Are Old Testament laws harsher towards women?
Another
one of the more relevant objections to Christianity is the apparent sexism that
we read into scripture, particularly the Old Testament. I have written a
handful of previous posts discussing how Christianity is unique in the
treatment of women, particularly how women are treated with respect in contrast
with the ancient world around the tribes of Israel and the cultures in which
Christianity was born. We see scripture filled with stories that prominently
feature women and show that God will pour out his grace and love on all of his
creations equally (Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Elizabeth, Rahab, the women leaders
in the early church mentioned in Acts, I could go on but I want to get to the
specifics of this post.) What I want to do is to take a look at the supposed scriptures
that people reference in regard to women, typically in regards to sexual
assault and marriage, though the women counting as half a testimony also comes
to mind. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular scriptures just to see
if any of these objections hold water, and if the God of the Bible is some sort
of misogynistic pig.
In my experience,
the low hanging fruit is the easiest to go for, so let’s take a look at the origin
of the decree that the testimony of women counts half that of men. This comes
from the Talmud, the Jewish book of Law written by the pharisees, which is not
part of scripture, so we must contend with the writings of men in this case,
not the inspired word of God. However, I believe that this culture really helps
us to believe that the testimony of the gospels is true, because women found the
empty tomb first. This would be an embarrassment if the early church placed men
above women and embarrasses the men in a Jewish culture. This principle of
embarrassment is also used to support the reliability of the gospels because
the original 12 were portrayed as poor students, and detailed many of their
shortcomings. So God actually used a shortcoming of human pride to give us
Christians who will not see Christ on this side of the grave to have a an
answer for our faith.
So let’s
take a look at some actual scripture now, starting with the “marry your rapist”
laws in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 and in Exodus 22:16-17. Let me add a preface from
something that I learned in researching much of these topics. Many of these
verses we will look at are case law, something that is written as a contingency
plan. Obviously we want to avoid the situations in case law, but God is wise
and writes these laws to help and minimize the damage done by human evil.
A plain English reading of the
above verses states that a man who comes upon an unbetrothed virgin and rapes
her is to marry her, pay her father a bride price, and the man can never
divorce this woman. However, reading the Hebrew, we see the word Tapas used in
these verses, which better translates to seduce. There is another Hebrew word,
Hazaq, which does denote forceful sex, as in a rape. Each of these words is
used in other parts of scripture, Tapas used when Potiphar’s wife tried to
seduce Joseph, and Hazaq used in the rape of Tamar by Amnon. So when we look at
these verses in context, we see something like a man seducing a woman, and
being ordered to do what many of us would be the right thing by marrying the
woman.
As a secondary point since we need
to talk about it, the bride price is paid because you are removing a worker
from a household. This was a mostly agrarian society, so by marrying a father’s
daughter, they are losing some productivity, so a bride price is helping out
the family by providing this. It isn’t some trading of property, but people
helping people in the right sense, and God still looking out for the woman in the
case mentioned above.
One more common objection that I
have come across as I study is the case seen in Deuteronomy 22:23-27, where a
woman “raped” in the city and does not cry out, she is stoned to death along
with her rapist, but only the rapist is stoned if the rape occurs in the field.
This is actually a side by side case of the different Hebrew words that we have
discussed earlier. In the case of the woman in the city, the Hebrew word Matsa,
or finds, is only found here, not chazaq, or the forceful word that we talked
about it. So it implies that the woman may have had a part in seducing the man
in this part, or was at least promiscuous while in the city. This was a time in
which the Israelites were supposed to be adhering to every letter of the law,
and to purge any willful sinners from their midst. However, in the case of the
woman in the field, the word chazaq is used here, implying force, and therefore
rape. This does reconcile with what we know about the psychology the woman
tragically goes through in the case of rape. The woman is so traumatized during
and after the rape that she is usually stunned into silence, so the scripture
about not crying out in the city was concerning for me. Not that I would say
that scripture was wrong, but it raised plenty of questions, such as if the mentality
of ancient was women was different, or if this was an unjust scripture that
placed some impossible standard on women. It was not the God of justice and
grace that I knew, and I am thankful to Dr. Katie McCoy (who I cite below) and others
for writing on the Hebrew language and allowing me to learn for myself and
overcome this apparent hurdle in scripture.
So now I think we have covered the
most common accusations of sexism, but let’s cover a handful that I found in my
reading that I conducted, these are mostly found from Paul Copan’s book, and I
highly recommend anyone read this book if you are struggling with any moral
objections to anything found in scripture. Dr. Copan started off the chapter in
question by using select verses to show that God intended equality between men
and women, but the fallen state of humanity and the evil of the human heart
causes this inequality that we fight so hard against today (Genesis 1:27,
Genesis 2:24, Exodus 20:12, Leviticus 19:3, Proverbs 6:20, Proverbs 18:22,
Proverbs 19:26, Proverbs 23:22, Porverbs 23:25, Song of Songs 6:3).
So now let’s look at some cases,
such as in Deuteronomy 17 or Numbers 5. This brings up a case in which a
husband accuses his wife of adultery, and he brings her before the court. Obviously
witnesses were not available, save the suspicion. However, the language used
here means that a wife could also bring her husband to court over adultery as
well. Secondly, this court protected the wife from a husband’s rash violence or
anything of that sort to cheaply get rid of his wife. In Numbers we see that
there is a supernatural way to determine adultery, and some people view this
like a witch trial like we saw in Salem or like River trials in Sumer. This was
a special case however, not a general one like we see in these comparisons.
How about women remaining unclean
longer after having girls than boys (Leviticus 12)? Women who have boys are
considered unclean for 40 days, but 80 days if they have a girl. This may imply
that the baby girl is somehow more unclean or something of the sort, but
against the backdrop of other ancient cultures, it may have something to do
with the special place of women in Israelite culture. In other cultures, women
were used as temple prostitutes, and fertility was worshipped and deified. We
could also take a look at biology, the woman experiences bleeding after either
birth, but the baby girl can also experience bleeding after they are born as
well, which gives us two sources of ceremonial uncleanness, since blood makes
one ceremonially unclean in Jewish culture. After either waiting period, the
mother offers a purity offering, regardless of the gender of the child, and it
is the same offering either way.
Probably the last one that I will
take a look at today is the ban of women in the priesthood. If women are truly
equal to men, why are there religious jobs that men can do that women are forbidden
to do? Firstly, most men were forbidden from the priesthood, because the
priests had to come from the line of Aaron and the Levi tribe. God also
intended for a male and female priesthood, as Adam and Eve performed priestly
duties. The people of Israel locked themselves into a male only priesthood
because they would not go up to the mountain, leaving Moses to go in their
place. Once again, we can also think about the ancient cultures surrounding Israel.
Women were engaged as temple prostitutes, which defiles the Godly image of sex
and marriage. God once again organizes the law in spite of human failings to
bring his glory and plan for man and woman through this arrangement, and He
shows Israel that women were to be respected, and that one man and one woman
only were to be made one flesh for life here on earth.
So hopefully this has covered many
of the objections of sexism in the Bible, but I hope to be able to have a
conversation with you if you have further questions. May God bless you and have
a good rest of your day.
References
“Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament
God” by Paul Copan
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