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Women in the Bible

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Ancient Near Eastern societies have traditionally been described as patriarchal, and the Bible, as a document written by men, has traditionally been interpreted as patriarchal in its overall views of women. Marital and inheritance laws in the Bible favor men, and women in the Bible exist under much stricter laws of sexual behavior than men. In ancient biblical times, women were subject to strict laws of purity, both ritual and moral.

Recent scholarship accepts the presence of patriarchy in the Bible, but shows that heterarchy is also present: heterarchy acknowledges that different power structures between people can exist at the same time, that each power structure has its own hierarchical arrangements, and that women had some spheres of power of their own separate from men. There is evidence of gender balance in the Bible, and there is no attempt in the Bible to portray women as deserving of less because of their "naturally evil" natures.

While women are not generally in the forefront of public life in the Bible, those women who are named are usually prominent for reasons outside the ordinary. For example, they are often involved in the overturning of human power structures in a common biblical literary device called "reversal". 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. The founding matriarchs are mentioned by name, as are some prophetesses, judges, heroines, and queens, while the common woman is largely, though not completely, unseen. The slave Hagar's story is told, and the prostitute Rahab's story is also told, among a few others.

The New Testament names women in positions of leadership in the early church as well. Views of women in the Bible have changed throughout history and those changes are reflected in art and culture. There are controversies within the contemporary Christian church concerning women and their role in the church.

Women, sex, and law in surrounding cultures

Almost all Near Eastern societies of the Bronze Age (3000–1200 BCE) and Axial Age (800 to 300 BCE) were established as patriarchal societies by 3000 BCE. Eastern societies such as the Akkadians, Hittites, Assyrians and Persians relegated women to an inferior and subordinate position. There are very few exceptions, but one can be found in the third millennium BC with the Sumerians who accorded women a position which was almost equal to that of men. However, by the second millennium, the rights and status of women were reduced.

In the West, the status of Egyptian women was high, and their legal rights approached equality with men throughout the last three millennia BCE. A few women even ruled as pharaohs. However, historian Sarah Pomeroy explains that even in those ancient patriarchal societies where a woman could occasionally become queen, her position did not empower her female subjects.

Classics scholar Bonnie MacLachlan writes that Greece and Rome were patriarchal cultures.

The roles women were expected to fill in all these ancient societies were predominantly domestic with a few exceptions such as Sparta, who fed women equally with men, and trained them to fight in the belief women would thereby produce stronger children. The predominant views of Ancient and Classical Greece were patriarchal; however, there is also a misogynistic strain present in Greek literature from its beginnings. A polarized view of women allowed some classics authors, such as Thales, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes and Philo, and others, to write about women as "twice as bad as men", a "pernicious race", "never to be trusted on any account", and as an inherently inferior race of beings separate from the race of men.

Rome was heavily influenced by Greek thought. Sarah Pomeroy says "never did Roman society encourage women to engage in the same activities as men of the same social class." In The World of Odysseus, classical scholar Moses Finley says: "There is no mistaking the fact that Homer fully reveals what remained true for the whole of antiquity: that women were held to be naturally inferior..."

Pomeroy also states that women played a vital role in classical Greek and Roman religion, sometimes attaining a freedom in religious activities denied to them elsewhere. Wayne Meeks writes that there is no evidence this went beyond the internal practices of the religion itself. The mysteries created no alternative in larger society to the established patterns, but there is some evidence of a disruption of traditional women's roles within some of the mystery cults. 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. 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. In Rome, priestesses of state cults, such as the Vestal Virgins, were able to achieve positions of status and power. They were able to live independently from men, made ceremonial appearances at public events and could accrue considerable wealth. Both ancient Greece and Rome celebrated important women-only religious festivals during which women were able to socialize and build bonds with each other. 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.

Laws in patriarchal societies regulated three sorts of sexual infractions involving women: rape, fornication (which includes adultery and prostitution), and incest. There is a homogeneity to these codes across time, and across borders, which implies the aspects of life that these laws enforced were established practices within the norms and values of the populations. The prominent use of corporal punishment, capital punishment, corporal mutilation, 'eye-for-an-eye' talion punishments, and vicarious punishments (children for their fathers) were standard across Mesopotamian Law. Ur-Nammu, who founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, sponsored the oldest surviving codes of law dating from approximately 2200 BCE. Most other codes of law date from the second millennium BCE including the famous Babylonian Laws of Hammurabi which dates to about 1750 BCE. Ancient laws favored men, protecting the procreative rights of men as a common value in all the laws pertaining to women and sex.

In all these codes, rape is punished differently depending upon whether it occurs in the city where a woman's calls for help could be heard or the country where they could not be (as in Deuteronomy 22:23–27). The Hittite laws also condemn a woman raped in her house presuming the man could not have entered without her permission. Fornication is a broad term for a variety of inappropriate sexual behaviors including adultery and prostitution. In the code of Hammurabi, and in the Assyrian code, both the adulterous woman and her lover are to be bound and drowned, but forgiveness could supply a reprieve. In the Biblical law, (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22) forgiveness is not an option: the lovers must die (Deuteronomy 22:21,24). No mention is made of an adulterous man in any code. In Hammurabi, a woman can apply for a divorce but must prove her moral worthiness or be drowned for asking. It is enough in all codes for two unmarried individuals engaged in a sexual relationship to marry. However, if a husband later accuses his wife of not having been a virgin when they married, she will be stoned to death.

Until the codes introduced in the Hebrew Bible, most codes of law allowed prostitution. Classics scholars Allison Glazebrook and Madeleine M. Henry say attitudes concerning prostitution "cut to the core of societal attitude towards gender and to social constructions of sexuality." Many women in a variety of ancient cultures were forced into prostitution. Many were children and adolescents. 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. Some waited years for release while being used without say or pay. The initiation rituals of devdasi of pre-pubescent girls included a deflowering ceremony which gave Priests the right to have intercourse with every girl in the temple. In Greece, slaves were required to work as prostitutes and had no right to decline. The Hebrew Bible code is the only one of these codes that condemns prostitution.

In the code of Hammurabi, as in Leviticus, incest is condemned and punishable by death, however, punishment is dependent upon whether the honor of another man has been compromised. Genesis glosses over incest repeatedly, and in 2 Samuel and the time of King David, Tamar is still able to offer marriage to her half brother as an alternative to rape. Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers condemn all sexual relations between relatives.

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