Katharine Bushnell's Interpretation
Katharine Bushnell was a biblical scholar and a social activist. She was particularly interested in women’s status in the Bible and she believed that the role of women in the Bible was misinterpreted and mistranslated. Bushnell’s work was done in the nineteenth century, which was during the women’s rights movement. In the nineteenth century, women struggled with interpretations of the Bible that seemed to oppress women and strip them of their power and dignity. Katharine Bushnell was an influential voice for women during this time period. She insisted that the Bible liberates women, rather than limits them.
In this particular interpretation by Bushnell, she is focused on the biblical story of Genesis. In Genesis, Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, and God told them that they can eat from any tree, except for one tree in particular. A serpent appeared in the Garden of Eden, and told Eve to eat the apple from the tree that God specifically said not to. Eve had fallen to the temptation of the serpent, and then said that Adam should eat the apple too. After they both ate the apple, God commanded that they leave the garden since they disobeyed him. This point in the story of Genesis is when the first sin is committed. In Bushnell’s biblical interpretations of Eve, she states that Adam was driven out of the Garden of Eden, and Eve chose to follow him. She backs this argument up in the section of Genesis 3:23-24 when it says that God “drove out the man.” She also states that Adam and Eve were both created equally because God said that Adam and Eve were both called to be fruitful and have dominion. This differs from other interpretations because the common assumption is that Eve is inferior to Adam because she was made out of his rib. Another one of Bushnell’s points was that the first sin cannot be blamed on Eve and that it was Adam’s fault. Bushnell’s interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is much different than most interpretations, which alludes to her feminist theologian background. Her interpretation opposes the widely held masculine interpretations of the Bible that claimed that women are inferior to men. Bushnell supports her claims with the biblical text, which strengthens her argument against the oppression of women in the Bible. Her distinct interpretation of women in the Bible is unlike any previous interpretation.
Bushnell’s book, God’s Word to Women, contains one hundred lessons that prove how centuries of interpretation and translation of the Bible by men has distorted the religious text into a misogynistic text. She used the original Hebrew and Greek texts to prove that the Bible establishes women’s equality, which was her strongest argument for the equality of women in the Bible. Bushnell works through every part of the Bible that was interpreted in a way that made women appear inferior to men, and interpreted them in her own way proving that the Bible does not actually portray that women are inferior to men. God’s Word to Women was not an extremely popular book when it was first published because of the scholarly content, but it is now published online and highly valued by Christian egalitarian scholars.
Katharine Bushnell’s interpretations were particularly important in the nineteenth century because they empowered women from the biblical standpoint, which was very important to people at that time. Religion used to be extremely important to Western culture in the past, but cultures have become more diversified, and the Bible and religion have become less influential in people’s lives. Recognizing the importance of the Bible in the nineteenth century is essential to understanding Bushnell’s work. Bushnell’s interpretations of women in the Bible was a strong movement to empower women in the nineteenth century, and her work is still relevant today.
