Women in The Hebrew Texts of The Bible
Christianity developed as a sect of Judaism in the First Century AD. It therefore inherited the depictions of women already existing within the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as The Old Testament) and through history, the women of these Jewish texts have been important in the development of Christian theology, art and attitudes to women.
In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were said to be the first man and the first woman. Adam was created first, and Eve from Adam's rib. Some commentators have suggested that Eve being God's second Creation indicated female inferiority, but in calling Eve "flesh of my flesh" others say a relationship of equality is implied. In a later episode, Eve persuades Adam to join her in eating from forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil - angering God, who casts them out of the Garden of Eden. These accounts were drawn upon by Christian theologians in the development of the doctrine of Original Sin.
Elsewhere, earthy depictions are given of the bearers of the children of Abraham, the Father of Judaism. His Egyptian slave girl Hagar bore Ishmael, while his wife Sarah bore Isaac. Hagar and Ishmael were banished, but with God's promise that Ishmael's descendants would found a great nation (the Arabs). Isaac's descendants meanwhile were to become the Israelites.
Others appearing in the texts include Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, who tricked Issac into blessing her second son as heir; Delilah, who brought down the mighty warrior Samson; the Queen of Sheba who was overwhelmed by the splendour of King Soloman's court; and the cursed Jezebel, who conspired with her husband to have an innocent man killed and was in turn killed for her crime.
Some women were praised in the books of Ruth and Esther. The book of Ruth is about a young Moabite woman's loyalty to her Jewish mother-in-law and her willingness to move to Israel and become a part of their culture. The story ends with her praise and blessing as she is married to an Israelite and subsequently King David comes from her lineage. In the Book of Esther, a young woman named Esther of Jewish lineage is praised for her bravery as the queen of Persia who saved many from being killed by her pleas to the king.
Read more about this topic: Christianity And Women
Famous quotes containing the words women in, women, hebrew, texts and/or bible:
“Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“The ideal of men and women sharing equally in parenting and working is a vision still. What would it be like if women and men were less different from each other, if our worlds were not so foreign? A male friend who shares daily parenting told me that he knows at his very core what his wife’s loving for their daughter feels like, and that this knowing creates a stronger bond between them.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden.”
—Bible: Hebrew Genesis 2:9-10.
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“I thought it a pity that some poor student did not live there, to profit by all that light, since he would not rob the mariner.... Think of fifteen Argand lamps to read the newspaper by! Government oil!—light enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by! I thought that he should read nothing less than his Bible by that lamp.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)