Princeton’s Sakenfeld Delivers Payton Lectures

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, the William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, offered the 2006 Payton Lectures May 10 and 11 on the topic “Reading Scripture from Different Worlds: Old Testament Narratives as Read by Women of Post-Colonial and First World Societies.”

Sakenfeld presented a critical assessment of alternative readings of the stories of Ruth, Jael, and Esther, with specific attention to how these characters and their narratives are interpreted by women from both colonized and colonizing societies. Interpretations of these characters, Sakenfeld claimed, has varied depending on whether the reader sees Israel’s relationship to outside cultures as colonizer or colonized. When Israel is perceived as holding a power position, the sympathies of women from colonized societies are more likely to lay with characters who maintain their allegiance to their people in the face of opposition. Although these new interpretations may be uncomfortable for readers in colonizing cultures, Sakenfeld said, they serve as a reminder that interpretation is conditioned by the world of the reader as well as the author. Rather than urging a wholesale adoption of reading these texts from the perspective of the colonized, Sakenfeld challenged readers from colonizing societies to enter into a true give-and-take dialogue with other perspectives so as to create a richer and more nuanced reading of the text.

The lectures also addressed, more generally, the act of “essentializing” members of other cultures by defining them according to only one characteristic. Sakenfeld urged her audience to allow those from other perspectives to speak out of their full identity, rather than reducing their interpretations to a more narrow and “essentialized” point of view.

Sakenfeld is internationally recognized for her work on the place of women in church and society, and on how the Bible may be used as a resource for the empowerment rather than the oppression of women. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she is author of Just Wives? and the Ruth Interpretation Commentary Series.