know that wo/men were members of the community. The designation of the community as ‘brotherhood’ could be a conventional reference borrowed from the nomenclature of social collegia and religious associations, could imply a masculine the*logical self-understanding, or could refer to the community either as a patriarchal family or as an egalitarian siblinghood. If the recipients understood their community as adelphotēs in the generic sense as ‘siblinghood’ of ‘sisters and brothers’ who are equally called, holy and elect, rather than as kyriarchal male-only family, then one can grasp that it is the author(s) who seek(s) to reshape the self-understanding of the communities in Asia Minor in terms of the patriarchal household or familia.

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The characterization of the recipients is ambiguous in two other ways. First, it is not clear whether their characterization as transients or migrants (parepidēmoi) and as non-citizens or resident aliens (paroikoi) is political and establishes commonality between the sender(s) and recipients as colonial subjects or whether it is purely religious asserting that the ‘fatherland’ of the recipients is in heaven. Second, it is not clear whether the recipients, like Peter, are Jews with a messianic bent—‘Christianoi’, as they are labeled by outsiders—or whether they are Gentile converts. The first interpretation is suggested by the rich Jewish language of the document and was prevalent until around the beginning of the nineteenth century, whereas most modern exegetes hold the second. Without question, 1 Peter’s inscribed symbolic universe is that of Israel, which is expressed and modulated in the language of the Hellenistic Jewish Bible, the Septuagint (lxx). Outline of the Overall Argument of 1 Peter The argumentative structure of 1 Peter has been delineated differently by different scholars, and I will do so here in terms of the letter’s arguments. 1.1-12: Greetings and Introduction The recipients are introduced as paroikoi. This word can be understood in political-legal terms to designate non-citizens or as expressing their religious identity of belonging to another world while being aliens in this world. Because words are not univocal but multivalent, which meaning might be intended can only be decided with reference to an overall interpretive framework and method. 1.13–2.10: First Argument: People of G*d The first line of argument articulates the recipients’ ‘high’ status as the people of G*d, ‘house (oikos) of the Spirit’ and ‘royal priesthood’ (1.15– 2.10) alluding to Jewish democratic understandings in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures. 2.11–3.12: Second Argument: Empire and Household The second line of argument spells out the ‘good’ behavior demanded especially from the subordinate members of the household (oikos). It utilizes the socio-political form of the colonial oikos-discourse, which is usually called by exegetes ‘Household Code’. The argument in 1 Peter, however, does not begin by addressing behavior in the household but by prescribing behavior toward the authorities of the Empire. Such emphasis on suffering is also found in the opening and the conclusion of the letter (1.6-10; 5.1, 9). It is also developed in the following sections.



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 27

3.13–4.11: Third Argument: Suffering and Doing Good The third line of argument articulates the necessity of suffering (pathēmata) and explains what ‘doing good’ means for the ‘stewards’ (oikonomoi) of G*d’s manifold grace who are publicly put down, harassed and defamed as Christianoi—that is, as Messianists (3.13–4.11). The section which spans 3.13-22 begins with a rhetorical question: ‘Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?’ It tells the recipients not to be intimidated, but to keep a good conscience. Finally, vv. 18-22 speaks of Christ’s suffering (cf. also 4.1), resurrection, vindication and exaltation. 4.12–5.11: Conclusion: Summary and Amplification These three argumentative moves are summed up and amplified in 4.12– 5.11, which continues to tell the readers to expect difficulties as ‘Christians’ and to undergo ‘honorable suffering’ because the end is in view. 1 Peter 4.12-19 refers to the ‘fiery ordeal’ and tells the audience to rejoice because they will be blessed when G*d’s glory is revealed if they now share in Christ’s suffering. If they suffer in the name of Christ, the Spirit of G*d is upon them. To suffer as a Christian (a Messianist) should not be considered a disgrace. The section ends with the statement that the judgment of G*d begins with the house of G*d. These admonitions are followed by an address to elder and younger members of the community that spells out the right order of the household of G*d and is reinforced with the vivid description of the adversary, the disorder creating diabolos (‘slanderer’ or ‘calumniator’) who is compared to a roaring lion seeking to devour everyone (5.1-9). The whole summation ends with a doxology to ‘the G*d of all grace’ (5.10-11). 5.12-14: Greetings from Babylon-Rome These greetings characterize the senders and their socio-political location. The Overall Argument of 1 Peter In short, the argument of 1 Peter moves from an elaboration of the theoretically high but socio-politically precarious status of the recipients to the central part of the letter which addresses the problem of how to behave in a politically correct manner (‘doing good’), especially if one is a subordinate member of ‘the household’. The rhetorical strategy then shifts to a more general argument addressing all the intended recipients about ‘good’ behavior in public and the ‘honorable sufferings’ to be expected. Finally, it climaxes with admonitions regarding the exercise of leadership in the ‘household (oikos) of G*d’. Thus, central to the rhetoric of the letter is the image of the household. Its inscribed argument engages the hegemonic socio-political and cultural discourses about household management

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(peri oikonomias) and about politics (peri politeias) which were inextricably intertwined in Greco-Roman political theory. Reconstructing the Rhetorical Situation The inscribed lofty titles of ancient Israel as the elect people of G*d and the exalted rhetoric and self-understanding of those living in the diaspora contrasts greatly with the inscribed situation of their harassment and suffering. This contradiction indicates the rhetorical situation and problem the author(s) seek(s) to address. As a rhetorical text, 1 Peter, like other rhetorical communications, is engendered by a rhetorical situation to which the letter must be at least a partially ‘fitting’ response if it should be effective. Moreover, as a particular discourse, 1 Peter, like any other rhetorical discourse, is engendered by a specific situation and an exigence that invites utterance. However, only when rhetoric endows certain events and circumstances with meaning do they become salient as a rhetorical situation. Discourses may describe particular occurrences but they actually give us more information about the strategies of the speaker/author(s) than about the actual situation. Nevertheless, the inscribed rhetorical situation must have some commonality with the actual situation of the audience if the author(s)’s arguments should have persuasive power. Hence, it is important to investigate the ways in which malestream exegetes define the rhetorical situation and strategy of the author(s). In so doing, we must ask whether the ‘metaideologizing’ of some of the major contemporary interpretations of 1 Peter strengthens the colonizing rhetoric of the text by privileging its kyriarchal elements and by reading its egalitarian-decolonizing-dissident consciousness in terms of hegemonic consciousness that naturalizes kyriarchal power relations as ‘G*d’s will’. The author(s)’s rhetoric characterizes and constructs the rhetorical situation in terms of three rhetorical strategies that are valorized differently by different interpreters: (1) the strategy of suffering, (2) the strategy of election and honor and (3) the strategy of subordination. These rhetorical strategies are not discrete parallel topical areas but work together dialectically to construct the rhetorical situation to which the letter can be understood as a ‘fitting’ response. Main differences in the interpretation of the letter and its function result from the fact that exegetes tend to centralize one strategy and privilege it over the others. Scholars almost universally agree that the problem confronted by the rhetoric of 1 Peter is that of suffering. In addition, virtually all recent interpreters agree that 1 Peter does not refer to an Empire-wide persecution of Christians but rather describes the situation of the recipients as harassment, social ostracism and slander of Christians on a local level. There is also agreement that the recipients are threatened with suffering because they are Christians.



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 29

A close reading of the letter’s rhetoric can show that the opening and the conclusion of the letter refer in an almost formulaic way to the suffering of Christ and the Christians. For instance, 1.10-11 refers to the sufferings and subsequent glory of Christ, 5.1 calls Peter a ‘witness to the sufferings of Christ’, 1.6 stresses that the recipients can rejoice in their imperishable eschatological inheritance even if now—‘for a little while’—they have had ‘to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of [their] faith…is tested by fire’, and 5.9 refers to their knowledge that ‘the “brotherhood” in the whole world is experiencing the same kind of suffering’. Christ’s Paradigmatic Suffering Within the letter, one can isolate three clusters of ‘suffering’ that refer to the Messiah’s (Christ’s) suffering as paradigmatic for the recipients of the letter. In 2.18-25 the house slaves who suffer unjustly (v. 19) are referred to Christ’s example of suffering but not to his ministry and message. The section 3.13-22 begins with the rhetorical question, ‘Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?’ It tells the recipients not to be intimidated but to keep a good conscience ‘so that those who abuse you for your good conduct as Christians (in Christ) may be put to shame’, and then in vv. 18-22 speaks of Christ’s suffering (cf. also 4.1), resurrection, vindication and exaltation. Furthermore, 4.12-19 refers to the ‘fiery ordeal’ and tell the audience to rejoice because they will be blessed when Christ’s glory is revealed if they now share in his suffering. If they suffer in the name of Christ, the Spirit of G*d is upon them. To suffer as a ‘Christian’ should not be considered a disgrace. The section ends with the statement that the judgment of G*d begins with the household of G*d, asks what will become of those who are ungodly and sinners, and concludes ‘Therefore, let those who suffer according to G*d’s will entrust themselves to a faithful creator while continuing to do good’. Suffering and ‘doing good’, suffering and being called a ‘Christian’, are intrinsically and eschatologically intertwined just as they are in the example of Christ/Messiah. The Strategy of Election and Honor The author(s)’s rhetoric of honor, praise and glory on the one hand and of slander, shame and disgrace on the other has engendered several books and numerous articles that offer a reading of 1 Peter in terms of the anthropological, ‘honor and shame’ rhetoric of Mediterranean culture. For instance, Barth L. Campbell has analyzed the rhetoric of honor and shame and its function in the overall rhetoric of the letter (1998). According to Campbell, this rhetoric of honor and shame is summed up in 2.12: ‘Conduct yourself honorably among the Gentiles, so that though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds, and glorify G*d when he comes

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to judge’ (nrsv). While Elliott previously reconstructed the meaning of the letter in terms of sectarian cohesiveness, more recently he has also read the ‘gospel according to Peter’ in the key of ‘honor and shame’ (1994). According to this anthropological theory, ancient Mediterranean culture was structured by the binary dualism of ‘honor and shame’. Such an interpretive grid, however, is conceptualized in kyriocentric terms whereby maleness is associated with honor and femaleness with shame. Moreover, this dualistic theory of cultural anthropology is intertwined with antiquarian historical studies’ insistence that the past is totally different from the present. In biblical studies’ appropriation of this cultural theory of ‘honor and shame’, the present is represented as contemporary American culture (which is understood in the singular!). Furthermore, the Mediterranean cultures of antiquity are said to have been group cultures, in which males embody the honor of the group while females embody the family’s shame. These cultures are conflicting in nature, hierarchical and oriented toward status, honor, praise and recognition. Contemporary American culture in turn is construed as an individualistic ‘guilt’ culture, which is labeled an equal opportunity culture because of its egalitarian, democratic, non-hierarchical ethos. Thereby, biblical antiquity is either ‘orientalized’ and reified as the totally ‘other’ of modern American culture or it is romanticized—especially by the political Right—as the time when the world was still in order, the family was patriarchal, and society honored the ancestral kyriarchal customs and social hierarchies. Reading 1 Peter with the lens of the honor-shame construct, Elliott understands the attack on Christians as a ‘classic example of public shaming designed to demean and discredit the believers in the court of public opinion with the ultimate aim of forcing their conformity to prevailing norms and values’ (Elliott 1994: 170). In response, 1 Peter does not recommend they ‘return insult with insult’ but rather turns social disgrace into grace by calling for engagement in honorable conduct. The cultural ethos of ‘honor-shame’, the*logically rationalized as the essential criterion for honorable conduct, is no longer public opinion but the ‘will of G*d’. Christ becomes the chief paradigm for and facilitator of such honorable conduct. Honorable conduct has a ‘missionary’ effect, especially in the case of wives and the whole community insofar as it persuades the Gentiles to cease their shaming of Christians and instead give honor to G*d. Finally, suffering itself is understood in a positive light: it is a divine test that, if passed, leads to eschatological honor and glory. Steven Richard Bechtler has focused on suffering, community and Christology in 1 Peter in terms of the ‘honor-shame’ culture in which the letter was written, and concludes that the problem of suffering in 1 Peter is the threat to the honor of the community. According to him, the addressees of 1 Peter were attacked, verbally abused and accused of



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 31

wrongdoing because of their conversion. Such attacks and harassment constituted a threat to their honor and posed a serious problem for their self-identity in a society in which ‘one’s place was determined by one’s socially conferred honor’ (Bechtler 1998: 207). Hence, the letter seeks to provide a legitimation of their symbolic universe that is able to satisfactorily address the problem of their suffering and social disgrace. The letter accomplishes this by constituting the Christian community as an alternative social entity and symbolic universe in which honor is differently understood and allocated. G*d, and not society, is the ultimate source of honor. Just as G*d has restored the honor of Christ, who has suffered disgrace, so G*d will bestow honor on Christ’s followers in the very near future and does so now through the spirit. According to this the*logical rhetorical universe, the slanderous accusations of the Christians’ opponents will result in a loss of honor not for them but for those who dishonor them now. Although Bechtler realizes that ‘most of what has been said…concerning honor and shame in Mediterranean societies actually applies predominantly to adult males’, he does not ask if scholars ‘masculinize’, or, better, ‘kyriarchalize’ (since the honor and shame of elite propertied males is at stake), the symbolic universe inscribed in the letter by interpreting 1 Peter in the key of honor-shame. The Rhetoric of Subordination or of Being ‘Subjects’ The injunction to subordination is used five times in 1 Peter. Four times it addresses a group of people: everyone in 2.13, household slaves in 2.18, wives in 3.1, and younger people or neophytes in 5.1-5. Only once is it used in a descriptive praise statement in 3.22, which states that angels, authorities and powers were made subject to Jesus Christ who ‘has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of G*d’. This last statement makes it clear that hypotassein (‘to subordinate’) expresses a relation of ruling and power. Apocalyptic and cosmic language meta-mythologizes the kyriarchal order of the Empire. Jesus Christ is Lord (kyrios) who is the ‘right hand’ of G*d, the Almighty. Whereas church ministry is later understood in analogy to Christ’s power of ruling, 1 Peter admonishes the elders of the community not to lord (katakyrieuontes) it over those in their charge. The Core of the Letter In a classical-rhetorical analysis the section 2.11–3.12 ‘emerges as the core of the letter’ (Campbell 1998: 231) and could be titled: Become Colonial Subjects/Subalterns. Since the subaltern behavior of household slaves and wives towards the imperial authorities is the topos or theme of the central argumentatio, scholars note that the author(s) first combine(s) and advocate(s) here the imperial ethos spelled out in the discourses peri politeias (‘on the political order’, 2.13) and peri oikonomias (‘on household

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science’, 2.18–3.7), then fund(s) it with reference to the example of the suffering Christ and the matriarch Sarah, and finally moralize(s) such colonial submission as righteousness and as ‘doing good’ (3.8-12). The whole section is introduced with an appeal to ‘honorable conduct’ addressed to the ‘non-citizens and transients’ who are hailed as ‘beloved’ (agapētoi). At this point, it becomes obvious that the sender(s) the*logize(s) and moralize(s) the dominant kyriarchal ethos of Roman imperialism and request(s) that the subordinates realize and live it in their practices of subordination. The rationale and motivation given is missionary—they should conduct themselves ‘honorably’ so that the Gentiles glorify G*d on the day of ‘visitation’ (episcopēs). The command to abstain from human desires (sarkikōn epithymiōn) that endanger their lives (psychē) is elaborated and elucidated in 2.11-17 with the admonition to subject themselves to the emperor as the supreme one and to the governors who are sent by him (i.e. to the imperial administration), so that these figures of authority recognize them as doing what is right, honorable or good. The the*logical justification given here is that such submission, understood as ‘doing the honorable’ is ‘the will of G*d’. Here, the elite masculine ethos of ‘honorableness’ has become ‘Christianized’. The overall rhetorical strategy of the letter is summed up in 2.17: ‘Honor everyone, love the “brotherhood”, fear G*d, honor the emperor!’ Unlike in 2.13, the injunction to the house-slaves is not stated in an imperative but in a circumstantial participle grammatical form, also used in 3.7-9, and indicates that the whole section continues the imperatives of 2.11 and 13. Slave wo/men’s ‘doing good’ consists in their subjecting themselves even to harsh and unjust masters so that if unjustly beaten and suffering, ‘if that is G*d’s will’, they do so for the purpose of ‘doing right’. Christ’s innocent suffering is then elaborated as an example for such honorable behavior in suffering. In a similar fashion, freeborn wo/men are told to subject themselves to their husbands, even to those who are not believers. The goal here is the conversion of the husbands that will be brought about not by their ‘preaching’ to them but by their proper ‘lady-like’ conduct of purity and subordination exemplified by the matriarch Sarah, the prime example for female converts to Judaism. Finally, the ‘brotherhood’ is not only to be governed by mutual love and support but also by subordination. In 5.5 the ‘younger’ members of the ‘brotherhood’, who are either younger in age or converts, are told to subject themselves to the older, the presbyters. Although the presbyters are admonished at the same time not to exercise kyriarchal leadership, this injunction still indicates that the inscribed argument seeks to fashion the order of the community as one of subordination.



1.   Rhetorical Analysis of 1 Peter 33

Conclusion In sum, the Roman colonial cultural rhetoric of subjection advocates the submission of the subaltern migrants and non-citizens in Asia Minor and specifies as problem cases the unjust suffering of household slave wo/men and the marriage-relationship between Christian wo/men and Gentile husbands. Contemporary exegetes are generally embarrassed by this rhetoric of subjection, which feminist biblical scholars have indicted. Hence, they seek to eliminate or mitigate the problem for modern hearers/readers by translating hypotassein (‘subordinate’) with ‘accept the authority’, ‘defer to’, ‘show respect for’, ‘recognize the proper social order’, or ‘participate in’, ‘be involved with’, ‘be committed to’ (Senior 1980: 430). Although such an apologetic translation is primarily concerned with ‘wo/men’ and ‘liberal’ readers/hearers, at the same time it conceals the elite male character of hypotassein and its colonizing function, which in 1 Peter has become ‘the*logized’. This indicates how much translation is also always interpretation.

