Monday, March 7, 2011
The Bible: The Book of Genesis Part One
Most everyone is familiar with the stories from the book of Genesis, it is where many of the traditional Bible stories come from. I'll go through the important parts and sum it up with some commentary and alternate translations here and there. Also, this is a big job so I'm breaking it up into parts.
The book starts with the creation of the world. Creation is said to have taken place in six days, however an interesting translation point is that the word for days can also be meant to mean generations. Here I think that rather than focusing on the time involved, the important point is that God thought His creation was good. Evolution is a fact of science, and I don't think that it is necessarily opposite to the teachings of creationism. It is possible that God created the world to evolve and that man evolved from whatever animal you wish to point to (monkeys, fish, etc). In the Bible it could say that God created man and woman on the sixth day (or generation) to point out that at the end of creating everything else, man had evolved to be what is thought of as modern man in the species. Here are the lists of what God made in each day:
1. Day and Night.
2. Earth's atmosphere.
3. Land and oceans are separated. Plants and trees are created.
4. Sun, moon and stars are created.
5. Sea creatures and birds.
6. Land animals and people are created.
7. Day of rest.
Now, skeptics may say that the Earth is not the oldest thing in the solar system, so it couldn't have happened this way. I agree that Earth is not the oldest thing in this universe and it must have happened in a different order. This doesn't disprove God, just that the people who wrote (or rather told, as the Bible was an oral tradition before it was written down) this creation story didn't understand science as we understand it now and wrote it in a way that they could understand. The message to take from this story isn't the days or generations, time period, specifics of the story - but the fact that God made the universe and He thought it was good. After each passage in the Bible describing the creation of each bit of the universe, God looks at what He has made and He says that it is good.
In the creation story, God is Elohim. When the story of Adam and Eve begins, God gives his more personal name - Yahweh Elohim. This to me says that God wants to be known personally by mankind where before he was the One High God, creator of all, now he is a personal God because he finally has made a being that is sentient enough to walk with Him.
God names his creations Adam and Eve. Adam in Hebrew means "mankind" and there are scholars who argue that at this point in the Bible, God creates a species of people not just one man. In this scenario, the story of the garden of Eden would be a metaphor for how the species fell, not a factually specific story. In the story, God makes Eve out of Adam's rib. Eve is described as a "helper" for Adam, which many people have in the past considered to mean Eve was to be inferior to Adam. I don't believe this is true as God Himself is described as a "helper" to mankind in the rest of the Old Testament. God is certainly not inferior to man, and Eve is not inferior to Adam.
God gives Adam and Eve the responsibility of respecting and caring for the Earth and all its inhabitants. In Hebrew, instead of the word till, the word that God uses is serve and keep. I think that this is especially important for today's people. Being that the Judaic people (Jews, Christians and Muslims) are the majority in most of the economically advanced countries, I assume that most people have forgotten that it is our job to preserve the earth instead of destroying it. Too many people remember the fact that God gave all of this to us, and forget that we're put in the position of servant to it - to keep the earth whole, unpolluted and as close to how it was at creation as possible. I think a great environmentalist action would be to remind the world's Christians (many of whom are at the highest positions in corporations that do the most polluting) that we have been tasked by God to take care of the earth.
Adam and Eve fall from the grace of God. God gives them Eden, where everything is always wonderful, no sin happens, lives are forever and all food and shelter is readily available. He lets them take from any tree or plant they want save one - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they eat from it, they will surely die. The serpent comes in and tells Eve that she won't die but will in fact be like the gods if she eats from that tree. Eve sees that the fruit looks good and she and Adam eat from it. They realize they are naked and sew clothing for their waists with fig leaves. God comes walking that evening to see Adam and Eve as He normally does daily and He can't find them. He calls out to them and they respond that they are hiding from Him. When He asks why they respond that they are hiding because they are naked. God realizes what they have done and ejects them from the Garden because now that they have knowledge of good and evil, He doesn't want them eating any more from the tree of life and living forever. In this way they would be like God. He ejects them and puts guards at the entrance so they can no longer enter Eden.
Now, if this is a metaphorical story, and Adam really did stand for mankind in that God created a species of people, this could be the point of history where man evolved into a creature sentient enough to know good from evil. The people creating the story use the tree of life to explain why their lives end. I don't know which I believe, but am open to both.
