Women in the Bible have many different roles; this has led to conflicting views and interpretations of all things concerning women in the Bible with adherents taking a myriad of different positions.
For example, the Book of Judges tells the story of Deborah, the only female judge mentioned in the Bible, who was honored and obeyed and led her people during war. The same book of the Bible (Judges) also tells the stories of two of the most egregious examples of violence against women in the Bible: Jephthah's daughter (Judg. 11:29-40) and the Levite's concubine (Judg. 19). Some scholars like Old Testament scholar Jerome Creach attribute this violence to the breakdown of the ancient Hebrew society recorded in Judges, while other scholars such as Professor Phyllis Trible say the patriarchal nature of that society naturally led to violence towards women.
Women were subordinate in the patriarchal sociological and legal systems of ancient and first-century Israel. Yet evaluating the social place and role of women in the Bible is not as straightforward as evaluating women in culture. Psychologist and professor James R. Beck points out that "Evangelical Christians have not yet settled the exegetical and theological issues," and interpretations of views on women in the Bible range from feminist views and what is called the "egalitarian" perspective to the "complementarian" perspective and its more patriarchal versions. Hebrew feminist scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky says the Hebrew Bible is egalitarian and does not attempt to justify cultural subordination with an ideology of superiority or "otherness" while Professor Phyllis Trible says "considerable evidence depicts the Bible as a document of male supremacy."
New Testament views on women are more complex--and contentious--than views based on the Hebrew Bible alone. There is no agreement on what the New Testament views on gender are because the New Testament has conflicting statements and stories, and the Christian Bible includes the views of the Old Testament which informs New Testament interpretation. Historically, the Christian church embraced egalitarianism in its early days, and patriarchalism in the middle ages; these dramatically impacted the role of women in the church and society, sexual mores, and marital and family relationships.
The number of named and unnamed women in the Bible is uncertain. Professor Karla Bombach says the number ranges from 111 to 173 named individuals, and over 600 unnamed women. "Despite the disparities among these different calculations, ... women or women's names represent between 5.5 and 8 percent of the total [names in the Bible], a stunning reflection of the androcentric character of the Bible." A study of women whose spoken words are recorded found 93, of which 49 women are named. Historian Carol Meyers says the common, ordinary, everyday Hebrew woman is "largely unseen" in the pages of the Bible; the women we see are those who rose to prominance.
Video Women in the Bible
Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
The Hebrew Bible (also called Tanakh in Judaism, Old Testament in Christianity and Taurat/Tawrah in Islam) is the basis for both Judaism and Christianity, and a cornerstone of Western culture. The Old Testament includes books by various authors produced over a period of centuries using primarily Hebrew and some Aramaic. These books are divided into four categories: (1) the first five books, or Pentateuch (Torah); (2) the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon; (3) the poetic and "Wisdom books"; and (4) the books of the biblical prophets.[1]
Professor Ben Witherington III quoted by McKnight says: "The dominant impression left by our early Jewish sources is of a very patriarchal society that limited women's roles and functions to the home, and severely restricted: (1) their rights of inheritance, (2) their choice of relationship, (3) their ability to pursue a religious education or fully participate in synagogue, and (4) their freedom of movement." However, Frymer-Kensky says: "Anthropology shows patriarchy to have been widespread, almost universal, and history shows that all the great civilizations were patriarchal, including the civilizations preceding and surrounding ancient Israel... The Bible inherited a patriarchal social structure from antiquity and neither transformed nor justified it."
The Hebrew Bible stories focus primarily on "movers and shakers" which women traditionally were not, filling their roles in the mostly private domains of life, yet theologians agree the Hebrew Bible does not depict the slave, or the poor, or women, as different in essence from other ordinary Israelites. The Hebrew Bible uses a wide variety of literary devices talking about women: similes, metaphors, symbols, and "types"; women appear in illustrations, and parables of women are frequently used to make a point.
The Hebrew bible has a large corpus of stories and poems which portray women as having the same goals, the same abilities and the same strategies as biblical men.