Chapter 2

Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible Although a plethora of metaphors and titles portray the recipients of 1 Peter in terms of the covenant people of Israel, the letter never mentions Israel directly, but describes the ‘Christian’ community as the ‘new Israel’. Israel and Judaism are not yet seen as the ‘other’ of the emerging Christian communities, but as their constitutive identity. This is programmatically expressed, for instance, in 1 Pet. 1.15-16: ‘As the One who called you is holy, even you yourself must become holy in every respect of your lives, because Scripture says, “You shall be holy because I am holy”’. Those who have been born anew are elect and holy, which, according to Lev. 20.7, 25, means that they are set apart from all other peoples. The communities of 1 Peter are best seen as counterparts to Gentile society. This Jewish self-identity of the ‘brotherhood’ comes especially to the fore in 2.4-10, where the author(s) use(s) a plethora of traditional images to characterize the elect and holy ones as the covenant people of G*d (Exod. 19.6). This section is steeped in the language of the Scriptures and the traditions of Israel and Judaism. It not only echoes previously introduced themes, but also integrates older traditions similar to those found in Qumran, rabbinic Judaism and the Pauline letters. The following images characterize the dignity and lofty status of the recipients in terms of the traditional attributes of Israel: They are ‘living stones’, being ‘built into a temple of the Spirit’ or a ‘spiritual house’ (2.5). They are a holy and royal priesthood, a chosen race, a holy nation, G*d’s very own people who have been summoned to tell forth the great deeds of the one who has called them from darkness to light, an image that could allude to conversion (2.9). They who were once a non-people are now the people of G*d, who have been graced with mercy. If, however, we read the text of the letter with the dualistic ‘Christianity/Judaism’ lens, we cannot but read it in a supersessionist and co-opting, colonizing fashion which appropriates and arrogates the honorific titles and identity descriptions of Judaism to Christianity, of the synagogue to the church. It is no longer the Jewish people but the Christian communities that are the people of G*d. Such an appropriating reading has become the standard reading today because we read 1 Peter as a revealed text of Christian Scriptures. Such reading of 1 Peter as a ‘Christian and not Jewish’ Scripture,



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 35

however, is bound to inculcate Christian election and superiority over and against Judaism. In the following, I would like to explore with you whether there is another way to read this text so that 1 Peter becomes truly Scripture—a liberating word of G*d. I will first explore the pitfalls of a supersessionist self-colonizing reading. Then I will ask: Did the first recipients of the letter understand themselves as ‘Jewish’ or ‘Christian’, or as both? I will then look at the tension that may exist between the author(s)’s and the audience’s understanding of the identity-forming name Christianos (‘Messianist’), which is mentioned in 4.16. Finally, I will explore this tension by looking at the Balch-Elliott debate and the attempted reinterpretation of the Messianic self-understanding of the communities in Asia Minor by these authors. Supersessionist Reading of 1 Peter Most professional and general readers read the text of 1 Peter as Christians, and even if the reader is not Christian, s/he likely reads it as a Christian text since it is part of the Christian N*T. Such reading, however, has been rightly criticized as a supersessionist appropriation of 1 Peter. The word ‘supersessionism’ comes from the Latin verb sedeo, sedere, sedi, sessum, ‘to sit’, plus super, ‘upon’. It thus signifies one thing being replaced or supplanted by another. According to David Novak, a supersessionist reading understands the N*T either as an addition to or as a replacement of the old covenant—that is, the religion of the Torah and Jewish Pharisaic tradition (2004). When one reads 1 Pet. 2.4-10 as a Christian rather than as a Jewish text, such a Christian reading understands the recipients as the new people of G*d. All honorific titles are understood in such a reading as Christian and no longer Jewish. Christianity is thus understood as a replacement of Judaism or as a complement (Old Testament complemented by the New*Testament) by which Christianity supersedes Judaism. Betsy Bauman-Martin argues that supersessionism itself might be better understood from a postcolonial viewpoint as a strategy that posits an “other” to better delineate one’s own group, plunders the resources of a marginalized group to delineate the self in relation to the colonial power and leaves that other group in a position of no value or status (Bauman-Martin 2007: 149f).

Bauman-Martin not only argues that general readers and scholars read 1 Peter in a supersessionist fashion and thereby in a colonizing way, but also asserts that the text itself is supersessionist and therefore colonialist. Rather than attempting to show that 1 Peter does not define itself over and against Judaism, Bauman-Martin argues that the letter is itself supersessionist because of its Christology. She thus concludes:

36

1 Peter Having determined that 1 Peter contains supersessionist elements, it is helpful to see supersessionism as well as Jewish-Christian relations as part of a wider context—as components within the power configurations of the Greco-Roman world. The attitude of the author of 1 Peter toward Judaism is determined in part by a stance against the Roman Empire. In its effort for legitimacy or even to achieve a more effective form of resistance and to set itself up as a true community, Christians had to both affirm the Hebrew Scriptures and to deny their applicability to the Jews themselves (BaumanMartin 2007: 156).

In short, Bauman-Martin argues that 1 Peter adopted Jewish language as a postcolonial argument to defend the Christian communities over and against ‘the coercive identity politics of Roman imperial power…by metaphorizing, decontextualizing and displacing’ Jewish identity (BaumanMartin 2007: 161). Thus, to Bauman-Martin, the author(s)’s cooptation of the Jewish tradition begins with the appropriation of the metaphor of the Jewish diaspora, a move that claims diasporic status for the Christian community (Bauman-Martin 2007: 164). Closely related to this cooptation of the diaspora metaphor are the designations ‘strangers’ and ‘aliens’. The author(s) of 1 Peter thereby ‘takes the identification of alien from its original owners’, sets ‘his communities up as the valued alien groups’, and seeks ‘to resist imperial definition of alien as bad’ (Bauman-Martin 2007: 167). Although the letter expresses a simultaneously Jewish and Christian hybrid identity, Bauman-Martin argues that this identity ‘so stabilizes that it becomes non-hybrid, completely Christian’ (Bauman-Martin 2007: 168). According to Bauman-Martin, the author(s) appropriate(s) key Jewish concepts, including ‘the royal priesthood’ (2.5-9)—a concept which is, according to her, inherently hierarchical and undemocratic—the Suffering Servant (2.21-25), Passover and liberation (1.19), the use of the Septuagint, the understanding of home as the land of Israel, covenant promises, references to the prophets (1.10-12) and, perhaps the most aggressive, the use of the term ‘Gentile’ to refer to anyone who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, including, or especially, Jews (1 Pet. 2.12, 4.2-4). These appropriations are in line with those of colonial and imperial powers which also seek ‘to rewrite the past of the oppressed—distorting it and destroying it, and often inserting themselves into it, all as a means of establishing superiority and legitimating their own identities, much as the author of 1 Peter does with Judaism’ (Bauman-Martin 2007: 170). Thus, Bauman-Martin reads the letter’s supersessionism as an imitation of imperialist domination because it appropriates the Scriptures and identity markers of Judaism without reference to ‘real Jews’. Read in and through the lens of postcolonial theory, the letter of 1 Peter becomes a document of imperialism that eliminates clear elements of ancient Jewish religion



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 37

by claiming them as Christian. While I completely agree with BaumanMartin that such a supersessionist reading permeates scholarship on 1 Peter, I would argue that a decolonizing reading of 1 Peter must critically analyze the presuppositions of its interpretations in order to be able to focus on the colonizing elements of the text. Bauman-Martin only glances briefly at the political subordination section of 1 Pet. 2.11–4.11, as she focuses on the first part of the letter. Taking a different approach, I have focused primarily on the central part of the letter in my own decolonizing reading of 1 Peter because it admonishes the audience to submit to the colonizing powers of its society, the Roman Empire (Schüssler Fiorenza 2007a). How then is one to adjudicate such different ‘postcolonial’ ‘decolonizing’ readings? Is 1 Peter Jewish or Christian? The Wrong Question to Ask Bauman-Martin can only maintain that the letter itself is supersessionist by rejecting Daniel Boyarin’s argument that we cannot speak about Judaism and Christianity as two distinct opposing religions until the fourth or fifth century. Until then, there are no sets of features that clearly define ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ in such a way that the two categories do not overlap. This proposal, carefully developed in Boyarin’s Border Lines (2004) and succinctly argued in The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (2012) is revolutionary insofar as it opens up the possibility of a nonsupersessionist, non-colonizing reading of the N*T in general and 1 Peter in particular. To the contrary, Baumann-Martin argues that all first-century texts indicate clear understandings that to be Jewish was to be distinct in a number of ways and the Christian writers defined their groups in contradistinction. Indeed the problem with some of Boyarin’s points are that if one takes his conclusions seriously, there is no such thing as supersessionism as long as one of the parties claims a share in the texts or concepts, regardless of how they view the other participants (Bauman-Martin 2007: 153 n. 32).

This is not quite correct, if one looks carefully at Boyarin’s proposal that the writings of the N*T should be read as ‘Christian’ Jewish writings. Boyarin convincingly argues that the notion of the ‘parting of the ways’, which was supposed to have taken place after a period of fluidity at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century, took place much later. He points out that the fluidity and diversity of Judaism did not end with the destruction of the temple or the so-called Council of Yavneh (c. 90 ce)—a Talmudic legend patterned after the famous imperial Councils of Nicaea (325 ce) or Constantinople (381 ce). These ecumenical councils, which were called by the emperor, functioned to establish ‘a Christianity that was completely separated from Judaism. At least from a juridical standpoint, then Judaism

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and Christianity became completely separate religions only in the fourth century’ (Boyarin 2012: 12-13). To illustrate his point, Boyarin translates and quotes a letter of Jerome (347–420 ce), a Christian scholar, to his colleague Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce): In our own days there exists a sect among the Jews throughout all the Synagogues of the East, which is called the sect of Minei, and is even now condemned by the Pharisees. The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, is the Same as the one in whom we believe. But while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other (cited in Boyarin 2012: 16).

The parting of the ways of Judaism and Christianity was completed by Roman imperial power to serve imperial colonial interests. As a result, one could no longer be both Jewish and Christian. The canonical consolidation of the Christian Scriptures took place at this same time. Every Christian reading of the Bible is now necessarily supersessionist if we do not question such a colonizing reading. If we should be able to read N*T texts such as 1 Peter as fundamentally Jewish texts, Boyarin argues, we must give up the understanding that ‘religions are fixed sets of convictions with well defined boundaries’, which does not allow for the possibility that one could at once be both a Jew and a Christian (Boyarin 2012: 8). He suggests, therefore, that we speak of ‘Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews’ prior to the fourth or fifth century ce. If one accepts Boyarin’s proposal to read 1 Peter as a ‘Christian’ Jewish writing, one must, however, still defend against supersessionism because the scholarship on 1 Peter documents that Christian scholars and general readers alike continue to read the letter in a supersessionist fashion, since the word ‘Christian’ continues to be understood in ‘difference to’ or ‘over and against’ what is Jewish. This continuing misunderstanding was expressed by a puzzled student in my class: When you say that 1 Peter should be understood as a Jewish text, it was not quite clear to me whether you were referring to all in the Jewish tradition or only to those who accepted Jesus as their Messiah. If the first is the case, how would you interpret 1 Peter 1.2, which characterizes the readers as those ‘who have been chosen and destined by God, the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood’?

Hence, in order to make clear that 1 Peter should be read as a Jewish writing, one must change the nomenclature. Although I had argued that 1 Peter does not define the identity of its audience over and against Jews/Judaism and that the letter can be read as a Jewish letter addressed to a Jewish



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 39

audience, the student still read it in Christian terms. I wonder whether Boyarin’s suggested nomenclature ‘Christian Jews’ and ‘non-Christian Jews’ still allows for the misunderstanding of supersessionism, because it still privileges ‘Christian’ or ‘non-Christian’ as defining terms for Jews. Since Boyarin stresses that the coming of a Messiah had been imagined in Jewish Scriptures long before the time of early ‘Christian Judaism’, I suggest that we speak instead of ‘Jewish Messianism’ rather than of ‘Christian Judaism’ or ‘Messianic Judaism’ if we want to overcome the Judaism/ Christianity dichotomy and the Christian cooptation of the term ‘Messianic Judaism’. The Septuagint (lxx) renders all thirty-nine instances of the Hebrew word for the ‘anointed one’, Mašíaḥ, as Christos, an expression which the N*T writers seem to take up since we find Greek transliteration of Messias only twice in the N*T (Jn 1.41; 4.25). In 1 Pet. 4.16 (see also Acts 11.26 and 26.28) the term Christianos is used to characterize the recipients of the letter either as ‘Jewish Messianists’ or as ‘Christians’, if we assume the latter title has already congealed into a fixed group appellation and title. According to David Horrell, most scholars agree that the designation Christianos originated with outsiders (Horrell 2007: 362). However, it is more difficult to determine whether the term was coined as a popular label, as many suggest, or was formulated by Roman authorities, as Erik Peterson has argued. Horrell follows Peterson’s lead, assuming the popular claim that the term was first used in Antioch is correct, and agrees that it may have been coined by members of the Roman administration. According to Peterson, the word probably originated in Latin-speaking circles and for the ‘first’ time in Acts 11.26 refers ‘to an official or juridical designation rather than to informal naming’ (Peterson 1959: 67-69). Thus the language seems to convey ‘a legal or juristic sense, as in legal documents where it indicates something is now being recorded that will henceforth have force’ (Peterson 1959: 68). Finally, in many non-Christian first-century sources, the names ‘Christ’ and ‘Christian’ seem to be associated with public disorder. Is 1 Peter a Jewish Proselyte Discourse? When reading the first argument of 1 Peter in 1.13–2.10 as transferring the honorific titles of Israel expressed in this section to the Christian community, scholars engage in a supersessionist interpretation that is determined by the dualistic ‘Christian church/Judaism’ opposition. But they may protest against such a judgment since, for instance, 1.18 speaks against such a Jewish understanding of the communities addressed. The author(s) declare(s) there that the recipients ‘were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors’; moreover, they were ransomed not with perishable silver and gold currency but with the ‘precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish’.

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This text seems to clearly refer to their conversion from Judaism to Christianity, as my student pointed out. Thus, Christians, and no longer Jews, are seen as ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exod. 19.6). Such a reading co-opts the identity claims of the Jewish people for the Christian church. To abandon such a supersessionist reading, we need to be able to read 1 Peter in such a different way that we do not re-inscribe the dualistic ‘Jewish/Christian’ opposition, which subsumes ‘Jew’ under ‘Christian’. Moreover, the letter of 1 Peter does not contain this dualism but rather constructs a ‘Jew/Gentile’ opposition (2.12). In line with this inscribed dualism of the author(s), we must translate the nomenclature Christos/Christianos not as ‘Christ/Christian’, but as ‘Messias/Messianists’. The supersessionist understanding of 1 Pet. 1.18 has been challenged by scholars who point out that the rhetoric of 1 Peter uses language similar to that which was used in Jewish discourses on proselytes. If this is the case, then the expressions ‘blood’ and ‘lamb’ in 1 Pet. 1.19 may refer to the proselyte offering that was needed for acceptance into Judaism. However, Christian scholars who point to the proselyte offering nevertheless insist that 1 Peter was not written to actual proselytes but uses this Jewish language to refer to becoming Christian. I would argue to the contrary, and assert instead that we need to read 1 Peter as a Jewish text. If we do not want to continue our colonizing supersessionist reading of the letter, we have to understand 1 Pet. 1.18f not just as metaphorical language but as referring to actual proselytes who have abandoned the religion and customs of their pagan ancestors and joined the Jewish communities in Asia Minor. This scholarly debate as to whether to understand the letter’s language as the*logical-metaphorical or as social-descriptive language has focused on the terms paroikos (‘stranger/sojourner’) and parepidēmos (‘resident alien’) which are used to describe the recipients in 2.11. John H. Elliott argues that the recipients did not become strangers and resident aliens because they became Christians but rather they were strangers and resident aliens because they were social outcasts. He asserts: 1 Peter was directed to actual strangers and resident aliens who had become Christian. Their new religious affiliation was not the cause of their position in society though it did add to their difficulties in relating to their neighbors. It is precisely this combination of factors which best explains the disillusionment which the members felt. Attempting to improve their social lot through membership in the community which the Christian movement offered, they experienced instead only further aggravation. Now they were demeaned not only as social strangers and aliens but for being ‘Christlackeys’ as well (Elliott 1981: 131f).

Such a social-political understanding of the terms ‘strangers and aliens’ squares well with a diaspora Jewish proselyte understanding if one reads the text in a Jewish messianic key. Already considered to be social strangers



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 41

and resident aliens, the proselytes become even more politically suspect as Christianoi (‘Messianists’) by joining the Jewish messianic communities of Asia Minor. If becoming a Jewish proselyte meant joining messianic communities, they were by definition seen as anti-Roman troublemakers, as ‘a further social aggravation’. This interpretation is supported by the lxx use of the terms ‘stranger’. Seland has shown that in the lxx, the Hebrew term for stranger (ger) is translated either as paroikos or as proselytēs, ‘indicating that the translators did not always differentiate between paroikos and proselytēs’ (Seland 2005: 54). Seland concludes that the words paroikos and parepidēmos are clearly proselyte related terms. He argues that Philo’s work which ‘describes a proselyte as someone who has left a belief in many gods and run to the truth, honoring one God and Father of all’ depicts Abraham as ‘a model proselyte on the basis of his status as a paroikos in the Scriptures’ (Seland 2005: 56, 59). Seland quotes Philo, who states that Abraham is the standard of nobility for all proselytes…who abandoning the ignobility of strange laws and monstrous customs which assigned divine honours to stock and stones and soulless things in general, have come to settle in a better land, in a commonwealth full of true life and vitality, with truth as its director and president (Virt. 2.19).

