Encounter with Daughters of Zelophehad
Dr. Sophia Magallanes reclaims self during HTI Open Plaza Writers Week
Academia can be a lonely place for a Latina Bible scholar.
This is particularly true when you still encounter patriarchy within church and academic spaces. What makes my life path so difficult is the awareness that patriarchy has not only informed my Latina identity but is also deeply embedded in my way of interacting with the world.
This task of finding a Latina identity apart from identification with one’s father and/or any other male figure in one’s life can be arduous, even exhausting. I am sure that interaction with patriarchy varies, and that my experience as a Latina is not the only one to be told. As one of seven sisters, my ideas about how to interface with patriarchy have been informed by how I’ve seen my sisters interact with it.
In my Mexican-American Evangelical family, we all feel the cultural pressure to marry and to have children. This is the main way we can leave the house of our father. Some of the sisters who left when they got married still live under my father’s religious authority, even after marriage. Because I have not married, I am encouraged to stay in my father’s house and to continue being family-oriented by financially supporting my parents.
An unmarried female in our household feels like she has to remain nun-like in her pursuit of God and her community of faith. It would be heresy to reject the patriarchy of Iberian Catholicism, to become fully “Americanized” and lose gender, cultural, and spiritual identities.
In a search for liberation, this leads me to ask:
“Are there models of women in the Bible who refuse to function under the constraints of patriarchy?”
![Five of the seven daughters of Jethro reunited, as depicted in a scene from the popular 2015 Brazilian telenovela Os Dez Mandamientos [Moses and the Ten Commandments]. Image: RecordTV](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5da9ca4316ddf940acff02af/1576555965349-K9Z5T0IKCLQXO0OA9WOZ/daughters+of+jethro.png)
Five of the seven daughters of Jethro reunited, as depicted in a scene from the popular 2015 Brazilian telenovela Os Dez Mandamientos [Moses and the Ten Commandments]. Image: RecordTV
The Daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27:1-11)
In both the New and Old Testaments, there are many passages--especially the ones classified as “Texts of Terror” in Phyllis Trible’s literary-feminist reading--that reinforce cultural patriarchy for women. However, there are also texts that can be liberating for Latinas in the face of patriarchy.
Numbers 27:1-11 tells the story of five daughters who seek to claim their father’s inheritance. Since they have no brothers (Nu 27:1-4), the sisters ask Moses for the rights to their father’s inheritance . The Lord tells Moses that these women are right in their request (Nu 27:5-7). The women then receive the authority they need to claim what is rightfully theirs. They are not treated as property or as alliance-making currency with other households. Instead, the daughters are treated as if they were sons, heirs over the land of their father. They have governance and dominion over their inheritance. Moreover, their case inspires a new amendment to Israelite law (Nu 27:8-11), whereby all daughters without brothers have legal rights to their father’s inheritance.
This story provides a testimony that women can innately know and claim their full rights (the same as those of their male counterparts) , especially when they empower one another by coming together as a group and confronting male leadership. They do not need divine revelation nor do they need validation from male leadership in order for them to step forward and claim what is rightfully theirs. In fact, it is Moses who relies on divine revelation and validation for him to decide on the right course of action. It takes God directly vouching for the women and granting them their property for Israelite law to change forever.
As a Latina Bible scholar, I then have to ask:
“Where can I find fellow Latinas within my faith and academic communities to reassure me that I know what rights belong to me?”
Encountering Real-Life Daughters of Zelophehad
Podcast recording session during HTI Open Plaza Writers Week, Princeton Theological Seminary, July 2019. Photo: Macarena Hernández
In mid-July of 2019, I was invited to my first Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) event at the Princeton Theological Seminary. The HTI Open Plaza series of workshops brought together Latinas in academia of all faiths, and it was here that I encountered a new set of hermanas--real-life Daughters of Zelophehad.
For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by strong women who excel in Biblical scholarship with no apology, regret, or restraint. The week with them revealed to me the ways in which I needed to be empowered. This new sense of empowerment came about organically, simply demonstrated by their mere existence. For the first time in my intellectual life, I did not feel isolated nor did I feel “crazy”. It saddened me to realize how I had become a truncated version of myself in order to be accepted in academic and faith spaces. But I was overjoyed to encounter sisters who presented me with alternate models of how to thrive despite the patriarchy controlling these spaces.
During the week of intense discussion, writing, and recording podcasts for Open Plaza, I did not receive a revelation from God or validation from bearded men. My liberation came with the reminder that even an unmarried Latina scholar still living under her father’s house has the right to claim the education, intelligence, and strength that is rightfully hers.