Eve and Genesis
Near Eastern scholar Carol Meyers says, "Perhaps more than any other part of the Bible, [Genesis 1-3] has influenced western notions of gender and identity."
Creation narratives
Comparing Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern creation stories with the Genesis story shows a few common themes: humankind is created by a god from clay mixed with some aspect of the god himself, making humans both earthly and divine. There are two distinct traditions in Sumerian literature with one having humankind created from clay and the other having man sprouting up from the earth like grass--imagery also found in the Hebrew Bible. Babylonian literature has numerous references to creation from clay. This imagery is twofold: man is "crafted" from clay then gestated and "born". "The two images are juxtaposed rather than harmonized, for both the creation of man which is analogous to the creation of a statue, and the birth of the first man, which is like the births of all subsequent humans, are understood as parallel metaphors."
Carol Meyers says, "Despite such similarities, sociological and anthropological theories allow ancient Israel to be categorized and comprehended as a socially distinct formation in the Near Eastern world of the late second and first millennia." She sees Eve in Genesis as "symbolizing all women," and because of Eve's archetypal role, the message to Everywoman seems to mandate a pattern for all who follow the Yahwist tradition. Yet exactly what that pattern is remains at issue. The accounts of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden[Gen 2-3] continue to be the subjects of considerable theological, sociological, and anthropological debate regarding the patriarchal family order, male dominance and female oppression. These debates have been used as a justification for the subordination of women and "for the rejection of Genesis as a source for male chauvinism." Sociologist Linda L. Lindsey says "women have born a greater burden for 'original sin'... Eve's creation from Adam's rib, second in order, with God's "curse" at the expulsion is a stubbornly persistent frame used to justify male supremacy."
Genesis 1 declares the purpose of God, antedating the creation of the sexes. It has been called the "non-subordinating" view of woman. Trible says the story of Eve implies no inferiority; the word helpmate (ezer) connotes a mentor in the Bible rather than an assistant and is used frequently for the relation of God to Israel (not Israel to God).
In mythology traditionally the last-created thing is the culmination of creation, which is implied in Genesis 1 where man is created after everything else, except Eve. Craig Blomberg says ancient Jews would have seen this in terms of the laws of primogeniture (both in their scriptures and in surrounding cultures) and might have interpreted Adam being created first as a sign of privilege.
Trible goes on to say, "Eve shows no inferiority to Adam anywhere in the Eden story." Frymer-Kensky says, "At the very least, the text indicates humans were meant to be equal partners... The subordination of women after the expulsion is part of the consequences of sin." However, Professor Susan Lanser has pointed out that biblical authors could have expected their readers to respond in culturally conditioned ways, relying on patriarchal attitudes to condemn Eve.
Old Testament views on gender
Edith Hamilton wrote that Old Testament writers considered women as impartially as men, free from prejudice and even from condescension.
In the Ten commandments of Exodus 20, aspects of both male priority and gender balance can be seen. In the tenth commandment, a wife is depicted in the examples not to be coveted: house, wife, male or female slave, ox or donkey, or 'anything that belongs to your neighbour.' On the other hand, the fifth commandment does not make any distinction between honor to be shown to parents.
The Hebrew Bible often portrays women as victors, leaders and heroines with qualities Israel should emulate: Hagar,Tamar, Miriam, Rahab, Deborah, Esther, and Yael, are among many female "saviors" of Israel at its beginnings and at the end of biblical history. They conquered the enemy "by their wits and daring, were symbolic representations of their people, and pointed to the salvation of Israel."
The Hebrew Bible also portrays women as victims. Frymer-Kensky says "This is not misogynist story-telling but something far more complex in which the treatment of women becomes the clue to the morality of the social order." Professor of Religion J. David Pleins says these tales are included by the Deuteronomic historian to demonstrate the evils of life without a centralized shrine and single political authority.
Hebrew Bible narrators are concerned with the nation of Israel; individual stories are only important "for what they indicate about Israel's society, history and destiny...victor stories follow the paradigm of Israel's central sacred story: the lowly are raised, the marginal come to the center, the poor boy makes good. Little Israel, like its heroes and heroines, triumphs... The god-fearing defiant women...are models of how Israel should behave in adversity...[conquering] through faith and determination...The victims are also images of an Israel that is small and vulnerable... Israel's understanding of herself as small and marginal provides context for these stories."
