I will examine here four controversial portions of Mosaic Law regularly accused of belittling women. For a separate post proving the Bible is very much in favor of gender equality, see here [1].
--Exodus 21:7--"If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do."
Atheists, for some reason, sometimes automatically decide that this verse must refer to sexual slavery and not mere indentured servanthood like the rest of Exodus 21:1-9 is about. That is a misrepresenting assumption that totally straw mans the verse to make it far easier to stir up emotion against it. With that matter resolved, let me remind people that just because this verse for some reason says that a daughter cannot necessarily go free at the seventh year like a male servant could (Exodus 21:2) does not mean that all women were restricted like this. Deuteronomy 15:12 obviously secures the right to release in the seventh year for both male and female slaves. Since Exodus 21:7 specifically mentions a "daughter", some unexplained scenario must be alluded to that modern readers are unaware of upon a superficial reading.
--Exodus 22:18--"Do not allow a sorceress to live."
The Bible's moral and civil judgments against sorcery are not misogynistic, especially since the Bible clearly extends them to men (Leviticus 20:27). The Biblical prohibition of sorcery has nothing to do with any perceived misogynistic elements in the Christian worldview but with the idolatrous and damaging nature of sorcery itself. As for why Exodus 22:18 singles out female sorceresses for punishment, perhaps women more commonly practiced witchcraft at the particular time it was written. Regardless, God warned all people against sorcery and witchcraft on multiple occasions, demanding that "no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead" (Deuteronomy 18:9-13).
--Deuteronomy 21:10-14--"When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails, and set aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her."
Some critics assume that this supports the rape or forced marriage of female captives in war, but the exact opposite is blatantly taught in the text. Not only is rape as an act condemned universally in Deuteronomy 22:25-27, but the laws in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 actually prevent the war rape so prevalent and expected in the ancient military world. This passage details how a Jewish soldier was absolutely not to rape a captive woman but, if he was attracted to her, was instead to provide her with at least a certain duration of time to mourn her captivity and the defeat of her nation in battle and the potential loss of family members in the combat, to allow her to transition into a new society and life, and to not spontaneously decide to sell or enslave her after marrying her. Captive women (and all captives) are to be treated with all the respect and humanity due to every person made in God's image and are not to be violated, abused, or exploited. Other nations raped captive men and women or tortured them, made them travel naked in extreme heat, starved them, or executed them in grotesque manners. Israel could not participate in such depraved behavior.
--Deuteronomy 25:11-12--"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
Some outside the church view these two verses as thoroughly anti-woman, but they are addressing an extremely unlikely situation and a very specific occurrence within the situation; this has absolutely nothing to do with all women or with misogyny. First of all, the woman sexually assaulted the man fighting her husband. Even in self-defense or protection of others there are definite moral boundaries. Not only is it usually overlooked by opponents of the Bible that the woman in question did commit an action that may have even been viewed by God and the Jews as comparable to rape, as she sexually violated a man by violently seizing his penis with the possible intent to harm him, but this law is not anti-women any more than Exodus 21:22 [2] is anti-men. Besides, there is a great number of scholars who provide possible reasons why the punishment wasn't mutilation of the hand anyway (I'll post on this later [3]). I imagine that if the genders were switched and the Bible said that a man who uses his hand to sexually attack a woman's groin area should have his hand amputated not as many people in our culture would object, as we live in a society that trivializes or remains in deep ignorance about female sexual harassment or abuse of men but treats the smallest male harassment of women as unforgivable. I hate both equally, not one more than the other--even if the culture is more attuned to one.
Remember, this is just the first part of a series on alleged misogyny in the Bible. There are New Testament passages which some non-Christians also charge with misogyny, but what they don't acknowledge is that Christian theology obviously teaches that gender equality is the correct ontology or reality of things. Christians, when they debate the meaning of the New Testament verses in question, like Ephesians 5, are not debating whether or not men and women have equal objective value and worth but whether or not there are any social or family roles for men and women to hold as a gender. I wish they would understand this fact and halt the relentless accusations that the Bible is anti-woman. The clear teaching of the Bible is gender egalitarianism and not complementarianism, but no one should confuse the debate for one over whether women have an identical level of intrinsic value to God.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/bible-on-gender-equality.html
[2]. Exodus 21:22--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows."
