by jimwalton » Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:13 am
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".
Last bumped by Anonymous on Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:13 am.