Deborah
The Book of Judges states Deborah was a prophet, a judge of Israel, and the wife of Lapidoth. She rendered her judgments beneath a date palm tree between Ramah in Benjamin and Bethel in the land of Ephraim.
The people of Israel had been oppressed by Jabin, the king of Canaan for twenty years. Deborah sends a prophetic "message of the Lord" to Barak, the son of Abinoam, at Kedesh of Naphtali, and tells him the Lord God has commanded him to muster ten thousand troops, where to put them, and where the enemy will appear. Barak refuses to go to war without her present. Deborah consents, but declares that the glory of the victory will therefore belong to a woman.
Then Deborah said, according to Judges 4:14:
"Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?" So Barak went down Mount Tabor, with ten thousand men following him.
As Deborah prophesied, a battle is fought (led by Barak), and Sisera is completely defeated. Sisera escapes on foot, comes to the tent of Jael, and lies down to rest. While he is asleep, she hammers a tent-pin through his temple.
The Biblical account of Deborah ends with the statement that after the battle, there was peace in the land for 40 years. (Judges 5:31)[[2]]
The Shunammite woman
Biblical scholar Burke Long focuses on the "great woman" of Shunnem who appears in the Book of Kings. The Shunammite woman is seen to acknowledge and respect the prophet Elisha's position yet is a "determined mover and shaper of events." The Shunammite was an independent woman. She is able to extend patronage then becomes a determined petitioner willing to confront prophet and King in pursuit of the well being of her household.
This narrative also demonstrates how gender intersects with class in the Bible's portrayal of ancient Israel. These stories "take place among the rural poor" creating a "backdrop of extreme poverty. Most of the miracles Elijah and Elisha perform involve providing food for the peasantry." The Shunammite is wealthy, giving her more boldness than poor women or sometimes even poor men.
Huldah
"2 Kings 22 relates an episode in which the High Priest Hilkiah and the scribe Shaphan go to the [woman] prophet Huldah. The text does not comment on the fact the prophet was a woman. The casual way she is mentioned indicates her position was not anomolous." Women could be prophets in ancient Israel even if they could not be priests.
Abigail
Abigail was the wife of a surly drunk who refused to assist the future king David after having accepted his help. Abigail, realizing David's anger will be dangerous to the entire household, acts immediately. She intercepts David bearing gifts and her "brilliant rhetoric" convinces him not to kill anyone. "Once again an intelligent determined woman is influential far beyond the confines of patriarchy" showing biblical women had what anthropology terms informal power.
Violence against women
Many have attributed the incidents of violence toward women in the Bible to the breakdown of ancient society. Old Testament scholar Kathleen M. O'Connor explains: "The period between the death of Joshua and the anointing of Saul...was a period of uncertainty and danger... lack of human leadership is viewed as disastrous, for when "every one does what is right in their own eyes, the results are awful" and that is evinced by violent acts against women. Yet others have alleged such problems are innate to patriarchy.
Hagar
Abraham is an important figure in the Bible, yet "his story pivots on two women." Hagar was Sarah's personal slave and Abraham's concubine. The text says Sarah used, abused then finally rejected Hagar for good. "This story starkly illuminates the relations between women in a patriarchy." Gender intersects with class: Sarah has the power. Sarah's actions are legal, but not compassionate; but her motives are clear: she is vulnerable, making her incapable of compassion toward her social inferior.
The Levites concubine
The Levite's concubine in the book of Judges is vulnerable as she is only a minor wife, a concubine. The reader is never told her name. In this story class intersects with gender and power yet again. When she is unhappy she runs home, but her father gives her to another, the Levite. They travel to a strange town and are vulnerable because they travel alone without extended family to rescue them; strangers attack. To protect the Levite, his host offers his daughter to the mob and the Levite sends out his concubine. "The story makes us realize that in those days men had ultimate powers of disposal over their women." This scene is similar to that in Sodom and Gomorrah when Lot sent his daughters to the mob, but in Genesis the angels save them, and in the book of Judges God is no longer intervening. The concubine is raped to death.
