Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

Sakenfeld attempts to help her reader cross the cultural expanse by the means of several strategies. In the story of Sarah and Hagar, for example, she uses the multicultural perspectives of other contemporary scholars: an American feminist OT scholar, an African OT scholar, a Korean author, a womanist OT scholar, a Jewish sociologist, and an OT scholar from Central America. Sakenfeld also uses cross-cultural examples from her world travels; for example, she describes the aversion of eyes from the body of a person of another gender taking a bath in Manila to illustrate the story of David and Bathsheba. She reports the ministry of her peers to women in the modern world who are suffering from difficulties similar to those of biblical women, specifically, a woman’s group that seeks to help young women escape from prostitution that has become a matter of their survival. These tools are consistent with her self-described scholarly “lenses” of sociocultural background and rhetorical interpretation.

Sakenfeld is an OT professor at Princeton with a significant publication history, and world-wide experiences in multi-cultural ministry. As was noted above, she clearly defines her scholarly tools in the introduction of the book: the lenses of sociocultural background and rhetorical interpretation. Although she accesses the fruits of feminist and womanist scholarship, she does not abandon a high view of the scripture in order to do so. In speaking of alternative version of the narrative of Sarah and Hagar, she cautions, “Readers who view the Bible as Scripture must still struggle with these words, regardless of how they came to be included.” When examining the story of Gomer, she notes that “Most people who have hear of Gomer have probably assumed that they story took place more or less as described in the summary of chapters 1 and 3 above. That is my view as well. But it is important to realize that the story is not so straightforward as it first appears, and the complexities of the text have led to other views.” Later in the same chapter she tells us that, “ . . . I assume that Gomer and her children were real people . . . .” Repeatedly, she asserts a high view of the biblical text. It appears that Sakenfeld would seek to use scholarly tools (much as has Carol Meyers) to redeem the biblical text from the appearance of being a male-only text.

Sakenfeld gives a balanced perspective, carefully weighing the claims of many differing scholars operating from differing perspectives and using different tools.… (more)