Abstract
This thesis aims to propose Feminist-Childist-Trauma as a new methodology for reading 2 Kings 6:24-31 and Lamentations 2:20 & 4:10. These biblical texts tell the story of women who ate one of their children due to siege-related poverty, while the other woman had hidden her child. Thus 2 Kings 6:24-31 and Lamentations 2:20 & 4:10 are considered as juvenile texts of terror as well as cannibal texts of the Old Testament by biblical scholars. In reading and interpreting these texts, male-centred and adult-centred biblical hermeneutical approaches have been mostly used. Many times, these hermeneutical approaches judged and blamed women as “murderers” who feed on their children instead of seeing the women as victims of patriarchal society. Many biblical scholars use an either/or methodological approach when reading these texts. They either use feminist criticism or Childist approach or the trauma biblical approach to read these texts. This study is premised on intersectionality as a theoretical framework of understanding the interrelated struggles of gender, class, race, and age in social movements and knowledge production. Women are not only oppressed in gender and children are not only oppressed based on their age but both of them (women and children) are exposed to a plethora of multi-layered oppressions. This is a reality in these biblical texts and contemporary South Africa. This thesis proposes that an either/or approach does not do justice to redeeming the lives of women and children in these biblical texts and in contemporary South Africa. Therefore, there is a need to read these texts through the “lenses” of mothers and children. Biblical Trauma hermeneutics, engaging the “lens” of trauma, will be utilized to interpret these biblical texts. This biblical trauma has a purpose for survival, recovery, and resilience to those suffering in and outside the texts. Thus, using a feminist approach only redeems women from being seen as murderers of their own children but does not do justice to children. Using the Childist approach gives a voice and agency to the eaten children but not to mothers of these texts. Using trauma approaches helps in reducing the narrator’s version into a construction rather than truth. A three-pillar methodology of the Feminist-Childist-Trauma approach is necessary to challenge the adult-centredness and patriarchal approach of the narrators and biblical commentators of these texts. This thesis aims to re-read and re-interpret 2 Kings 6:24-31 and Lamentations 2:20 & 4:10 from a feminist-childist-trauma perspective in light of the stories of abandoned children in South Africa. This thesis further proposes that the mothers of these biblical texts are not murderers, but they are victims of patriarchy and androcentrism and that the version of the narrator is not truth but a construction.