We intended that each one of this series of posts would give a good example from "The Bible Now" of what is involved in seriously dealing with the Bible and five "hot" issues of our day in light of the advances in current Bible scholarship and archaeology. That is what we did in the last two posts, which dealt with abortion and homosexuality. This post, though, is the hardest. The subject is women's status. How on earth are we to choose a single text as an example? Should it be prose, poetry or law? Women are more than just one subject among many in the Bible. (Big surprise. They are, after all, half the people on earth.) And we're working only with the Hebrew Bible (also called the Old Testament) in these posts. We're not dealing with the New Testament, Church History, rabbinic interpretations or Christian doctrine, which are outside of our area of expertise.
The arguments over what the Bible has to teach about women's status are curious. Some people say that the Bible was enlightened for its time, a crucial step in an evolution (some would say a revolution) of women's status. Others say that males composed the Bible, that it was the product of patriarchal society, that it was the justification of such patriarchal society and that it has been one of the best-known contributors to maintaining an inferior status of women.
Both groups are reading the same book.
It's understandable. The book was composed by more than a hundred authors and editors (male and female) spread over a period of about a thousand years. So it gives mixed signals from the very beginning. In the Bible's first chapter, both man and woman are created in the image of God:
"God created the human in His image. He created it in the image of God; He created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27).
In terms of equality of the sexes, that sounds pretty close to definitive. But then the Garden of Eden story comes two chapters later, in which God tells woman:
"Your desire will be for your man, and he'll dominate you" (Genesis 3:16).
That looks pretty definitive as well. And this strange interspersing of sexual equality on one hand and male dominion on the other continues through the rest of the book.
Women can be prophets, but all 15 of the Bible's books of prophecy are about male prophets.
Women can be Nazirites, which are a kind of voluntary clergy, but only males can be priests.
An upper-class woman has privileges above those of some lower-class men, but all the rulers are kings except for one case of a queen who usurps the throne -- and is later killed!
Women can inherit property, but then special limits are imposed on them. (For more on this, see "The Bible Now," pp. 98-99.)
Males dominate the family, but women are depicted as acquiring power and influence through good means and bad: through their sons, through sex, through wisdom, through strength of character, through nagging, through lies or trickery, through love.
The book starts and ends with a woman playing a determinative role: Eve and Esther.
A woman (Eve) is the first human to say the name of God. (The name of God itself, Yahweh, is masculine. The feminine would be Tahweh.)
Now, the example we chose for this post is the case of the most under-appreciated woman (or, for that matter, the most under-appreciated person) in the Bible: Deborah.
You can read the Song of Deborah in Judges 5. This song celebrates a victory of Israelite tribes in a battle against a Canaanite army. It says that things were bad until Deborah arose.
Until you arose, Deborah,
you arose, Mother of Israel.
(Judges 5:7)
Israelite tribes follow her and a man named Barak (no relation to the President) to fight the battle. Now, this song pictures more than just a coalition of a few tribes. It names 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. This is the first text known to us in which Israel is pictured as a united people in the land. Before this, Israel's origins historically are unknown; and in the Bible's story the people are in Egypt, not Canaan, prior to this. So for both the traditional believer and the critical skeptic, this is the period in which the history of Israel as a people in this land starts. The time is the 12th century B.C.E. This is the period when we first have archaeological evidence of the existence of the people of Israel, and it is the period of the events in the Song of Deborah, which is the oldest (or second oldest) text in the Bible. (The only thing that is possibly older is The Song of Miriam in Exodus 15. Of course, it's interesting that the two oldest texts in the Bible are both named for women.) As the biblical historian Baruch Halpern wrote, "For the period before Deborah, the time of Israel's formation, the evidence is utterly circumstantial -- insubstantial." That is: the first time in which we find Israel as a people existing in its land, they are led by a woman.
There are many candidates for the title of "most under-appreciated person in the Bible," but Deborah must be the winner. When people are asked to name the great women of the Hebrew Bible, they very commonly begin with Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel. They are important, definitely, but they are all known in the first place as wives. The qualities for which they are praised occur in the stories of Genesis in connection with their husbands (and sons). Even for biblical women who are thought of more for their own significant roles, like Ruth and Esther, their stories start off with their marriages and then develop from there. But Deborah is different. Deborah stands out as a leader, as the first leader of Israel in the land. The song does not even mention a husband or father or son.
Even more, the song identifies Deborah, the founding leader of Israel, by that phrase "Mother of (or: in) Israel." Biblical commentators have long treated this line as a touching sidelight. Isn't that nice: she was a great leader and judge, and she was also a good mom. She made the best chicken soup in Beth El. But, as Halpern was the first to point out, "mother of Israel" is more likely to be comparable to calling George Washington the father of the United States. An umma (a "mother's house") is a political unit, reflecting kinship. Halpern noted that the Song of Deborah reflects four of such ummot; that is, four political regions. He concluded: "Deborah is 'the mother of Israel,' all of it. She is the woman who united the four regions into full-brother unity, into a single umma." The biblical scholar Susan Ackerman, too, has emphasized the enormous importance of Deborah's leadership role.
The reason why people have taken the verse to mean she was a good mother rather than a founding figure is a matter of a technical point of Hebrew grammar. (Warning: it gets a little technical here.) The phrase in Hebrew is em beyisra'el (Judges 5:7). The particle be in that word is a preposition that usually means "in." So translators usually have taken it to mean "mother in Israel." But prepositions are extremely fluid in Hebrew and are possibly the hardest words to translate, much as new speakers of English find it hard to master the use of prepositions: "I live in the house, by the store, near the street, at the corner of the block." Halpern observed that "of" is the meaning of the particle "be" elsewhere in the Song of Deborah:
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For example, the Talmud says that the punishment for the Rebellious Son [stoning] was never carried out even once, and that the verse in the Torah is there as an admonishment to parents who are ultimately responsible.