Alongside Abraham, Philo praises Tamar as the paradigmatic proselyte while 1 Peter exalts the submission of Sarah as a prime example for proselyte wo/men. Tamar (Genesis 38) passed from profound darkness to light, deserting to the ‘camp of piety at the risk of her life caring little for its preservation’ (Philo, Virt. 221-22), whereas 1 Peter declares Sarah as an ideal example of wifely obedience because of her subordination to Abraham as her Lord. If we understand this first argumentative section of the letter as addressed to Jewish Messianists (Christianoi) who were resident aliens and proselytes of low social standing, then we can understand the letter’s introductory first line of argument in 1.13–2.10 as not only indicating the ‘democratic commonwealth’ of the addressed and their self-understanding as the royal, priestly people of G*d but we may also glimpse the rhetorical situation that triggered the writing of the letter itself. In a supersessionist reading, Jewish scholar Claudia Setzer sums up the ways in which the communities’ high the*logical self-understanding as the people of G*d is expressed in 2.4-10, stating, In ch. 2 the author marshals verses from the Septuagint much as rabbinic literature uses biblical verses as proof texts. The aim is clear: Christians assume the identity of Israel, the people of God, through faith in Jesus. In becoming Israel, these Christians may suffer as the Exodus people, and like Israel, they will be rescued. What has happened to the Jews, the former Israel, the author does not say. So thorough is the church’s identification

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1 Peter with biblical Israel that non-Christians are now called ‘Gentiles’ (2.12), and the hostile world is the diaspora (Setzer 2011: 439).

If however, with Boyarin, one does not assume that the ‘parting of the ways’ of Judaism and Christianity has already happened at the time of the writing of 1 Peter but instead presupposes a ‘Christian’ Judaism (i.e. Jewish Messianism), then one is compelled to read the text in a political fashion as the contrast between G*d’s people, who are called Christianoi/Jewish Messianists, and the surrounding Gentile society in the provinces of the Roman Empire. As Setzer observes, the rhetoric of 2.1-10 is similar to that of rabbinic literature, expressed in the language of the Septuagint, speaking of Israel as the Exodus people and proclaiming their calling as a royal priesthood over and against the Gentile world. Nothing, therefore, prevents us from understanding the text as speaking about Jewish people who believe in the Messiah Jesus and who understand themselves as proclaiming the mighty acts of G*d who has called them ‘out of darkness into G*d’s marvelous light’. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Philo Judaeus, also called Philo of Alexandria (c. 15–10 bce to 45–50 ce), was the most prominent representative of Hellenistic Judaism. His writings thus provide the clearest view of the development of Judaism in the diaspora (see http://www.britannic.com/EBchecked/topic/456612/Philo-Judaeus). Although Philo lived much earlier, he shares with the audience of 1 Peter a location in the diaspora and a common text, the Torah. While we do not know the hermeneutics of the letter writer(s) of 1 Peter, I suggest we can try to destabilize a Christian supersessionist reading through such an imaginative exercise in a diasporic Philonic reading. For instance, in an ‘exercise of interpretation and hermeneutics’ Seland asks how ‘a Jewish reader who is well versed in Philo’s works’ and located in ‘the symbolic universe represented by the works of Philo’—a hypothetical, ideal Jewish reader—would interpret 1 Pet. 2.5 and 9 which speak of the ‘common priesthood’, the ‘priesthood of Israel’ or the ‘priesthood of the Jewish people’ (Seland 2005: 79-115). Seland’s constructed Philonic interpreter would likely read the key terms in 1 Pet. 2.5 and 9 in the following way: the verb ‘building up’ (oikodomeisthe) would be understood by such a reader as an indicative and not imperative since, for Jewish readers, the Jewish nation was an oikos (‘house’) of G*d and the ‘common priesthood’ was something given to all. The holy people of Israel enacted in their Passover celebrations, prayers and sacrifices their ‘common priesthood’. Furthermore, a Philonic Jewish reader also would have understood oikos (‘house’) not simply as household but as temple. Exodus 19.6 is translated in the lxx as basileion hierateuma (‘kingdom of priests’) and ethnos hagion (‘a holy nation’). When Philo refers to this text, he places ‘and’ between the two nouns—basileion kai hierateuma—and understands this ‘kingdom of priests’ as the royal dwelling of G*d where



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 43

the whole world is understood as a temple. The task of this royal priesthood, then, is to offer spiritual sacrifices and to proclaim the great deeds of G*d in their worship. Its special location is the Passover celebration where, as ‘commanded by the Law, the whole nation acts as priest… Hence, each individual is a priest if he or she follows the Law, and together as a nation are for the world what the priest is for the state’ (Seland 2005: 106). According to 1 Pet. 2.5, the task of the communities is to ‘bring spiritual sacrifices’. However, it is important not to understand such a statement as ‘spiritualizing’ in distinction to a literal reading of offering actual sacrifices. Scholars have argued that Christianity has spiritualized its relations to the Jewish cult. In this view, ‘spiritual’ is understood as something immaterial in contrast to the material bloodiness of sacrifices. Moreover, they have distinguished between a ‘naïve’ and a ‘critically reflected’ spiritualization. In such an anti-Jewish interpretation, the more naïve spiritualization is found in the Hebrew Bible, the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings as well as in the N*T, whereas the critically reflected spiritualizing reading is ascribed to the philosophical works of the Stoa and Philo. However, such a thesis has been widely criticized by other biblical and Philonic scholars, but is nevertheless still prevalent in popular writings. Yet, pneumatikos (‘spiritual’) does not indicate the spiritual in contrast to the real, but rather refers to pneuma (‘Spirit’). Thus, the adjective pneumatikos qualifies the terms ‘house’ and ‘sacrifice’ as gifts of the Spirit but does not imply a ‘spiritualization’ of worship. It does not mean a spiritualization of cultic institutions but rather the transferal of cultic institutional language to the communities of 1 Peter. Philo distinguishes among different material sacrifices and includes expositions of their symbolic and moral meanings that is ‘the mystical character which symbols convey’. Such interpretations ‘should not be called ‘spiritualizing’; they are not given as substitutions for other more literal understandings but they represent actualizations of the meanings of the sacrifices’. According to Philo ‘words in their plain sense are symbols of things latent and obscured’ (Spec. 1.200; cf. 2.287). In short, Philo’s allegorical interpretation retains the literal, material cult of Jerusalem but ‘elaborates on it in order to reveal the depth of God’s truth therein’ (Seland 2005: 111). The Author(s)’s Colonizing Re-interpretation of ‘Christianos’ According to Seland, Philonic readers would probably have had difficulties understanding 1 Peter’s multiple references to a Jesus Messiah (Seland 2005: 93) and the letter’s descriptions of him in sacrificial terms (1.2-3, 11, 19; 2.21; 3.18; 4.1,13; 5.1). This observation raises two questions: Does 1 Pet. 2.4-10 preserve an independent tradition that expresses the understandings of the communities? Moreover, does 1 Peter add the emphasis on

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the suffering Jesus Messiah and if so, why? I will answer the latter question before shifting my focus to the former. Let me just point out that the author(s)’s emphasis on the suffering Jesus Messiah does not force us to resort to a supersessionist interpretation. Daniel Boyarin has also sought to trace the ‘Jewish history of the “supernatural” Redeemer’ in The Jewish Gospels. Here, he challenges the ‘near classic statement of the absolute difference of Jewish from Christian ideas of the Messiah’ and argues convincingly that the notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not alien to Judaism (see Boyarin 2012: 127-56). Hence, there is a shared understanding of a suffering Messiah. Thus, we can approach the question not as one of Christianity’s difference to Judaism but as one that is also important for 1 Peter’s understanding of Jesus as the Jewish suffering Messiah. The colonizing move of 1 Peter is then not the denial of its Jewish character by emphasizing the suffering Jesus Messiah, I argue, but a colonizing of the self-understanding of the ‘Christian’ community. It is widely accepted that 1 Peter incorporates traditional material not only from the Hebrew Bible but also from early Christian writings. 1 Peter 2.4-10 is widely seen as a well-composed unit that possibly existed before the writing of the letter and draws on tradition, although one can no longer make clear distinctions between source and redaction. Whereas older scholarship saw this textual unit as part of the baptismal tradition or liturgy, more recent scholarship does not identify it as such but rather understands it as part of the tradition taken up by the letter. The rhetorical stress on the ‘babyhood’ of the community (in 2.1-3) and on the suffering Jesus Messiah is intended to persuade the recipients to understand themselves not as the house of the Spirit, the royal messianic house of G*d (the temple) and themselves as the people of G*d who exercise their priestly functions among the nations, but instead to see themselves as the kyriarchal household of G*d. The letter admonishes them to adapt to their colonial society and suffer like Jesus Messiah rather than emphasize their messianic self-understanding as the holy people of G*d. This selfunderstanding of the community is expressed in 1 Pet. 2.10 and modified in the following chapter: Once you were not a people, But now you are G*d’s people, Once you had not received mercy, But now you have received mercy (1 Pet. 2.10).

Hence, 1 Pet. 2.12, which follows 2.10, admonishes the proselytes who have joined the Messianic community of G*d’s people: ‘Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, although they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify G*d when he



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 45

comes to judge’ (nrsv). Such ‘honorable’ conduct demands their subordination to the kyriarchal colonizing powers of the Roman Empire against which movements of Jewish Messianism fought to defend their independent royal priestly peoplehood. Overall Scholarly Debate How then is my feminist decolonizing interpretation of 1 Peter to be situated in terms of the overall scholarly debate on the function of 1 Peter in its rhetorical socio-political situation? To situate it, I will follow the discussion outlined by David Horrell In his Guide to 1 Peter (Horrell 2008: 77-96) in order to contextualize the interpretation of 1 Peter that I have proposed here. The scholarly debate on 1 Peter has focused on two works which were published more than 30 years ago: Let Wives be Submissive by David L. Balch (1981) and A Home for the Homeless by John H. Elliott (1981), but has practically taken no notice of In Memory of Her (1983) which was also part of the emerging ‘new kind of research going on in biblical studies’ (Clark Wire 1984: 209)—that is, research which seeks to reconstruct the ‘social world’ of early Christianity. Both works focus on oikos, which can be translated either as ‘house/home’ or as ‘(well-organized) household’. The key interpretive category for Elliott is ‘home’, whereas Balch stresses ‘household’ and uses as his critical lens the domestic code which was part of political philosophy. According to Balch, the author(s)’s strategy is to lessen the hostilities and antagonisms Christians experience and to entreat them to greater conformity to imperial society (Balch 1981). Elliott, in turn, sees the letter as fostering the internal cohesion of the community and as articulating a distinct Christian identity—a home for the socially homeless—in order to enable them to resist societal pressures to conform to their society (Elliott 1981). Whereas Balch advocates conformity and acculturation, Elliott stresses uniqueness and distinctiveness to resist such assimilation. In essence, both works argue for 1 Peter’s recipients to adapt to the kyriarchal imperial ethos of their societies but stress different sides of the same coin. They do so by focusing on different accents of the text and thus on the inscribed voice of the author(s). Horrell’s review of this debate concludes: As the Balch-Elliott debate shows, along with a good deal of other work on the letter, scholarship has tended to emphasize one aspect or the other— either the tendency to assimilate and accommodate to the world, or the desire to strengthen the distinctive life and character of the Church (Horrell 2008: 92).

Horrell points to this either/or focus on different topics, texts and rhetorical emphases to show that ‘some of the material in 1 Peter fits both of

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their perspectives’. In contrast, he proposes a different focus on ‘the ways in which the socially weak exercise forms of resistance to the powerful’ (Horrell 2008: 95). Building on James Scott’s argument in Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) and on postcolonial work, especially that of Homi Bhabha, he argues: There is a stress on the ambivalent and complex relationship between colonizer and colonized, and between conformity and resistance. Again, this can help us to avoid a too simple distinction between seeing texts like 1 Peter as either resistant to empire or conformist (Horrell 2008: 94).

Horrell suggests that the name Christian, which was coined by the representatives of the colonizer, imperial Rome, and originated as a ‘hostile outsider label’, is one good example of this either/or. While coined by outsiders, this label was claimed by insiders, ‘the members of the Christian movement in Asia Minor, as a designation of who they are’ (Horrell 2008: 94). Still, this statement disguises the fact that this stance was formulated by the author(s) of 1 Peter to persuade them that they as Messianists/Christians should only be known ‘for doing good’—that is, being ‘willing to be good and obedient citizens as far as possible but drawing a clear line of resistance’ (Horrell 2008: 94). This clear line of resistance alongside a generally obedient and conformist stance is drawn with the name ‘Christian’ which is not to be denied, whatever the pressures to abandon it. Orders to renounce the name and to worship the Roman gods are to be resisted. Horrell seeks to show that drawing this line had become Christian practice toward the end of the second century with the example of the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs (180 ce): The proconsul, Saturninus, urges the Christians to swear by the genius of the emperor that, by his (divine) spirit, that which represents the selfidentity of each male person. They reply: ‘We have none other whom we worship (timeamus) but our Lord God who is in heaven… Honour (honorem) to Caesar as Caesar, but worship (timorem) only to God [Act.Scil. 8-9].

Thus, Horrell seeks to have his cake and eat it at one and the same time when he claims that 1 Peter is posing postcolonial resistance to the Empire while at the same time advocating adaptation to imperial kyriarchal society. In the process, however, he empties the designation Christianos of all messianic connotations and solidifies a supersessionist reading of the text. In so doing he not only depoliticizes the rhetoric of the letter but also reads it over and against Judaism. It is the church who is now ‘the people of G*d’. In the process, the presence and voices of the recipients have been lost. The voice of the author(s) has become absolute. In her review of the works of Balch and Elliott which have initiated and dominated this scholarly debate, Antoinette Wire expressed the hope for



2.   Making our Jewish Ancestors Audible 47

an effective re-orientation of the questions scholars asked when reading 1 Peter: Rhetorical Analysis [is] searching the text for what Elliott calls the ‘strategy’ of the writer, and through that finding the situation—among all situations history and social theory might suggest—in which this particular strategy makes sense. And it may turn out then that the situation so reconstructed is not only the key to hearing the author, but gives us something of a counterweight to the writer’s strategy, in that the intended readers are discovered to have had patterns of life, confessions and strategies of their own (Clark Wire: 1984: 210).

While the Balch-Elliott debate has greatly enriched our understanding of the rhetoric of the author(s), it has not made audible the voices of the intended readers. In the process, it has erased the Jewish voice of both and solidified an unreflected supersessionist Christian reading of the text. Hence, in the next chapter, I will try to hear the voices of the intended recipients of the letter in and through the voice of the author(s) and I will try to hear them as Jewish voices.

Chapter 3

Reconstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated Conceptualizing the argumentative strategies of slave-, freeborn-, and Jewish-Messianists or Christian-Jews as well as the possibility of their resistant consciousness requires reading 1 Peter ‘against the grain’ of its colonizing kyriarchal argumentative strategies. If, as Barth Campbell’s classical-rhetorical analysis has shown (Campbell 1998), the center of 1 Peter’s argument is the discourse of hypotassein (i.e. of subjection or subordination), then a critical emancipatory interpretation must first of all attempt, in Nelle Morton’s words, to ‘hear into speech’ the submerged arguments of those whom 1 Peter’s subordination discourse seeks to subject (Morton 1985). Such a critical feminist approach that focuses on the submerged knowledges inscribed in the letter runs counter to male­ stream interpretation that insists on valorizing the author(s)’s subordination rhetoric. Scholarship and the Subordination of Wo/men Because of feminist work, most recent scholarship on 1 Peter is aware of the problematic ethical-political meaning and socio-historical effects of 1 Peter’s subordination discourse in contemporary society and religious communities. Commentators tend to focus less on the hermeneutical problem posed by the Jewish language of the letter, the injunction to political subjection, or the use of the example of Christ to motivate slaves to suffer than on the demand for the subordination of wo/men. In response to feminist interpretation, exegetes feel compelled to write a special hermeneutical excursus (Elliott 2000) or to articulate special hermeneutical rules for reading these texts today (Boring 1999: 104-113). The rhetoric of how these texts must be read is itself instructive. Over and against those who critically deconstruct the rhetoric of 1 Peter, other scholars insist that ‘we must explore the Bible in its cultural context with an openness to the way that the good news of the past may continue to animate the good news in the present’ (Elliott 2000: 599; emphasis added). At stake in this scholarly rhetoric is the legitimization of kyriarchal relations of domination as ‘good deeds’ and a problematic ‘Christian’ self-definition.



3.   Reconstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated 49

To illustrate my point: In a blistering attack on my interpretation of 1 Peter in In Memory of Her, John Elliott acknowledges that my reading of 1 Peter is quite different from his own. However such a contrasting of our two readings of 1 Peter is rather unequal since Elliott’s tome is 956 pages, whereas I wrote barely five pages on 1 Peter in In Memory of Her and these few pages are part of an overall discussion of the early Christian missionary movement and the household code discourse in post-Pauline literature. Most telling, however, is that Elliott’s emotional rhetoric feels compelled to misconstrue my argument for interpreting the letter from the perspective of those against whom the inscribed author(s) argue(s). He introduces my argument with the claim that it is made on ‘the basis of a fanciful reconstruction of the Jesus movement’ in which I supposedly imagine that ‘Jesus overthrew the patriarchal structures of his society’ and inaugurated ‘a golden egalitarian age’. This ‘fantastic premise which it must be said, lacks any support whatsoever in the social data (as even acknowledged by feminists [e.g. Heine)]’ (Elliott 2000: 596; emphasis added). This leads Elliott to assert that such a ‘fanciful’ reconstruction determines my interpretation without acknowledging that it is his reading that produces ‘this fantastic premise’. Such a premise and proposal would indeed be fanciful and fantastic, if his claim were correct that I have articulated it. Quoting it out of context, Elliott misrepresents my interpretation of the letter when he claims that the relapse of 1 Peter into patriarchal thinking was, in my view, prompted by a concern ‘to avoid persecution and suffering and to “lessen tensions” between the Christian community and its neighbors’ (Elliott 2000: 597). Using ‘relapse into patriarchy’ as a criterion, I supposedly then judge all later positions on wo/men in the N*T in terms of such an erroneous standard. He then goes on to claim that I ‘completely misconstrue the aim of the letter’, which according to him is ‘to affirm the holiness and distinctiveness’ of the community and ‘to urge holy nonconformity with Gentile modes of thought and life’ (Elliott 2000: 597; emphasis added). At this point Elliott seems to have forgotten that he himself has argued that it was the author(s) and not the community who ‘transposed’ the cultural honor-shame discourse into ‘a theological key’. By collapsing author(s) and recipients into one and the same he overlooks that a rhetorical process requires at least two voices. The reason for his ‘put down’ of my position appears to be a rhetorical struggle for the allegiance of wo/men readers, as the following statement indicates: This sadly erroneous and arbitrary interpretation of 1 Peter must be mentioned not simply because it is an egregious example of ideologically driven exegesis but because this study, which on the whole has much positive to commend it, has had pronounced influence on subsequent feminist commentary on 1 Peter, leading to a misreading and undeserved depreciation of this pastoral letter in general (Elliott 2000: 597; emphasis added).

