The Positive Portrayal of Women in the Bible
One of the reasons I trust the unique inspiration of the Bible is because of what it says about women, or, more to the point, what it doesn’t say about women. The writings in the Protestant Bible never say that women as a group are unintelligent, gullible, deceptive, difficult, emotional, sexually wanton, temptresses, evil, or inferior to men. In fact, it says a lot of good things about women.[1]
In the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, many women are described as beautiful, intelligent, courageous, resourceful and enterprising. And some Bible women functioned as prophets, teachers, advisers, leaders and deliverers.
In the New Testament, we read that the Saviour, the Son of God, came into the world through the body of a woman. Amazing! And the first person to see the resurrected Jesus, at the beginning of the New Covenant era, was a woman, Mary Magdalene.
There is no story in the Gospels of a woman opposing Jesus. Rather, they show that many women were faithful and devoted to Jesus. Many even travelled with him and supported his ministry with their own money. In the Pauline letters, several women are mentioned as being ministers and as colleagues of the apostle Paul.
Women and Patriarchy
This positive portrayal of women in the scriptures is remarkable considering the patriarchal setting of the Bible and its androcentric writing.
Hanna Tervanotko comments on this androcentricity.
It has been recognized for a long time that ancient literature is not value neutral. It reflects the ideas of its own time and its voice belongs to the people of its time. The Hebrew Bible has been described as a “men’s book.” It was written by an “urban elite of male religious specialists.” [Phyllis Bird 1997: 53] Therefore, various texts of the Hebrew Bible reflect these selected men’s interests and manly language. Traditionally this was accepted without much criticism. It was accepted that women were given less importance in religious and historical texts and hence also in the Hebrew Bible.[2]
As well as a predominately male viewpoint in the Bible, we see that women, in general, did not have the same social freedoms as men because of the pervasive patriarchal culture and because of their vital role of having babies and the young. And there are some horror stories in the Hebrew Bible that involve the unjust and despicable treatment of certain women. The biblical narratives, however, are not part of teaching or Law, and the injustices and atrocities are not condoned.
Truths and principles can be drawn from Bible narratives but we must make a distinction between descriptive and prescriptive texts. Moreover, the laws in the Hebrew Bible regulate against the worst excesses of patriarchy, slavery, polygamy, warfare, etc—features of a fallen world. The regulations reflect the culture of the Israelites, and to some extent that of surrounding nations, but generally speaking, they don’t promote these less-than-ideal practices. Between the Fall and Pentecost, there is little evidence of equality or mutuality between the sexes. Nevertheless, the female sex is never disparaged in the writings contained in the Protestant Bible.
The Negative Portrayal of Women by Non-Biblical Authors
In contrast to the Bible’s portrayal of women, as soon as you step outside of the canon of Protestant Scripture there are terrible generalisations written about women. Some of these terrible things are even taught by Jewish and Christian writers and philosophers.
Ben Sirach, a Jew writing in the second century BC, wrote in his apocryphal work Ecclesiasticus that a good wife is a silent wife and that all women have a disposition of sexual wantonness (Sirach 25:13–25; 26:13–16; 42:9–11, 12–14). “He maintained that women in general constitute a threat to the dignity and well-being of men and that the most dangerous threat comes from a man’s own daughter.” (“Women in Second Temple Judaism” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism.)
An unknown Jewish writer, also writing in the second century BC, claims that “Women are evil … treacherous … lustful …” (Testament of Reuben 2:13–16)
The Jewish philosopher Philo, writing in the first century AD, “accepted the Aristotelian judgment that the female is, in and of herself, inferior to the male. He used this to explain the biblical narratives allegorically. The women of the Bible [he thought] represent inferior aspects of a person’s psyche, namely the senses, while the male figures represent the superior mind. The creation of woman, for example, is explained as a corruption of the mind by the senses (Opificio Mundi 59).” (“Women in Second Temple Judaism” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism.)
Tertullian, an early Christian theologian writing in the late second to early third centuries AD, called women “the devil’s gateway.” He had the opinion that all women are guilty of the Fall, and that women are especially guilty of Jesus’ death. (On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1)
Sadly, there are still more examples of overt and destructive misogynistic teaching by Jewish and Christian writers in works not considered Holy Writ by Protestants.[3]
The Inspiration of the Holy Spirit
The biblical writings are androcentric because they were written by men in the patriarchal culture of the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman world. Patriarchy is not God’s ideal, yet he used people within that culture and setting to tell his story. The Bible, however, was also inspired by the Holy Spirit and so there is none of the harsh and crushing misogynist generalisations that are present in extra-biblical or apocryphal writings.
