Women in this society had subordinate status and were under the sexual control of men. Thus a daughter was to stay a virgin till married off (she could be stoned to death if she didn't), earning her father a mohar or bride price from the bridegroom's family. Once married, the woman's principal role was that of childbearing. She was considered for all practical purposes to be the property of her husband (Hebrew baal, "lord" or "master"), who was free to have more than one wife--monogamy was the ideal, but there was no set limit--all the more to obey the divine commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28).
By New Testament times, a Jewish man was usually the lord or master of only one wife at a time. But the image of woman suffered from the stress that postexilic priests placed on ritual purity, which, to quote Leonie J. Archer, made women, due to the blood of menstruation and childbirth, "unclean for a large part of their lives." Hellenistic Jewish writers began expressing the same contempt for women that made the views of the Greeks on gender, in Giulia Sissa's words, "distinctly unpalatable." Thus the Jewish philosopher Philo (first century B.C.E.) identifies man with mind and reason, and woman with irrationality and the senses. "A silent wife," says the apocryphal Sirach (second century B.C.E.), "is a gift from the Lord" (26:14). The Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of Philo, puts it succinctly: "Women are inferior to men in every way" (Against Apion II:201).
The behavior of Jesus Christ toward women--he included them among his disciples (Matt. 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:2-3), spoke indiscriminately to women in public (John 4:5-27), and in general treated females as if they were equal to males--was scandalously unconventional. In the Apostle Paul's day women were among leaders of the early Christian community (see Fiorenza's In Memory of Her, and Newsom and Ringe's The Women's Bible Commentary), but leadership roles for women in the church died soon after Paul did. (See PAUL.) The Apostle, though saying there is "neither male nor female," for all are "one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28), ironically set a standard for the misogyny that would become institutionalized in the church after him, and that would return all women to subordinate status, with his statement (not actually his--Paul is reading the Corinthians' words back to them), "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Cor. 7:1). Convinced that the world was soon coming to an end, Paul preferred that men and women forget about marriage and its hassles, and thus sexually abstain. (Procreation, in the world's last days, was naturally no longer a concern.) The Apostle nonetheless felt that those who could not contain their desire should marry (1 Cor. 7:9), and that husbands and wives, for fidelity's sake, should have sex on a regular basis (1 Cor. 7:2-5).
What Fiorenza calls the post-Pauline "patriarchalization" of the church is reflected in the subordination of women that is required in the First Letter to Timothy (purportedly written by Paul but, most scholars agree, based on content and style, composed after Paul's death): "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (2:11-12). (Also suspected by scholars to be a later non-Pauline insertion in the First Letter to the Corinthians is the command, "Let your women keep silence in the churches" [1 Cor. 14:34].)
But such subjection, it appears, was not something originally meant to exist between the sexes. According to Hebrew legend, the first woman God created as a companion for the first man Adam was a strong-willed lady named Lilith. (See Graves and Patai's Hebrew Myths and Reuther's Womanguides.) As both had been created from dust, Lilith considered herself equal to Adam. (They differed anatomically, of course, with the Bible referring to a male as one who "pisseth against the wall" [1 Sam. 25:34; 1 Kings 14:10; 21:21].) Lilith objected to having to lie beneath Adam during sexual intercourse, but Adam would have it no other way. Lilith up and left him, winding up in rabbinic tradition as a baby-killing demoness who seduces sleeping men. Lilith is mentioned in Isa. 34:14, though the KJV renders lilith as "screech owl." This first wife of Adam may safely be called the world's first uppity woman.
With Lilith departed, Adam was back where he started, being without a fit helper. According to a Hebrew tradition cited in Graves and Patai, God let Adam watch while he put a second woman together. The process of anatomical assemblage was so disgusting that Adam found the woman repulsive even though she was beautiful when finished. God sent this first Eve away and tried again: while Adam slept, Yahweh created the Eve found in Genesis 2 from Adam's rib. God presented her to Adam, who said happily, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man" (Gen. 2:23).
Being "taken out of Man" need not imply a subordinate role, but rather, as Adam's rhapsodizing words suggest, a oneness of flesh. Phyllis Trible points out that the Hebrew word ezer is mistranslated "helper," as the word rather connotes "companion," an equal partner. Such equality is more explicit in the first Genesis creation account (1:26-27), in which man and woman are created simultaneously ("male and female created he them"). Indeed the Bible makes it clear that the subordination of women is the result of the first couple's disobedience (the eating of forbidden fruit): Yahweh tells Eve that, as part of her share of divine punishment, "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (3:16). Thus the Bible's patriarchal social system, far from being presented as an ideal, is seen as the result of a fall from grace.
