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Were the followers of Yahweh afraid that Asherah and her consort, Baal, might one day rise again? Did they purposely try to keep women down?
We started out thinking of earth and nature as feminine. We refer to Mother Earth and Mother Nature, those from whom life springs. Women have always been necessary, but men were the protectors and hunters. They were also always necessary.
Why is there not an equality? The Bible identifies God as male, makes Adam first and Eve from Adam, and portrays Eve as tempting Adam, causing him to fall from grace. Women throughout history have been discriminated against because of this story. They have been blamed for being a bad influence on Adam and thus causing all mankind to be cast from paradise.
Women are seen as property in the ten commandments. Wives are not to be coveted, just as oxen and other possessions are not to be coveted. There are also stories of the evil Jezibel and the evil Delilah. The barrenness of a woman is seen as her fault. Extending the line of the male is more important than the dignity of women. There were cleansing rituals required of women after menstration and childbirth.
Certainly Jesus interviened in the stoning of an adulteress. However, were unfaithful males also stoned at that time?
Paul said terrible things about women. He said that women should learn in silence with all submissiveness. He permitted no woman to teach or have authority over men.
Witches have been burned. Justification for cruelity toward women has been found in the Bible. It's also used to keep women from being Priests in the Catholic Church. Why do women continue to put up with this?
Yet this is how it was almost throughout recorded history, even before the New Testament. From literature long ago, like "Antigone" by Sophocles, we see how the male King resents being opposed by a woman. He seals his sister in a cave just for disobeying him. Pericles maintained the importance of men being in the leadership positions. Plato was an exception. He actually didn't mind women as rulers if they met the qualifications, but most others thought this was a nutty part of his views. Aristotle, after Plato, went back to prescribing men as leaders, not women.
Dr. Rosemary Radford Reuther, Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, says the following about the image of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition:
The problem of the male image of God cannot be treated as trival or an
accidental question of linguistics. It must be understood first of all as an
ideological bias that reflects the sociology of patriarchal societies; that
is, those societies; dominated by male, property-holding heads of
families. Although not all patriarchal societies have male monotheistic
religions, in those patriarchal societies which have this view of God, the
God-image serves as the central reinforcement of the structure of patriachal
rule. The subordinate status of women in the social and legal order is
reflected in the subordinate status of women in the cultus. The single
male God is seen not only as creator and lawgiver of this secondary
status of women. This very structure of sprituality in relation to this God
enforces her secondary status. |
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Are Women equal to Men or secondary, according to Paul?
In Galations 3:28, Paul sates, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."
However, in 1 Corinthians, starting at 3 and going on to for awhile, at least to 17, Paul clearly reafirms a patriarchal order:
| But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God...For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) |
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Isn't this a little like saying woman is lacking a direct relationship to God except secondarily, through the mediator of male? How do women take that?
bis bald,
Nick
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