Morality & Politics

Biblical Morality: Womens' Rights

Timothy 2:11-14 (NIV): A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

The subject of Bible misogyny is one upon which voluminous texts have been written, and any contribution I could make here would be a mere drop in the ocean. However, I would like to point out that the Bible's negative messages on women go beyond the obvious, such as Paul's famous "wives, submit to your husbands" line in Ephesians 5:23, or the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians 14:34 (NIV): "women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says."

1 Peter 3:5-6 (NIV): For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master.

Of course, not everyone admits that Paul was a misogynist. Some have even gone so far as to suggest the opposite: that Paul actively promoted female equality! They base this on Galatians 3:23: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus". However, they are guilty of ignoring the context in which the statement was made; he was not trying to convince anyone to change the status of women, non-Jews, or slaves. He was merely listing pairs of contrasting status (Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female), and including them all as potential Christians despite differences in status which he had no desire to change. He was speaking in a strictly non-Earthly sense, of the fact that everyone can be a Christian no matter how high or low his or her status (to quote the Borg from Star Trek, "you will all be assimilated"). It doesn't mean that he thought women should be considered the equals of men here on Earth, particularly since he explicitly and unequivocally instructed women to be subservient to men in his other writings.

As an aside, Paul's defenders demonstrate the basic problem with Biblical fundamentalism. Fundamentalists claim that the process of reading the Bible is not a subjective process, as if thoughts leap off the page into their minds. But the process of reading and interpreting language is always subjective. It is coloured by societal perceptions, and you will read what you want to read, particularly if you're willing to ignore inconvenient contradictory passages. That is why scientists and engineers use equations and numbers when they want to describe an idea in an unambiguous manner, and that is one of the reasons that Biblical fundamentalism and science will never meet. The methods of religion and theology bear no resemblance whatsoever to those of science, and they never will.

Actions speak louder than words, and are not subject to such pedantic interpretations. The actions of the Bible's holy figures are quite revealing indeed. What gender are the people in Heaven? God? Male. Jesus? Male. The angels who visited Lot? Male. And what of all the storied figures, such as Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon, Joshua, Samson, and Gideon? Hmmm ... male. Who came first? Adam, a male (Eve was created because he needed a "helper"). What about Jesus' 12 disciples? All male. The "Angel of the LORD" who runs around wreaking havoc, and who David saw poised over Jerusalem with sword in hand in 1 Chronicles 21? Male. In the Bible, females almost always hold positions of subservience; men take them at will and lord over them. From a modern perspective, we can clearly see that this is wrong, and we can rectify it. We might even argue that they simply "didn't know any better back then", and refrain from applying the values of that era to the modern era. But fundamentalists invariably hold the belief that where modern values and Biblical precedent clash, Biblical values must win, no matter how heinous they are. Therefore, fundamentalists tend to promote patriarchal models, and the Bible gives them a convenient excuse.

It would be nice if Biblical misogynism stopped at patriarchy, but unfortunately, this isn't the case. Another Biblical theme regarding women is that of property. All throughout the books of Joshua and Judges (and the rest of the Old Testament, for that matter), women are treated as property, to be traded, treated as war booty, offered up during negotiations, or sacrificed in order to protect men.

Numbers 31:14-18 (NIV): Moses was angry with the officers of the army--the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds--who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

In other words, kill all the boys, kill all the women, and rape all the little virgin girls. This is Moses talking, the man who's still held up today as a symbol of the Ten Commandments and of morality. In Judges, we saw a similar trend: women are "given" to men without their consent, or kidnapped against their will, all by the supposedly "righteous" Israelites.

Judges 21:12-22 (NIV): They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man ... So the Benjamites returned at that time and were given the women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. But there were not enough for all of them ... the elders of the assembly said, "With the women of Benjamin destroyed, how shall we provide wives for the men who are left? The Benjamite survivors must have heirs," they said," so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out ... But look, there is the annual festival of the LORD in Shiloh, to the north of Bethel, and east of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem, and to the south of Lebonah. So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, "Go and hide in the vineyards and watch. When the girls of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the girls of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, "Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war ..."

Continuing with the theme of women as property, not only was Lot willing to sacrifice his own daughters to a rape gang in order to protect two men, but in Judges, we saw a man gladly sacrificing his concubine's life in order to protect a Levite who was staying at his house.

Judges 19:24 (NIV): Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing ... the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.

Notice how he didn't even bother staying awake, or rushing to her aid immediately after her ordeal ended. He slept peacefully, kept the door locked with her outside, woke up the next morning, and wondered why she wouldn't get up! Absolutely incredible ... the Benjamites were vilified because some of them had raped and beaten her, but why wasn't her master vilified for handing her over to them like some kind of trinket, or failing to help her when she lay dying on his doorstep?

Unfortunately, the Bible's misogyny is still not complete, because we must consider the theme of temptation and betrayal. From Eve to Bath-Sheba, Job's wife, Jezebel, and Delilah, the most famous women in the Bible are regarded as either betrayers or temptresses. Eve disobeyed God, ate the forbidden fruit, and then convinced Adam to eat it too (see Timothy 2). Bath-Sheba is often blamed for tempting David by bathing naked (as if there's any other way to bathe). Job's wife tried to turn him away from God. Delilah's beauty captivated Samson, she tempted him to reveal his sole weakness, and then she betrayed him to his enemies. The notion of women being proud, having status, or gaining authority is seen as a foul, unnatural situation which is somehow a betrayal of God:

Isaiah 3:12-17 (NIV): Youths oppress my people, women rule over them. O my people, your guides lead you astray; they turn you from the path ... The LORD says, "The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles. Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion; the LORD will make their scalps bald."

When viewed from a modern perspective, the Bible's message on women is a purely regressive one, and it helps explain the common fundamentalist attitude that feminism is an "ungodly" movement. According to the Old Testament, women are temptresses and betrayers who cannot be allowed to ever have authority. According to Paul in the New Testament, women can best demonstrate their piety by being submissive to their husbands. According to the Ten Commandments, women are mere property, lumped in with a man's cattle, house, and servants. Once again, many modern Christians have eschewed that attitude. But the Bible itself continues to promote them because it has not been revised since that ancient time, and one must deliberately ignore parts of the Bible in order to produce a moral outcome.

Continue to 6. Did Jesus Fix It?

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