Let me reiterate: the Bible never says that women are unintelligent, gullible, deceptive, difficult, emotional, sexually wanton, temptresses, evil, or inferior to men.
The main message of gender in the Bible, pre-Fall and post-Pentecost, is that women and men are equal and compatible, and both have been made in the image of God. Women are in no way inferior, less competent, or less valuable than men. This message reveals the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This message of genuine equality and mutuality between men and women is the message that the Church should be sharing and promoting among its people and in the world. This is the message that I am sharing.
Footnotes
[1] Some people read a few Old Testament texts as belittling women. I discuss Leviticus 27:1–8, Numbers 30:1–16, Ecclesiastes 7:28, and Isaiah 3:12, in an article here. I discuss Leviticus 12:1–8 here.
[2] Hanna K. Tervanotko, Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016), 21–22. (Google Books)
[3] If you have a misogynistic quotation from a Jewish or early Christian author, etc, please let me know. Here are some from early church fathers and reformers.
© Margaret Mowczko 2012
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Postscript: May 6th, 2013
Wendy Alsup has done a good job of looking at the context of a few of the more unpleasant Old Testament passages concerning women here.
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“A woman in Bible times …” (79916) by Pearl via Lightstock
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20 thoughts on “The Portrayal of Women in the Bible and Biblical Inspiration”
I think the narratives (and even some laws) can be used to give insight into certain cultural ASSUMPTIONS by the way things are worded, but I do not see that as God endorsing those ASSUMPTIONS, rather God is working inside the culture (or cultures in the case of the NT books) of the time those words were written moving the people of God step by step to be more in line with the principles of the Kingdom of God.
The most obvious examples are that all the cultures of the time of the Bible assumed polytheism, slavery, and patriarchy and the Jewish and other Eastern cultures assumed polygamy if the husband could afford it.
Yes they definitely give some insight into culture.
God tolerated patriarchy in the past, and he continues to tolerate it, but it is not his ideal.
I always find it interesting that when a woman is portrayed as doing something wrong in the eyes of God, such as Sapphira, it does not say that she did it because she was a woman, or for any gendered reason, but she sinned because she was a sinner, just like any sinful man or woman in any other part of history. She was a sinner and was trying to sidestep God, just like the many other sinners portrayed in the bible. I believe we can all learn the lessons from biblical stories regardless of our gender- David- how to be humble and faithful, Deborah- servant leadership without taking the glory for yourself, Sapphira and Annaias- God sees our sin, and the list goes on. And that is something truly beautiful about the bible!
I think you’re right. I can’t think of a single example where the Bible links certain types of sins to gender.
I was reading some excerpts from Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria today and after a while a realized that the authors were clearly writing to men, and not to women, even though the topics were marriage and sex, etc. The writers use the words “us” and “we” in their address to men. But when they speak about women, it is “they.”
It struck me that the Bible authors do not use this “us” and “them” vernacular when writing about men and women.
I’m thinking that this inclusivity in Bible writing could well be another indication of the unique inspiration of Scripture.
Also, the New Testament passages about ministry gifts and church leadership are remarkably free from gender distinctions. Paul’s theology of ministry, for example, is gender-inclusive. https://margmowczko.com/tag/pauls-theology-of-ministry/
This inclusivity and mutuality are absent in passages on leadership in the Didache and other Early Church literature.
Good morning g from UK.
My Q refers to Samaritan women at well, woman taken in adultery in GofJohn, the woman Mary who anointed Jesus, being designated as “sinners”, and the Q asked by the Pharisees to Jesus about the woman who had seven husbands. I have read Lucy Peppait and Lynn Chickerell and Amy Jill Levine amongst others.
It occurred to me that the Q from the Pharisees whilst being hyperbole may have had historical references e.g. in Tobit reflecting an oral transmission. Did the seeming “excessive” number of relationships of the Samaritan parallel this text? I’m not suggesting myth but an association.
I’ve been trying to disabuse my home group about the immediate conclusion that both the Samaritan woman and Mary were “harlots” and I use the term from its medieval usage from whence much of our pejorative views derive.
Hi Janice, Good evening from Australia.
I’ll comment on these four women separately.
