The accusation of misogyny in the Bible reflects a misunderstanding of the biblical text. In Genesis 1.26, we can see in that verse that both the male and female were the image of God, positioned as equals in essence. Both are mandated in Gn. 1.28 to rule the earth and subdue it as equal co-regents of God. In Gn. 2, one of the points of the text is that male and female are ontologically unified as equals. Her identity is that she is his ally, his partner, his equal, his other half. "Helper"(Gn. 2.20b) is not a marker of inferiority; most of the time in the Old Testament when the term is used it is used of God and his relation to Israel. An honest study of the text shows that both the "help meet" concept and the "rib" event are specifically (linguistically and contextually) showing how woman is every much his equal—equal in status and in worth, equal in role and function, and equal in godlikeness.

The Mosaic Law regularly includes and commands provisions so that the rights of women are not ignored, and so that she is treated as a person of value.

The narrative accounts in the Old Testament tell the stories of many noble and heroic women, including Jocabed, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Abigail, and Esther.

In the Gospels we read repeatedly how Jesus treated women with dignity (not just the woman at the well), and how he refused to play into the misogyny of his culture. He had many women followers. Women were at his birth, his dedication, the cross, and the tomb.

Paul, in Ephesians 5.21-33, shows how the gospel lifts women from cultural degradation to a place of honor. 1 Corinthians 11 shows how women could pray and prophecy in their gatherings just as the men did. Carol Meyers contributes to the discussion with this cultural analysis of ancient Israel (excerpts):

"While there were certain activities in the household that the women exclusively did, such as the grinding of grain into flour, anthropologists note that most household activities were not performed exclusively by one gender. ...
Anthropological studies can also elucidate women’s relationships with other members of their families, especially their husbands. Were women really as subordinate in Biblical times as many people think? Anthropological studies from societies similar to ancient Israel provide useful analogies. Interactions between household members are an example. Because women often have critical roles in maintaining household life, the senior woman in an extended family is often in a position of parity and interdependence, not subordination, with her husband for most aspects of household life. This is an especially significant observation for ancient Israel because the household was the major unity of society for most Israelites. ...

"The negative images of Eve that persist until today can be traced to ancient sources beginning in the Greco-Roman world. Those images were influenced by ideas about women that were current in Greco-Roman times but not in Iron Age Israel. ...

"Social scientists alert us to what they call 'presentism,' the phenomenon in which perspectives and ideas that we take for granted in today’s world affect how we understand the past. We tend to read the present into the past anachronistically, which can lead us to misunderstanding the past. It is surely true that human beings have much in common throughout time, but there are also sometimes basic differences, and these must be taken into account. For example, today cooking and cleaning and caring for young children are often seen as unpaid housework. These chores may be undervalued, even trivialized. But in a pre-modern peasant society without supermarkets and day-care centers, these tasks have significant economic value. They are essential for household survival, and they earn women positive regard.

"Similarly, 'presentism' can affect how we view the division between work and family, between what is public and what is private. How these divisions are understood may be very different between a post-industrial capitalist society, on the one hand, and a pre-modern agrarian society on the other. In the latter, the household is the workplace for both women and men, and household activities for both women and men were connected to larger community and kinship structures.

"Consider the concept of patriarchy. Typically this concept has been taken to imply near total male domination in families and in other social institutions. But anthropologists, classicists, feminist theorists, theologians and others who have more recently studied the concept have shown that this understanding of patriarchy does not take into account that women often had considerable agency in certain aspects of household life and that women’s groups and institutions had their own hierarchies. ...

"To get a balanced view of Israelite society in the Iron Age, the broader picture must be considered. Patriarchy is a term that was invented millennia after the Iron Age and is probably unsuitable for characterizing ancient Israel."

