The Wife of Bath and Biblical Interpretation

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer was a revolutionary book for its day. There are many interesting and thought provoking characters in Chaucer’s story. One such character is the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath is a seamstress who goes on pilgrimages to Jerusalem and has been married four times in her life. It is upon her latest pilgrimage that Geoffrey Chaucer shows the reader through her that he supports equality of women. He does so by telling her story and laying out her arguments for it using Scripture as her guide. This subject is the focus in this paper. This paper will explore what the Wife of Bath is attempting to convey with her use of Scripture, whether her arguments are supported by Scripture, is exegesis or eisegesis being used here, and how to determine how to properly interpret Scripture.

For centuries people have read the Bible as the literal inerrant word of Almighty God. It is widely known that the Bible has given millions of people around the world hope, purpose, peace, and direction. It is also widely known that the Bible has been used to justify inflicting the most evil and wicked acts imaginable. Throughout time the Bible has been taken out of its proper context in order to satisfy an agenda or one’s personal gain.

Women were not excluded from these manipulations and misinterpretations of scripture.

Religious leaders would often use various scriptures to demean women. Scriptures such as these were used in defense of these actions:

2 Timothy 3:1-7: Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands….

Ephesians 5:22-24: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in everything.

1 Timothy 2:11-14: Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Scriptures such as these were used in defense of denying women the right to vote, employment, education, land, and property to name a few.

Time and time again Christians have claimed that it was just tradition. The Church has taught this for years so why stop now? In many cases the Church has been grossly negligent in its interpretation of the Bible either because of ignorance, prejudice, or both. It is important for the Church to learn how to properly interpret Scripture, how to look at both historical and literary context, and how to read with objective eyes to ensure that they are in line with what the Scriptures are trying to convey to its readers. To a degree, the Wife of Bath follows the Church’s tactics in her interpretation of scripture.

The Wife of Bath is attempting to convey a number of messages in her prologue in regards to Scripture. Her use of Scripture and scholarly works shows that she too can do what many clergymen and scholars tend to do. They use their vast knowledge and learning to misuse and manipulate Scripture to justify their own immoral actions. This is one of the first places and times that we see the Wife of Bath try to turn the tables on the male dominated culture and to challenge the status quo. It is for this,as well as many other reasons, that she is looked at as a modern day feminist and a radical for the times that she was leaving in.

With her use of Scripture it is important to determine if she is interpreting scripture correctly. One point of interest is when she uses 1 Timothy 2:9-10 when talking about modesty. In this scripture the Apostle Paul is writing to Timothy and teaching him about how to deal with Christian women in the Church. He says that women should be modest in their attire and not be vain and attempt to adorn themselves with expensive jewelry. He wants them to be modest in appearance and seek to glorify God instead of themselves. The Wife of Bath does not submit to this interpretation and she is in fact defiant and content on wearing anything that makes her feel happy.

St. Jerome talks about this topic and creates an argument between himself and women on this very subject. In Against Jovinian St. Jerome sets up an argument between women like the Wife of Bath and an authority figure. He believes that these women who attempt to make such arguments from scripture are inferior Christians and are willfully resistant to self-discipline. Both Jerome and Chaucer attempt to tackle these issues based on their own cultural experiences.

The academic article Contested Authority: Jerome and the Wife of Bath on 1 Timothy 2 delves deep into these matters. It says that when Jerome and Chaucer look into Timothy they are looking at a scripture which seeks to subjugate women and feminine resistance to authority. It observes and explains that the text of 1 Timothy 2 is prescriptive rather than descriptive saying that the text does not mirror an existing reality but imagines religion compensating for men’s declining social power. It is apparent that the scripture has been written down because women were not being silent in the churches. Women were educating men and exercising authority over them. These actions by women may have caught some congregations off guard and caused uneasiness and division in the Church. Despite these reactions and negative responses to these acts in some churches, however, the article makes an important note and observation that this was not a universal reaction to women’s leadership roles in the early Church. It points to the contemporary Gospels of Mark and John as evidence of this. It becomes apparent that these Gospels clearly validate women’s authority, depicting women as esteemed disciples, apostles, prophets, deacons, preachers, and teachers. It is interesting to note that despite what Paul says in Timothy that these Gospels as well as other Scriptures respect and give outright credibility towards the feminine authority that 1 Timothy 2 seeks to discredit. Even the scriptures themselves seem to be battling over this idea of women’s authority in the Church. The problems with 1 Timothy 2 and other such texts were not resolved for many centuries. Women even continued to be given ordinations into the twelfth century. The article says that if the text implies women’s prior speech was not biblical then it failed to report their words or exact teachings which were so problematic. It says that women speaking challenged the Pauline ideal of hierarchical order instead of the problem simply being that these women were teaching false doctrine.