1. The Samaritan woman is not referred to as a sinner in John 4, let alone a harlot or prostitute. And there is no real reason to think she was immoral. There are a few reasons why a woman in the first century may have been married five times and then lived under the protection of a man who she was not married to. I mention Sarah’s seven dead husbands in the book of Tobit in a footnote in my article on the Samaritan woman here. https://margmowczko.com/samaritan-woman-john-4/
2. The woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8:2-11 is brought to Jesus by scribes and Pharisees who accuse her and try to trick Jesus. After dealing with the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus lets her go. He doesn’t disparage her or berate her. He asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” And when she replies, he says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” We can imagine that she was thankful for Jesus’s words and heeded them.
3. We don’t know the name of the woman who anoints Jesus and is described as a sinner by the narrator of the story and by the Pharisees who were with Jesus at a dinner (Luke 7:37 and 39). Her name is not given and we don’t know what she did to be called a sinner, but Jesus doesn’t call her that. Jesus describes her great love and faith. He says nice things about her. Note that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are never called sinners in the Bible. I compare the different anointing stories in the Gospels here: https://margmowczko.com/comparing-anointing-stories-gospels/
4. The woman with seven husbands is probably a hypothetical woman. According to the story that some Sadducees tell Jesus, rather than being immoral, she was following the Levirate Marriage Law where a childless widow marries the brother of her deceased spouse (Matthew 22:24 cf. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 ). The only reason she is married seven times is because there were seven brothers. She married one after the other when the previous brother died.
The Sadducees used their story as a test case about the resurrection. The question they ask Jesus is, “… at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” They were testing Jesus. (The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection.)
Also, I don’t think this woman is Sarah in the book of Tobit, because Sarah married eight times, and the seven men who were killed were not brothers. And the Sadducees, who were elite Jewish men, were not alluding to an obscure woman in Samaria. I don’t see a connection between the story of the Sadducees recorded in Matthew 22:23-32 and the Samaritan woman in John 4.
None of these four women are identified as a harlot or prostitute. And only the woman caught in adultery is described as doing something sexually immoral.
Hi Margaret,
This is a question that may be too obscure but it relates to Gen 19.
I’m just wondering if you or any if your readers can make sense of why Lot, who offers his two daughters up to a feral crowd, is spared, while his wife is turned to a pillar of salt for looking back upon Sodom. (BTW: I’ve just come back from this area in Jordan and there are a lot a salt pillars along the Dead Sea’s shoreline.
Lot’s offer was despicable and it reflected his cultural perspective rather than God’s perspective.
In Lot’s culture, hospitality, especially hospitality to men, was considered an almost sacred duty, whereas women, including one’s own daughters, might be poorly treated. I don’t deny that there are some horrible stories about women in the Hebrew Bible.
The angels, however, saved Lot’s daughters. They saved them from the feral crowd and they saved them from Sodom’s destruction. They seem to have regarded the women more highly than their father.
Some scholars believe, however, that Lot was bluffing about offering his daughters, and that the text reveals that his daughters were already married (and not virgins) and were not in the house. (More about this here.)
A woman at my church is ‘concerned’ about me since I am egalitarian now. She wants to sit with me and teach me of what the “whole bible” means to say on this issue. Mainly, that the bible enforced the truth that men are the spiritual leaders. I can’t speak of Deborah or Huldah because she will explain it away. I don’t want to talk to her, but I want to give her a chance to speak her mind, but I don’t think she will truly listen to me. She is an older woman who also went to seminary and says i can’t come to my conclusion because I don’t know the original language. I am incredibly frustrated and at the same time, I wish the bible could better support the idea of true equality with say, a woman author, or exonerated egalitarian relationships, or more stories of women leading or even just more stories of women. I’m wondering: A) how can I go about speaking to this woman B) how can I have peace about less of a focus on women in the Bible
Hi Sally,
A. I don’t think I could sit through a meeting with someone who is quick to dismiss my views and who is intent to prove their view that only men are spiritual leaders. It would be an irritating, futile exercise and a waste of time for both parties.
B. Because of patriarchy, women do not feature nearly as much as men in many Bible stories. I understand your frustration, but the Bible was written in a different day and age. It reflects the fallen culture of a distant past. But I think it is amazing that women feature as much as they do and that they are spoken of in a positive way, especially post-resurrection and post-Pentecost.