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Scholarly Identification with the Assumed Male Author(s)’s Perspective If I single out for discussion Elliott’s emotion-laden remarks and misconstrual of my position as an example of such an author-focused rhetoric, I do so not in order to defend my own interpretation of 1 Peter as the only correct one. Rather, I discuss Elliott’s attack as an example of how the kyriarchal elite male discourse of ‘honor and shame’ is at work not only in the rhetoric of 1 Peter but also in contemporary scholarship when it is confronted with dissident methodological voices. Since according to the construct of the Mediterranean honor-code, shame is qualified as ‘feminine’ and honor as ‘masculine’, it is important to observe how such masculine ‘shaming’ works today in defense of academic status on the one hand and apostolic authority on the other in order to understand the silencing function of this type of argument in the past. Such an historical analogy allows one to see what is at stake in the exclusive focus on the author(s)’s rhetoric, when the author(s)’s attempt to transpose the hegemonic cultural ethos of submission into a ‘theological key’ is taken up through scholarly argument and rationalized as divine revelation or historical data. It is also not surprising that almost all scholarly introductions to and commentaries on 1 Peter identify with the author(s) and hence elaborate the text’s perspective, but rarely ask why 1 Peter argues as it does, what kind of tenets and practices it assumes, or what lens it reflects in its address to the communities. Although literary criticism has declared the ‘death of the author’, 1 Peter scholarship still privileges the author(s)’s perspective as a kind of historical informant. Rather than reading the author(s)’s voice as one side of the argument and attempting to analyze the other voices inscribed in the text with whom the author(s) argue(s) or whom the author(s) attempt(s) to persuade, scholars reify the author(s)’s vision as historical reality. I propose instead that it is necessary to ‘read against the grain’ of the text in order to understand the full argument and rhetorical situation of 1 Peter. Reading against the Grain In contrast to a colonizing interpretation of 1 Peter that re-inscribes the kyriarchal values of the Empire and legitimizes the author(s)’s kyriarchal practices with reference to the constructs of ancient culture, sociological theories, and the*logical or Christological interpretations, a critical decolonizing analysis of the letter seeks to ‘read against the kyriarchal grain’ of its language in order to deconstruct the inscribed colonialist imperial ethos. It seeks to re-valorize the emancipatory values and visions that are also inscribed in the letter’s rhetoric. To ‘read against the kyriarchal grain’ of the text in this way challenges us not to accept at face value the rhetoric



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of the author(s) of 1 Peter and its scholarly elaborations but to stand back from it and analyze it critically, as well as to adopt a position that is not automatically on the author(s)’s side. ‘Reading against the grain’ compels us to look for and try ‘to hear into speech’ the silenced voices, experiences and histories of the recipients to whom 1 Peter is addressed that are omitted or suppressed by the author(s). It means to search for the gaps and fissures in the text rather than to focus just on what is forcefully argued by the author(s) and scholarly interpreters of the text. ‘To read against the grain’ involves questioning the kyriarchal norms and values that have informed the arguments inscribed in the letter and its interpretations, which are presented as authoritative on grounds of critical scholarship or canonical authority. To ‘read against the grain’ is to insist that the biases, attempts at persuasion, and possibly even wellintended manipulations inscribed in the text be acknowledged so that the values and visions of the author(s) or interpreter(s) are exposed. In and through a critical reading of the author(s)’s text, ‘reading against the grain’ invites us to hear more fully the voices and perspectives of those who are silenced within and by the text. It does so in order to open up the understanding of the letter in terms of a radical democratic equality of the people of G*d, male and female, slave and free, Jew, Greek, Anatolian and Roman and many more who are understood in 1 Peter as a ‘royal priesthood’ called to proclaim the mighty liberating acts of G*d, who has called them from darkness to light, from being non-citizens and strangers to becoming G*d’s very own people. Situating 1 Peter’s Argument in an Early Christian Context As I point out in the beginning of this Guide, feminist literary critics have argued that readers do not engage texts ‘in and of themselves’. Rather, insofar as we have been taught how to read, we activate reading paradigms (Kolodny 1980: 10). Reading paradigms determine the selection of methods and provide the interpretive frameworks and theoretical perspectives of reading. They organize the practice of reading insofar as they relate texts, readers and contexts to one another in specific ways. Both professional and nonprofessional readers draw on the ‘frame of meaning’ (Giddens 1976: 64) and the contextualization provided by the symbolic-religious constructions of social-cultural worlds of the texts they read, which they usually share. Hence, scholars as well as readers need to become conscious of and explicate their own reading frameworks, lenses or ‘eyeglasses’ with which they approach biblical texts. Hence, I have affirmed throughout this book that my own ‘lens’ is that of a critical feminist hermeneutic and rhetoric of liberation. Such a feminist perspective is radically egalitarian in the original sense of the word, if one understands radical as ‘complete, thorough,

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without compromise, totally, from the ground up’ and equality not as sameness but as difference, equal standing, rights and access. Still, such a critical decolonizing interpretation is often rejected as a modern democratic construct that is ahistorical and does not fit GrecoRoman imperial society and culture. However, such an argument overlooks that the ‘honor and shame’ culture which supposedly determines the cultural-societal context of the N*T in general and that of 1 Peter in particular is also a modern theoretical construct that is energized by the contrast between ancient societies and modern democratic American society. Rather than assuming an ‘either accept one and reject the other’ theory, I suggest that we work with both cultural societal constructs—‘democratic equality’ and ‘honor-shame’—since both are modern scholarly constructs. Furthermore, both have been articulated as scientific theories in today’s culture and are then used as analytic tools and hermeneutical frameworks for interpreting ancient texts such as 1 Peter. I have argued in my work that the rhetoric of our textual sources and their scholarly interpretations is not only androcentric but also kyriocentric. Hence, kyriocentric ‘honor-shame’ texts such as 1 Peter must be read against their kyriarchal grain if one wishes to rediscover the arguments of the recipients in and through an analysis of a writing, since rhetoric always presupposes not only the voice of the speaker/writer/author(s) but always also the voices and arguments of those whom the author(s) want(s) to persuade. Moreover, grammatically androcentric texts which use the masculine form as generic must be read against the grain, since such androcentric textual references to wo/men eradicate the presence of women and, like the tip of an iceberg, indicate what has been lost to historical consciousness. Reading against the Grain: Its N*T Context In order to be able to read 1 Peter ‘against the grain’ of the author(s)’s argument and to reconstruct the possible counter-voices of the recipients, one needs to contextualize the writing in terms of other early Christian sources or traditions which the recipients might have known. I will discuss two N*T texts whose traditions may have been known to the recipients and may have informed their self-understanding and arguments. The first one is the prePauline baptismal formula of Gal. 3.28 and the second one is the Pentecost promise in Acts 2.17-18; both egalitarian traditions which might have shaped the recipients’ self-understandings. Galatians 3.28 Much scholarly work has tried to establish the meaning of Gal. 3.28, a very influential text throughout Christian history and still today. To begin, scholars must adjudicate how to translate the baptismal formula:



3.   Reconstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated 53 For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise’ (Gal 3.26-29 nrsv).

In order to understand this text, one must carefully analyze the language used and ask whether the expressions ‘Jew/Greek’ and ‘slave/free’ connote only men/males, or whether they include wo/men so that they express that wo/men as a matter of course belong to these groups of people. However, if the first and second pair include both men and women, then the question arises as to how the third pair ‘male and female’ is to be understood. For, as Krister Stendahl has pointed out, it would be redundant to add the expression ‘men and women’ to the other two pairs, if slaves, freepersons, Jews and Greeks are understood as connoting both genders. If that is the case, then it becomes understandable why the third pair of this baptismal formula is missing in 1 Cor. 12.13 and Col. 3.11 (Stendahl 1996). Stendahl suggested that the text refers to Gen. 1.27 and refers to marriage. However, one can also read it as saying in Christ there is no longer gender. Just as the kyriarchal structures of culture and those of slavery so also kyriarchal gender structures are no longer existing ‘in Christ’. After having settled on the translation of the text, one needs to explore it in its social-historical context, which is also a reconstruction. In a careful analysis of the extant materials on circumcision, Judith Lieu has pointed out that no clear ritualization and the*logical understanding of wo/men’s conversion to Judaism existed in the first century (Lieu 1994). However, at the turn from the first to the second century, a clarification of the status of proselytes and an explication of the understanding and rite of conversion seems to have occurred. Shaye Cohen has argued, for instance, that one of the factors in developing a structured ritual may have been the needs of wo/men converts (Cohen 1985, 1989, 1990). Hence, one may assume that this discussion was already developing in the first century. Accordingly, Lieu reads the exchange between Justin Martyr, the ‘Christian’, and Trypho, ‘the Jew’, as a part of this ongoing debate about wo/men proselytes. Justin cites Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah and Job as having failed to observe them, and then adds, ‘I might also cite Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, Rachel, the wife of Jacob and Leah, and all the other such women up to the Mother of Moses, the faithful servant, who observed none of these—do you think they will be saved?’ (Dial. 46.3). Interestingly, this argument lists the foremothers in terms of their family status as wives and mothers. If, as in Greco-Roman religion, a tradition existed in Judaism that defined the membership of wo/men in terms of their affiliation as wives and mothers, then the declaration in Gal. 3.28c could be understood as standing over and against this tradition.

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Earlier in the debate, Justin seeks to refute Trypho’s argument that circumcision was already enjoined upon Abraham by making reference to the biblical wo/men. Justin argues that wo/men are part of the people of G*d, and that they predate the giving of the commandment of circumcision to Abraham and his sons, but are excluded from circumcision by their very nature of not having a penis. Justin states, Furthermore, that the female sex is unable to receive fleshly circumcision demonstrates that this circumcision was given as a sign and not as a work of righteousness. For God made women equally able to observe all that is right and virtuous. We see that in physical form male and female have been made differently, but we are confident that neither is righteous or unrighteous on this basis but only on the basis of piety and righteousness (Dial. 23.5).

This argument fits with the tenor of the pre-Pauline baptismal formula found in Gal. 3.28. It also underscores that Paul’s argument in the letter to the Galatians is contrary to it. While in the interpretation of Gal. 3.28 the meaning of ‘male and female’ is controverted, this is one aspect of the baptismal formula to which the married freeborn wo/men could have appealed in 1 Peter, whereas the first pair ‘Jew or Greek’ could have shaped the selfunderstanding of the whole community. Slave wo/men, in turn, could have challenged the division between free masters and enslaved servants in the community. Acts 2.17-18 To give another example, ‘reading against the grain’ is extremely important for understanding not only the silenced voices of 1 Peter but also those of the book of Acts which has shaped Christian historical self-understanding. Shelly Matthews concludes her Guide to the Acts of the Apostles in this series with an analysis of the citation of the prophet Joel interpreting the events of Pentecost. She does so in order to show how the author’s narrative of the Pentecost is constructed as an argument made by Luke in the midst of a contest and struggle over the meaning of spirit possession in the early community of Jesus believers. Through it, Luke makes a rhetorical assertion concerning the manner by which believers in Jesus became empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel and the meaning that should be ascribed to that event (Matthews 2013: 73).

Matthews identifies seven rhetorical strategies which the author used in order to ‘tame the tongues of fire’—that is, both to acknowledge the manifestations of the Spirit in the Christian communities and at one and the same time to contain the Spirit through his orderly narrative. The first strategy is to give an orderly account of the Spirit’s descent, because many



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Jesus followers in the past and the present claimed to be possessed by divine Spirit and ‘experienced the Spirit as an indiscriminate force, one that was no respecter of persons’ empowering men and women, slaves and freeborn people from different nations and parts of the world (Matthews 2013: 75). The author of Acts’ second strategy seeks to fix the time and space of the Spirit’s coming in Jerusalem on a Jewish feast day, Pentecost, which was associated with the covenant at Sinai and foretold by Jesus (Acts 1.4), whereas the third strategy is to privilege the male apostles as recipients of the Spirit. Only the twelve male apostles and Mary, the mother of Jesus, are named members of the approximately 120 persons who are said to constitute the earliest community in Jerusalem (Acts 1.12-15). Fourthly, the Spirit appears in a public male space. While wo/men are mentioned in the beginning as members of the group of believers (Acts 1.14), none of them were qualified to be elected in order to replace Judas in the leading circle of the apostles. Making the unintelligible glossolalia plain was the fifth strategy of containment. ‘Rather than depicting the speech as unintelligible, Luke depicts it as a form of prophecy that is perfectly clear…and comes closer to the realm of public oratory than ecstatic worship’ (Matthews 2013: 78). The final two strategies seek to give an authoritative explanation to the miracle by letting Peter as the leader give a definite account of the fulfillment of Scripture. The quotation from the prophet Joel is proof that Scripture has been fulfilled, but the prophet’s egalitarian character is not elaborated. Rather, Joel is used as a springboard to a missionary sermon. Since Luke could have chosen a myriad of other passages from the Hebrew Scriptures to explain the event of Pentecost, it is significant, according to Matthews, that he uses the text of the prophet Joel. It is therefore reasonable to conjecture that this text was central to the self-understanding of the people to whom he wrote and expressed their experience and convictions to be Spirit-empowered people. The text’s egalitarian inclusive meaning (‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy, …indeed on my male and my female slaves in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy’, Acts 2.16-18) can be understood as having shaped the selfunderstanding and identity of the audience not only of this passage but also of the whole of Acts. One can assume that this Joel tradition was known to not only the readers of Acts but also those of 1 Peter, since it transmits a longstanding tradition. Hence, the author of Acts had to work hard to correct it. Taking this quote from Joel as starting point for reading against the androcentric kyriarchal grain, Shelly Matthews interprets the whole of Acts ‘against its grain’. In the next section, I will attempt such a ‘reading against the grain’ of 1 Peter in order to make the counter-voices of the text audible again. Such a close

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reading is not a fanciful reconstruction but seeks rather to hear these voices in and through the voice of the author, reading both the author and audience in their socio-historical symbolic universe. Making the Voices of the Subordinated Audible Whether one assumes identity and sameness or constructs differences and tensions between the recipients’ and the sender(s)’s rhetoric decisively determines one’s overall scholarly interpretation of 1 Peter. For instance, when commentators see a seamless unity between the first, second and third chain of rhetorical arguments, then they understand the first section to function as a captatio benevolentiae (‘winning of good will’) that seeks to secure the sympathy or support of the recipients for doing what the author(s) tell(s) them to. Because in and through their conversion the recipients of 1 Peter have been given the titles and prerogatives of the people of Israel, they should now behave like Christ who suffered innocently. As G*d’s people who live in the midst of Gentiles, they should ‘do good’ rather than commit acts against the dominant cultural and political ethos. They should love the ‘brotherhood’ as much as possible because this is the ‘will of G*d’. In turn the recipients may have insisted, I suggest, on a different self-understanding and practice as is appropriate to the covenant people of G*d. In short, what draws Elliott’s ire is my insistence that the strategy of the author(s) is kyriarchal insofar as it uses the captatio benevolentiae to the*logically rationalize and justify the ethos of subjection over and against the different ethos subscribed to by ‘Messianist’ recipients, well-to-do wives, the whole community vis-à-vis the imperium, and slave wo/men. It is the focus on this ‘different ethos’ of the recipients that is at issue in the contest between a critical feminist emancipatory reading and a colonizing scholarly interpretation of the rhetoric and the rhetorical-historical situation of the letter. As has been argued in previous chapters, commentators agree that the historical context of the letter is one in which the Christianoi as Messianist Jews were seen as seditious and as a threat to colonial religious, cultural and political Roman imperial ‘customs’. The independent conversion of slave wo/men, freeborn ladies and younger people—when the master of the house did not convert—already constituted an offence against the ‘ancestral’ laws and customs. According to these traditions, the pater familias— like the emperor who was called the supreme Father of the Empire (pater patriae)—had absolute power over his subordinates in the household and determined the religion of its members. Hence, it was generally accepted as a matter of good civil order that slave wo/men, freeborn wo/men and all other members of the household practiced the religion of the master and lord of the house.