The Levite butchers her body and uses it to rouse Israel against the tribe of Benjamin. Civil war follows nearly wiping out an entire tribe. To resuscitate it, hundreds of women are captured and forced into marriage. Fryman-Kensky says, "Horror follows horror." The narrator caps off the story with "in those days there was no king in Isarel and every man did as he pleased." The decline of Israel is reflected in the violence against women that takes place when government fails and social upheaval occurs.
Some feminist critiques of Judges say the Bible gives tacit approval to violence against women by not speaking out against these acts. Frymer-Kensky says leaving moral conclusions to the reader is a recognized method of writing called gapping used in many Bible stories.
Jephthah's daughter
The story of Jephthah's daughter begins as an archetypal biblical hagiography of a hero. Jephthah is the son of a marginal woman, a prostitute. He is vulnerable. He lives in his father's house, but when his father dies, his half-brothers reject him. "This is not right. In the ancient Near East prostitutes could be hired as surrogate wombs as well as sex objects. Laws and contracts regulated the relationship between the child of such a prostitute and children of the first wife... he could not be disinherited. Jephthah has been wronged, but he has no recourse. He must leave home." The author assumes the biblical audience is familiar with all of this, will know Jephthah has been wronged, and will be sympathetic to him.
Jephthah makes a name for himself as a mighty warrior--a hero of Israel. The threat of the Ammonites is grave. The brothers acknowledge their wrongdoing to gain his protection. Jephthah's response reveals negotiation skills and deep piety. Then he attempts to negotiate peace with Ammon but fails. War it is, with all of Israel vulnerable. Before the battle he makes a battle vow: "If you give the Ammonites into my hand...the one who comes out of the doors of my house...I will offer to YHWH." This turns out to be his daughter. Jephthah's reaction expresses his horror and sense of tragedy in three key expressions of mourning, utter defeat, and reproach. He reproaches her and himself, but foresees only his doom in either keeping or breaking his vow. Jephthah's daughter responds to his speech and she becomes a true heroine of this story. They are both good, yet tragedy happens. "The vulnerable heroine is sacrificed, the hero's name is gone."
The author of the book of Judges knew people were sacrificing their children and the narrator of Judges is in opposition. "The horror is the very reason this story is in the book of Judges."
Some scholars have interpreted this story to mean that Jephthah's daughter was not actually sacrificed, but kept in seclusion.
The rape of Tamar
The story of Tamar is a literary unit consisting of seven parts. The story "has received a great deal of attention as a superb piece of literature, and several have concentrated on explicating the artistry involved." This story focuses on three of King David's children, Amnon the first born, Absalom the beloved son, and his beautiful sister Tamar.
Amnon desires Tamar so deeply it makes him sick. Immediately after explaining Amnon's desire the narrator first uses the term sister to reveal Tamar is not only Absalom's sister but is also Amnon's sister by another mother; the storyteller "stresses family ties for such intimacy exacerbates the coming tragedy." Full of lust, the prince is impotent to act; Tamar is a virgin and protected property. Then comes a plan from cousin Jonadab "a very crafty man."
Jonadab's scheme to aid Amnon pivots on David the king. "Amnon laid down and pretended to be ill and the king came to see him." He asks that his sister Tamar make him food and feed him. The king orders it sending a message to Tamar. The narrator now concentrates on Tamar: "six verbs in sets of threes detail her activities." Amnon sends the servants away. Alone with the would-be rapist she is vulnerable, but Tamar claims her voice. She speaks with wisdom, but she speaks to a foolish man. She attempts to dissuade him, to get him to see sense, then offers the alternative of marriage: appeal to the king. "But he refused to listen to her" and since he was stronger than she, he raped her."
Amnon is immediately full of shame and angrily throws Tamar out. "No!" she said to him. "Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me." But he refuses to listen to wisdom again. Tamar is desolate: ruined and miserable. King David is furious but he does nothing to avenge his daughter or punish his son. "The reader of the story who expects that the state will provide protection for the vulnerable now sees that the state cannot control itself." Absolom is filled with quiet hatred. Two years later Absolom kills Amnon. Some time later Absolom rebels against his father and is also killed.