[3]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/you-shall-cut-off-her-hand.html
Thank you for this, especially on Deuteronomy 21:10-14. I think part of why that passage raises the eyebrows these days is in part because of a few factors: the way the sentences are organized implies that these things are to happen precisely in the order they are written; the, "if you are not pleased with her," section is read as implying that only the man has a say in the matter, though even then, the women going, "I will not marry you," should be displeasing enough to take any prospect of relationships out of the question; and lastly, all of those "may"s seem to being read as, "encouraged and prescribed and if you don't do this the you suck," rather than just "are allowed" or... "may".
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I think the translation of that phrase in this (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy+21&version=NET) might be causing me to have questions regarding it. Based on that little chunk (and any further you might look into regarding it), would you recommend I stick with that translation or immediately move on to another one (of your recommendation)?
That is exactly what some people seem to assume the Bible means when it says "if this situation happens, you should/can respond with . . ." They confuse a context-specific allowance of a very specific course of action for a moral demand. No one is told to marry captives, so Deuteronomy 21:10-14 cannot so much as even be prescribing forced marriage. At most it is revealing restrictions on how captives are to be treated so as to avoid abusing them. A similar passage that comes to my mind is Exodus 21:20-21, where it could almost seem at first like a servant is being beaten with a rod or lashes for no reason and that anything short of killing the servant is not actually sinful. Deuteonomy 25:1-3, which demands a strict upper limit of 40 strikes for even adult men and women, would already address some of the objections to Exodus 21:20-21, but nowhere does the passage say to use corporal punishment on servants for anything beyond what anyone else would be penalized with lashes for. The instructions in Exodus 21 about this are actually forbidding mistreatment rather than prescribing abuse. If the servant dies from too much force, the master/mistress is guilty of murder. Otherwise, as long as the servant received less than 41 strikes on the back at most and they were not given the strikes just based on a whim, then Exodus 21:20-21 is not even applicable. The wording just throws some people off, especially when they aren't familiar with other relevant passages.
DeleteAfter reading Deuteronomy 21:10-14 in the New English Translation in the link, it seems like the phrasing is not any worse than it is in some of the other translations I've read! It still would come across to anyone who doesn't make assumptions as they read that there is no command to marry, rape, or divorce anyone, especially since rape is not even situationally permissible at any point according to Biblical ethics, unlike the other two. From that passage at least, nothing about the translation seems erroneous.
Sorry for the late reply, by the way! I tried to respond last night, but various things kept coming up.
Thank you for your reply, and it's fine, things happen.
DeleteMy hesitancy in regards to this translation stems largely from how even though it is an academically and technically competent version of the biblical texts (as far as I've read), I've noticed that a lot of their study notes and some of their other footnotes are essentially sermons that take on this kind of reactionary tone and substance that often times seems to assert things and meanings that need not be read into the texts and come off as rather tone deaf and unhelpful in regards to how to apply them in and address much of the things going on today (and I say this knowing that much of today is often frustratingly idiotic to address).
Maybe that's just me being too wary of hyper-partisan rhetoric. I suppose what I could do waould be to keep going on with this version knowing that it is good, but just be aware of when the footnotes seem intent to double down on unnecessary and stereotypical observations of a given passage.
Oh, I totally get what you mean now. Many footnotes I've read about passages like Deuteronomy 21 do just reiterate false or shallow assertions that might even have little to do with the actual text. What I saw of the footnotes here didn't seem to be anywhere near the worst example of this kind of thing, but I wouldn't expect them to be very helpful in actually detailing how a command or idea is applicable today, how it relates to broader or more foundational philosophical/theological concepts, or how it is consistent with other passages that might at first seem to conflict with it. For whatever reason, vague or dismissive explanations seem to be the norm for some translations.
DeleteIt's not that there is always something new or more important to realize about a passage, because that is certainly not the case. There are only so many things a given text actually says and a fixed number of ways it relates to other ideas. Still, when so much that is basic or important is ignored or completely misrepresented in footnotes, sermons, and commentaries, it is pretty pathetic that there isn't more pushback against the stereotypical kind of evasive or contradictory explanations that can be found pretty easily. As long as you see right through the irrational footnotes that are there, there isn't anything to lose by simply reading them and realizing that they are problematic!