A common Bible text often mistakenly used to justify misogyny is 1 Timothy 2.11-15. There Paul says a woman is not allowed to speak, must remain silent and fully submissive. She is not permitted to teach or exercise authority over men. We can know, first of all, that Paul’s words have a particular local meaning (to this particular church, as opposed to a universal principle) since in 1 Corinthians 11 (esp. v. 5) he teaches that women are allowed to speak (pray and prophecy) in the assembly as long as their head was covered—another local teaching. We also know that one of the general themes of 1Timothy is the campaign against false teachers. Like Eve, the women of the situation addressed in 1 Timothy were likely listening to and propagating false teaching and asserting their position over wiser, orthodox authority. This was not to be. (Remember, in their culture the women were not educated routinely as men were.) All false teachers, in this case, women, needed to remain silent and submit to the authority of true teaching. People not versed in the truth need to learn submissively rather than assert themselves against those who are teaching the truth. The passage (along with Paul, the Bible, and God Himself) is not misogynistic, but concerned that the truth be paramount.

I, for one, regard the "Word of God" with a capital "W".

I've been reminded of that- that the viewpoints and treatment of women by Jesus and his followers were radical in their time. But I feel like there's a mixture of positive and negative verses. Some defend it just by pointing out the good ones and saying "oh, did you see how Jesus treated that women at the well?" like it makes up for it. I feel that because the Bible was written by men back then, some of their cultural biases seeped into it, but then if that's true, that makes me wonder if it's the Word of God with a capital W.

You say a lot of good things here, too. Thanks for the discussion.

The role of "Father" is exactly that: a role. God is not of the male gender. God has no gender. The role of father gives us a more accurate theological understanding of who God's nature and character. It's unfortunate that the only choices in our language are gendered or impersonal. That's where we get stuck.

And I thought I explained why Jesus had to be male. It's not because of sexism, but because of how he came to earth and what he was trying to accomplish.

As far as some of your Christian friends calling God "Dad," that comes from Mark 14.36 and Romans 8.15. "Abba" was a personal term (like "Daddy") characteristics of the fondness of family members for the father. The idea behind it, as far as your friends are concerned, is to show how friendly and intimate the relationship with God is, without being disrespectful. The Jews would never use such a term of intimacy like that for God; Jesus said, "Feel free to view God in this way." The use of Abba indicates that it's not a formal, or even just a legal relationship, but a close family tie of belonging.

It's interesting and a shame that you feel "beneath men." The Bible works very hard, against a patriarchal culture, to show the value of women as being equal to men. In Gn. 1.26, man and woman are equally in the image of God. Gn. 1.28, they are both co-regents. Genesis 2, woman is shown to be equal to man in every way, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." The biblical laws of Exodus, etc., give rights and value to women that were unknown in the ancient world. And Ephesians 5.21-33 restores that equality and value to women in the church, and under the cross of Christ (Gal. 3.28). These were all radical expressions in world that was hopelessly sexist, and the Bible often champions women's value and dignity.

It's also true that historically there have "always" been more women followers than men. I have a book on my shelf from 1875 titled, "Why men don't go to church." Maybe it has to do with the Christian message of humility and submission, I don't know. Maybe it has to do with women being more spiritually attuned because of their intuitions and sensitivities, when too many men are blind to such things. I don't know. It is an intriguing trend.

ok you say some good things here. I like point 5. And point 4 and point 6 make sense given that time period, so I'm willing to give some grace for that. I'm starting to understand the role of "Father" better but the fact remains that he and Jesus are the male gender. Some of my Christian friends take this really far and even say "dad," which I think is weird. But, taken as a whole it all still feels sexist to me and that I have this role in society and it's beneath men. When I read the Bible, I think men, men, men. He, he, he. For God so loved the world he gave us his SON. It's one of the most important passages out there. But it is what it is, I can't change it. It's funny that women are more likely to be believers—my church purposely tries to reach out and do things to attract young men.

First of all, God isn't male. He is spirit, not corporeal (John 4.24), so he has no body and therefore no gender. Secondly, God is spoken of in the Bible using both masculine (warrior) and feminine (mother hen) metaphors. But there are reasons God is referred to with a masculine pronoun rather than a neuter or feminine one.