Maps Women in the Bible
New Testament
The New Testament is the second part of the Christian Bible. "The New Testament discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity."[3] It consists of four narratives called gospels about the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. It includes a record of the Apostolic ministries in the early church, called the Acts of the Apostles; twenty-one letters called "epistles" written by various authors to specific groups with specific needs concerning Christian doctrine, counsel, instruction, and conflict resolution; and one Apocalyptic book, the Book of Revelation, which is a book of prophecy, containing some instructions to seven local congregations of Asia Minor, but mostly containing prophetical symbology about the end times.
Jesus' interactions with women
The New Testament refers to a number of women in Jesus' inner circle. There are several Gospel accounts of Jesus imparting important teachings to and about women: his meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well, his anointing by Mary of Bethany, his public admiration for a poor widow who donated two copper coins to the Temple in Jerusalem, his stepping to the aid of the woman accused of adultery, his friendship with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, and the presence of Mary Magdalene, his mother, and the other women as he was crucified. According to New Testament scholar Dr. Frank Stagg and classicist Evelyn Stagg, the synoptic Gospels of the canonical New Testament contain a relatively high number of references to women. The Staggs find no recorded instance where Jesus disgraces, belittles, reproaches, or stereotypes a woman. They say these examples are instructive for inferring Jesus' attitudes toward women.
New Testament views on gender
There is no consensus on the New Testament view of women. New Testament scholar Linda Belleville says the New Testament contains multiple stories of "women leaders" and that "virtually every leadership role that names a man also names a woman. In fact there are more women named as leaders in the New Testament than men. Phoebe is a "deacon" and a "benefactor" (Romans 16:11-2). Mary, Lydia and Nympha are "overseers" of house churches (Acts 12:12; 16:15; Colossians 4:15). Euodia and Syntyche are among the "overseers and deacons" at Philippi (Philippians 1:1; cf, 4:2-3). The only role lacking specific female names is that of elder--but there male names are lacking as well." The New Testament also contains 1 Timothy 2:11 and 12: "A woman (wife) must learn in quietness and full submissiveness. I do not permit a woman (wife) to teach or exercise authority over a man (her husband)." Ephesians 5:23: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church." And 1 Corinthians 14:34,35: "women (wives) are to be silent in the churches..." Belleville asserts the traditional English translations of these verses using women and authority are colored by hierarchical bias. There is no doubt that in Paul's time there were women teachers in the church. Traditionalists explain this by distinguishing between public and private, authoritative and non-authoritative, formal and informal types of instruction. Belleville says those distinctions are not in the Greek.
Early church views
Sociologist Linda L. Lindsey says "Belief in the spiritual equality of the genders (Galatians) and Jesus' inclusion of women in prominent roles, led the early New Testament church to recognize women's contributions to charity, evangelism and teaching." Pliny the Younger explains in his letters to Emperor Trajan that Christianity had people from every age and rank, and both sexes, with women in leadership roles. Professor of religion Margaret Y. MacDonald uses a "social scientific concept of power" which distinguishes between power and authority to show early Christian women did in fact play a significant role in Christianity's beginnings. According to MacDonald, much of the vociferous pagan criticism of the early church was linked to this female initiative.
Christianity was considered a threat to Roman society. Rome had a social caste system where female initiative was seen as akin to sorcery. Such accusations were used to oppose Christianity and influence public opinion.
The [pagan critic's] focus on women is to draw attention to the essence of a group where power is exercised in dangerous, illegitimate ways, where the norms of household order are subverted, where traditional male control of house and school is compromised, where the public practices of religion are ignored in favor of a god who is worshipped in private, and where the only wisdom comes from magic lore."
Some New Testament texts (1 Peter 2:12;3:15-16; 1 Timothy 3:6-7;5:14) explicitly discuss early Christian communities being burdened by slanderous rumors because of this perceived threat. Such negative public opinion played a part in violence and martyrdom of early Christians.[4] McDonald alleges some New Testament texts concerning the behavior of women were written in response to these dangerous circumstances.