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As noted in the previous chapter, most 1 Peter scholars since the 1980s have argued that the letter writer(s) are concerned with ‘honor and shame’, construe the meaning of the expression ‘house of G*d’ not as temple but as ‘household’, and advocate submission as well as the hegemonic ethos of ‘doing good’. In this way, the recipients will not be attacked as wrongdoers. Hence, they surmise that 1 Peter advocates limited accommodation to the kyriarchal order of the house and state for missionary purposes as long as such acculturation does not interfere with their confession of ‘Christian’ calling. If one reads the title Christos as meaning ‘Messiah’, one might be able to argue that the author(s) understand(s) the function of ‘Christian’ calling as preserving messianic self-identity and praxis. However, such an interpretation does not square with the author(s)’s rhetoric of submission to the authorities and institutions of the Empire. Reading ‘against the grain’, one can see a tension or conflict between the first and the subsequent rhetorical argumentation, and can then understand the second and third string of arguments as a corrective rhetorical response to this tension. In so doing, one can see that the ethos and selfunderstanding of the holy people of G*d stands in tension with the ethos of submission and the socio-cultural hegemonic ethos of ‘honor and shame’. Such a ‘reading against the grain’ and rhetorical analysis understands the rhetorical tension between the first and the following segments of argumentation as provoking a rhetorical debate in the community about what the ‘will of G*d’ demands. To ‘hear this debate into speech’, we have to ‘read against the grain’. Debating the ‘Will of G*d’ For instance, slave wo/men could have argued that it was ‘G*d’s will’ to be treated justly as holy members of G*d’s elect people rather than to suffer patiently the sexual abuse and crass mistreatment at the hands of their masters. They might have argued that resisting the sexual abuse of their masters will be harshly punished and not seen as ‘doing good’ but as neglecting their duty to their master. Hence, it was imperative for them to be ransomed by the community since their masters treated them as sexual objects. Furthermore, freeborn, well-to-do wives could have argued that it was their Christian calling to proclaim the ‘good news’ to their Gentile husbands. If their husbands prohibited their Christian practice and they were not able to convert them to the lifestyle of the elect people of G*d, it was the ‘will of G*d’ to separate from them by divorcing them. They could have bolstered their argument with reference to Paul, who supported wo/men’s ‘marriage free’ state. Freeborn wo/men married to Christian husbands could have argued that they are not to be treated as inferior, ‘weaker vessel’ but as members of a royal priesthood and co-heirs of the gracious gift of life in

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the messianic community. If treated badly, married wo/men of considerable means (‘ladies’) could have left their husbands on religious grounds and divorced them. As Jewish proselytes, they could have pointed to their foremother Sarah, whose course of action G*d commanded Abraham to obey in Gen. 21.12 (Clark Kroeger 2004). All of the members of the community could have argued that the covenant of G*d commanded that they separate from Gentile society and resist Roman imperial culture because their ‘low class’ status as non-citizens and migrants had been changed in and through their conversion. They were now bound together in love and respect and formed a royal priesthood and holy nation, a temple of the Spirit. In consequence, they could not possibly pay obeisance to the emperor, his governors, and other cultural institutional authorities. Thus, like the community of Qumran or Philo’s Therapeutae, they advocated a separatist stance which would not completely avoid but perhaps reduce harassment and suffering, since they would not have to mix daily with their Gentile neighbors. This alternative separatist strategy was made possible by a messianic consciousness that was in tension with that of the colonial society and culture of Asia Minor. As I have suggested in In Memory of Her, such a consciousness, which might have been shared by the recipients of 1 Peter comes to the fore in a pre-Pauline fragment preserved in 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1 (Schüssler Fiorenza 1983: 193-94): Do not get misyoked (or mismatched) with unbelievers! For what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness Or what community has light with darkness? Or what common lot a believer with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between G*d’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living G*d; as G*d has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their G*d And they shall be my people. Therefore come out of their midst and separate Says the Kyrios. And touch nothing unclean. Then I will receive you, And I will be a father to you, And you shall be my sons and daughters, Says the Kyrios who holds all power. Since we have these promises, beloved, Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the flesh and spirit.

Making holiness perfect in the fear of G*d The affinities between this text and 1 Peter are striking. In 1 Peter, the selfunderstanding of the ‘siblinghood’ who was once a non-people is expressed with traditional language and images: spiritual house or temple, priests



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offering spiritual sacrifices, elect, holy, ‘defilement of the flesh’ and fear of G*d. Those who were once a non-people are called in political-cultic language ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the people of G*d who proclaim the saving deeds and mighty power of G*d’ (2.9). They are a ‘brotherhood’ with G*d as their ‘father’, they are ‘beloved’, and ‘called from darkness into light’. Therefore they might have believed that they were to separate from the Gentiles/Romans, practice Kashrut, trust in G*d’s promises, form a different society from that of the Gentiles/Romans, and live a sanctified life as ‘non-citizens’ and ‘transients’ in hope of experiencing soon the messianic day of liberation and glory. If one does not translate the first imperative of the pre-Pauline text transmitted in 2 Corinthians as ‘mismatch’ or ‘cross-breeding’, but with ‘mis-yoke’ or with ‘unevenly yoked together’, the anti-colonial political overtones of such an oppositional the*logical consciousness come to the fore. Since the metaphor of the yoke usually refers to burdens imposed by foreign oppressors (Isa. 9.4, 10.27, 14.25; Jer. 27.8, 11-12; Gen. 27.40; 1 Kgs 12.4), the community might have understood itself in opposition to Roman imperial rule. The most striking adaptation of scriptural texts is the alteration of the promise given to King David in 2 Sam. 7.14: ‘I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me’. In 1 Peter, G*d’s promise of ‘sonship’ is changed to include the ‘sons and daughters’. The daughters as well as the sons are members of G*d’s elect people and royal priesthood. Scholars have argued that the oppositional consciousness expressed here in the language of Scripture cannot be of Jewish provenance. However, nothing speaks against a Jewish origin of this pre-Pauline tradition that seems also to inform the the*logical universe of the recipients of 1 Peter. Rather, it seems to fit well into the the*logy of the (Hellenistic) Jewish (Christian) missionary movement. The members of this movement conceived of themselves as a new creation through Christ’s (i.e. Messiah’s) resurrection and as the eschatological people gifted with the presence of divine wisdom. Both daughters and sons, both young and old, both male and female slaves are graced with the gifts of the Spirit and have received prophetic endowment (cf. Acts 2.17-18). They are children of G*d, the holy people, the templecommunity among whom the Spirit dwells. In sum, the recipients of 1 Peter share with the sender(s) a common social situation (i.e. Roman colonialism) and a common the*logical universe and consciousness that consists of an ‘elevated’ religious self-understanding. However, they seem to have disagreed with each other on how to relate this elevated communal self-understanding to their colonial social-political situation. The author(s) advise(s) ‘limited adaptation’ in a difficult situation of harassment and suffering, insofar as he counsels opposition only in religious but not in socio-political terms. Some of the recipients in turn seem to have affirmed both their status as non-citizen and transients under Roman

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colonialism and as the elect people of G*d in the diaspora, but might have advocated separation from their dominant culture and society. Withdrawal from oppressive societal structures whenever possible, they might have argued, would reduce conflict and suffering because it would minimize contact with unbelievers. Slave wo/men would have practiced this communal ethos of separation by running away from unjust masters and mistresses, whereas freeborn married wo/men may have left their Gentile husbands if they could not convert them. Both actions would have caused problems with the wider society and with the ‘master/patron class’ within the community itself. If the whole community consisted primarily of proselytes who were now a part of the Jewish messianic opposition against Roman cultural and religious imperialism, they would have been suspected as Christianoi (i.e. revolutionary Messianists), who were a threat to the dominant imperial society. This situation of suspicion would have been aggravated if the ‘brotherhood’ continued to honor run-away slave wo/men or divorced wives as members in their midst. Hence, on religious and socio-political grounds, the recipients might have been interested in reducing contact with Gentile neighbors as much as possible. This seems to have been the concrete rhetorical problem and situation which the author(s) of 1 Peter sought to overcome by transposing the dominant cultural rhetoric of ‘honor and shame’, subjection and domination into a the*logical key. As E.A. Judge suggests, it is likely that the rhetoric of 1 Peter, which demands the subjection to the kyriarchal authorities of all members of the community—slave wo/men, freeborn wo/men and younger members—expresses the interests of the ‘owner and patron class’ in the community who felt that their prerogatives were undermined (Judge 1960: 60, 71). Sent from the metropolis by Jewish colonials living in the heart of the Roman Empire, 1 Peter advocates these interests over and against an alternative separatist strategy that seeks to protect the counter-kyriarchal practices of those doubly marginalized and jeopardized by the hegemonic colonial ethos. Conclusion I want to conclude by paraphrasing a student’s reaction after reading this chapter. She explains what such a ‘reading against the grain’ taught her: Reading this chapter I learnt how to reconstruct the meaning of a biblical text by bringing the hidden voice of the inscribed audience to the fore. It was like making the previous two-dimensional picture in[to] a threedimensional one. Through practicing ‘reading against the grain’ I was able to better understand the argument than merely following the author’s statements. I also learnt that I should be aware of the assumptions I am making while reading or listening to another person’s argument. Finally, by



3.   Reconstructing the Arguments of the Subordinated 61 ‘reading against the grain’ and listening for the audience’s voice I learnt to see the situation of the socio-religious context as very real, wrestling with arguments that are going on still today.

I have attempted to show in this chapter how ‘reading against the grain’ of 1 Peter as a rhetorical text makes the submerged and silenced voices, the egalitarian Spirit and self-understanding of the first-century intended readers audible again. We can rediscover their faith and ethos in and through the reading of canonical texts such as 1 Peter by reading against the kyriarchal grain of the author(s)’s rhetoric, be it ‘Luke’ or ‘Peter’. The history of early Christian beginnings needs to be rewritten in and through rereading the rhetoric of biblical texts in which are inscribed the arguments of not only the authors but also the readers. We can do so by ‘listening into speech’ the silenced voices of the recipients of 1 Peter.

Chapter 4

Exploring the Meaning of 1 Peter for Today In the previous chapters, I focused on a historical-rhetorical analysis of 1 Peter and underscored the inscriptions not only of imperial kyriarchal power and alternative visions but also of the recipients’ self-understanding as Jewish messianic people of G*d. To that end, I have focused on the discourses of election and of subordination and submission to the kyrios—the emperor, the slave master, the husband, the freeborn, propertied, elite male. Those who are asked to submit (the whole community of resident aliens, slave wo/men and elite wives) are told that they must do so in order to avoid the impression that they are subversive of the kyriarchal order of the Roman Empire. They must accept suffering so that they will be accused only of being Christians, of belonging to the messianic community, and not of undermining the kyriarchal order of empire and household. As my analysis of scholarship has sought to demonstrate, a hermeneutic of appreciation and consent will justify the kyriarchal rhetoric of 1 Peter in cultural or the*logical-religious terms instead of critically investigating it in order to dislodge its inscriptions of empire. My rhetorical reading of 1 Peter in the previous chapters emphasized how to read the text from the perspective of the historical author(s) and audience. I stressed the importance of ‘reading against the grain’ in order to deconstruct the text’s persuasive power and to rediscover the submerged voices and beliefs of those whom 1 Peter seeks to persuade. In this chapter, I will explicitly reflect on the hermeneutical moves I have made. I will also suggest further questions for decolonizing the consciousness of readers who are shaped by the inscriptions of empire in and through the process of reading/hearing this scriptural text. With Wayne Booth, I will especially ask the ethical question that must accompany all rhetorical analysis: What does the text do to those who submit to its kyriarchal world of vision? The Kyriarchal Ethos of Household and Empire 1 Peter is part of a series of texts in the N*T which demand submission to the kyrios. These texts, classified as ‘household codes’—a label derived from Lutheran teaching on social status and roles (Ständelehre)—are



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primarily concerned with three sets of relationships: wife and husband, slave and master, son/children and father. The central interest of these texts consists in bolstering the authority of the kyrios, or the pater familias (the father of the extended household), by demanding submission and obedience from the familia (the extended family, from which our notion of the ‘family’ is derived), including wives, slaves, children, and all of the less powerful members of the community. Familia did not refer to the ‘nuclear family’ in the Roman Empire, but instead encompassed all those who were under the authority of the paterfamilias (‘father of the household’): the mater familias (‘mother of the household’), children, relatives and slaves. Related to the familia (‘extended family’) was the domus (‘house’ in Latin), or the oikos (‘household’ in Greek). The domus included all those affiliated with the household, not only the members of the extended familia but also clients, day-workers and even visitors. Much more expansive than contemporary notions of ‘family’, the Roman household was thus an economic production center, a central site of education and training in trade and craft skills, the guarantor of social services, and the locus of religious life (Barclay 1997). Politically, the household functioned as the microcosm of the Empire and the ‘nursery’ of the state. As Cicero so succinctly states: The first bond of union is that between husband and wife; the next that between parents and children; then we find one domus with everything in common. And this is the foundation of civil government, the nursery (seminarium), as it were of the state (De officiis 17.54).

The emperor was called ‘pater patrum’ (‘the father of all fathers’) and the pater patriae (‘the father of the fatherland’). Thus, the emperor was the ultimate father and lord (kyrios) par excellence. According to Greco-Roman political ideology, a male citizen’s authority rested in his dominance over his extended household. Likewise, within this kyriarchal ideology the order of subjection/subordination in the Empire was mirrored in the order of submission in the kyriarchal household. This pattern of domination and subjection does not always include all of the four social status groups outlined above—freeborn well-to-do fathers and mothers of the extended family, freeborn children and relatives, slave wo/men, paid workers. Occasionally, when members of the kyriarchal household are addressed in other ‘household code’ texts such as in Colossians and Ephesians, only some of the subordinate groups are mentioned. Most importantly, the ‘household code’ text in 1 Peter includes an imperial code text which demands obedience to the political powers of the Roman Empire and is used to inculcate the ethos of submission for the household as well as the Christian community understood as ‘household of G*d’.

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The injunction to submission found in 1 Peter occurs already in the authentic Pauline letters, for example in Romans 13 and 1 Corinthians 14 (Briggs Kittredge 1998). It therefore cannot be attributed solely to what exegetes call ‘early Catholicism’. While this pattern of submission functions differently in various early Christian documents and social-ecclesial-historical contexts, this imperial conception and ethos of the submission of the family, state and church in terms of the kyriarchal household seems to be characteristic of the pattern. Since this pattern of submission is ingrained also in Western culture and Christian ethos, we need to deconstruct it not only by critically reading the texts of Scripture but also by paying attention to how we have internalized such an ethos contrary to democratic religious self-understandings. Hence, it is important that we deconstruct such internalized scriptural kyriarchal texts if we should not continue their oppressive impact. To question this kyriarchal order and to destabilize the kyriarchal household was a threat to the order of the state. Furthermore, those male citizens who could not control their households risked endangering the stability of the state. Hence, the emperor, like any other elite male, had to project and maintain a firm patriarchal image and to appear in full control of his household in order to show that he was to be trusted as the ruler of the Empire. Price observes, ‘The stability of the imperial rule was perceived to lie in the transmission of power within the imperial family and, in consequence, considerable importance was attached to the whole imperial house’ (Price 1984: 162). In short, the N*T teaching on ‘male headship and female subordination’ reflects this oikos-ideal of empire that calls for submission and subjection of members of the household, officers of the Empire, citizens, vassals and provinces. It does not just affect elite married men and wo/men and their relationships, but it also calls for submission and subordination of all the subjects of the Roman Empire: freeborn men and wo/men, slave wo/men and men, clients, resident aliens. However, it must be borne in mind that the so-called ‘household-code’ texts are not descriptive but prescriptive. Thus, 1 Peter’s rhetoric of subjection is best understood as a rhetorical response to the egalitarian ethos of ekklēsia (the democratic assembly) which met in houses (oikoi) and was based around notions of equality and mutual wellbeing (Lassen 1997). When reading texts of subordination as Scripture or as significant cultural texts, we internalize their ethos of domination and submission either as ‘word of G*d’ or as important cultural heritage. Hence, it is important that we detoxify the heritage of 1 Peter in and through a critical ‘reading against the grain’. The Decolonizing Dance of Interpretation In light of 1 Peter’s scriptural rhetoric of submission to the Empire as the ultimate kyriarchal household, we must question the prevalent hermeneutics



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of appreciation of and consent to such scriptural texts. In contrast to a hermeneutics of consent, we need to engage in a critical hermeneutic and the spiraling steps (dance) of decolonizing interpretation. In so doing, we may engender a critical process of detoxification and conscientization. For this reason, we should not approach the text with a historical or the*logical hermeneutics of acceptance but rather need to instigate a critical feminist hermeneutical process of decolonizing 1 Peter’s texts of subordination and their the*logical rhetoric which has been inscribed in public discourses and in the experience, memory and imagination of contemporary readers. The hermeneutical method of consciousness-detoxification or conscientization (Freire 2008)—which I have developed in Bread not Stone, fine-tuned in But She Said and practiced in Wisdom Ways (Schüssler Fiorenza 1984, 1992, 2001)—seeks to lift into critical reflection the cultural and religious values and reading frameworks which readers internalize in and through hearing and reading of biblical texts. At the same time, such a method creates a critical space for transforming wo/men’s selfunderstanding, self-perception and self-alienation. By analyzing scriptural texts’ power of persuasion, it seeks to engender biblical interpretation as a critical decolonizing practice against all forms of domination. Such a hermeneutical process of decolonizing reading, cultural-political consciousness-raising and religious imagining can never be finished once and for all. Rather, it must be repeated again and again because every new reading of such internalized imperial inscriptions tends to work ‘hand in glove’ with cultural-religious ‘common sense’ assumptions. By deconstructing the rhetoric and politics of imperial inequality and subordination inscribed in biblical texts and reinforced through the reading of such texts as religious Scriptures or cultural classics, we are able to detoxify our minds and move towards ever-fresh articulations of radical democratic religious possibilities and emancipatory practices. Whether one thinks of the interpretive process as detoxifying or decolonizing, as emancipative technique or conscientizing strategy, seven hermeneutical moves are, in my judgment, crucial: the hermeneutics of experience, of domination, of suspicion, of evaluation, of imagination, of remembrance and of transformation. These interpretive moves can also be understood as hermeneutical lenses. Their interpretive practices are not to be construed simply as successive independent methodological steps of inquiry. Rather, they are best understood as intersecting interpretive moves and movements and as detoxifying hermeneutical methods. These moves, or steps, interact with each other simultaneously in the process of deconstructing the inscriptions of kyriarchy in particular biblical or cultural texts in today’s context of the globalization of inequality and poverty. While the classic ‘hermeneutical circle’ tends to be closed, a critical feminist hermeneutics moves in never-ending circling spirals. A critical

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feminist emancipatory interpretation of cultural and religious texts such as 1 Peter must be repeated differently in different situations and from different perspectives. It is exciting because different meanings emerge in every new reading of texts such as 1 Peter. Such a detoxifying and decolonizing process of biblical interpretation has a ‘doubled’ reference point: our contemporary present and the biblical past. ‘Dancing’ with 1 Peter The seven hermeneutical strategies, or ‘set of technologies’, for a critical decolonizing reading of 1 Peter in the context of empire are guided by ‘democratics’. Chela Sandoval’s ‘methodology of the oppressed’, proposes a set of technologies for decolonizing the social [and religious] imagination. These technologies…are all guided by democratics, the practitioners’ commitment to the equal distribution of power. They are technologies that seek to fashion the ‘dissident consciousness’ of revolutionary, mobile, and global coalitions of citizen-activists who are allied through the apparatus of emancipation (Sandoval 2000: 183).

If the tendency of texts and the ideologies inscribed in them is to ‘naturalize’ structures of domination by eliminating their socio-historical lineage from consciousness, then it is important in a process of conscientization to lift into awareness that such constructions of kyriarchal difference and ideologies of domination are historical and not normative. In the following, I will indicate but cannot comprehensively develop such a decolonizing process of reading. Hermeneutics of Experience A hermeneutics of experience begins not simply with individualized and privatized experience. Rather, it starts with a critical reflection on how experience with a text such as 1 Peter is shaped by the socio-political location of the interpreter. What I see depends on where I stand! Hence, a hermeneutics of experience critically renders problematic not only the social-religious and intellectual locations of contemporary interpreters but also those of biblical texts. This reading lens thus works in relation to global struggles for survival and wellbeing. A hermeneutics of experience approaches a text such as 1 Peter by reflecting on readers’ experiences in relation to this text. With respect to the experiences inscribed in 1 Peter and those of reading/hearing this text, readers may ask: What kind of experiences does 1 Peter evoke? Does the experience inscribed in 1 Peter ‘resonate’ with our own experiences? What kinds of emotions and sentiments are engendered by the text? Whose experience stands in the center and whose experience is ruled out, silenced or



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marginalized? Are the arguments of the letter to inculcate such subordination familiar or are they alien to us? Which statements make us angry and encourage us to struggle against injustice? Is 1 Peter preached or emphasized at certain occasions? How does its rhetoric of submission reinforce ‘feminine’-submissive behavior today? How does the text re-inscribe prejudices of race and class which we have experienced? Are the statements of submission appealing to our imagination and why? Which statements have, in our experience, perpetrated the continued violence of empire? In short, a hermeneutics of experience compels us to look at our own experiences and reactions as we read 1 Peter. For example, post-biblical feminists engage in a purely deconstructive reading of such a scriptural text as 1 Peter because their experiences with religion and the Bible have been oppressive and self-alienating. Jewish or Christian identified feminists, in turn, have sought to develop both a critical reading and an appreciation of the Bible because their experiences of biblical reading have not just been negative but have also inspired their self-affirmation and struggles for liberation. Or, to give another example: While it is assumed that the oppressive social system of overt slavery supposedly no longer exists today, covert slavery in and through growing devastating poverty and ever-increasing and lucrative international sex-trade is often not recognized. Nevertheless, millions of wo/men and children are forced or duped into it. Many will feel guilty and fear the wrath of G*d because of their ‘sinfulness’ at having been exposed to such exploitation and sexual abuse. Christian wo/men who have been socialized into a literalist understanding of the Bible as the word of G*d might interpret 1 Peter as telling them that they should accept abuse, suffering and beatings from their husbands or partners as the will of G*d. When they experience domestic violence and abuse, they often blame themselves and accept it as their fault. When preaching this text, clergy people often still underscore that wo/men should suffer just as Christ has suffered. As we read 1 Peter, these and similar questions seek to identify and name both our experiences and how they connect with the experiences inscribed in the text of 1 Peter itself. Hence, it is important that a decolonizing reading help us to get in touch with such experiences of being silenced, of being asked to accept second-class citizenship, suffering and abuse, and to reflect critically on them in terms of a hermeneutics of domination. Hermeneutics of Domination A hermeneutics of domination investigates how the rhetoric of 1 Peter inscribes the ethos and structures of empire and how contemporary interpretations continue to re-inscribe them. How are the experiences of wo/ men mentioned in 1 Peter textualized not only in terms of gender but also

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in terms of race, class, ethnicity and religion? Such a hermeneutics not only asks for the experiences of contemporary wo/men with a particular text such as 1 Peter and its interpretations but also reflects on how our social, cultural and religious location(s) shape(s) our experience with and our reactions to a particular biblical text such as 1 Peter. To that end, it engages the critical analytics of domination (kyriarchy), which I have discussed throughout this Guide. As I have noted previously, what kind of systemic analysis we adopt will crucially determine our interpretation and internalization of 1 Peter. In the previous chapters, we have explored the historical and literary-cultural inscriptions of the ethos of kyriarchy in 1 Peter. In this chapter, I want to emphasize that this needs to be done not only on the literary-textual and historical level but also on the contemporary level of interpretation, since every ‘faithful’ reading internalizes the letter’s kyriarchal ethos in the process of ‘making sense’ of it. It does so because much interpretation resonates with the contemporary systems of domination and subordination. It is not accidental that the anti-feminist Christian Right has made the family, sexuality, and diminishing the citizen rights of wo/men and LGBTIQA people the central cornerstone of its political rhetoric. The Bible is invoked because it teaches the divinely ordained subordination of wo/men and the creational differences between the sexes as well as the abomination of homosexuality. Since the rhetoric of submission in 1 Peter is rooted in the rhetoric of the imperial household, Rightwing biblical political rhetoric is often effective among faithful wo/men; it seems to defend American kyriarchal family and society structures in the name of biblical Christianity. A hermeneutics of kyriarchal domination makes it possible for us to critically reflect on how relations of domination operate to delimit the range of democratic options that we as individual readers can choose in constructing our unique identities as individuals. It also makes it possible for us to examine how we access and engage with cultural knowledges such as the Bible. It helps us to explore how these different expressions of self- and groupidentity are at work in the process of interpreting a text such as 1 Peter. It also inspires us to seek within biblical texts for possibilities to transform our identities over and against such socially defined categories of domination. For instance, we will read 1 Peter differently depending on whether we engage a Thomistic, Aristotelian, Freudian, capitalist, anarchist, postcolonial, womanist, queer, gender or critical feminist systemic analysis of domination. A feminist liberationist approach prioritizes wo/men’s struggles against multiplicative structures of oppression as hermeneutical frames and spaces from where to read. A systemic analysis of the sociocultural and political-religious structures of domination seeks to identify not only contemporary situations of domination but also those inscribed in biblical texts.



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With the help of such a critical feminist analytic and hermeneutic of domination, we first explore and articulate our own social location and participation in kyriarchal power relations. In so doing, we become conscious of how our experiences of reading 1 Peter are constructed by kyriarchal relations of domination and how they then work to construct our self-identity in terms of the intersecting structures of gender, race, class, religion or nationalism that define our social location. However, social location must not be mistaken for an identity category but rather is to be understood as a category that articulates our differential embeddedness in systems of domination. Engaging this detoxifying reading strategy, one would ask questions on the level of text such as: Which Roman imperial socio-political and religious values does the rhetoric of 1 Peter articulate? Does its call to ‘suffer as Christ has suffered’ and to subordination as the foremother Sarah has done reflect imperial values that reinforce domination and exploitation? Does this rhetoric have the same meaning for all members of the community or does its meaning depend on the social location of those to whom it is addressed? The hermeneutical strategy of domination explores these historicalthe*logical questions in the interest of contemporary meaning-making and thus asks: Into what kind of practices of empire and identity slots of domination and subordination are we socialized today? Are we using the kind of lenses we are taught in school and university to read the rhetoric of 1 Peter? How is our reading of 1 Peter shaped by kyriarchal socializations, privileges and prejudices that inscribe systemic racism, heterosexism, class discrimination and nationalism? How does this text function as ideological legitimization of the ethos of subordination? How do both legitimizations of kyriarchal domination—the Christological legitimization of suffering and the ethical appeal to subordination—inculcate and legitimate collaboration in globalized oppression today? In short, a hermeneutics of domination asks us to think critically about the ongoing life and function of the text of 1 Peter as both oppressive and liberating in our contemporary society and world. Hermeneutics of Suspicion As biblical readers, we are often taught to approach the Bible with a hermeneutics of respect, acceptance, consent and obedience. Instead of cultivating a hermeneutics of appreciation and consent, I have argued, a critical feminist interpretation for liberation needs to engage in a hermeneutics of suspicion that places on all biblical texts the label ‘Caution, could be dangerous to your health and survival!’ Texts such as Lev. 20.13 (‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death’), Tit. 1.12 (‘It was one of them, their very own prophet who said: “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons”.

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That testimony is true…’) or 1 Peter’s characterization of wives as ‘weaker vessels’ (3.7) cannot be approached with a hermeneutics of empathy, appreciation and consent but must instead be approached with a hermeneutics of suspicion. The primary task of a hermeneutics of suspicion is to disentangle the ideological functions of kyriarchal text and commentary. Yet, such a hermeneutical process must not be misunderstood as peeling away layers of debris in order to recover a pre-given, essentialist ontological reality. Kyriarchal language does not cover up but rather constructs reality in terms of exclusion and domination and then mystifies its own constructions by naturalizing them. Hence, a hermeneutics of suspicion is concerned with the distorted ways in which not only wo/men’s but all subordinated people’s actual presences and practices are constructed and represented in and through grammatically kyriocentric language and media. For that reason, a hermeneutics of suspicion must problematize kyriocentric language on both the level of text (e.g. ‘brotherhood’ in 1 Peter) and on the level of contemporary meaning-making, because such language makes marginalized wo/men doubly invisible. For instance, affirmative-action job advertisements will invite ‘African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and women to apply’, as if African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans are only men and not also wo/men. To a larger extent than we are often aware, how one understands androcentric language determines also one’s understanding of early Christianity and of our world today. Since readers align themselves with the dominant voice represented by the andro-kyriocentric text, a hermeneutics of suspicion critically analyzes dominant strategies of meaning-making. In addition, it draws out and makes manifest masculine/feminine, superior/inferior, we/others roles and values inscribed in the text. Moreover, it engages in a conscious articulation of the ideological strategies of a text such as 1 Peter and makes apparent the text’s interaction and resonance with our experiences and cultural value-systems. Finally, it seeks to determine and circumscribe the rhetorical situation and context in which the letter was formulated and in which it operates today. For example, studies on ‘Woman in the Bible’ often understand only 1 Peter’s admonitions for wives as speaking about wo/men because they take the androcentric text at face value. For this reason, they overlook that the admonitions to household slaves are also addressed to wo/men. Thus in a ‘normal’ reading of the text that is not aware of andro-kyriocentric language but unconsciously ‘naturalizes’ grammatical gender, slave wo/men are erased from historical and contemporary consciousness. Or, to give another example that I have discussed already, 1 Peter names the community with the grammatically masculine term ‘brotherhood’, although the admonition of freeborn wives indicates that wo/men were active members of the community. In short, a hermeneutics of suspicion not only scrutinizes the



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language of the text but also lays open the inscribed kyriarchal the*logical tendencies and those that are re-inscribed by contemporary interpretations. In 1 Peter, a hermeneutics of suspicion opens up to critical scrutiny the Christological legitimization of suffering in the admonition to slave wo/ men or points to the scriptural legitimization of the subordination of freeborn wives, even to unbelieving husbands. Hermeneutics of Evaluation A hermeneutics of evaluation presupposes and completes a hermeneutics of suspicion. It is necessary because texts such as 1 Peter always make meaning in context and thus they have a multiplicity of meanings. For this reason, this hermeneutical strategy seeks to name and assess the inscriptions of empire in 1 Peter and its traditions as well in contemporary discourses in terms of a feminist liberationist scale of values. Just as a hermeneutics of suspicion, so also a hermeneutics of critical evaluation is difficult to practice for readers who have been socialized into a hermeneutics of trust and/ or obedience towards scriptural texts such as 1 Peter. Such a hermeneutics of evaluation does not take the kyriocentric N*T text such as 1 Peter and its claim to divine authority at face value but rather scrutinizes it as to its ideological functions in the interest of domination. Emotionally, it might be difficult to engage in such a hermeneutics of evaluation either because we have internalized biblical authority as unquestionable or our experiences with the Bible have been positive and edifying because we were not aware of its texts of violence. Hence, we need to work through our emotions, anxieties and fears and to ask what stake we have in upholding a hermeneutics of appreciation and consent before we can fruitfully engage in a hermeneutics of critical evaluation of 1 Peter. Accordingly, a hermeneutics of evaluation borrows from the previous steps and seeks to adjudicate the oppressive tendencies as well as the liberatory possibilities inscribed in a biblical text such as 1 Peter, its function in contemporary struggles for liberation, and its ‘resonance’ with wo/men’s experiences of equality today. It accomplishes this not once and for all but must be repeated again and again in a variety of social locations and situations. A hermeneutics of evaluation has thus a double reference point. The first is cultural-ideological. Language and texts such as 1 Peter are not selfenclosed systems of signs but have performative power—either they legitimize or challenge power structures, serve to ‘naturalize’ or to interrupt hegemonic world-views, or inculcate dominant or emancipatory values. For instance, Sheila Redmond points out that the biblical values of suffering, forgiveness, purity, need for redemption and obedience to authority figures—which I would add are also inscribed in 1 Peter—prevent recovery

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from child sexual abuse and continue to dis-empower victims (Redmond 1989). If such values which prevent recovery are espoused by a biblical text such as 1 Peter, they must be named and made conscious as kyriarchal values that perpetuate suffering and abuse. Consequently, they must be judged for their possibly debilitating effects in particular situations where such abuse exists or is remembered. The key question of a hermeneutics of evaluation is: What does a text such as 1 Peter do to those who submit to its world of vision and values? The second reference point for a hermeneutics of evaluation is religiousthe*logical. In a Christian context, biblical texts such as 1 Peter are understood and proclaimed as the Word of G*d. Canonization compels us to make sense out of such scriptural texts in such a way that we accept, consent and submit to them. This hermeneutics of submission and consent understands canonical authority as kyriarchal authority that requires subordination. Such an understanding of canonical authority in terms of the the*logy of kyriarchal identity fosters exclusion and vilification of the other. To the contrary, a hermeneutics of evaluation does not categorize biblical texts such as 1 Peter in a dualistic fashion either as oppressive or as emancipatory. Rather, it seeks to adjudicate again and again how biblical texts such as 1 Peter function in particular situations. Its socio-cultural criterion or standard of evaluation is the wellbeing of every wo/man (which includes the principle of human rights as wo/men’s rights), which must be established and reasoned out in terms of a systemic analysis of kyriarchal domination. For the*logical reasons, a hermeneutics of evaluation for proclamation insists that biblical religions must cease to preach kyriarchal texts such as 1 Peter as the ‘word of G*d’, since by doing so we continue to proclaim G*d as legitimating kyriarchal oppression. Instead, it argues, biblical religions must adopt the socio-cultural criterion of evaluation and search for visions of wellbeing in biblical texts such as 1 Peter that proclaim the divine as a power for justice and wellbeing. In order to adjudicate the ethical implications and impact of 1 Peter’s rhetoric of subordination and its effects in the past and in the present, we must establish a critical scale of values and visions. Since such values are always context- and theory-dependent, they cannot be fixed once and for all but must be discussed and debated in each new situation. Therefore, biblical interpretation is not able to do its work of detoxification without simultaneously engaging a critical feminist the*logy and ethics. The academic disciplinary divisions between biblical studies, the*logy, ethics, hermeneutics and ritual break down in the face of emancipative practices of evaluation. Moreover, a hermeneutics of evaluation presupposes the vision of a world and church different from that of empire and searches for it in texts like 1 Peter. We may not yet experience the realization of such a different world of wellbeing, but it lives in our dreams and hopes that



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inspire us to continue the struggles for the wellbeing of all without exception. Consequently, we need not just detoxifying practices of interpretation but also constructive practices that can envision alternatives to empire and domination. Hermeneutics of Imagination A hermeneutics of imagination searches for such egalitarian visions and seeks to ‘dream’ a different world of justice and wellbeing. The space of the imagination is that of freedom, a space in which boundaries are crossed, possibilities are explored, and time becomes relativized. What we cannot imagine, we will not have. As Toni Morrison so forcefully states in her novel, Beloved: She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it (Morrison 1987: 88).

The space of imagination is a space of memory and possibility where situations can be re-experienced and desires re-embodied. Because of our imaginative abilities, we can put ourselves into another person’s position, relate to their feelings, and participate in their deliberations and struggles. Because of the imagination, we are able to conceive of change, of how situations can be altered. Historical imagination, like all other types of imagination, is absolutely necessary for any knowledge of biblical texts and worlds, as I hope to have shown in this Guide to 1 Peter. A hermeneutics of imagination thus enables us to fill in the gaps and silences of the text. Reader-response critics point out that we ‘make meaning’ in the process of reading by imaginatively filling in the gaps, fissures and breaks in the text with reference to our experience and knowledge as we have done in the previous chapters. Jewish hermeneutics, for instance, has imagined that the Shekhinah (the divine presence) dwells in the blank white spaces between the black letters. In the process of story telling or role-playing, our imagination seeks to make present the Chokmah/Sophia/Sapientia (divine wisdom) in the ‘blank spaces’ between the slave wo/men in the community addressed by 1 Peter and our own lives. Retelling biblical stories such as that of Sarah and Hagar and reimagining biblical characters in creative imagination and play is a catalytic process that liberates us from the false images that we have made. Such envisioning of an alternative reality is only possible if we have at least some experiences of it. Wo/men who have experienced the Bible only as oppressive and discriminatory but not also as promoting justice and

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equality cannot imagine its grace. This insight also applies to the level of text. If we do not discover visions of equality and wellbeing inscribed in biblical texts, we cannot imagine early Christian life and world differently. To ask whether visions of justice, equality, dignity, love, community and wellbeing that are also inscribed in biblical texts such as 1 Peter, one does not need to show that the text is liberating, or to explain away or to deny its inscriptions of empire and domination. Rather one is enabled to explore whether 1 Peter, either its author(s) or its audience(s), also advocates an alternative to the oppressive powers of empire. Feminist interpretation might be able to imagine a world different from the imperial world advocated by 1 Peter if it would focus on those statements and visions in 1 Peter that express a self-identity different from that of empire. Slave wo/men and freeborn wives who were told ‘you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, G*d’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of G*d who called you out of darkness into G*d’s marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are G*d’s people’ (2.9-10) would have heard this message differently than elite propertied men, since kyriarchal culture told them that they were nonpersons. Slave wo/men who understood themselves as a ‘royal priesthood’ and ‘chosen race’ might have claimed their new self-identity and argued that their conversion abolished their slave status. Freeborn wo/men in turn might have insisted on ‘proclaiming’ in the community the great deeds of the One who had called them. They, therefore, might have objected to living with husbands who did not heed the call. Thus, a hermeneutics of imagination results in a different historical memory and leads to a different historical reconstruction and self-identity. Hermeneutics of Re-membering A hermeneutics of re-membering uses the tools of historiography to reconstruct the struggles of slave wo/men and freeborn wo/men against kyriarchal domination and the violence of empire inscribed in early ‘Christian’ literature in general and 1 Peter in particular. It re-conceptualizes and rewrites early ‘Christian’ history as decolonizing history and memory. It does so not from the perspective of the historical ‘winners’ but from the perspective of those who struggled against the dehumanization and violence of empire. By placing freeborn wo/men, slave wo/men, migrant wo/men, sex workers and many others in the center of 1 Peter’s attention, our image of early ‘Christianity’ as well as that of ourselves, of church and of the world today is changed. As I have argued in previous chapters, such a hermeneutics of remembering our Jewish ancestors utilizes constructive methods of revisioning insofar as it seeks not only for historical retrieval but also for a religious reconstitution of the world. It seeks these things in and through

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a recovery of the forgotten past both of wo/men’s victimization and of our struggles for survival and wellbeing. With postmodern thinkers, such a hermeneutics is fully conscious of the rhetoricity of its own reconstructions but nevertheless insists that such work of historical remembrance is necessary in support of wo/men’s struggles for survival and transformation today. If it is a sign of oppression when a people do not have a written history, then feminists and other subaltern scholars cannot afford to eschew such rhetorical and historical re-constructive work. Such a feminist decolonizing historiography seeks to replace the kyriocentric models of world construction inscribed in 1 Peter with a radical egalitarian model of re-membering also potentially inscribed in 1 Peter. History writing can be likened to making a quilt, fitting all the bits and pieces of information into a new design and model. Thereby, we can open up the possibilities of wo/men’s historical presence and awaken our capacities to envision alternatives to the kyriarchal past and contemporary struggles. This requires, as I have argued throughout this book, new hermeneutical assumptions that can correct the kyriarchal determination of our historical sources. To begin, we cannot take grammatically androcentric language and terms, such as ‘brotherhood’, at face value but must assume that wo/men were present and active in history until proven otherwise. In order to displace the kyriocentric dynamic of the biblical text in its literary and historical contexts, we need to read the text against its androcentric grain. For instance, since the grammatical form of ‘slave’ is masculine, it is usually assumed that 1 Peter speaks only of slave men. Hence, we must read the kyriocentric text of 1 Peter in an inclusive fashion unless it is explicitly stated that slave wo/men were not present in the community. • Texts and injunctions such as 1 Pet. 3.1-6, which seek to censure or limit wo/men’s behavior, must be read as prescriptive rather than as descriptive of reality. If wo/men are forbidden a certain activity, we can safely assume that they might actually have engaged in it to the point that it became threatening to the kyriarchal order of the Empire or of the ‘brotherhood’. • Texts and information as elaborated in 1 Peter must be contextualized not only in their variegated cultural and religious environments but also in terms of the kyriarchal structures of domination. They need to be reconstructed not only in terms of the dominant ethos of the Roman Empire but also in terms of the ethos of alternative social movements for change such as slave revolts, Jewish messianic movements or the early ‘Christian’ movements. •

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Thus, by reading the text of 1 Peter against the grain, we are able to re-contextualize androcentric texts and kyriarchal sources within a sociopolitical-religious model of reconstruction, as used in this Guide to 1 Peter, that aims at making the subordinated and marginalized ‘others’ visible, and their repressed arguments and silences ‘audible’ again. Hence, the ‘chasm’ that historical positivism has constructed between contemporary readers and the text of 1 Peter can be overcome if we seek to recover wo/men’s religious history and the memory of their victimization, struggle and accomplishments as heritage for today. To remember is to assert the historical presence of wo/men in the communities of Asia Minor addressed by 1 Peter, and to claim historical religious agency of slaves and servants. Such historical remembrance recaptures early Christian history that is inscribed in 1 Peter as tradition of struggle, survival and vision. This practice reclaims Jewish and ‘Christian’ historical and religious heritage as wo/men’s heritage. Hermeneutics of Transformation A hermeneutics of transformation is at work in all the preceding hermeneutical moves and works as the driving force and power in a decolonizing process of interpreting 1 Peter. It compels us to read the inscriptions of empire and domination in 1 Peter in order to change kyriarchal consciousness and knowledge today. To that end, it explores avenues and possibilities for changing and transforming relations of domination and subordination inscribed in texts such as 1 Peter, Christian traditions and everyday life. Such work stands first of all accountable to those wo/men who have struggled at the bottom of the kyriarchal pyramid of discriminations and dominations in the past and do so today. Such a hermeneutics of transformation seeks to articulate 1 Peter studies as a site of social, political and religious struggle and transformation. When seeking future visions and transformations of kyriarchal globalization we can only extrapolate from our present experience which is always already determined by past experiences. Hence, we must critically analyze the past and the present, biblical and cultural texts such as 1 Peter, as well as our society and institutions in which they are valued and studied in order to be able to articulate creative visions and transcending imaginations for a new humanity, global ecology and religious community. Yet, only if we remain committed to work for a different, more just future will our imagination and our struggles be able to transform the past and present limitations of our vision and ability to read 1 Peter differently. To deconstruct and re-imagine biblical visions such as those inscribed in 1 Peter is to reclaim the biblical power of social, cultural and religious transformation. Biblical texts such as 1 Peter have the power to evoke potent emotions and imaginative responses and thereby create a sense of community necessary to



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sustain contemporary visions and struggles for a different society, church and world. I hope this Guide has engendered a reading and study of 1 Peter and its scholarly interpretations that is transformative and inspiring new knowledges, commitments and visions.

Instead of a Conclusion We have come to the end of our journey of reading 1 Peter together. In this volume, you have encountered a critical rhetorical decolonizing method and hermeneutical process of the letter’s interpretation. I have suggested that such a method is best understood as a process of detoxifying the inscriptions of empire in Scriptures such as 1 Peter, cultural classics, or our own internalizations. A detoxifying process of interpretation challenges us to become ethically sophisticated readers by reflecting on our own socio-political locations and functions in global situations and structures of empire. At the same time, such a detoxifying reading empowers us to struggle for a more just and radical-democratic society and religion. Such an interpretive process is not restricted to Christian canonical texts but can be, and has been, used successfully by scholars of other religious traditions and Scriptures. Moreover, it is not restricted to the scholar as expert reader. Rather, it calls all of us to become critical resisting readers and transformative and engaged biblical interpreters. This process of ideological detoxification has been successfully used in graduate education, in parish discussions, in college classes, and in work with illiterate wo/men and I hope has impacted also you, the reader. This is how the first reader of this commentary, Ms. Kelsi MorrisonAtkins, a doctoral student in New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School and my research assistant, sums up her reading journey through the chapters of this book: In this Guide to 1 Peter, I was struck in no small measure by the ways in which Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza utilizes a traditional introductory text to critique the very genre and expectations of the commentary itself. While this was not my first engagement with 1 Peter, this brief book has not only changed the way I read this particular letter, but has forced me to be more self-reflexive in my engagement with all Scripture texts and the scholarly discourses surrounding them. In the ‘Introduction’, we do not begin with a list of names, dates, and a narrative of masculine imperial conquest, but rather with an extended exploration of practices of reading and engaging with texts in the first place. To begin, Schüssler Fiorenza highlights the dual reference point of all readings of ancient texts—the ancient context in which it was produced and circulated as well as our own socio-historical and political world(s). Furthermore, she notes that flagging ‘dangerous texts’ is central to a feminist



Instead of a Conclusion 79 decolonizing reading that does not take the inscribed authority of the text at face value, but works to read ‘against the grain’ of its rhetoric in order to discover the submerged and silenced voices of wo/men. To this end, the ‘Introduction’ asks the reader to look closely at the ways in which leading men’s historical agency is taken for granted while that of wo/men is ignored or sidelined due to the andro-kyriocentric character of language in general and of 1 Peter in particular. This ‘Introduction’ was surprising and jarring to me in a number of ways. Although I have been exposed to feminist biblical interpretation for years at various levels of education and religious praxis, I still came to this ‘Introduction’ expecting ‘facts’ and ‘data’ about the writing, distribution and reception of 1 Peter. Expecting to learn about the text, my focus was instead shifted back upon my own practices of reading and pedagogical training. Instead of laying out the ‘correct’ translation and reading of 1 Peter, this ‘Introduction’ equipped me with many of the tools to do so myself, with my own socio-historical and political context(s) in mind. The rhetorical analysis of 1 Peter in Chapter 1 provides the reader with some of the conventional ‘data’ about 1 Peter, but with a twist—the focus of this analysis is not on the author(s) as authoritative, but on the writing of 1 Peter as a rhetorical act of communication that involves both author(s) and audience (inscribed and ‘actual’). In this chapter, Schüssler Fiorenza engages in a meta-critique of the scholarship, which all too often takes for granted the success of the author(s) in persuading his audience. As opposed to this reading strategy, which naturalizes the kyriarchal power relations inscribed in the author(s)’s rhetoric, she shifts the focus to the wo/men and their possible counter-arguments. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this chapter begins to chip away at centuries of supersessionist readings of 1 Peter by highlighting the ways in which Judaism and its symbolic universe lie at the very heart of this letter and its persuasive power. Chapters 2 and 3 make explicit and audible both the letter’s constitutive Jewishness and the voices of the subordinated who have been subsumed under centuries of interpretation focused exclusively on the authority of the author(s). These chapters turn traditional reading strategies upside-down, asking us to read 1 Peter through the lens of Jewish Messianism in a way that supplants the prevailing Christo-centric readings of the letter. Whereas in Chapter 2 we meet our Jewish ancestors as the recipients of the letter, in Chapter 3 we are asked to think beyond the author(s)’s rhetoric to the possible alternative and resistant responses of the subordinated who are asked to submit to kyriarchal authority. Embedded within this chapter is yet another critique of the scholarship on 1 Peter, whose identification with the author(s) further marginalizes the voices of all wo/men, especially slave wo/men, and their possible counter-arguments inscribed within the text. What struck me most about these central chapters was the emphasis on the power of language to reveal and to conceal. Both in her rhetorical analysis of the letter and her critiques of the scholarship on 1 Peter, Schüssler Fiorenza underscores that how we read ‘generic’, andro-kyriocentric language matters much in the interpretation of the letter and whose voices we are able to hear. Furthermore, I was surprised to find that, even in my own feminist, decolonizing readings, I have been inadvertently—yet

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1 Peter unreflectedly—assuming that the language and symbolic universe of the letter was Christo-centric and supersessionist in its own terms. Like her student mentioned in Chapter 3, I had so often overlaid Christian themes upon the letter of 1 Peter, without considering the parallels with proselyte discourses in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, my reading ‘lenses’ were shifted from a Christian to a Jewish Messianist reading of 1 Peter, and in so doing a whole new set of interpretive possibilities opened up in my reading. Finally, in Chapter 4, Schüssler Fiorenza makes a rare move in the world of scholarly commentaries on Scriptures—she elaborates her own hermeneutical moves and opens up space for transformative readings in the present. Whereas one might expect in a feminist commentary on 1 Peter to see a special excurses given to ‘Women in 1 Peter’, she makes a surprising and convincing critique of this move—emphasizing that a reading only of those moments in which wo/men are explicitly mentioned does not account for the voices and presence of those wo/men whose silencing continues in our failure to ‘read against the grain’ and to practice a hermeneutics of suspicion. By reading 1 Peter’s arguments about wo/men as prescriptive rather than descriptive and using the hermeneutical ‘steps’ laid out here, I began to see alternative possibilities for a space in which readers and hearers did not take the author(s)’s words at face value, but who likely behaved differently or responded in opposition to his attempts at disciplining and controlling their behavior. As should be clear, I came to this Guide to 1 Peter with a certain set of expectations that I have been trained to take to so many introductory texts—a clear set of ‘facts’, a bird’s eye view of the scholarship, and perhaps also a ‘new’ translation of the letter. This Guide paradoxically met and foiled these expectations. While the reader gleans historical context for the letter in this Guide, she is also asked to recognize that ‘facts’ are themselves interpretations and can be constructed differently based on the aspects one chooses to emphasize. While Schüssler Fiorenza made me aware of and well-versed in the scholarly debates surrounding the letter, she also posed a critique to the very methods and presuppositions which shape scholarly discourses and have the potential to naturalize relations of power inscribed within the text. While she offers up a more complex and nuanced set of vocabulary for interpreting key terms in the letter, Schüssler Fiorenza also proposes critical insights into the very difficulties of language itself in a way that changes not only how we read 1 Peter and its symbolic universe, but also how we engage with all texts that are potentially ‘dangerous’ for wo/men. In reading through this Guide, I found my own methods and investments critically and productively challenged. What relationships of power am I naturalizing and authorizing in the reading strategies I deploy? How might I read these texts otherwise, in order to get at the historical agency of wo/men—Jewish wo/men, slave wo/men and many more—who are subsumed beneath the author(s)’s assumed authority? Put briefly, this Guide to 1 Peter is more than a guide to 1 Peter—it is a politically engaged and potentially transformative introduction to reading not just 1 Peter, but all texts, otherwise.



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I hope this summary of Morrison-Atkins’ reading experience will help readers to name and sustain their own reading of 1 Peter. For in and through such a critical rhetorical process of interpretation and deliberation, biblical texts such as 1 Peter can become sites of struggle and conscientization. Patricia Hill Collins has dubbed such a praxis of change and transformation ‘visionary pragmatism’ (Hill Collins 1998). Feminist visionary pragmatism points to an alternative vision of the world but does not prescribe a fixed goal and end-point for which it then claims universal truth. In such a process of imaginative pragmatism, one never arrives but always struggles on the way. This process reveals how current actions are part of a larger, meaningful struggle. It demonstrates that ethical and truthful visions of self-affirmation and community cannot be separated from the struggles for survival and transformation. One takes a stand in these intellectual struggles by constructing new knowledge and new interpretations that search religious and cultural texts for visions of wellbeing in the struggles against exploitation. While vision can be conjured up in the historical imagination, pragmatic action requires that one remain responsive to the injustices of everyday life. If religion and biblical interpretation are worth anything, they must inspire such visionary pragmatism in everyday struggles for global justice and the wellbeing of all of creation. In the context of the exploitation and domination of today’s global empire, I argue, cultural, political and religious progressives must reject the the*logical, scriptural claims of 1 Peter through the imperial pattern of submission, and one must do so because of the oppressive effects they have on the life of wo/men. A feminist scriptural hermeneutics that has as its canon the liberation of all wo/men from oppressive structures and kyriarchal institutions seeks to name and resist the imperial values inscribed in 1 Peter. A feminist decolonizing critical interpretive practice of reading 1 Peter that is committed to the emancipatory struggles of wo/men around the globe insists that the ethos and praxis of coequality in community has the power to transform the kyriarchal inscriptions of empire in such a way that the interpretation of the letter will contribute to a radical democratic egalitarian future of wellbeing for all of creation. I hope you will continue the journey and the struggle.

Key Terms Kelsi Morrison-Atkins Androcentric/Androcentrism: Male-centered/male-centeredness. From the Greek ‘aner’. Used to describe a cultural, ideological and linguistic system in which the ‘male’ functions as the norm against which wo/men are viewed as secondary, deviant and derivative. As a system of language, androcentrism functions as the ‘generic’ form (i.e. congressmen, postmen, mankind) which eradicates the presence of wo/men from the historical record. In androcentric language systems, wo/men must adjudicate whether or not they are being addressed or referenced in a given context. Archetype: An archetype refers to an original model meant to be reproduced exactly in every iteration. An archetype is thus an ideal form that becomes the establishing principle for an unchanging and timeless pattern. An archetypal understanding of Scripture claims that interpretation can reproduce the true, unalterable, and inerrant meaning of the text that has been revealed and must be maintained unchanged in all times and places. Argumentatio: Latin term referring to a rhetorical argumentation or proof. Asia Minor: Also called ‘Anatolia’, this geographical peninsula comprises modern-day Turkey. After being conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 bce, Asia Minor underwent a period of Hellenization. In 133 bce, after centuries of Hellenistic rule, Asia Minor became part of the Roman Republic. Located at the crossroads between Asia and Europe, Asia Minor was an important ‘contact zone’ where members of diverse cultures were brought together to exchange ideas and engage in trade. The provinces listed in 1 Peter include Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. The provinces of Lydia, Lycia, Caria, Mysia, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Pisidia, Paphlagonia, and Cilicia are not mentioned in the letter. bce:

Before the Common Era. Refers to ancient periods before Jesus is said to have been born (replacing bc or ‘Before Christ’). This abbreviation replaces the bc/ad dating system which connotes a Christian, supersessionist bias.

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Captatio benevolentiae: Latin, ‘winning of goodwill’. This rhetorical strategy seeks to garner the approval and consent of the audience at the beginning of the oration. ce: Common Era. Refers to the time period after the assumed birth of Jesus. This abbreviation replaces ad (Anno Domini), which presumes the dominance of Christianity.

Chokmah [Hebrew], Sophia [Greek] Sapientia [Latin]: ‘Divine wisdom’. Often personified as female. Cicero: 106 bce–46 orician.

bce.

A famous Latin philosopher, politician and rhet-

Collegia: In Ancient Rome, collegia were social communal organizations with legal status. Organizations such as trade guilds, clubs or religious groups served a variety of social functions and were often politically suspect under the Empire. Discourse: In general, refers to the verbal exchange of ideas and the process of engaging in communication. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, discourse marks the relationship between knowledge and power, whereby individuals are shaped and disciplined by language and practices that are themselves shaped by ever-shifting discursive formations. Ekklēsia: Often translated from the Greek as ‘church’, it refers to the decision-making democratic assembly of freeborn citizens. Since ‘free citizens’ has referred throughout Western history to elite freeborn propertied men, it is necessary to quality ekklēsia with ‘wo/men’ (hence ekklēsia of wo/men) in order to subvert this kyriocentric bias. Encomium: A rhetorical composition expressing high praise for someone or something. Exigence: The term comes from the Latin word for ‘demand’. In rhetoric, an issue, problem or situation that causes or prompts someone to write or speak. Feminism/Feminist: Feminism is a political movement and body of theory focused on the equal social, political, religious and economic rights of all wo/men. Feminism is aimed at dismantling all structures of oppression, exploitation, dehumanization and domination worldwide. In short, ‘the radical notion that wo/men are people’.

