In last week’s class, we noticed
several troubling features of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2-3:
·
Eve
was created second. She appears to have been derivative, secondary, created to
serve Adam’s needs.
·
God
barely speaks to Eve. God speaks only to Adam, until the end of the story, when
God questions her for eating from the Tree of Knowledge (after first speaking
to Adam)
·
Adam
names Eve, as he names the animals. The naming seems to be an expression of
power over Eve, as Adam has power over the animals.
·
Worst
of all, God says to Eve, after she and Adam have eaten from the Tree that Adam’will
rule over you,’ i.e. that from this point forward, men will rule over women.
We responded to these issues in the
following ways:
1. There is no question that the Adam
and Eve does not reflect a 21st century ethical sensibility in every
way. There are elements of the story that we must reject as the product of a
human element in the Bible, and not as reflecting God’s ultimate will. The idea
that women will be ruled by men is not something we can accept today.
2. Phyllis Trible has written that the
Adam and Eve story is descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it’s clear that
before Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden, they lived in a state of
equality. The dominance of man is equated with a fall from grace. It’s implied
that the return to a more ideal state would mean the restoration of equality
between men and women. The rest of the Bible and Jewish history is the story of
how we seek to get back to the Garden. So, modern feminism is in keeping with
the idea that male chauvinism is a flaw in human relationships that must be
corrected to retrieve what God wants of human beings.
3. This idea is supported by a later
story in the Bible, the story of Esther. In chapter one of the megillah, male
chauvinism is ridiculed. A drunken king objectifies his queen, demanding he
show off her beauty to her male comrades. When she refuses, he calls a cabinet
level meeting to decide what do to. Memuchan frets that if Vashti’s refusal is
allowed to stand, all the women of the kingdom will rise in revolt against
their husbands. It will be a catastrophe!
The king issues an order that the man is the boss of the house
everywhere in his empire. This story portrays men who seek to dominate women as
weak and foolish.
4. What’s more, later in the story,
Haman’s paranoia about Jewish ‘disobedience’ to the king’s laws is equated with
male paranoia about the female disobedience. Male dominance of women and
persecution of the Jewish people are equated and declared equally illegitimate.
At the end of the story, a strong woman emerges as a hero over weak men. Still,
there is a missing piece. The Jews have escaped death, but we are still
powerless and vulnerable to a fickle non-Jewish population. We have power, but
it is the power behind the throne. It is clear from this Diaspora story,that
the ideal is for the Jewish people to be in charge of our own destiny. This we
can only achieve by having complete sovereignty in our own homeland (depicted
by the Bible as the new Garden of Eden). The implication of the Esther story is
that similarly, the triumph of women through manipulation of weak men is only
an intermediate step. Ultimately, women deserve to be men’s equals, not just
the power behind the throne, just as the Jewish people deserve to be
authorities in our own land, not just vice presidents in someone else’s country.
5.
What emerges from the Esther story is that the Bible is a conversation,
reflecting varied points of view, just as later in Jewish history, the Talmud
is debate among Jews who have different opinions. The tendency of the Jewish people to wrestle with each other and with
God in seeking to find the best way to live is found in the Bible itself from
the very beginning. In next week’s class, we will look at how this tendency is
found in Abraham and Sarah.
I believe the bible is sexist. Though we have many heriones in the bible many of them including Sarah, Rebeccah, Rachel and Leah beguiled their husbands to achieve their goals. Sarah cast Hagar out so Issac, the second son would steal Ismael's birthright, Rebecca tricked Jacob into giving Jacob Esau's birthright.
ReplyDeleteGenesis chapters 29 through 32 tells the story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah. Jacob buys Rachel and Leah from their father Laban. Jacob buys the women by working seven years a piece for them. Eventually, Jacob wants to leave but Laban tries to stop him because the women were his property. The women are not seen as Jacob's wives but as property to be bartered with.
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