Gina Hens-Piazza began writing America’s Word column with the start of the new liturgical year on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 30. Professor Hens-Piazza has written for America in the past, and we are delighted that she will now be a regular contributor. She holds the Joseph S. Alemany Endowed Chair at Santa Clara University and teaches Scripture at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif. We had a conversation by Zoom shortly before her first column went online. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. — Michael Simone, S.J., contributing editor
Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. I’m sure you have other things to do on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
A lot of cooking to do, yes!
Why don’t we start with some background: How long have you been teaching Scripture?
I started teaching Scripture formally in 1979, when I had a master’s degree. I taught for nine years at the University of Portland in Portland, Ore. Then from 1988 to 1992, I was at Union Theological Seminary [in New York City] doing my doctorate. In 1992 I came to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif., and I’ve been there ever since. So I counted up: I think it’s about 40 years, not counting the four years of doctoral studies.
What has changed in the field since you started?
There has been a shift from historical-critical to literary studies. I did my master’s degree at Vanderbilt University in 1972, and I studied with the great Philip Hyatt, who was my advisor. He passed away while I was there, and I continued with Walter Harrelson. They were incredibly talented, excellent scholars who taught primarily historical studies. I learned good historical studies, text-critical studies, form-critical studies. I had an excellent background in really foundational work in Scripture.
And then things began to change. As I started teaching in 1979, I started reading some of the new work coming out from the standpoint of feminist studies, especially by people like Phyllis Tribble and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Schüssler Fiorenza’s work was more historical; Tribble’s work was much more literary. And then, when I went to Union Theological Seminary in 1992 for doctoral studies, I had the great privilege of having Phyllis Tribble as my advisor. And that’s where I really learned literary studies.
That is actually the change in the discipline, from historical-critical studies in the first part of the 20th century to literary studies today. In 1969, James Muilenburg gave his presidential address at the Society of Biblical Literature, entitled “Form Criticism and Beyond.” That marked a change in the way biblical studies were done. He was a great literary critic. He taught Tribble and [Walter] Brueggemann and all those folks, and I became the beneficiary, really having those folks teach me. So it was great, I feel like I gained the best that the fields of historical and literary studies have to offer.
In the years that you have been teaching, what changes have you noticed in your students?
I’ll speak especially about the years I’ve been at the Jesuit School of Theology. Those are the students I probably can talk best about. I think the students have become far more international. The variety of kinds of questions they ask and their preparation is vastly different. Some come from seminaries and parts of the world that have very limited resources. These seminaries do really good jobs preparing students, but they don’t have some of the resources and some of the opportunities of knowing where the field of biblical studies has gone. So they come with, maybe, a good historical foundation, but they haven’t heard much about other methods. Some come from more traditional or even parochial kinds of seminaries. So they find they need to stretch and think new thoughts.
It makes for a very eclectic classroom. The international students ask questions sometimes from their context, even if it’s questions about the past. I really believe our questions about the past are very tied up with our questions about the present. And they ask questions that I would never have considered. So I feel really privileged to teach students that have become more and more international and have, in many ways, I think, shaped my own scholarship.
How do you go about teaching Scripture to your students?
How I teach Scripture has developed over the years. I’ve come to think of the process as a fusion of horizons. I try to get the students to enter into a dialog with the text. Now, I know the text is an inanimate object, but what I’ve discovered (and students themselves have said this to me) is that if they’ve learned the critical tools and can interrogate the text, that as they work on the text, they start to realize the text is working on them.
They start working on a text at the beginning of a semester, and they stay with that text all through the term as they learn critical tools. But in the course of that, they’ve almost memorized their text. As they’re working on it, they start to be, in a sense, interrogated by the text. They start to fix on things in the text that maybe their other colleagues are not fixing on.
I think actually that what happens is this. Even though they’re reading other scholars and they’re doing critical work, they’re still discovering that they are landing on something in the text that they didn’t come to the text with. Something starts to work on them, and that becomes really the focus for their interpretation. It becomes something that repeats over and over again.
I’m just finishing up teaching exegesis at this part of the semester, and [my students] are writing their papers after their outlines, and they’re all saying the same thing, “I finally got an idea!” I had said all through the semester, “You just have to keep asking questions.” Some of them even say their idea is something that they had as a hunch when they started reading their text, and now they’re sort of codifying the hunch with their methods. But even so, their “hunch” is different from the four or five other people that are working on the same text.
I think this is the dynamism of revelation. And that revelation isn’t, of course, the word on the page. It’s what happens between readers and the text in the culturally contextualized situation. It’s a dialogue. I tell them that a dialogue is not a process where they make the text say something, but it’s also not a process of taking the text literally. The text doesn’t have “privilege”—we’re not biblical literalists—but when they do something that’s interactive with the text, they can come up with something that they didn’t expect. And that often happens.
I’m fascinated that you teach a course that takes students to the Holy Land, especially because last year I interviewed your dean, who thinks that a significant portion of the education at J.S.T. should happen overseas and in different contexts.
For 14 years, I have taught a course every other year called “Children of Sarah, Hagar, and Mary.” We study Judaism, Christianity and Islam through their Scriptures from the standpoint of women. Then we spend almost a month in Israel/Palestine, really meeting people and seeing, on the ground, different kinds of religious experiences—and hearing from people talking about the experience.
Years ago, I also taught a course called “Prophets: Foundation for Ministry in a Global Context.” Half the course was about prophets and the other half was contextual studies. We went to Guatemala for two weeks, to San Lucas Tolimán. Some students worked chopping wood. Some worked with women, weaving. Some of the guys worked out in the fields or on the lake in the boats, bailing water out as the guys would fish. When we came back, they would have assignments like, “What would your first homily be with this reading?” Or “What would your blessing of the corn be?” “How would you conduct baptisms?” Those kinds of things.
Last question: Are there any non-professional hobbies or passions that intersect with your interest in Scripture?
I love to garden. I have a greenhouse. We live on an acre, and I do a lot of gardening. I also just came back from Rome, where I gave a paper on God’s ecology. So I guess it intersects with Scripture. I’m very interested in ecological readings of the Bible.
The other thing I do that influences my work in Scripture is that I am a licensed physician associate, called a physician assistant in other places. I work evenings and some Saturdays as a volunteer in a clinic for the underserved. I would say that the simple clinic care that I do has really influenced my reading of Scripture, and vice versa. When I go into a patient’s room, I think of it as my chapel. There’s a lot of conversation that goes on in there that I didn’t expect, but it’s a good thing for me.
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