There is Scripture that seems to contradict what Paul says in 1 Timothy 2. In the book of Galatians 3:28 Paul says that all are equal if they are under Christ. This may either indicate that Paul has gone through much growth as a Christian being that before his conversion Paul was a Pharisaic teacher and it took a while for the old habits and ways of thinking to be done away with. The other option is that Paul was talking about women teaching false things and leading men astray. The article notes that Paul has left this Scripture open to debate by saying that he does not allow women to have authority over men implying that others may indeed have allowed it.

The article notes that centuries of translations and reading of text has allowed Timothy to be interpreted through specific cultural lenses. Understanding this exegesis approach helps the reader to understand the text more.

The Wife of Bath also talks about marriage and celibacy and argues that she should be allowed to remarry and not remain a widow. She says that there is no commandment mandating that Christians be celibate. The Apostle Paul says that he wishes that people could be like him and be celibate for the glory of God. By saying this he puts celibacy on a high pedestal. He says that if you are married then you have to prioritize your time between God, your wife, and your children. On the other hand Paul says that if you are celibate that you can dedicate yourself to God and honor Him more. However, the Apostle states that he acknowledges that all people cannot accept his advice on this matter. He says that since this is the case then men and women should get married to avoid being promiscuous or burning with lust. In the article The Wife of Bath Debates Jerome the author says that the Wife accepts the fact that celibacy is preferable to marriage, that marriage is allowed by God, and concedes Jerome’s argument in which he says that marriage represents servitude to the husband.

The Gospel of John is taken into account when looking at the debate between marriage and celibacy. The Wife mocks Jerome and Tertullian as well as others like them who attempt to make the argument that John 4:17 is a condemnation of polygamy. This scripture details an account in which Christ talked with a Samaritan woman by a well. She tells Him that she has no husband. His response is that she has in fact had five husbands already and that the man currently staying with her is not her husband. It is the interpretation of this text by Jerome and Tertullian that the Wife is skeptical about. She does not believe that this was Christ’s message. She speculates that this is a way for men to look too much into minor details and impose something onto the text that simply is not there.

The author says that Jerome was known to impose his own beliefs on the Old Testament about marriage and polygamy when scripture nowhere condemns either practice. Her views are moderate and the more acceptable view. This view is aligned with St. Augustine when he says that attempts to make allegories or to fight against the plain reading of scripture is foolish especially in light of the other scriptures which approve of marriage and even sanctifies it.

The Wife says that polygamy seems to be no sin. Her reasons for this are the plain readings of scripture and the fact that no scripture explicitly commands against such practices. She even notes such characters as Abraham, Jacob, and King Solomon. All of these biblical characters had multiple wives and neither God nor scripture ever condemned them for it. It is because of these things that the Wife says that it is evident that there is no sanction against her having more than one husband.

Scripture seems to agree with the Wife of Bath that celibacy is something not natural to all humans. This is something that the Apostle Paul talks about in one of his letters to Timothy. He says that in the end times men will be given over to deceitful teachings and be led astray by demons and false teachers. He says that one result of this would be that many people would call for forbidding marriage. By saying this the Apostle Paul is equating the act of forbidding marriage to the faithful as an ungodly and demonic practice. Where God gives permission those advocating for a ban on marriage would be acting contrary to the very will of God.

It is because of major discussions and debates like these that the question of proper interpretation of scripture is important to look at.

The article The Peculiar Case of the Hebrew Bible speaks about the importance of proper interpretation of scripture. One of the few examples given is the case of the “Eye for an Eye.” passage in scripture.

It is because of a misunderstanding of this text and others that many have claimed that God is barbaric and that He does not have compassion. The author says that this widespread image of God and the Jews is the result of ignorance and bias. They note that the God of the Old Testament is one of justice. However, justice is not solely addressed in terms of the judicial process. It also refers to human relationships on a larger scale, and involves fairness and concern for everyone made in God’s image. It is also important to note that God is explicitly described as a God of mercy which has served as a major source of numerous philosophical commentaries on divine attributes. As evidence of this they point to the book of Exodus when it says that, "The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exodus 34:6-7). They are quick to note that this does not mean that the guilty will not be charged but that God’s abundance of mercy can clearly be observed for all to read and understand. In the Jewish liturgy and especially on Rosh Hashanah as well as Yom Kippur the factors of divine mercy for those sinners who repent are stressed repeatedly and brought up relentlessly. The fact being made that even the New Testament, with concern to the cherished concept of divine mercy is deeply rooted in the Old Testament and Pharisaic tradition.

