Dinah's Lament: The Biblical Legacy of Sexual Violence in Christian Interpretation

by Joy A. Schroeder

Dinah's Lament studies the ways Christians have read six biblical narratives about sexual violence, using biblical commentary, homilies, and devotional writings as a window into the history of the church's attitudes about rape. Schroeder analyzes the patterns of Christian interpretation ... from the early church through the Reformation, and shows that traditions of interpretation are often more disturbing and horrifying than the texts themselves. Her work raises important questions about the way Christian readers continue to shield the Bible from criticism and to reinforce patterns of subjugation, silencing, and violence against women.

An introduction addresses the physical, emotional, and social effects of rape and sexual violence on women in the early church, Middle Ages, and Reformation, and summarizes Christian patterns of interpretation including allegorical, moral, and literal- historical approaches to the Bible. Subsequent chapters discuss early Christian accounts in which virgin martyrs were divinely protected from rape; interpretations of Genesis 34 that effectively blamed Dinah for her own rape (with the remarkable exception of Martin Luther); the importance of Christian voices, especially medieval women like Hildegard of Bingen and Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, that insisted on the innocence of rape victims and lamented the violation of women's bodies; and more.

317 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a wonderfully fascinating book, dealing with how Christian (Catholic and Protestant) biblical commentators have dealt with the various stories of violence concerning and against women in the Bible; and the author concludes that interpretation is molded both by the culture of the commentator and by the culture’s (mostly negative) views about women’s place in society.

The author reviews how biblical commentators have dealt with such biblical incidents as the rape of Dinah (the only daughter of Jacob, Genesis 34), the rape of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19), and the rape of Tamar, the daughter of King David (2 Samuel 13). She also considers the stories of virgin martyrs, the wife of Potiphar (Genesis 39), and the story of Susanna (Daniel 13, in the Deuterocanonical books). By and large, the commentators used the stories for moral instruction (in the early ages, for monks and nuns, and in the Reformation, by Protestant commentators for the people in general).

Several of the conclusions of the author are alarming, if not discouraging: basically, the commentators decided, based on these scriptural sources, that a good women who depended on the Lord could not be raped (the virgin martyrs), and that a women in danger of being raped should never submit, choosing the option of death instead, for the Lord would vindicate her (Susanna); by the same token, a woman who is raped demonstrably does not have the Lord with her, so she essentially deserved to be raped. The story of the wife of Potiphar emphasized that a woman who claimed to have been raped could not be trusted.

In the story of Dinah, the commentators claimed she brought on the rape by going about the country, which shows that women should stay at home; in the story of Tamar, who was raped by her own brother, that women should never be alone with men (or conversely, that men should never be alone with women, because men can’t control themselves). The commentators further held that the rape of Tamar was part of God’s punishment of King David for the King having taken Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and arranging to have Uriah killed in battle.

In the story of the Levite’s concubine (the men of Gibeah wanted to rape the Levite, so he tossed his concubine out to them), the commentators had the greatest difficulty understanding why she died, since they knew that simply being gang raped all night could not be fatal to a woman.

There were commentators who were more sympathetic to these women, but basically the culture shaped the interpretation, and the interpretation shaped the culture. In the story of Susanna, while the Bible says she cried out several times upon being accused of adultery, the commentators take pains to say that her cries were interior, and not audible, to fit with their view of her as a woman who, when falsely accused, did not argue or object, but instead trusted in the Lord to save her.

Thankfully, in this the twenty-first century, we are beyond thinking that a women who is raped deserved it, or asked for it, or thinking that women only claim to be raped out of vindictiveness towards innocent men. But the Bible is one of the world’s great best sellers; and if a misogynistic age comes back again, we may yet have misogynistic interpretations of the women of the Bible.

[Rachel Turner-Poteet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important. Sobering.