Open Theology 2020; 6: 468–474
Regular Article Amy Madeleine Walters*
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and the Quest for the Historical Jesus https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0117 received April 20, 2020; accepted July 13, 2020
Abstract: The feminist theological and historical work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has been met with diverging responses. For feminist biblical scholars, Schüssler Fiorenza is essential reading, with even her works from the 1970s and 1980s still standing as key reference points. For mainstream (“malestream”) biblical scholarship, however, her entire body of writing is typically ignored, including within historical Jesus research (HJR), despite its value in both problematising and advancing the so-called Quests for the Historical Jesus. By evaluating and synthesising Schüssler Fiorenza’s HJR work on fundamentalism, feminism, and anti-Semitism, this article situates the effects of Schüssler Fiorenza’s work and the credibility of her critics within the Quests. While the themes Schüssler Fiorenza addresses, such as feminism and Judaism, are key features of the Third Quest, Schüssler Fiorenza’s proposals with regard to HJR, including the politics of interpretation, the shift to memory and orality studies, and the evaluation of meaning-making itself, are theoretically critical and self-reflexive in a way which the Third Quest has rarely been. Given the emphasis Schüssler Fiorenza places on self-evaluation, and her critical examination of the work of her peers in HJR, one is led to consider the possibility that her work may represent a Third Quest Critical-Stream, or even a Fourth Quest. Keywords: quests for the historical Jesus, feminist biblical scholarship, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, historical Jesus research, critical theory, feminism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalism
With a career spanning over fifty years, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has consistently worked to enhance feminist studies and their reception in the field of biblical studies. Medi Ann Volpe attributes this lifelong work towards an equal playing field to Schüssler Fiorenza’s “struggle for acceptance in a male-dominated field,” following her completion of Roman Catholic theological training at the University of Wurtzberg.¹ Volpe concludes that at the core of Schüssler Fiorenza’s work is “the recovery of women’s voices in the history of the church in a distinctively feminist-theological key.”² This, I would argue, provides an excellent summary of the overarching thrust of Schüssler Fiorenza’s scholarly and public work. However, in this article, I will narrow in on an area where her work has not received the attention it is due, assessing Schüssler Fiorenza’s place within the so-called quests for the historical Jesus. As such I will often refer to the Third Quest and its questers.³ This should be understood as referring to the period between 1980 and 1 Volpe, “Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1938-),” 712–4. 2 Ibid., 712. 3 It should be noted early on that there has been some backlash towards the use of the “quest” language in recent years. While I accept that it might be the source of some “confusion and disagreement,” I maintain that the concept of the “quest for the historical Jesus” is useful in characterising some aspects of historical Jesus research, and I would argue that this makes historical Jesus research more accessible. I agree that the naming of the “Old Quest” and “No Quest” is inaccurate and unfair, * Corresponding author: Amy Madeleine Walters, Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, e-mail: walters.amym@gmail.com Open Access. © 2020 Amy Madeleine Walters, published by De Gruyter. Attribution 4.0 Public License.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons