Women's Place in Biblical Society

This paper examines some of the statements about women made in the Bible. It is specifically concerned with the question of whether a secondary role for women in a Christian society is asserted, implied, or even allowed by anything in Christian scripture. The conclusion that will be reached after examination of the evidence is that, contrary to popular opinion, there is almost nothing in the Christian scriptures that would allow anything but complete equality for men and women; and those passages were not derived from Jesus or Paul.

The amount of scholarly, popular, and polemical writing on this subject has now reached such a bulk that attempting to cite or discuss any significant percentage of it would exhaust a paper of this length without allowing any significant conclusions to be drawn. Instead, it seems sensible to turn directly to the key scripture passages and see what they actually say, taking advantage of extant scholarship where needed for translation and interpretation of these passages.

One may note that the literature on this topic tends to fall into two camps. One is the "liberal" school that attempts to argue for complete and absolute equality between men and women. The other is the "conservative" school that attempts to argue that the "traditional" family values which relegated women to second-class status were based completely on Scripture; Grudem is a typical example of this sort of thought. Although this writer generally has problems with liberal th

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prayers that begin the Sabbath observance and who has other ritual duties. If no woman is present to say these prayers and carry out these duties, then the men will have to settle for eating an ordinary meal. So far all that has appeared has been circumstantial evidence. One would want to have a pronouncement by Jesus himself on this topic in order to be sure of his attitude. Fortunately, such a pronouncement does exist. The incident in the Gospels that provides the key to Jesus's attitude toward women is in the famous story about Martha and Mary. When Mary sits at Jesus's feet with the other disciples, in the position that a rabbi's students ordinarily assumed, Martha complains that Mary is not helping her with the housework. However, Jesus replies that Mary has chosen the better vocation and that she shall not be deprived of it. The essential point here is that the Greek word moira has the ordinary meaning of "a choice of career"; and it carries the same connotation as the modern term "vocation" as referring to a choice of a religious life. Jesus is saying that Mary has chosen to be his student just like the men, that she has chosen this as her spiritual path and career--in modern terms, that she is just as entitled to

Category: History - W