Ancient Israel history and culture

Ancient Israel

The Connection between Ancient Israeli Women and Women in the Modern Ministry

Ancient Israel seems so far removed from modern times, that it can be difficult to realize the impact that ancient Israeli women had on the role of women in the modern church. Part of the problem is that so many modern Christians fail to comprehend the importance of the fact that Jesus was a Jew. Jew was the promised savior for a very small group of people, whom had already been singled out as favored by God. During his lifetime, he acted, not as a Christian leader, but as Jewish religious leader. Furthermore, his Apostles, the founders of the modern Christian church, were likewise devout Jewish men. They brought their ideas about gender roles into their teaching. Unfortunately, the passage of time has made it almost impossible to understand what role ancient Israeli women actually played in the Bible. First, the Bible is dominated almost entirely about stories about males. When women do play a role in the Bible, much of the emphasis is on their fertility or lack thereof (Mary, Rebecca, Sarah, Miriam, etc.). Little is said about their daily lives. Moreover, the women in the Bible generally cannot be taken as representative of all ancient Israeli women. By and large, these women came from families of some position and power, and their lives probably would have differed substantially from the life of the average Israelite woman. However, by combining Biblical sources with archeology, sociology, and other sciences, one can get a better picture of the life of a woman in ancient Israel. That picture can then be used to help illuminate the role of women in the modern church.

Because most, if not all, modern churches continue to embrace a patriarchal hierarchy, excluding women from positions with the highest power, readers tend to view the Hebrew Bible as similarly patriarchal. This view might be inaccurate. "Feminist consciousness uniformly assumes negative connotations for the word patriarchy." (Meyers, p.24). However, patriarchies are not inherently misogynistic, just as a matriarchal political structure does not ensure equal roles for men and women in society. However, "two aspects of patriarchy have emerged as central in feminist assessments: implications for power relationships and relationship to modes of economic production." (Meyers, p.27). The problem with those aspects is that they inject modern-day expectations into a culture that is not modern, placing value judgments on those expectations. It may be that ancient Israel emerged as a patriarchy for a valid reason, so that an explanation of its origins is necessary to understand both women at that time and the role that women play in the modern church.

It is important to understand that ancient Israel was unlike any other culture of its time:

Though a participant in the general matrix of Babylonian, Egyptian, and Canaanite culture, Israel was also radically different. The difference in Israel's identity is to some tantalizingly immeasurable extent the product of Israelite self-establishment on a previously unsettled landscape: the Palestinian highlands. The ideology Israel formulated and promulgated was conditioned by the exigencies of the new environment along with the inherited thought patterns of the component populations. (Meyers, p. 48).

Because researchers have largely been able to eliminate biological determinism as a source for gender role stereotyping, context can be especially important. The reality is that life in ancient Israel was demanding and tough. Israeli society was agrarian, though the land was not particularly well-suited for farming or other agricultural endeavors. "The soils in the mountainous areas are rather poor. Perennial sources of water are virtually nonexistent except for a few relatively minor springs. The greatest obstacle to settlement was probably the difficult topography: an irregular configuration of hills and valleys." (Meyers, p.51). That is why the area was relatively uninhabited during the Bronze Age, making ancient Israeli settlers into pioneers. This meant that, prior to farming, land had to be cleared. The clearing of land has been a traditionally male domain, which meant that men created and participated in, perhaps, the most meaningful act of settlement. However, that meant that, in addition to reproduction, women had to take a greater role in other crucial component of group survival: the production of subsistence goods. This added labor would have, in turn, had an impact on family structure and dynamics. Agrarian societies tend to dictate larger family structures, which has the impact of increasing the importance of a woman's reproductive functions. This emphasis on reproductive capabilities is certainly featured in the Bible; several matriarchs experience infertility, and many resort to desperate means to attain a child. Another factor contributed to the emphasis on reproduction: lowered life-expectancy. At that time, both women and children routinely died in childbirth and, in a world without antibiotics, people of both sexes and all ages could die from routine infections. Moreover, ancient Israel and the surrounding societies experienced bouts of epidemic illness, which could kill substantial portions of their population. Eventually, when Israelites began to be persecuted for their minority status and minority beliefs, the emphasis on reproduction could have taken on a more social aspect; increasing numbers would have made them less of a minority and less subject to maltreatment.

The emphasis on reproduction continues to be an interesting aspect of the modern church's approach to gender roles. In many denominations that self-identify as Christian, birth control is discouraged, if not prohibited. Catholics prohibit birth control, Mormons tout the virtue of the large family, and most denominations discourage sexual activity outside of marriage or for any type of self-gratification. To encourage fecundity, many Christians point to a reference in the Bible discussing the spilling of seed upon the ground, ignoring the fact that the context of that passage was concerned with the fulfillment of a Levirate obligation, rather than with normal sexual relations. Certainly, in the early days of the church, the emphasis on female reproductive capabilities was probably socially driven; like the Jews before them, Christians were a persecuted religious minority. That persecution only ended when a vast portion of the world had been evangelized. It can also be seen in the fears that many Christians have about the popularity of Islam, and concerns that Muslims will outnumber Christians, once again transforming Christians into a persecuted minority.

As the first woman mentioned in the Bible (though not the first woman in Jewish Talmudic tradition), Eve has become something of an archetype for both Jewish and Christian woman. Her actual action, which consisted of eating a fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was not the act of a sexual temptress, though Eve has been portrayed that way. If the text is accurate, Adam and Eve knew nothing of sexuality while in Eden; therefore, how could Eve have possibly used her sexuality to entice Adam to eat the fruit? It was only after they both ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge that they became aware of sexuality. The fruit also brought the closer to God by seemingly granting them both greater intelligence and a conscience. This interpretation is much more consistent with the actual language of the Bible than interpretations found in extra-biblical sources describing the Eden tale. In Genesis, God creates both Adam and Eve in his image; years of culturally-laden expectations and poor translations have caused that story to read as if only Adam were created in the image of God, with Eve as a mere servant to help Adam.

Though the Bible does not subscribe women to a subservient role, the cultures that developed with the Bible and helped shape Biblical interpretation were, by and large, misogynistic. A comprehensive review of all of those cultures is beyond the scope of this review, but it is important to realize that they helped shape the modern view of women in the church in a substantial manner. Once Eve was transformed into a sinner, as the prototype for women her transformation made all women into sinners. If women were inherently sinners, then it made sense for them to be denied an equal position with males. If women were inherently temptresses, as well as sinners, then it made sense for them to be treated with caution. Women could also be treated as sexually wanton, if they were indiscriminate sinners, which would explain one of the interesting dichotomies in ancient Israelite tradition. Jewish ancestry is passed through the mother, though the precise origin of that custom is unknown. This custom may have developed because of the presumption of harlotry; while a child's paternity could not, until very recently, be conclusively established, maternity was hard to ignore. While this reality may have been acknowledged, it was not openly accepted; adulterers were subject to horrific deaths, and women, unlike men, could not take multiple spouses or have concubines. This restrictive and suspicious attitude toward female sexuality is one that has plagued both Judaism and Christianity, though it appears to be something injected into the Creation narrative, rather than an intrinsic part of that narrative.