In the following verse is the command to not let the body [of the postulated son] wait overnight, because it is made in the image of God. This points to a contradiction, of which the world is full of. Jewish philosophy recognizes and embraces the ambiguities and contradictions in the World and in the Torah, and questions absolutes. Being Absolutely Sure about something is Idol Worship.
Some will say that the Rabbis just "explain away" the difficult passages in the Torah, and this may be true - but in practice Judaism celebrates and extols the female more than any other religion, while at the same time preserving the distinctions between the sexes, which is another fact, one that PC nudniks try to deny.
The Soul itself is given a feminine pronoun, and the Jewish Path is said by some to be a way to 'feminize' and soften the brutal nature of men.
Absolutism is Babylon Madness.
The problem is these societies outside ours, are typically founded not on our ideas of individual rights but on eastern ideals of collective responsibilities. In these cultures individuals do not really have rights per say but instead have duties and responsibilities. Women are not relegated to being baby machines ect ect ect... that is considered their obligation to society. Men are not laborers by some oppressive regime but instead out of age old responsibilities held by society.
Yes, in most societies today and all societies in the past women did not have the lives they do now in the Modern United States of America, heck before the industrial revolution there wouldn't have been the free time nor the ability to have such things as "careers," or anything like that for women and arguably men did not have "careers," as we understand them either.
Why women would have anything to do with a religion and denegrates and subjugates them defies all logic .... but then, again relgion =/= logic
Seriously, is there an editor in the house? There is some good stuff buried in this piece that I wish was highlighted properly. There is so much to work with here. Some of the information is presented on a scholarly level far beyond the comfort zone of the lay or regular reader. That information could have been made much more approachable.
So.... this read like an interesting draft. I am looking forward to when the authors actually write this article. With the right permissions, I would take it and give it a shot myself.
If we were to limit ourselves to the social standards that are documented in the bible, we would still have slavery. Women and children would still be defined as property. The economy would be war based. We would still use the death penalty to punish crimes less than murder. We would not require a higher standard of proof for murder cases where the death penalty is considered as punishment.
The standard that remains constant from biblical times is the insistence that respect is due to all who do not break the moral code or the law.
As much as you want to spin it and as much as you want to put a current spin on a very old story, the Hebrew society was and still is a patriarchal one. There is no equality there.
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Projects/Reln91/Power/lilith.htm
Interesting article, but this conclusion is nothing more than a supposition. The authors admit that Hebrew prepositions "are possibly the hardest words to translate," and then base most of their argument on Deborah being the "Mother OF Israel, not "IN Israel." The fact is, no one knows for sure how this should be rendered.
"This is the first text known to us in which Israel is pictured as a united people in the land. Before this, Israel's origins historically are unknown."
Israel's origins are unknown? What about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons? Oh right, for the period before Deborah the evidence is "purely circumstantial." Suddenly, in Judges 5, the Bible becomes credible, but before that, it's not?
And the authors make it sound as if the nation was organized for the first time into a unified whole under Deborah. But the book of Numbers presents Israel as very organized society even during their wilderness sojourn. They were organized into four three-tribe divisions, with specific places to camp and even a census being taken.
Why is so much importance attached to Judges 5, but the five books that precede Judges are treated as of little significance?
The Bible itself is evidence. Reliability of the Old Testament History: William F. Albright, known for his reputation as one of the great archaeologists, states: "There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of OT tradition." NETDAV McDowell pg 98. K.A. Kitchen brings out in his book, Ancient Orient and OT, that Genesis 3:28, gives the correct price for a slave in the 1800 BC. Before that time slaves were cheaper, after dearer. Joseph's promotion of ring and gold chain was normal procedure for Egyptian office promotions. Vos. "It is clear that Semites could rise to positions of great authority in Egypt" Yanhamu,Canaanite Meri-Ra and Semite Yanhamu rose to high positions. NETDAV pg 109-110. "Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are quite obviously aimed at a people wandering in the desert, not a nation of farmers settled for centuries in their promised land. Otherwise, the frequent and detailed descriptions of the portable tabernacle would be absurd." pg 384. Examples include: Num. 2:1-31, Num 10:14-20, Deut 23:12,13 and Lev 16:10. Archer. It is hard to condense a 700 page document into 250 words, so end here.
But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.
Female babies make a mother twice as “unclean” as a male babies.
Exodus 23:17 Three items in the year all thy males shall appear before the LORD God.
Not females.
Exodus 21:7
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.
Sounds pretty unequal to me.
Also: Women are “unclean” on their periods (in the bible this goes on and on about how terrible and disgusting that is), women “go a whoring” and cause men to “go a whoring” but men do not do it on their own, and monetarily are worth less than a man. Roughly half as much in fact.
Leviticus 27:3-4 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.
And this is just the first THREE books of the bible and skimming them at that.
This speaks, not to God's attitude toward women, but man's. Jesus made it quite clear that He, and He is, after all, God, considered women equal. That should be enough to cause all Christians to follow His lead and consider women equals, but, reality again, it isn't. There are just plain too many men who are invested in their own entitlement.
In all fairness, however, there are too many women who are equally invested in the safety of not having to accept full responsibility for their own lives.
Best of all, however, are the many men and women who really do try to see and interact with each person as a unique individual, and who leave gender roles in the past.
Women were seen as inferior. Their job was to have children and take care of some responsibilities at home.
Your beliefs of the 21st century won't line up with what was written two thousand+ years ago and put into the bible, no matter how hard you try.
If you take any stock from Darwin, know that evolution isn't a straight march forward. Old traits that were lost, often reemerge when they become benefitial.