Women in the Bible

Abigail, David's wife, Esther the Queen, and Jael who drove a tent peg into the enemy commander's temple while he slept, are a few examples of women who turned the tables on men with power.

[14]: 6  Priestesses in charge of official cults such as that of Athena Polias in ancient Athens were paid well, were looked upon as role models, and wielded considerable social and political power.

[15] In the important Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece, men, women, children and slaves were admitted and initiated into its secrets on a basis of complete equality.

[18][19] Although the "ideal woman" in the writings and sayings of male philosophers and leaders was one who would stay out of the public view and attend to the running of her household and the upbringing of her children, in practice some women in both ancient Greece and Rome were able to attain considerable influence outside the purely domestic sphere.

[20] Laws in patriarchal societies regulated three sorts of sexual infractions involving women: rape, fornication (which includes adultery and prostitution), and incest.

According to the 5th century BCE historian Herodotus, the sacred prostitution of the Babylonians was "a shameful custom" requiring every woman in the country to go to the precinct of Venus, and consort with a stranger.

"[2]: 174  Professor of Religion J. David Pleins says these tales are included by the Deuteronomic historian to demonstrate the evils of life without a centralized shrine and single political authority.

[1]: 22  Meyers adds that "in traditional societies comparable to ancient Israel, when women and men both make significant economic contributions to household life, female–male relationships are marked by interdependence or mutual dependence.

If either he or she did not consent to the marriage, a different ceremony called chalitza was done instead; this involves the widow removing her brother-in-law's shoe, spitting in front of him, and proclaiming, "This is what happens to someone who will not build his brother's house!".

(Joshua 2:9–13) She was told to tie a scarlet cord in the same window through which she helped the spies escape, and to have all her family in the house with her and not to go into the streets, and if she did not comply, their blood would be on their own heads.

"[49]: 65–89  Frymer-Kensky says the scene is similar to one in the Sodom and Gomorrah story when Lot sent his daughters to the mob, but in Genesis the angels save them, and in the book of Judges God is no longer intervening.

[56]: 14 According to Old Testament scholar Jerome Creach, some feminist critiques of Judges say the Bible gives tacit approval to violence against women by not speaking out against these acts.

[2]: 395  Biblical scholar Michael Patrick O'Connor attributed acts of violence against women described in the Book of Judges to a period of crisis in the society of ancient Israel before the institution of kingship.

While in the Midrash and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, she is said to be the daughter of Dinah, Joseph's sister, and Shechem, born of an illicit union, described as either premarital sex or rape, depending on the narrative.

"[31]: 72  Sociologist Linda L. Lindsey says "women have born a greater burden for 'original sin'... Eve's creation from Adam's rib, second in order, with God's "curse" at the expulsion is a stubbornly persistent frame used to justify male supremacy.

[49] However, New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg says ancient Jews might have seen the order of creation in terms of the laws of primogeniture (both in their scriptures and in surrounding cultures) and interpreted Adam being created first as a sign of privilege.

For these transgressions against the God and people of Israel, Jezebel met a gruesome death—thrown out of a window by members of her own court retinue, and the flesh of her corpse eaten by stray dogs.

Biblical scholar Burke Long says the "great woman" of Shunnem who appears in the Book of Kings acknowledges and respects the prophet Elisha's position yet is also a "determined mover and shaper of events.

Frymer-Kensky says "Once again an intelligent determined woman is influential far beyond the confines of patriarchy" showing biblical women had what anthropology terms informal power.

[92] This permitted Roman society to find both a husband's control of a wife's sexual behavior a matter of intense importance and at the same time see his own sex with young slave boys as of little concern.

The legacy of Christianity lies in the dissolution of an ancient system where social and political status, power, and inherited inequality with no hope to better one's self scripted the terms of sexual morality.

[107] According to MacDonald, much of the vociferous pagan criticism aimed against the early church is evidence of this "female initiative" which contributed to the reasons Roman society saw Christianity as a threat.

[116] Power resided with the male authority figure, and he had the right to label any uncooperative female in his household as insane or possessed, to exile her from her home, and condemn her to prostitution.

[117] Kraemer theorizes that "Against such vehement opposition, the language of the ascetic forms of Christianity must have provided a strong set of validating mechanisms", attracting large numbers of women.

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III says "Jesus broke with both biblical and rabbinic traditions that restricted women's roles in religious practices, and he rejected attempts to devalue the worth of a woman, or her word of witness.

"[138]: 179, 181 The Roman writer Celsus' On The True Doctrine, circa 175, is the earliest known comprehensive criticism of Christianity and survives exclusively in quotations from it in Contra Celsum, a refutation written in 248 by Origen of Alexandria.

"The challenge to Mary's position has been evaluated as an indication of tensions between the existing fact of women's leadership in Christian communities and traditional Greco-Roman views about gender roles.

"[146]: 343  Liberal Christianity represented by the development of historical criticism was not united in its view of women either: suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton tells of the committee that formed The Woman's Bible in 1895.

Meyer explains: "Genesis 2–3 recounts the creation of man and the origins of evil and death; Eve, the temptress who disobeys God's commandment, is probably the most widely discussed and portrayed figure in art.

[153] The story of her dance before Herod with the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter led medieval Christian artists to depict her as the personification of the lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation.