Reading Revelation 18: A South African Theo-Ethical Feminist Perspective in a Context of Violence against Women

Recent Feminist Approaches to Interpreting the New Testament

“…Within feminist scholarship on the Gospels and Acts, particular directions for exploration vary widely. In many cases, such scholarship focuses on a particular Gospel, examining how Matthew (Botha 2003;Weaver 2010;Clements 2014;Pillay 2015), Mark (Mitchell 2001;Dewey 2006;Cadwallader 2008;Betsworth 2010;Kim 2010;Aernie 2018;Connolly 2018;Lyons-Pardue 2020), Luke (Elvey 2005; F. S. Spencer 2013;Forbes and Harrower 2015;Dale 2017), or John (Lee 2002;Beirne 2003; J. K. Jones 2008;Kearney 2017) individually portray the women in their respective accounts. However, beyond this focus on a particular part of the canon, this otherwise vast body of work might be loosely categorized by the methodological approaches of its practitioners.…”

“…Related to these more ideologically driven works, another category of scholarship has pursued more theological directions. Scholarship in this vein has considered both the theology of the Evangelists themselves as well as how this theology drives modern theologies of construction and practice (Belleville 2000;Finger 2005;Reid 2007;Waweru 2008;Weaver 2010;Pillay 2015;Lee 2021). Like other ideologically driven approaches, these theological explorations also display a keen interest in the question of how the biblical texts in question contribute to the circumstances of women today, especially in explicitly religious and ecclesial settings.…”

“…Others have taken a closer look at the gendered dynamics of the figure's portrayal (Pippin 2005;Nelavala 2009), though at least Hylen (2003) has cautioned against taking an all or nothing approach to reading this text through a lens of gender only (so also Økland 2003, 2005). Still others have drawn attention to the horrific nature of this text (Vander Stichele 2000, not only in its original context but also in its application to contemporary problems of sex trafficking (Carson 2011) or violence against women (Pillay 2019).…”