Rereading Canonical Identity: A Sexual Ethics of Bible Interpretation

Abstract

With all the damage biblical religion from the “West” has inflicted upon bodies, psyches, cultures, and lands, how can we engage ourselves with such a problematic text and history? What might ethics of interpretation mean in the context of this tradition? In this essay, I propose that many of us already have deep psychological entanglements with the text and tradition through our cultural, if not personal and familial, histories. I also argue that sex and gender theorists (particularly for this essay, Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler) offer the best modes for thinking about the relationship between the biblical canon and identity as well as some ethical considerations in interpretation. I articulate this ethics of interpretation through the noncanonical text the Gospel of Mary and point to ways in which “unmaking” is always already part of an ethical making of meaning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Gilbert Cole and Celene Lillie for their attentive readings of this essay in various forms. I especially thank Hal Taussig for our numerous conversations, which meant the genesis and continuing development of these ideas, and for our conversations on this material that continue.

Notes

¹Translation from the New Revised Standard Version.

²See Jane Schaberg's (2002) excellent history of various imaginations of Mary Magdalene.

³This approximate dating reflects Karen King's (2003b) conclusion.

⁴Obviously these terms have their problems because they define their contents negatively.

⁵See Schaberg (2002).

⁶In one version of the Gospel of Mary, “they” go out and preach, leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Mary goes.

⁷All translations from the Gospel of Mary are King's (2003b) translation.

⁸Brackets [] indicate the text has been reconstructed due to lacuna.