Views of the Middle Ages
By the middle ages, a return to patriarchal views meant women were largely excluded from religious, political and mercantile life. There had been a rite for the ordination of women deacons in the Roman Pontifical, (a liturgical book), up through the 12th century, but by the 13th-century Roman Pontifical, the prayer for ordaining women as deacons was removed, and ordination was re-defined and applied only to male Priests.
The formation of convents (and monasteries), distinct from either political or familial authority, gradually carved out a series of social spaces with some amount of independence thereby revolutionizing social history. They also helped form the concept of chivalry which was influenced by a new Church attitude towards Mary, the mother of Jesus. The increasing popularity of devotion to the Virgin Mary secured maternal virtue as a central cultural theme of Catholic Europe of the period.[[5]]
Some leading churchwomen gained powers unavailable to women in Roman or Germanic societies. Medieval abbesses and female superiors of monastic houses became powerful figures whose influence could rival that of male bishops and abbots: "They treated with kings, bishops, and the greatest lords on terms of perfect equality;... they were present at all great religious and national solemnities, at the dedication of churches, and even, like the queens, took part in the deliberation of the national assemblies...".[[6]]
Woman-as-witch became a stereotype in the 1400's until it was deliberately codified in 1487 by Pope Innocent VIII who declared "most witches are female." "The European witch stereotype embodies two apparent paradoxes: first, it was not produced by the "barbaric Dark Ages," but during the progressive Renaissance and the early modern period; secondly, Western Christianity did not recognize the reality of witches for centuries, or criminalize them until around 1400." Sociologist Don Swenson says the explanation for this may lay in the nature of Medieval society as heirocratic which led to violence and the use of coercion to force conformity.
Paul the Apostle and women
Linda Belleville says there is no other New Testament letter in which women figure as prominently as they do in 1 Timothy. "All told, 20% of the letter focuses on women." Writings such as 1 Timothy 5:3-16 and 3:1-7 concerning the behavior of widows "reflect a heightened concern for the honor of the community" and offer a clear indication of what those who wanted to slander the community were saying. Widows in Greco-Roman society could not inherit their husband's estate and could find themselves in desperate circumstances, but almost from the beginning the church offered widows support. Roman law required a widow to remarry; Paul says a woman is better off if she remains unmarried. "Through their deeds, the widows may have confirmed the suspicion of critics that early Christianity largely involved female initiative."
...we have been able to trace a shift in perspective concerning unmarried women from Paul's [early] day to the time of the Pastoral epistles. ...the presence in the community of [a strong inclination among single women to remain unmarried and celibate] and the increasing public scrutiny [it brought] were catalysts for this change of perspective, which manifests itself in a return to traditional [Roman] patterns [and the requirement to marry].
Concerns about the public visibility of women are evident in the return to Roman concepts of traditional household roles in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and in 1 Corinthians 14:34-5. There is ongoing dispute over the correct translation of these verses. However, minister Professor Leland E. Wilshire says a computer program has resolved the issue. 1 Timothy 2:12b contains the clause authentein andros which has traditionally been translated "to have authority." Wilshire says a whole theology excluding women has been built on this clause which the computer has revealed is a mistranslation.
Paul the Apostle was the first writer to give ecclesiastical directives about the role of women in the church. However, there are arguments that some of the writings attributed to Paul are pseudepigraphal post-Pauline interpolations.
Apostle Peter on women
In 1 Peter 3 wives are exhorted to submit to their husbands "so they may be won over." Scot McKnight says: "This is entirely consistent with [Peter's] agenda at 2:11-12, that Christians live such holy lives that nothing can be lodged against the gospel because of their behavior. ...Christians have an obligation to live "orderly lives" to maintain a credible witness."
Official teaching of the modern Catholic church considers women and men to be complementary (equal and different), but some have argued the teachings attributed to St. Paul and those of the early Fathers of the Church and later Scholastic theologians advanced the notion of a divinely ordained female inferiority.
