Deryn Guest

When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Bible Hermeneutics is an excellent place to begin a query into gay and lesbian readings of the Bible, and more generally into GLBT approaches to religion and theology. Much of the book is a clear and concise review of scholarship, beginning with the question of how one defines the categories of lesbian and woman. Guest also describes the contemporary situations in which lesbians find themselves in throughout the world as evidence for the need for a distinctly lesbian approach to scriptures.

Guest emphasizes the need for a theory rooted in practice and the lived experiences of GlBTQ persons. She is wary of highly academic approach of queer theology and insists of the need for queer and GLBT which are accessible to a lay readership.

A lesbian reading of the Bible is particularly difficult. Whereas the androcentricism of the text and its can lend itself to a gay readings (see Theodore Jennings Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Readings of the Hebrew Scriptures), the treatment of women in the Bible requires different methods such as reading against the text (challenging its presentation of women as competitors for masculine attention) and imaginatively filling in the gaps in the text.… (mer)

Queering The Bible
Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West, Thomas Bohache, The Queer Bible Commentary(2006, SCM Press, London).
See also: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/actsperpetua.html; Review on http://www.lgcm.org.uk (Featured book on front page)
Review submitted and published in Movement magazine.

Every time I picked up this book I was drawn to its cover. I found myself absolutely fascinated with the image on it. The more I read the more appropriate the image seemed, I found myself wondering if the editors of this substantial collection of essays knew just how appropriate the image was.
The image in question is an ikon of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas; two black north-African women, the one holding the other in her arms, both wear robes, one the red of a martyr, the other a virginal white. It is a striking image. Perhaps the editors chose this image because of its suggestions of a lesbian relationship, certainly the halo's of the two saints join to give the appearance of a heart behind their heads, like teen sweethearts in a cheesy 70's sitcom.
I can only speculate regarding the reasons for this image, I did not find an explanation or even a reference beyond the attribution on the back cover. (Br Robert Lentz by the way – courtesy of Trinity Stores, http://www.trinitystores.com) I happen to know a little about these two Carthaginians. They died in 203 AD in the Roman arena, their crime was conversion to Christianity. The account of their final days and martyrdom is recorded in part (supposedly) by Perpetua herself, the account makes feminist medievalists weak at the knees. It has been read as an account of women defiant, refusing to bow to masculine authority, rejecting the roles of the family (both saints have young children, Felicitas gives birth in prison, Perpetua is begged by her father to reject her faith for the sake of him and her children), and striking an early blow for the sisters. Nonetheless these two saints were extraordinarily popular amongst those pillars of patriachy – St Thomas Aquinas, and St Augustine, as well as being two of the most popularly revered saints of the medieval church.
One active SCMer has been known to hold forth on the irony of Christian Family Values; he points out that Jesus actively rejects the 2.4 children nuclear family, “Who are my Mother and Brothers” He asks, He tells his followers to “hate their mother and father”, He instructs men to abandon the bodies of their fathers. Christian Family Values are by no means Jesus' Family Values.
Perpetua and Felicitas are a neat example of the early churches rejection of the family. They provide reach pickings for scholars interested in the sexuality of the martyrs. Perpetua's death is preceded by a steamy dream of her meeting Christ naked, her body oiled, her genitals male. I have no doubt that the authors of this book would see the martyrdom of a woman who was most definitely Queer, a transgendered saint, who rejects the patriarchal orthodox family for a new formulation with her slave/servant Felicitas.
If this seems far fetched don't bother with this book, this is the approach it takes. Esau is a bear, Jacob a mincing queen who doesn't fit in with his aggressively heterosexual brothers. When Jesus washes his disciples feet he is engaging in an homoerotic process, which is followed by pillowtalk with his most beloved disciple.
Queering the characters is not the only approach this book takes, in one essay (the book follows the bible through, book by book with commentaries by different authors for each one, often divided into individual narratives) it might re-read the stories as queer, deconstruct a seemingly homophobic reference, or endorsement of heterosexuality (Genesis is good for this – Michael Carden offers convincing ways of re-thinking Sodom and Gomorrah, Adam and [St?]Eve, and the reproductive pairings of the ark). The same essay might also reflect on how a text might be received by a queer audience, how experiences might be reflected, or identify direct messages to the sexually marginalised. Inevitably there are moments which are sketchier than others. I have no idea what Rebecca Alpert adds by claiming that God's obsession with priestly vestments and the interior decoration of the tabernacle is a sign of his homosexuality, a kind of Queer God for the straight priest. At best meaningless, at worse pandering too the stereotypes.
The variety of approaches undertaken makes for a staggering experience. The otherwise laudable inclusion of prostitution, masturbation, pederasty, paedophilia, feminist readings, HIV/Aids, and class and race based readings, only adds to this sense of bewilderment. In a desire not too leave anything out many of the essays take on too much, they rarely present a coherent approach to a book, rather they display a series of verse by verse reflections, this is a function not only of the breadth, but also of the inconsistency of approach.
Despite this I have no problem with recommending this book to anyone, it is approachable to someone not familiar with Queer theology, as it takes only the biblical texts as a starting point. Even if you aren't interested in Queer readings it offers a refreshing approach to familiar passages, as well as an often entertaining, and an always stimulating guide to unfamiliar ones.
I must put a warning alongside my recommendation, anyone who has studied medieval or antique sexuality (surely not just me?) will be familiar with the problems of imposing modern ideas of sexuality on older texts. Did the authors of Leviticus really have a concept of “Gay”? - many social historians believe that modern conceptions of sexuality are only a few hundred years old. These questions form part of the dialogue of the book, but they also problematise it. Like Perpetua and Felicitas, where I see a sexual rebellion, Augustine saw patriarchal order.… (mer)