| In this study I describe Mieke Bal's interdisciplinary hermeneutic and its contribution to biblical studies in general, and feminist biblical criticism in particular. As such, I have organized my study into four chapters that unfold along these lines: Bal's contribution in the form of her biblical trilogy; the theoretical background of her reading strategy; her interdisciplinary reading of Judges 19; and the connection between Bal's work and present concerns in feminist biblical scholarship.;To begin, I summarized the essence of Bal's contribution to the field of biblical studies--her award-winning trilogy: Lethal Love (1987), Murder and Difference (1988a), and Death & Dissymmetry (1988b), and presented several of the positive responses by members of the biblical guild to the trilogy. I also delineated three issues that Bal considers important in all critical discussions of interpretation today: the detail, relativism, and coherence.;I then gave an overview of the theoretical underpinning of the Balian hermeneutic, which locates her interdisciplinary reading strategy on the horizon of current trends in a literary-based culture criticism. The overview includes a discussion of the relationship between Bal's reading practice and both reader-response criticism and neo-formalism, and a detailed examination of Bal's sophisticated theory of narrative.;My gaze shifted from theoretical considerations to practical application as I next depicted Bal's feminist (re)reading of the little known story of the gang-rape, death, and dismemberment of the "concubine" in Judges 19. The interdisciplinary character of her reading strategy was featured by focusing on her use of four disciplinary codes (the narratological, philological, anthropological, and psychoanalytical), and the interdisciplinary gender code (in its female version), for interpreting Judges 19.;Finally, I traced multiple points of intersection between Bal's reading strategy and present concerns in feminist biblical studies. For this task, an account of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's taxonomy of feminist approaches in biblical studies provided the backdrop for situating Bal's work in the feminist camp. I closed my study with a brief discussion of how Bal's interdisciplinary hermeneutic fits Schussler Fiorenza's double ethics of "historical reading" and "accountability," leading to an "ethically responsible" biblical scholarship. |
