Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:3 (Summer 2024)
Article: Editorial
Author: Anonymous

Editorial

Aesop’s “The Grasshopper and the Ant” takes an interesting turn in some of its retellings. In its earliest forms, the fable commended hard work. The ant toiled ceaselessly all summer to store up food for the winter while the grasshopper sang and danced the long bright days away. When autumn turned to winter, the grasshopper, shivering with cold and hunger, stood outside the ant’s door begging for shelter and food. Work hard, the fable says. Plan for the future.

Just after Napolean III (1808–1873) took France into a disastrous war with Prussia, and ended up a prisoner of war, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) painted The Grasshopper, taking inspiration from the fable. His grasshopper is female—a nude, worriedly chewing on a fingernail while standing among autumn leaves gusting around her feet. This “grasshopper” is the painter’s reference to a foolhardy emperor who acted without having thought through his action. Lefebvre’s The Grasshopper was one of many paintings titled as such in late nineteenth-century France, in which the grasshopper was represented by the metaphor of the beautiful bohème, a woman, often holding a musical instrument. The woman typified the person who idles, without a care for the future.

Why a woman rather than a man? Is it that women portray idleness more readily than men, who in our patriarchal cultures are the proverbial bread winners?

In this issue, we feature women at work. Susy Flory introduces Enheduanna (2334–2279 BC), the royal daughter of Sargon the Great of Mesopotamia. She is now recognized as the earliest litterateur in human history. This poet priestess composed hymns, earning for herself the epithet of “the Sumerian Shakespeare.” The implication for biblical studies is the plausibility of female authorship for texts and books in both Testaments. Rudolf Gaisie compares the attributes of Proverbs’ Lady Wisdom with the defining virtues of the queen mother of the Akan people of Ghana. Both are women at work, being productive for the good of family and community.

Julie Walsh tracks women theologians across three centuries (sixteenth through eighteenth) to showcase the various kinds of arguments they made for biblical egalitarianism. They put their minds to work, wrote, and published, establishing a firm foundation for the scholars who succeeded them, and for multiple Christian movements.

Alison Gerber’s sermon profiles Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, as a “minister” in her desire to serve Jesus. Maybe a rather distracted and anxious minister, running herself off her feet, but a minister nonetheless. Indeed, she makes one of the most stupendous declarations of Jesus’s identity in the gospels: “I know that you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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