The New Testament and female sexuality
New Testament teachings on sexuality, marriage, and family life have been both influential and controversial. They have affected the status of women by promoting monogamy, condemning marital infidelity by both genders alike, limiting divorce, forbidding incest, polygamy, infanticide (especially since female infants were more likely to be killed), and abortion.
Christianity began within the meta-social environment of the Roman empire which had inherited some of its sexual views and mores from the Greek world. Both the ancient Greeks and the Romans cared and wrote about sexual morality within categories of good and bad, pure and defiled, and ideal and transgression. But the sexual-ethical structures of Roman society were built on status, and sexual modesty meant something different for men than it did for women, and for the well-born, than it did for the poor, and for the free citizen, than it did for the slave--for whom the concepts of honor, shame and sexual modesty could be said to have no meaning at all. Slaves were not thought to have an interior ethical life because they could go no lower socially. Roman literature indicates the Romans were aware of these dualities.
Shame was a profoundly social concept that was, in ancient Rome, always mediated by gender and status. "It was not enough that a wife merely regulate her sexual behavior in the accepted ways; it was required that her virtue in this area be conspicuous." Men, on the other hand, were allowed live-in mistresses called pallake. This permitted Roman society to find both a husband's control of a wife's sexual behavior a matter of intense importance, and at the same time, see his own sex with young boys as of little concern. Christianity sought to establish equal sexual standards for men and women and to protect all whether slave or free. This was a transformation in the deep logic of sexual morality.[7]
The central Christian prohibition against porneia, which is a single name for an array of sexual behaviors outside marital intercourse, "collided with deeply entrenched patterns of Roman permissiveness where the legitimacy of sexual contact was determined primarily by status. Paul said the body was a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine. ...Same-sex attraction spelled the estrangement of men and women at the very deepest level of their inmost desires. Paul's over-riding sense that gender--rather than status or power or wealth or position--was the prime determinant in the propriety of the sex act was momentous. By boiling the sex act down to the most basic constituents of male and female, Paul was able to describe the sexual culture surrounding him in transformative terms."
Christian sexual ideology is inextricable from its concept of freewill. "In its original form, Christian freewill was a cosmological claim--an argument about the relationship between God's justice and the individual... as Christianity became intermeshed with society, the discussion shifted in revealing ways to the actual psychology of volition and the material constraints on sexual action... The church's acute concern with volition places Christian philosophy in the liveliest currents of imperial Greco-Roman philosophy [where] orthodox Christians offered a radically distinctive version of it."
The Greeks and Romans said our deepest moralities depend on our social position which is given to us by fate. Christianity "preached a liberating message of freedom. It was a revolution in the rules of behavior, but also in the very image of the human being as a sexual being, free, frail and awesomely responsible for one's own self to God alone. It was a revolution in the nature of society's claims on the moral agent... There are risks in over-estimating the change in old patterns Christianity was able to begin bringing about; but there are risks, too, in underestimating the Christianization of sexual mores as a watershed."[8]
Women of the New Testament
Junia
Paul wrote in Romans 16:7 "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was." Bible translator Hayk Hovhannisyan says Junia was a woman and there is consensus supporting this view. "Some scholars argue that Junia was really a man by the name of Junias... Whether this name is masculine or feminine depends on how the word was accented in Greek. ...scribes wrote Junia as feminine. Examination of ancient Greek and Latin literature confirms this idea. The masculine name Junias is nowhere attested, whereas the female name Junia...is found more than 250 times..."
Belleville says some traditionalists translate [outstanding among the apostles] as "esteemed by the apostles." "The justification for this change is the contention that all biblical and extra-biblical parallels to Romans 16:7 are exclusive (esteemed by apostles, well known to apostles) rather than inclusive (honored as one of the apostles, "among" the apostles)...[but] proof is wholly lacking. ...The preposition en plus the dative plural with rare exception is inclusive "in/among" and not the exclusive "to". ...the parallels... plus the dative plural bear the inclusive meaning "a notable member of the larger group." Professor of New Testament Craig S. Keener says the early church understood Andronicus and Junia to be a husband and wife apostolic team. "Paul nowhere limits the apostolic company to twelve plus himself as some have assumed." Keener says "it is unnatural to read the text as merely claiming that they had a high reputation with the apostles." Minister and Professor Leland E. Wilshire says New Testament critic Eldon Jay Epp's work comparing the Junia passage to Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead "has resolved the Junia controversy" by convincingly proving the phrase should be rendered with Junia as a female and one of the apostles.