The author gives various reasons for why misinterpretation is prevalent among many people. He says that one of the reasons for this is that there seems to be an ignorance which appears to be heightened in the modern age by poor humanistic education. The result of this is a decline in the book being the medium of culture and also the rise of the television as the substituted source of that culture. He says that the written word has largely given way to the flashing picture--occasionally enhanced by a sound-bite. He believes that in that type of an atmosphere even venerated books will be left unexplored and that the only words people see come through the television screen. As a consequence, if a biblical quotation makes it to the screen it will come in the form of a sound-bite. "An eye for an eye" would fit that requirement. Biblical names, other than Moses, David, and Abraham have lost their source of recognition. Few people even know the origin of the names that are spoken, the literal meanings behind them, or their literary connection. People usually do not give any credence to these important matters because the interest in the ancient world and the society surrounding them is limited to antiques.

In the article Science Meets Biblical Exegesis in the Galileo Affair by George V. Coyne the author gives a perfect example of exegesis and eisegesis in talking about the controversy between Galileo and the church. Coyne notes that the two problems were that the Council of Trent limited its judgement on the interpretation of Scripture to "matters of faith and morals." The other issue was that the ruling of the consultors of the Holy Office spoke of the "sense of Holy Scripture according to the literal meaning of the words." Galileo took issue with the first argument in his Letter to Castelli and in his Letter to the Grand Duchess saying that the nature of the motions in the planetary system was not a matter of faith and morals. He also thoroughly discussed in detail what the "literal meaning of the words" might signify in terms of the many ways of interpreting Scripture. The main point of the theological issue is that Galileo's scriptural exegesis took a firm position on this even though at times it was ambiguous. He asserted that Scripture did not teach what the proper field of the natural sciences were.

Coyne observes that on November 18, 1893, Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Providentissimus Deus which called for the study of the languages, literary forms, historical settings, and so on, of scripture so that a fundamentalist approach to Scripture could be avoided. On May 7, 1909, Pope Pius X even founded the Pontifical Biblical Institute which is dedicated to these important studies.

In an academic review of Reading the Bible with the Dead: What You Can Learn from the History of Exegesis that You Can’t Learn from Exegesis Alone by John L. Thompson the author of the review says that in the “Introduction: On Reading with the Dead”, Thompson raises and answers the question of “Why anyone who cares about the Bible should also care about the history of its interpretation.” The reviewer says that Thompson begins here with the all too familiar bad habits of countless Bible readers and talks about the benefits of identifying and studying the difficult readings from scripture. Thompson then goes on to speak about the great benefits of discovering supporters in the mission of interpretation in the ignored past of the Church’s interaction with Scripture. Thompson wanted his approach to provide the readers with “a digest of the history of interpretation of some passages and issues that ought to be of great interest to readers and hearers today, and for which the history of interpretation can offer not merely novel perspectives, but also insights and arguments likely to encourage and to surprise”. His aim was to demonstrate “how the difficulties and obscurities and even scandals of some Bible passages are actually more accessible, not less, by consulting the commentators of our distant past”.

This paper explored what the Wife of Bath attempted to convey with her use of Scripture, whether her arguments were supported by Scripture, whether or not exegesis or eisegesis was being used, and how to determine how to properly interpret Scripture. History has shown that proper biblical interpretation is crucial in how we deal with our neighbors. The Wife of Bath brought that discussion into focus in The Canterbury Tales by challenging the authority figures and clergymen on their strict interpretation of scripture and turned the status quo on its head. Some of her interpretations seemed to be in line with great thinkers like St. Augustine while other interpretations appeared to be off. It seems that the most effective and beneficial way to interpret scripture would be the one that Galileo and centuries later Pope Leo XIII approved which was to practice exegesis and read all texts, especially religious texts such as the Bible, in their proper literary forms and historical settings as well as commit to studying the ancient languages of the day. This view seems to be the best at tackling the issues in any text that a person may read.

Bibliography

Tinkle, Theresa. "Contested Authority: Jerome and the Wife of Bath on 1 Timothy 2."

Chaucer Review 44, no. 3 (January 2010): 268-293.

Smith, Warren S. “The Wife of Bath Debates Jerome” Chaucer Review Vol. 32, No. 2

(1997), pp. 129-145

Roshwald, Mordecai. "The Peculiar Case of the Hebrew Bible." Midwest Quarterly 39,

no. 1 (September 1997): 90-106.

Coyne, George V. "Science Meets Biblical Exegesis in the Galileo Affair." Zygon:

Journal of Religion & Science 48, no. 1 (March 2013): 221-229.

Stenschke, Christoph. "Reading the Bible with the Dead: What You Can Learn from the

History of Exegesis that You Can't Learn from Exegesis Alone. By John L. Thompson.”

Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.