Today as I sat in church listening to the pastor's wife preach a Mother's Day sermon, a thought suddenly struck me.
Why is it only Two books in the whole bible are named after women? And how come none of the books are written by women?And..
The Bible is a book written by and for men.....As soon as I'd thought these things I realized that it was true. Christianity is essentially a patriarchal religion. This was something that had always bothered me, as a christian and as a feminist.
Every time I read christian or non christian articles calling women to take the 'true' place at home instead of working outside, it made the bile rise in my throat. While there is nothing wrong with the job of a homemaker, there is everything wrong with the perception that women are only good for that. In fact, the work of homemakers is often overlooked and underpaid just like many of the jobs associated with women.
This call for women to stay home and mind the children is really only a half step away from '
Why educate my daughter? She's only going to grow up to look after kids and cook anyway'And yet another half step away from'
Of course she can't vote, she's so stupid. She can barely read or write.'It just keeps going downhill from there onwards to'
women are property and not quite as intelligent or able as men'....All the freedom we take for granted today, the right to vote, to leave an abusive husband, the right to get a job, all were won after hard fought battles with men in authority.
Women make up a moiety of the world and yet the Bible, supposedly the greatest text of all time, is strangely lacking in their stories.
I grabbed my friend's bible in church and started flipping(yeah, forgot to bring mine again.heh).I found that there are
66 books in the Bible.
Only two are named after women, the book of Ruth which is all of
4 pages long and the book of Esther which gets*gasp*
7 whole pages. All the others are named after the men who wrote them or the men who featured prominently in them. As for authorship, I suspect even the book of Ruth was written by a man. In any case, the book of Ruth is ultimately about a good woman who still has to be rescued by a man, confirming the subordinate status of women during that time.
There are no stories written from a woman's point of view. There are certainly stories about women. But no stories by women. Just take the story of David for instance. King David was a legendary character and one of the most pivotal characters in the Old Testament. His story was literally infamous, seriously, those gossip mags are nothing compared to this.
His affair with Bathsheba was one of the most scandalous and sordid of all the biblical stories. The story of a king who slept with Bathsheba then sent Uriah, her husband, to die that he could marry her. In most versions told of this story, their romantic entanglement was described as an affair. A word that implicates Bathsheba as David's partner in bed and in crime. In reality, Samuel, who chronicled this, said nothing of Bathsheba's feelings. He states factually that '
Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her”(2 Sam 11:4)
In fact she could easily have been his hapless victim, taken by force. Which would make the most revered man in the Old Testament not only a murderer, but also a rapist. Samuel is silent on this,but given that David was a king, and that one did not say no to kings at that time, it is very likely that she was taken by force. After all, that line could have been, '
Then David sent messengers and she followed them, and they slept together'.( Yes I know this is conjecture, but hey, it really could have been that way since she never got to tell her side of the story and Samuel was so ambiguous about it.)
Where is Bathsheba's story? David's story is told over and over again. His pain and suffering at losing the child Bathsheba bore himwas recounted in a famous psalm(Psa 51), where he begged for God's mercy and acknowledged his own sin.The prophet Nathan's warning to him was recorded and his misery at the illness of his child was also recorded.
How did Bathsheba feel? She had been forciby taken to David, raped, gotten pregnant and then watched as her husband was sent to his death so that David might marry her and legitimize their child.But Samuel doesn't talk about all that; the psalms do not carry a poem with her feelings of contrition or grief.
This woman was recently widowed and just watched the baby she carried for nine months die. Samuel took two whole books to recount David's military exploits in detail. But he says nothing of Bathsheba's maternal grief and precious little about all the rest of David's wives or daughters
.Where is the recounting of Bathsheba's grief and pain? There is only one line for that, '
When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. '( 2 Sam 11:26).
There is no mention of her grief at her only child's death, we are only told that David comforted her and then proceeded to sleep with her again.She was husband to David and mother of Solomon, giant figures in the Old Testament world and yet there is no book where her side is told.
It didn't end to badly for her in the end. Perhaps David felt truly sorry; Samuel did say that he tried to comfort her. Maybe he was kind to her after that. And in the end, out of all his wives, he picked her son to be his successor which probably means something.All the same, she probably regretted bathing with a window half open in the middle of the night.
The other women of the bible tend to suffer the same sort of treatment at the hands of the Old Testament authors. One suspects Ruth must have been an extraordinarily determined and plucky lady for the author to have written it in at all. Otherwise it might easily have been a liner, '
Ruth was the wife of Boaz who was the father of...'.. The same would probably apply for Esther, who only got a few pages more because she got to be queen.
Why is the bible so silent on the mothers and wives and daughters? Why are none of the books written by them? In those days where women were not taught to write, could their stories have died with them for the lack of literacy?