The Christian church, influenced by the same Hellenistic misogyny that helped inspire Josephus, Philo, and such pseudepigraphical works as the Testament of Reuben ("For women are evil, my children" [5:1]; see Kee), would blame the Fall on Eve: "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:14). ("She gave me of the tree," Adam whines to God, "and I did eat" [Gen. 3:13]. Thus Adam defends himself, notes William E. Phipps, by complaining about "having to eat what his wife served him.") Yet woman can still be saved, the First Letter to Timothy allows, by having man's babies: "she shall be saved in childbearing," as long as she also has "faith and charity" and stays sober (2:15).
Can egalitarian grace be restored? Not in this world, if we are to judge by the pronouncements of Paul, whether Paul actually pronounced them or not. According to Christ, such a blissful time ultimately will come: in the hereafter ("the resurrection"), says Jesus in Luke 20:34-36, there will be no marriages, for men and women alike will be "equal unto the angels." (See also MARRIAGE: "THEY SHALL BE ONE FLESH.")
Michelangelo, The Creation of Eve / Sistene Chapel
The genitals of Israelite priests had to be unblemished; under the ritual purity system, God could not be served by a eunuch or by anyone with his "stones broken" or with a missing "privy member" (Lev. 21:20; Deut. 23:1). And any woman who tried to help her husband in a fight by grabbing a combatant by the genitals was to have her hand cut off--a hands-off policy found in Deut. 25:11-12.
A biblical term frequently used for illicit sexual activity is "to uncover the nakedness" of the person whose genitals or nakedness (Hebrew erwa) one should not be uncovering (Lev. 18:6-16; 20:11-21). Ever since Adam and Eve, it was also shameful for a person's genitals to be exposed in public. (When Adam and Eve, blissfully unclothed in Eden, sinned against God through disobedience, they immediately reacted with a new-found shame: "They knew that they were naked" [Gen. 3:6-7].) Thus the king of Ammon subjects David's servants to public humiliation by shaving them and cutting off their garments "hard by their buttocks" (1 Chr. 19:4). The prophet Isaiah--who incidentally walked around naked for three years as a bad sign to Egypt and Ethiopia (Isa. 20:3)--warns King Ahaz of Israel that the Assyrians will shave off the Israelites' pubic hair (7:20) (literally "hair of the feet," feet being a euphemism for genitalia [see also Ex. 4:25 and Ruth 3:7]), and later tells the "virgin daughter of Babylon" to "make bare the leg, uncover the thigh," for "thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen" (47:1-3). Judahites captured by Assyria, says Micah, are to be led away with their "shame naked" (1:11). Jeremiah quotes Yahweh as telling whorish Jerusalem that he will lift her skirts over her face and expose her genitals (13:26), and in Nahum the "harlot" Nineveh is told the same ((3:5). Likewise in Ezekiel God tells Jerusalem that he will gather all her lovers around her and uncover her nakedness before them (16:37).
Priests had to wear linen breeches lest their unblemished genitals be glimpsed--apparently from the vantage-point of the floor--during services (Ex. 28:42-43). There was nothing wrong, on the other hand, with prophets stripping and dancing around naked during religious ecstasy, or, as mentioned, simply walking around naked as a sign. ("I will wail and howl," says Micah [1:8], "I will go stripped and naked.") Even King Saul once stripped and "prophesied" when the "Spirit of God" came upon him (1 Sam. 19:23-24). It was probably in a similar ecstasy that King David danced publicly before the ark clad only in a priestly apron (2 Sam. 6:12-16). When his disgusted wife Michal complained of this spectacle, David retaliated by apparently denying her his nakedness for the rest of her childless life (see DAVID AND MICHAL).
Antoine Wiertz, Eve Experiencing Her First Guilt after Sinning / ArtMagick
Gideon turns down the offer of kingship to concentrate on raising a family. He does ask all the men of Israel to give him their golden earrings, which they do. With the earrings Gideon makes a fancy ephod (a priestly garment, here perhaps clothing an idol), which he puts in his hometown of Ophrah, and which the Israelites promptly start worshipping ("all Israel went thither a-whoring after it"). (See also AARON AND THE GOLDEN CALF.) How long this goes on is not stated, though it is "a snare" to Gideon and his family.
As for the family, seventy sons, we are told, are "of his body begotten," for Gideon has "many wives. " To top things off, a concubine of Gideon in Shechem bears Abimelech, son number seventy-one.
Gideon dies "in a good old age," immediately after which the people again go "a-whoring after Baalim." The concubine's son Abimelech kills all but one of his seventy half-brothers (the youngest, Jotham, escapes) and has himself crowned king in Shechem. His reign is shortlived, however, as Abimelech gets crowned by a woman with a millstone while he's attacking the city of Thebez. Mortally wounded, Abimelech has his armorbearer kill him, "that men say not of me, A woman slew him." (Judg. 8:22-9:57) (On to SAMSON AND DELILAH)
James Tissot, A Woman Breaks the Skull of Abimelech / Jewish Museum, New York
Adam and Eve
Roman Catacombs
3rd century
