This morning I was browsing through the library in a protestant church. One of those old, yellow, church-library paperbacks called Women, Men and the Bible by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott caught my eye (of course I’d go for that title 
). I opened it up, read the following quote, and went and made inquires about checking it out. The lady at the desk hadn’t ever even made a library loan before, but she let me write my name on one of those old cards tucked in an envelope glued to the cover. Remember? But I digress…..
What I read relates so perfectly to a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about recently that I thought I’d post some of it here.
It will probably be clear to a lot of you at this point that I’m still posting tactically. While that is true, I’d like to also make it clear that I am not trying to hurt anyone or anything even though I know there are those who ardently disagree with me. I don’t think that having an agenda is necessarily a bad thing.
I didn’t go looking for a link because it was published in 1977. I’m also not sure if I’ll have that much time to follow up on this thread, but I’ll do my best. While I don’t have any specific direction in mind for conversation, I did bold the parts I thought were the most interesting.
). I opened it up, read the following quote, and went and made inquires about checking it out. The lady at the desk hadn’t ever even made a library loan before, but she let me write my name on one of those old cards tucked in an envelope glued to the cover. Remember? But I digress…..What I read relates so perfectly to a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about recently that I thought I’d post some of it here.
It will probably be clear to a lot of you at this point that I’m still posting tactically. While that is true, I’d like to also make it clear that I am not trying to hurt anyone or anything even though I know there are those who ardently disagree with me. I don’t think that having an agenda is necessarily a bad thing.
I didn’t go looking for a link because it was published in 1977. I’m also not sure if I’ll have that much time to follow up on this thread, but I’ll do my best. While I don’t have any specific direction in mind for conversation, I did bold the parts I thought were the most interesting.
At the historical moment when Jesus was born into the world, the status of Jewish women had never been lower. Although the Old Testament reveals some cultic practices which are distressing to modern women, such as the need for ritual cleansing after menstruation and childbirth (with twice as much cleansing needed after girl babies than after boy babies), there is rarely any outright contempt for women taught in its pages. 1 By the time of Jesus’ birth, however, many decades of rabbinic traditions had considerably lowered the status of women. Males were taught to thank God daily that they were male. 2 Boy babies were regarded as a sign of God’s favor, as opposed to girl babies (Talmud, Menachoth 43b). Men avoided speaking to women in public, even their own women, because the rabbinic tradition taught that a woman’s voice was a sexual enticement (Berachoth 24a in the Talmud). Women were not permitted to read from the Torah during prayer services because of “the dignity of the congregation” (Megillah 23a). Women were not even permitted to pray aloud at their own table; the Berachoth 20b went so far to pronounce a curse on any man who allowed his wife to recite the blessing over wine on behalf of the whole family. Some even considered it preferable to burn the Torah rather than to place it into female hands. The Talmud records Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion that whoever teaches her daughter the Torah teaches her lasciviousness” (Sotah 3:4). In Alexandria during the time of Christ, the Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus equate the masculine with reason and the feminine with sensuality—and, of course, taught males to condemn sensuality and to seek the reasonable life. In fact, Philo flatly stated that sexual desire was the “beginning of iniquities and transgressions.” Had there been no Eve, Adam would have remained happy and immortal. Of course, such views could find plenty of support in Greek thought, especially in Aristotle’s division of humanity into the Greek males as “head-person,” or dominators and the females, slaves and non-Greeks as “body-persons,” or persons meant by nature to be dominated………
........The more we find out about the cultural conditions of rabbinic Judaism, the more we realize that in situations like the conversations with the Samaritan woman, Jesus was deliberately breaking rabbinic customs that were degrading to the self-concept of women. He was providing object lessons for his disciples—and for us all.
Other revealing incidents include the time Jesus was touched by a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. This woman had been ritually unclean all that time and would have rendered unclean any man whom she touched. No wonder she chose to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe secretly! She hoped to get her healing without making a scene and without forcing him to undergo ritual cleansing. (She was probably acting on the principle that if he didn’t know it wouldn’t hurt him.) When he called attention to her by asking who had touched him, her heart must have sunk—thinking that she was going to get bawled our for her nerve and lack of consideration. After all he was a rabbi conducting important business, and she was just a “nobody” who had rendered him unclean. But instead of bawling her out he compliment her on her healing faith: “Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you’” (Matthew 9:22 NIV).
........The more we find out about the cultural conditions of rabbinic Judaism, the more we realize that in situations like the conversations with the Samaritan woman, Jesus was deliberately breaking rabbinic customs that were degrading to the self-concept of women. He was providing object lessons for his disciples—and for us all.
Other revealing incidents include the time Jesus was touched by a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. This woman had been ritually unclean all that time and would have rendered unclean any man whom she touched. No wonder she chose to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe secretly! She hoped to get her healing without making a scene and without forcing him to undergo ritual cleansing. (She was probably acting on the principle that if he didn’t know it wouldn’t hurt him.) When he called attention to her by asking who had touched him, her heart must have sunk—thinking that she was going to get bawled our for her nerve and lack of consideration. After all he was a rabbi conducting important business, and she was just a “nobody” who had rendered him unclean. But instead of bawling her out he compliment her on her healing faith: “Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you’” (Matthew 9:22 NIV).
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