1. Using the neuter would make it seem like God was a force or an "it," not a person. Totally the wrong idea.

Hebrew and Greek are both gendered languages in which nouns, even inanimate ones, have a gender. It's inaccurate to assume that all gendered nouns or pronouns imply a gendered object. For instance, the Hebrew and Greek words for "wisdom" are feminine, but in nighter case can we conclude they are trying to say something specific or exclusive about women. There is no connect between gendered language and gender identity. Ben Witherington says, "Our cultural biases have led to the overly sexualized reading of the God language of the Bible."

2. So we want to use masculine or feminine because of speaks of God as personal. It speaks of relationship that anyone anywhere in any time of history will understand.

3. "Father," in many cultures of the world, speaks of authority. It's fitting since God is sovereign.

4. "Father" avoids the sexual connotations of the female in the ancient world. In many cultures, "God" was a sexual being, image, and concept, and this perspective was to be avoided at all costs. The male imagery avoids the problem that men have as they look at women as sexual objects. We should not look at God sexually. For men and women, in the ancient world, it was better to have God as a guy. We need to go with whatever communicates best. "Him" are "he" are just labels of revelation, not a reality of theology.

That the biblical God is never addressed as "Mother" is unique compared with the cultures surrounding the biblical authors. Simon Chan writes, "Most ancient Near Eastern societies had a goddess as the main cult figure or at least to complement a male god—Asherah in Canaan, Isis in Egypt, Tiamat in Babylon. If patriarchy is responsible for cultures portraying God as male, then we would expect goddess worship to reflect a matriarchal society—one in which women are given superior status or at least equal to men. But this is not the case. Even today, many societies devoted to goddess worship remain oppressive toward women. Devotion to the goddess Kali in Hinduism, for instance, has never resulted in better treatment of women, even among Kali devotees."

Also, God as male and creator is necessary because of all the ancient mythologies portraying god as female and giving birth to the universe and to the world. Creation came about by sex, and the earth was extension of the deity mother's body. Calling God *Mother* undermines the Christian doctrine of creation by implying that God and the world are made of the same stuff and virtually indistinguishable. We need *Father* to get the right doctrine of creation.

5. "Father" enables the birth of Jesus. The plan from eternity past was that the Redeemer would come from the seed of a woman. Well, you can't have the imagery or the theology of a woman impregnating a woman. Since Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father, you really can't have Him as the only begotten Son of the Mother, and Mary. It doesn't work on so many levels.

Despite criticism, this does not exclude women, because, as I said, God's masculine image doesn't convey exclusively masculine qualities (Isa. 54.5-7 [deep compassion]; 49.13). What God's masculine qualities exclude is the idea of a distant and impersonal being.

6. If God's Messiah had been a woman, in the culture of first-century Palestine, he would have had no platform to do his work. Frankly, the Jews, Romans, and Greeks were sexist, and Jesus as a woman would have hit a dead end really fast, or wouldn't even have gotten off the starting blocks.

7. The reason Jesus did not call God "Mother" is not just because God is never prayed to or directly addressed that way in the Bible, but also because Jesus had an actual human mother. He did not wish to dishonor her by using language appropriate only of his relationship with her, of the one he called Abba (God the Father).

In John 3.16 we read that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. This is meant to convey the notion that while the rest of us, by God’s grace, may become the adopted children of God (see Jn. 1.12-13), the relationship between Jesus and the Father is one of direct kinship. Jesus and the Father are one, such that those who have seen the Son have seen the Father, according to the gospel. It's not meant to be sexist, but to show a different kind of kinship.

So it's not sexist at all that God is referring to as male. There are important theological concepts behind the usage, but that has nothing to do with his (nonexistent) gender or anything sexist, exclusive, or demeaning.

Doesn't it feel wrong or sexist that both God and Jesus are male?

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The key thing here is SON not DAUGHTER. I think that every time I hear this and as a woman, I feel "less than." Men are #1, I'm here as their helpmate or companion. Wondering if other Christians feel this as well? My Christian friends don't seem bothered by being 2nd class at all.

God doesn't have to be male or "the Father." And he could have sent his son AND daughter to be the ultimate sacrifice, that makes more sense to me. More complicated, though.