Is the Bible Sexist?

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The Rev. Neichelle Guidry Jones washed Ramona Gant’s feet during a Shepreaches gathering at a Hyde Park apartment in Chicago on Thursday. Credit: Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times. Holladay said that the debate over sexism in the Bible today is reminiscent of the mid-19th-century controversy over references to slavery in the Bible. But here’s what makes this gender issue so complicated and, why it is important to consider carefully our translations. If you want to justify women’s leadership in the church, you can turn to the Gospels, where Jesus travels with and accepts support from women (e.g., Luke 8:1-3). Or look to Romans 16, where Paul hails Phoebe, a deacon and benefactor, and Junia, “prominent among the apostles.” If you believe in equality, you can appeal to 1 Corinthians 7:2-4, where Paul advocates mutuality in marriage, or Galatians 3:28, widely viewed as erasing differences altogether (“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”). Despite their reactions, Jesus was acting as He always had in eternity past. God has always valued women.

Last week, an article entitled, " Students 'angry and confused' over Archbishop Glenn Davies' comments on gender equality", was published by the ABC. The students who spoke to the ABC not only misrepresented the Archbishop's stance on the role of women in the church, but largely neglected even to engage with it, preferring instead to make sweeping generalisations about how his ideas were "outdated", that they contradicted messages "told to them by their parents, educators and society in general" and that he spoke of men as having "higher status and more power". (Interestingly, I have no memory of him saying anything of the kind). The OT stories were cosmic myths and reflected the views of the constellations. They were written at a time when the goddess was being dissed. A correct reading of the original OT would also exclude the name of Eve who cosmically was Ishtar/Ashera. Adam had 2 wives, one in Eden, one afterwards. Only the man was expelled if you read the text. It was believed the perverse worship of the goddess caused two meteors to destroy two Babylonian cities, according to ancient texts. Ishum who pleaded with Irra not to destroy anymore cities became Abraham in the OT as did many Akkadian kings and gods. Noah’s wife didn’t have a name because there are no stars in Argo or Orion that represent women. Sarah is represented in Hercules, Rebecca in Cancer, Jacob’s wives in Auriga, Moses’ wife in the Pleiades (one of seven sisters, not hard to figure out), Bathsheba in Sagittarius and oddly she was also Ishtar. Tamar- Northern Crown etc. Some of my fellow students took issue with what the Archbishop said about women, but they've misrepresented him. And I can testify to just how completely unconstrained I feel my faith has rendered me as a 17-year-old girl and feminist, writes Paige Katay.The Bible affirms the equality of both men and women. Jesus died for all people, and salvation is offered to everyone by grace through faith. Scripture affirms the value of women and men, something the Lord has always done. We need to tell critics the truth about the Bible in love and grace.

The reality is that the Bible talks about women in a way that appears not to align very nicely with the values which we as a culture hold dear - equality, freedom of the individual, feminism - all values which, by the way, I wholeheartedly stand by.But it is also that language with which I have a problem. Because the language of the Bible is culturally ubiquitous, much of its meaning goes unchallenged. The Bible is a mishmash written by hundreds of men over more than a thousand years. And it's been translated and mangled and enhanced over and over again, and fixed in a sort of no man's land somewhere between Jacobean and modern English. Its longevity give it a protective forcefield from neutral criticism because our culture is utterly dependent on it. You can repeat "God is love" until the stars fall from the sky, but I require further explanation. Is that the love that I have for my children, Freddie Flintoff or pepperoni pizza? All are quite profound, but mercifully different. Instead of allowing grief to consume her and turn her into a bitter woman, Hannah went to the temple and worshipped God, vowing to give her first child as a servant to the Lord if she were to become pregnant. And when God gave her this blessed child, she kept her vow (probably going against what most mothers would do) and released the child to the Lord’s service in the temple. This child went on to become the great prophet Samuel, while Hannah was blessed by God with several more children.

Approaches #1 and #2 above generally seek to value or redeem New Testament texts about women for our world today. Advocates of #3 instead consider texts like 1 Timothy 2 (sometimes dubbed “texts of terror”) to be harmful to women and thus reject them outright. Reading with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” or reading “against the grain,” these interpreters consider oppressive tendencies in a text to be traces of humanity’s fallen nature.Ware countered that appeals to Scripture have been used to support anti-female attitudes and that the non-sexist parts of the Bible are not given similar prominance.