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G*d: Because ‘God’—Greek Theos and Latin Deus—is a masculine term taken to mark a masculine figure and ‘Goddess’ (thea/dea) invokes a notion of essentialized gender, the asterisk in the writing of G*d is meant to signify the ungendered nature of the divine. Furthermore, writing G*d with an asterisk highlights the inherent difficulties of using human language to speak about the divine and thus underscores G*d’s ineffability. Genre: Refers to a literary category of composition, with groups of compositions sharing the same form, features, style and/or subject matter. Hellenism/Hellenistic: The process by which Greek (Hellenic) culture was imposed upon and considered dominant over the eastern half of the Mediterranean world. Hermeneutics: From the Greek, hermeneuein, meaning ‘to interpret, translate, exegete or explain a text’. The term refers to both theories and practices of interpretation. Honor–shame: A modern theoretical and sociological model used to analyze cultures in the ancient Mediterranean whereby dominance is asserted by invoking a sense of shame and submission in others. In this system, ‘honor’ is coded as a masculine, whereas ‘shame’ is represented as feminine. Household Codes: Haustafeln in German. A term coined by scholars for clusters of texts such as those in Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Peter, 1 Timothy and Titus which promote the continued submission of oppressed groups, such as slaves and wo/men to their masters and husbands. Commonly, Household Codes seem to emphasize three major relationships of domination—master/slave, husband/wife, parent/child. Actually, these are not three separate and independent relationships, but rather a threefold relation of the male head of household, the paterfamilias, to those under his control. Inscribed author/reader: In rhetorical analysis, a means of marking the distinction between the textual and actual author and reader. The inscribed author/reader is not synonymous with the flesh-and-blood author/reader, but is rather the image of the author/reader that is constructed through the process of engaging with a text. Justin Martyr: c. 100–165 ce. Justin Martyr was one of the earliest Christian apologists (writers who attempted to defend Christianity over against Greco-Roman culture. Other famous early apologists include Tatian, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian). Although many of his works have been



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lost to us, two of his apologies and one dialogue are extant. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr engages with the likely fictional Jewish character, Trypho (see below), in order to argue that Christians are the true heirs of Judaism and to convince Trypho to convert to Christianity. Kashrut: Jewish dietary laws. Food fit for consumption is referred to as ‘kosher’. Kyriarchal/Kyriarchy: A neologism coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to replace the notion of patriarchy. Kyriarchy comes from the Greek kyrios (‘lord’) and archein (‘to rule or dominate’). Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, ruling and oppression. Kyriocentric language: Biblical and Western language systems naturalize the dominance of the kyrios or ‘lord’, while simultaneously obscuring that not all men have power and eliminating marginalized groups from the historical and linguistic record. See also ‘Androcentric/Androcentrism’. Kyrios: The Greek word for ‘lord’. It refers to the emperor, slave-master, husband, elite, freeborn, educated, propertied male who exercised decisionmaking power over the household, community and state. Messianism/Messianists (Jewish): Although the term ‘messiah’ has been coopted by Christianity to refer exclusively to Jesus Christ, Jewish Messianism refers to people who awaited the coming leader and savior (Meshiach) of Israel appointed by G*d. In antiquity, and throughout Jewish history, there were many figures thought to be the Messiah, including, for instance, Jesus of Nazareth and Simon Bar Kohkba, leader of the Third Jewish Uprising in 132– 135 ce. Today, the term has been co-opted by evangelical Christians who call themselves ‘Jews for Jesus’ or ‘Messianic Jews’. Such cooptation is another form of supersessionism. Metacritique: According to Jürgen Habermas in the Preface to Knowledge and Human Interests, a metacritique is a radical critique of knowledge and is only possible as a social theory. Neronic Persecution: In 64 ce, Nero blames and executes Christians for the ‘Great Fire’ in Rome. Reference to this persecution can be found in the Roman historian Tacitus’ Annals. New*Testament/N*T: Because the ‘New Testament’ presupposes a claim to Christian authority and the*logical superiority over the ‘Old Testament’,

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this writing seeks to make conscious the ethical and the*logical problem connected with the names ‘Old Testament’ and ‘New Testament’. Paradigm: An authoritative model, example or pattern meant to be imitated or copied. Paterfamilias: Latin term meaning ‘the father of the extended household’ (kyrios in Greek), who demanded the subordination of not only his wife and children, but also slaves, relatives, business associates, and even guests in the home. The rule of the paterfamilias over his household was often conceived as the microcosm of a well-run state. Philo of Alexandria: Also referred to as Philo Judaeus, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived from 25 bce to 50 ce in Roman Egypt. In his allegorical writing, Philo worked to bring together Greek and Jewish philosophy. Prototype: Refers to a preliminary model that becomes a malleable basis for future models. Prototypes are often experimental and not binding, and can be continually reformulated as needed. Conceiving of the Bible as a prototype means recognizing that meaning changes over time and in different socio-political and geographical contexts. Thus, the notions of Christian faith and community put forth in the texts not only allow, but actually necessitate transformation of meaning and praxis. Pseudepigraphy/Pseudonymity: Refers to the attribution of a text to someone other than the actual writer. For instance, 1 Peter is attributed to the disciple Peter and is written in a Pauline style. This attribution was common in the ancient world, and was meant to bear rhetorically the authority of the individual by whom the work is said to have been written. In the ancient world, writing in the voice of another was thus not an equivalent to modernday ‘copyright infringement’ or ‘intellectual property’ violation. It can refer also to the practice of writing under an assumed name to protect one’s identity for political or legal reasons. Qumran: Located near the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert, Qumran is the site of the excavation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Archaeologists and scholars postulate that a community of Essenes (a separatist Jewish community devoted to ascetic practices) populated this site from approximately the second century bce to 68 ce. Rabbinic Judaism: Since the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in 70 rabbinic Judaism has been the mainstream form of Judaism. According to rabbinic Judaism, Moses received both the written and oral Torah on

ce,



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Mount Sinai. The first major work of rabbinic Judaism is the ‘Mishnah’ (‘to study or review’), the first collection of the Jewish Oral Torah. Reader-response criticism: A form of literary theory which focuses on the reader and her experience with a text. In this way, literary theory is repoliticized as the focus shifts from the author/content to the socio-politically situated reader. Rhetorical Criticism: Not to be misunderstood as referring to stylistic ornamentation, ‘mere’ persuasion, or manipulation through the use of language. Rhetoric/rhetorical criticism assumes that all acts of communication seek to either judge, persuade or celebrate, and do so through certain linguistic-symbolic strategies and/or audience construction and formation. Rhetorical criticism acknowledges as well that all interpretations are historically, socially and politically situated. Roman Empire: The period of Roman rule and conquest after the Roman Republic, beginning with the rule of the emperor Augustus in 27 bce to that of Romulus Augustulus in 476 ce. At the apex of its power, the Roman Empire spanned from the Persian Gulf through Northern Africa and into modern-day Germany and Britain. Semiology/Semiotics: Semiology/semiotics refers to the philosophical study of meaning-making, focusing in particular on issues of signs, symbols, and the relationship between the verbal sign and that which it signifies. Septuagint (lxx): The body of Jewish Scriptures, translated into Koine Greek. This translation was completed as early as the second century bce, and is quoted in several New*Testament writings. Shekhinah: From the Hebrew for ‘dwelling’ or ‘settling’. It refers to the personified divine presence or dwelling of G*d. Stoa: Refers to the Athenian site where the philosopher Zeno (of Citium, c. 334–263 bce) associated with and educated his followers. It is from this architectural landmark that the name ‘Stoicism’ is derived for the philosophical school Zeno founded. Taking a deterministic perspective on human life, the Stoics valued equanimity and felt that emotions were destructive and should be overcome through human will. Supersessionism/Supersessionist: Supersessionism refers to the commonly held, if often unacknowledged, notion that Christian Scriptures, doctrine and the*logy replace or supplant Jewish Scriptures. Such supersessionism comes

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to the fore in the nomenclature ‘Old Testament/New Testament’. To alert readers to this problem, scholars use First and Second Testament or, as in this volume, Hebrew Bible/New*Testament (N*T). Talmud/Talmudic: From the Hebrew for ‘instruction’ or ‘study’. It refers to the authoritative writings of Judaism, consisting of the Mishnah (legal tradition) and Gemara (learned commentary on this tradition). Two versions of the Talmud exist: the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud (finalized 350– 400 ce) and the Babylonian Talmud (finalized late fifth century ce). Both include earlier traditions. The*logical/The*logy: Because the Greek word theos (‘God’) from which we derive the term ‘theology’ is grammatically masculine and shifting to the feminist ‘thealogy’ would only reinscribe essentialized gender, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza uses the asterisk (*) in order to problematize all gendered language about the divine. Therapeutae: According to the writing of Philo, the Therapeutae were a late-Second Temple Hellenistic separatist sect of Judaism in Alexandria that focused on philosophy and contemplative living. Women were members of this community, and there were no slaves or servants. Rather, they served one another as they deemed the ownership of slaves ‘against nature’. Interestingly, paragraph 70 of De vita contemplativa states that ‘nature has created all alike—free’. A collective noun is used to refer to people generally instead of the more common anthropoi or andres. Third Jewish Revolt: Also referred to as the Bar Kokhba Revolt. From 132–135 ce, Jews revolted under the leadership of Simon bar Kokhba, considered by many to be the Messiah. After two years of success, the revolt was finally put down by the Romans and all Jews were banished from Jerusalem. Topos: In classical rhetoric, it refers to the places or sources of information used in argumentation. These topoi function as categories which aid in the organization of ideas and the delineation of relationships among various ideas presented by the speaker/writer. Trypho: Justin Martyr’s Jewish counterpart in Dialogue with Trypho (see Justin Martyr, above). Trypho likely did not exist, but is a constructed figure meant to aid in the persuasive force of Justin Martyr’s apologetic rhetoric. Wo/men: A term introduced by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to underscore that woman is not to be used as an essentialist, but as a socio-political



Key Terms 89

category. Wo/men are fragmented and differentiated along lines of race, class, ethnicity, religion, colonialism, age, and many more identity categories. Furthermore, this term includes subordinated men, and is meant to provide an alternative to andro- or kyrio-centric, generic language that eradicates the presence of women.

Timeline Kelsi Morrison-Atkins 334 bce

Alexander the Great conquers Asia Minor. Period of Hellenization begins.

133 bce

Asia Minor bequeathed to Roman Empire by last Attalid king. Beginning of steady colonization of Asia Minor.

63 bce

Romans conquer Jerusalem; Judea becomes part of Roman sphere of influence.

37–4 bce

Rule of Herod the Great.

4 bce

Herod the Great dies. His kingdom is split into three parts (Archelaus, Philip, and Herod Antipas).

6 ce

Roman Procurators begin to rule Jerusalem.

c. 26–36 ce

Pontius Pilate is procurator of Jerusalem.

c. 6 bce–30 ce

Life and career of Jesus.

c. 30 ce

Jesus executed by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem.

37–41 ce

Rule of Emperor Gaius Caligula, who attempts to profane the Temple by placing his image inside. Outbreak of violence is narrowly avoided.

41–44 ce

Rule of King Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great.

c. 50–58 ce

Letters and travels of Paul (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Romans, Philemon, 1 and 2 Corinthians).

54–68 ce

Rule of Emperor Nero. In 64 ce, Nero blames Christians for Great Fire in Rome.

66 ce

Outbreak of riots in Judea lead to war against the Romans.

68 ce

Romans destroy Qumran settlement.

Timeline 91



70 ce

Romans destroy Jerusalem Temple.

73 or 74 ce

Masada falls to the Romans.

c. 70 ce

Gospel of Mark.

c. 70–80 ce

Colossians and Ephesians.

80s ce

Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

80s ce

Acts.

c. 80–100 ce

2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, Jude.

81–96 ce

Rule of Emperor Domitian.

c. 80–90 ce

The beginnings of rabbinic activity at Yavneh (Jamnia).

c. 90–100 ce

Gospel of John.

c. 95–110

Letters of John (1 John, 2 John, 3 John).

c. 95–110

The Book of Revelation (Apocalypse).

c. 96 ce

Epistle to the Corinthians by Clement of Rome.

c. 100 ce

Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

98–117 ce

Rule of Emperor Trajan.

c. 107–117

Letters of Ignatius. Martyrdom of Ignatius.

c. 100–165 ce

Justin Martyr. The apologetic text, Dialogue with Trypho.

112 ce

Pliny’s (governor of Pontus and Bithynia) letter to the emperor Trajan.

115–117 ce

Revolt of Jews in Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene against the Romans.

132–135 ce

Revolt of Bar Kokhba (Kosiba) in Judea (also referred to as the Third Jewish Revolt against Roman occupation).

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Freire, Paulo 2008 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Crossroad, 30th Anniversary edn). Gardner, Jane 1998 Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Giddens, Anthony 1976 New Rules of Sociological Methods: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologists (New York: Basic Books). Green, Gayle, and Coppélia Kahn (eds.) 1985 Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism (New York: Methuen). Gunsalus Gonzáles, Catherine 2010 1 and 2 Peter and Jude (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press). Hilberg, Isidorus (ed.) 1996 Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi epistulae (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 55; Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). Hill Collins, Patricia 1998 Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Horrell, David G. 2007 ‘The Label Xριστιανóς: 1 Peter 4.16 and the Formation of Christian Identity’, JBL 126: 361-81. 2008 1 Peter (New York: T. & T. Clark). Howland, Courtney W. (ed.) 1999 Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women (New York: Palgrave). Hyman, Naomi 1998 Biblical Women and Midrash: A Sourcebook (New York: Jason Aronson). Jameson, Frederic R. 1982 ‘The Symbolic Inference’, in Representing Kenneth Burke (ed. Hayden White and Margaret Brose; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 6891. Janeway, Elizabeth 1971 Man’s World, Woman’s Place (New York: Dell). Judge, E.A. 1960 The Social Pattern of the Christian Groups in the First Century: Some Prolegomena to the Study of New Testament Ideas of Social Obligation (London: Tyndale Press). Knight, Douglas A. (ed.) 2004 Methods of Biblical Interpretation (Nashville: Abingdon Press). Kolodny, Annette 1980 ‘Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism’, Feminist Studies 6: 1-25. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Küng, Hans, and Jürgen Moltmann 1992 Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge (Concilium; London: SCM Press). Lassen, Eva-Marie 1997 ‘The Roman Family: Ideal and Metaphor’, in Constructing Early Christian



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Peterson, Erik 1959 Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Rome, Freiburg, Vienna: Herder, 1959). Price, S.R.F. 1984 Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rawson, Beryl 1996 Marriage, Family and Divorce in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 2001 ‘Children as Cultural Symbols: Imperial Ideology in the 2nd Century’, in Childhood, Class, and Kin in the Roman World (ed. Suzanne Dixon; London: Routledge), pp. 21-42. Redmond, Sheila 1989 ‘Christian “Virtues” and Recovery from Child Sexual Abuse’, in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn; New York: Pilgrim), pp. 70-88. Rich, Adrienne 1978 The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 (New York: W.W. Norton). Rogers Radl, Shirley 1981 The Invisible Woman: Target of the Religious New Right (New York: Dell). Said, Edward 1983 The World, the Text and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Saller, Richard 1991 ‘Corporal Punishment, Authority, and Obedience in the Roman Household’, in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (ed. Beryl Rawson; Canberra: Humanities Research Center), pp. 144-65. 1994 Patriarchy, Property, and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 1999 ‘Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of a Roman Household’, CP 94: 182-97. 2003 ‘Women, Slaves, and the Economy of the Roman Household’, in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (ed. David Balch and Caroly Osiek; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), pp. 185-204. Sandoval, Chela 2000 Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth 1983 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad). 1984 Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press). 1992 But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press). 2001 Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books). 2007a ‘The First Letter of Peter’, in A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (ed. Fernando Segovia and R.S. Sugirtharajah; London: T. & T. Clark), pp. 380-403. 2007b The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).



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Index of Authors Applegate, Judith  24 Augustine  38 Balch, David L.  8-9, 35, 45-47 Barclay, John M.G.  63 Bauman-Martin, Betsy  35-37 Bechtler, Steven Richard  30-31 Besley, Andrew  3 Bhabha, Homi  46 Booth, Wayne  20, 62 Boring, M. Eugene  5-6, 48 Boyarin, Daniel  37-39, 42, 44 Briggs Kittredge, Cynthia  64 Campbell, Barth L.  29, 31, 48 Carter, Warren  8 Cicero  63, 83 Clark Kroeger, Catherine  58 Clark Wire, Antoinette  45-47 Cohen, Shaye  53 de Beauvoir, Simone  11 duBois, Page  15 Elliott, John H.  8-9, 30, 35, 40, 45-50, 56 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth  10 Freire, Paulo  12, 65 Giddens, Anthony  51 Gunsalus González, Catherine  5 Hill Collins, Patricia  81 Horrell, David  8-9, 9, 45-46 Hyman, Naomi  16 Jameson, Frederic R.  20 Jerome  38 Joel  54-55 Judge, E.A.  60 Justin Martyr  53-54, 84-85

Knight, Douglas A.  4 Kolodny, Annette  51 Kuhn, Thomas  3 Lassen, Eva-Marie  64 Lieu, Judith  53 Long, Asphodel  1-2 Luke  54-55 Macey, David  4 Mark  22, 24 Matthews, Shelly  54-55 Morrison, Toni  73 Morrison-Atkins, Kelsi  78-80 Morton, Nelle  9, 48 Novak, David  35 Paul  7, 22-23, 34, 52, 54, 57, 64 Peter  6-7, 22, 55, 61, 86 Peterson, Erik  39 Philo  41-43, 58, 86 Price, S.R.F.  64 Redmond, Sheila  71-72 Rich, Adrienne  10 Said, Edward  19 Sandoval, Chela  66 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth  4, 37, 49, 58, 65, 78-80, 88 Scott, James  46 Seland, Torrey  41-43 Senior, Donald P.  33 Setzer, Claudia  41-42 Silvanus  6-7, 22, 24 Stendahl, Krister  53 Suskin Ostriker, Alicia  15-16 Tompkins, Jane P.  19