Is the Bible Sexist?

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What is the task of Christians, Ware asked, in confronting this ideology of the church and its Bible? Another example is in the creation narrative, where God says “Let us make man in our image and likeness” describing them as “male and female,” (Genesis 1:26 and 27). The Old English term “man” describes all humanity. Yet the ESV retains the Old English language, while the TNIV and NLT substitute “human beings.” That modern linguistic clarification doesn’t make the text gender-neutral, but rather gender-accurate—reflecting the actual meaning of the biblical text. I’ve laid out three major interpretive approaches to New Testament texts about women, with some bias (of course). Obviously, each could be expanded in many directions, and I’ve had to skip over far too many details due to space. My main point, however, is this: When Christians make claims about women based on the New Testament, we ought to be doing so with full awareness of the interpretive strategies we employ and the criteria by which we’re drawing our conclusions. At one point, I had a conversation about it all with a friend. Perhaps not a great idea to talk about the thing that was making me spitting mad while I was still feeling spitting mad. But there you go. I think he found my level of anger and indignation slightly alarming.

Mary:Who could say the virgin Mary wasn’t someone to admire for her willingness to carry God’s child, even though it put herself and her future husband Joseph in a difficult position? But instead of being fearful when the angel of the Lord told her of God’s plan for her, she calmly and confidently said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” ( Luke 1:38). This is the last in my series, looking at the elephant in the room of misogyny in the Bible that people generally don’t talk about. Had he stayed, I might have shared that I’m not only a New Testament scholar; I’m also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). And perhaps – if we could have given one another the benefit of the doubt – we might have had a real conversation about the Bible and women. Because the man was right about this: Paul did indeed have “some things to say about” women’s roles. How we understand and apply those “things” today, however, is a more complicated matter. For instance, Pastor Patricia of New Bethel Baptist Church in an urban city in the northeast rejects Biblical text that undermine her authority as a religious leader. Referencing Ephesians 5:22–24, she states, This text follows the often-quoted statement, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28).

2. New Dignity for Women in the Early Church

This belief asserts that while women and men are of equal value, God has assigned them specific gender roles. Specifically, it promotes men’s headship or authority over women, while encouraging women’s submission. It was a question that made the participants in the panel and their audience uncomfortable and that would most likely bring cries of dismay from more conservative quarters of the Christian churches. Evidently, the original ESV translators were unbothered by modernizing the Old English word “ass” to “donkey” (cf., Numbers 22:22; Joshua 6:21). Apparently their editors deemed it more important to clarify the meaning of “ass” than “man.” A Canadian friend of ours won the prize for the most embarrassing gaffe. After her interview for a new job and on hearing the good news that she was hired, she asked her proper English male employer, “Is it alright if I wear pants to work?” She was puzzled by his awkward reply and only later discovered to her chagrin what had been lost in translation. In Britishese, “pants” refers to underwear. Our friend had just asked her boss if it was permissible to wear underwear on the job!

Among other things, the Danvers Statement affirmed the submissive role of women. It said, “Wives should forsake resistance to their husbands’ authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands’ leadership.”Her palm she has stretched out to the afflicted one, and her hands she has thrust out to the poor one. If different meanings to the same words isn’t enough of a challenge, there is the fact that even within a single culture, words have a way of changing. How many kids have rolled their eyes when their parents used some out-of-date expression? When God created Adam, He “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). Adam’s creation is extraordinary and required God to use His divine power to form this being. On the other hand, Eve’s creation is less significant: “the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs…and made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen 2:21-3). The means by which Eve was created is enough to be extremely suggestive that the woman is inferior to man. To begin with, Eve is a derivative of Adam. She is literally created from the rib (a very small part) of Adam, and thus is dependent on him for life. The words “she was taken out of Man” emphasize this point and indicate that Eve will occupy a place secondary to Adam. There is no suggestion here that woman might be superior or even equal to man after reading this passage. While it is impossible to argue with the written words that woman was taken from man’s rib, Trible challenges the interpretation that man was responsible for woman’s creation. She states that “human life is God’s gift; it is not possession” (81). She believes that for both man and woman, creation is an act of God and that when the man says “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” he is not implying that she is derived from him or subordinate to him. Rather, he is saying that he shares equally with the woman the dust of the ground and the origin of their lives. Predictably, he sent me a whole series of links to Christian blogs and articles, all explaining why, read properly, the Bible is not sexist at all.