Priscilla
In Romans 16:3-5 Paul refers to the married couple Priscilla and Aquilla as his "fellow workers" saying they risked their lives for him. Paul worked and seemingly lived with them for a considerable time, and they followed him to Ephesus before he left on his next missionary journey. In Acts 18:25,26 Luke says Apollos, a "learned man," came to Ephesus and began speaking in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquilla heard him, they took him with them and "explained the way of God more accurately." Hayk Hovhannisyan says "either Priscilla was unaware of [Paul's doctrine that a woman shouldn't teach a man], which is virtually impossible; or she knew about it and decided to rebel--or the doctrine did not exist."
Mary of Bethany
Theologian and ethicist Stanley Grenz with Professor Denise Muir Kjesbo say that "In contrast to many rabbis who considered it inappropriate to instruct women, Jesus readily taught them. Perhaps the most obvious example is Mary of Bethany who sat at Jesus' feet (Luke 10:39). In describing the scene, the Evangelist chooses terminology associated with rabbinic study (compare Acts 22:3), suggesting that Mary became Jesus' student. By his response, Jesus overturned the culturally determined priorities for women. He rejected the Jewish notion that household maintenance constituted the only appropriate role for women in society. And He defied the practice of excluding women from the study of the Torah. [He] set aside the prejudices of his day and restored the Old Testament injunction that both men and women apply themselves to learning God's Law...
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene, or Mary from the town of Magdala, is sometimes "erroneously identified as the sinner who anointed Jesus according to Luke's description in Luke 7:36-50. She is at times also confused with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (John 12:1-8). Mary Magdalene is also sometimes mistaken for the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). Luke qualifies her as "one who was healed" but otherwise little is known about her. Mary Magdalene is named first in all lists of women except one, John 19:25. There is nothing to indicate she was a prostitute and some scholars believe she was a woman of means who helped support Jesus and his ministry.
New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III says John is the only evangelist with a "keen interest" in portraying women in Jesus' story, yet, the "only Easter event narrated by all four evangelists concerns the visit of the women to the tomb of Jesus." Mary Magdalene and the other women go to anoint Jesus' body at the tomb, but find the body gone. Mary Magdalene is inconsolable, but she turns and Jesus' speaks to her. He calls her by name and she recognizes him. "There are certain parallels between the story of the appearance to Mary and John 20:24-31 (when Jesus appears to Thomas) [however] Mary is given an apostolic task (to go tell the men) and Thomas is not." "There is little doubt the Fourth evangelist wishes to portray Mary Magdalene as important, perhaps equally important for Jesus' fledgling community as Mother Mary herself."
The Roman writer Celsus left one of the primary anti-Christian works still in existence. Margaret McDonald says: "Celsus' study of Christian scripture led him to focus on the intriguing figure of the woman who witnessed the resurrection, Mary Magdalene. The hysterical female is singled out by this pagan critic as the instigator of the Christian story of the resurrection. In Celsus' work Mary Magdalene's role in the resurrection story denigrates its credibility... From beginning to end, the story of Jesus' life has been shaped by the fanciful imaginings of women. [But] Mary Magdalene is by no means powerless...Deluded by sorcery, she in turn becomes one of its main perpetrators." "The challenge to Mary's position has been evaluated as an indication of tensions between the existing fact of women's leadership in Christian communities and traditional Greco-Roman views about gender roles."
This focus on Mary Magdalene may reflect second century conflict over her role as a woman disciple of Jesus and the leadership roles of women in general. "Several apocryphal and gnostic texts provide evidence of such a controversy."
See also
- Christian feminism
- Feminist theology
- Gender and Judaism
- Jewish feminism
- List of women in the Bible
- Women as theological figures
- Women in Judaism
- Role of Christianity in civilization
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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