Fast forward about a thousand years to the time of the New Testament, one can see that it is even more silent where women are concerned. Nothing has changed. The cornerstone of the new testament, the 4 gospels, were written and named after the men who wrote them. After that, the only other major writer was Paul, who was a chronic bachelor and rabble rouser. The other books are short accounts of the rest of the apostles.
And yet, glancing through the the 4 gospels one is struck by the number of women that actually did feature in Jesus's life and works. Where he could be kind, He
was kind. He helped not only blind men but also crippled women(Luke 13:10). He was compassionate toward a woman's obviously female ailment of constant bleeding(Mark 25:5). He took no umbrage at an 'unclean woman' touching His robes but instead called her daughter and praised her faith(Mark 25:34) where other holy men of that era might have screamed.
The women in Jesus's life were just as devoted followers but very little mention is made of them.At his crucifixion, Mark said that a group of women were watching as well and that they had
'followed Him and cared for his needs in Galilee'. Only three of all those devoted women were even mentioned by name, Mary, Mary Magdelene and Salome. What of the rest?
Where is the story of the woman who cooked for Jesus, served him meals and washed his clothes? Where are the women who 'cared' for him and left their homes to serve and follow him?
In fact, during the crucial times of his crucifixion, death and resurrection, his women followers stayed faithful. They were there when he was dying(Mark 15:40), at his burial(Mark 15:47) and his recurrection(Mark 16:1). Where the other 'stars' of the new testament like Peter or Matthew fled or lost faith, his women followed him.
Despite this, their stories died with them. What we know is from a paltry few lines in each of the four gospels. Of his 12 alpha-male followers, one betrayed him, one denied him and others had to be convinced of his resurrection. (Although granted, they did pretty well after that). But their every exploit is recorded and lauded, while the female followers died in silence and passed away into the unknown.
Jesus himself displayed many traits traditionally attributed to women today. He was compassionate, understanding, tried to help society's delinquents(Mark 2:15) and placed interpersonal relationships over work commitments(Luke 10:38) and actually seemed to understand the disadvantaged status of women and the sacrifices they had to make. He was after all, the embodiment of an all seeing, all powerful God.
The male authors and editors of the bible may have excised or excluded the women who played such important roles. But the fact that they saw fit to tack on a few lines here and there, may attest to the importance of their involvement and role.
Jesus may have treated women with compassion and respect. But the men who followed him later did not, at least not in writing. Their elision of women from the new testament leaves a glaring lacuna which cannot simply be patched over.
Perhaps in the end it comes down to the story of the beginning. Where God made woman to be man's helper. I doubt that God had much hand in the abuse of Eve's descendants. One must also doubt the theory of women as an inferior race, or that God meant for women to only stay home and mind the children. After, careful reading should yield up the realization that God never actually specified what it was Eve was to help Adam with.
As far as He was concerned, they were both equally punished for their transgressions but there is no mention of women's inferior status in the opening chapter of the bible.
Maybe my reading of the bible is spotty at bestI I'll be the first to admit that). And given that I am not exactly a biblical scholar, it is possible that I have made mistakes.
But I refuse to believe that God only made women to submit to men and bear children. If that were the case He could just as well have created some curvy organic robots without souls or minds or feelings. But He did not. He made men and women for a reason. And that reason has to be that they are meant to work together.
Dan Brown's
book
The Da Vinci Code may have made many spurious and specious claims(underlined by bad writing), but he was right on one score. Without the input of women, men are found lacking. The two were meant to fit and work as one unit.The current wreakage of our world may suggest that a sole patriarchy was not meant to be.( well men have made rather a mess of things you know)
It has been said that history is written by the winners. The silence of the bible reflects the silence of women over the history of mankind.In some unspoken gender war, women lost and allowed men to create society in his own image and tell his own stories.
In this world, many stories are told through male eyes. For women, the ones who got beaten up, the ones who got left behind when husbands and sons went to war, the ones who got sold by their fathers and the ones abandoned on hillsides to die because they were born the wrong gender, their stories died with them. And story telling is the backbone and buttress of cultural beliefs. Without their stories and ours, this chauvinistic culture can never change.
Today is Mother's day. A day for mothers and the women who will become mothers. In the end, a day for women.
There is no prayer in the Bible that is really written for women. Even so, it is with great humility that I say this,
May God ease the pain of childbirth,May he grant us wisdom in our children's years of rebellion,May He bless us with husbands who understand and respect us,And please God, let us speak,let our stories be heard.
Could I ever reconcile the christian and the feminist? Maybe one day. After all, there is evidence to support the fact that this sorry state of affairs wasn't in His original plans.
Maybe the men just lost the plans along the way and decided to go their own way and blame it on us.
Typical of them don't you think?*grin*
Disclaimer: No I don't speak for God. Yes this is all just my own opinion.
