Thanks for following up, Tom! I’m struck your observation that you were “reading it in a male voice.” It’s so easy to project ourselves onto a text — and that’s often a good thing because it means we’re engaging with it to the point of weaving ourselves into the words and meaning. The benefit is that the text helps us reflect on ourselves, and texts like sacred scriptures survive because generation after generation see their experiences in them, but the risk, which you are pointing to, is integrating ourselves into the text to the point of obstructing them, of sucking the life out of them like weeds. That only leaves a reflection of ourselves that leads us to erroneously claim some meaning or insight from the text.

I think this is part of why non-religious and anti-religious people are skeptical when religious folks cite scripture as justification — when there’s a perceived discrepancy between the (perceived or literal) meaning of a text and a believer’s actions, it leaves a whiff (or a tsunami) of authenticity. But your comments also remind me of the ways feminist theologians and historians of religion (like Marcia Falk) have worked to uplift the experiences of women that were lost to the trappings of patriarchy.

This has been a model for other work to unearth the voices of individuals and groups who were pushed further and further underground. At some point, each group hits fatigue after working to unearth forgotten truths, and the rest of us who are either complicit in or just benefitting from perpetuating patriarchal (and other deeply-seeded prejudices) practices need to pick up the mantle. Keeping close the very questions you articulate when approaching a text or an experience is an essential step toward identifying one’s own hidden assumptions deconstructing and sweeping away the layers we inherited (or that we produced).