If the Bible didn’t have Deborah, the wise woman of Abel Beth Macaah, Huldah, Anna, Mary, Priscilla, Phoebe, Junia, Euodia and Syntyche, the Chosen Lady, etc, it might be another story.
Marg, I have a question. While I get that the bible isn’t blatantly misogynistic like most other ancient texts, something has been bugging me for a while. If God cares so much about women and, relatedly, slaves, then why didn’t he make it clear? I know that, similar to you, many other scholars and theologians have said that God simply worked within and tolerated unjust and fallen cultures. But something about it feels off to me about that. Why would God need to beat around the bush if he hated something? Especially in the context of the Jewish nation; they were set aside to be God’s chosen people so, if he didn’t want either women to be abused or treated as objects or humans to claim other humans as property, then why didn’t he just come out and say it? I don’t understand the explanation of “they weren’t ready for it yet” because god spoke rather bluntly about things like sexual ethics, not worshiping other Gods, not killing (and not killing while worshiping other Gods!) so I don’t really see why he’d dance around it when he’d tell them other things and have them turn around and do it anyway. The whole OT is literally a cycle of the people not listening to God, getting punished, turning to God for help, being saved, having a period of faithfulness and starting all over again. While I want to believe that God is just, I don’t understand why or how his silence can be justified on some of these things; I don’t get how God can tolerate injustice without saying something if he truly cares and I don’t get how the argument that God is sensitive to people not being ready for truth when he’s repeatedly said other things that were rejected by people anyway can hold water? why be selective about things when, in all honesty, it won’t matter and most people will ignore God on any issue in favor of they want to hear?. Especially if you’re choosing your followers to be set apart; why not tell them all these things and desire them of them if you really care? I’m sorry if this is coming off as defensive, but I honestly don’t understand why God let this stuff happen without saying anything, and it gives me worries and doubts about him and I’m just looking for some explanation that makes sense. Thank you!
Hi Bre, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the New Testament shows that God loves all people: men, women, and children, whether slaves or free. But this is not always clear in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
Still, God frequently reprimands people in the OT for not showing justice and mercy to people such as widows and orphans. And God speaks strongly against the men in Malachi 2 who were dumping their wives and placing them in a precarious situation.
Much of the Hebrew Bible is made up of stories, it’s not a systematic theology, and we don’t get to hear many stories of wives and slaves, but God clearly cared for Hagar the slave.
Women were in some way regarded as property in Bible times. But this was also true of more recent laws in western society. Women can be “property” and still be loved and respected and have agency (e.g., Aksah in Judges 1). I appreciate that some may baulk at the idea of women being property, or as belonging to a man, but this is the way things were, whatever we think of it. Family life was very different in past generations, and very few people, men or women, had anything like individual rights that westerners take for granted today.
So I’m not understanding why you think it’s not clear that God cares for women or slaves, especially in the NT. And there are plenty of men in the Bible who get what appears to be a rough deal.
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Life was tough in bronze-age Israel. In a world where just to survive could be a struggle, sometimes patriarchy (often associated with military might) and slavery had benefits. And women were needed to have babies. This was a vital role for the survival of the Israelites!!!
As I say in the article, the laws in the Hebrew Bible regulate against the worst excesses of patriarchy, slavery, polygamy, warfare, etc—features of a fallen world. The regulations reflect the culture of the Israelites, and to some extent that of surrounding nations, but generally speaking, they don’t promote these less-than-ideal practices.
[…] Ben Sirach, writing in around 180–175 BCE, is one example of an ancient Jewish author who plainly states that the only good woman is a silent woman.[3] It is clear he has a dim view of the capabilities and proclivities of women, as he says some terrible things about them. The Hebrew Bible, however, doesn’t disparage women as a group. Furthermore, it contains regulations designed to curtail the excesses of patriarchy and to protect women in what was a fallen, and sometimes brutal, culture. But patriarchy was not part of God’s original creation. […]
[…] I often hear people say that ancient Jewish rabbis said terrible things about women. But this generalisation is inaccurate. Some have said negative things, but others have said positive and honourable things about women. Here’s one of the better statements:
The Sages taught: One who loves his wife as he loves himself, and who honors her more than himself, and who instructs his sons and daughters in an upright path,… about him the verse states: And you shall know that your tent is in peace …. Yevamot 62b.19
Likewise, ancient Christian writers have said both bad things and good things about women. Thankfully, the Bible does not say negative things about women. […]