Adam and Eve become farmers and hunters and have two children Cain and Abel. Everyone knows the story. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a herder. They both brought offerings to God. God accepted Abel's offering of a lamb but rejected Cain's because his attitude towards offering to God was one of bitterness. It had nothing to do with the offering itself, but that God cannot be bought off with sacrifices and acts - God needs an attitude of faith as well. God sees what we do, but it is not enough to be a good person. We have to have faith and love for God in our minds and hearts. Cain, with his bad attitude, gets angry that God didn't accept his offering but did of Abel's, and kills his brother. When God asks him where his brother is, Cain says the famous words "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?" Because of what Cain did, he is exiled and marked by God so that no one will kill him. In the next bit, it supports the idea that God created a species of people, because it says that Cain took a wife and his lineage created the first cities and music and the beginnings of civilized life. He couldn't have taken a wife if there weren't already people around the world for him to run into.
Adam and Eve had more children, and the begots begin in the Bible. There is a long passage about each first son, who their first son is and how old they were when they first had him, then how long they were alive before each died. The only exception is Enoch, who didn't die but was taken by God. This happens several times in the Bible and it usually means that a person was especially holy in their life.
Now we run into the story of Noah. But before Noah there is an interesting line. The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were beautiful and they took wives amongst them. Another name for the sons of God are Nephalim. They are also referred to as giants. This act is one of the things that makes God so angry that He wants to destroy the earth. Wikipedia puts forth that Nephalim's base in Hebrew is fallen and many scholars suggest that the giants refer to Angels. In my mind, this could be one of two things - that Angels (who are forbidden to marry in heaven) married women on earth and those women birthed half-angels "who were the heroes of old" (Genesis 6:4) or that fallen angels married women on earth and spread evil among man. I'm leaning toward the second, since the root of the word Nephalim is fallen.
Anyway, God sees that his creation has turned into a species so sinful that He is angry and decides that He wants to destroy it all because He wishes He had never created it. But there is one good, honest and faithful man on earth - Noah. So God tells Noah to build an ark, to take two (male and female) of every beast on land and bird in the sky, his sons and their wives and get on the ark when He tells him to. Something to note here is that it says nothing of Noah's neighbors laughing at him because of this. When I was in Sunday School we heard this story and it was said that everyone laughed at Noah for creating a boat but his faith was strong enough to get through that. I read nothing of the sort in my Bible. Perhaps it's in other Bibles, but its not in the New King James Bible or the version of the Tanakh that I've read.
The measurements in the Bible for the Ark makes it almost as big as a modern liner. Its bigger than a pilgrim ship and a clipper ship by alot. I suppose they needed the room for all those animals. Also there were three stories to this boat, and it was meant to float, not to sail.
When God told Noah, Noah gathered all the animals and his sons and their wives and boarded the ark. It rained for 40 days. The waters overcame the earth and raised the ark far above the mountains. Finally, God decided to stop the rain and eventually Noah's ark landed on top of a mountain. Noah does something a little weird now. He lets the raven out. There are no details as to why or to what purpose, but it states that he let a raven out of the ark. He also let out a dove and this was how he found out if it was dry outside. The dove came back a couple times with nothing, then one day the dove comes back with an olive leaf in it's mouth. Who knows what the raven did. Then God tells Noah to let everyone out of the ark and makes a covenant with them that He will never again destroy all of the world. And the covenant is remembered in the form of a rainbow.
Its interesting to note here that the Babylonian story of Gilgamesh incorporates almost the same story of a flood and a boat as Noah's story. Except in the Babylonian story, the Gods decide to destroy the world because human beings are being so noisy that they can't sleep. I feel that way about my dogs sometimes :)
Now there are a lot of begats again, and the descendants of Noah and his sons is traced. The one thing of note other than the different kingdoms is that Noah's son Cush begat Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter. He is referred to in some Biblical commentary to be the first king of in a kingdom on earth.
At this time the whole world spoke the same language. In Shinah, which is ancient Babylonia and in the kingdom of Nimrod the hunter, they decided to rebel against God and build a tower so tall that it reached the heavens. God saw this as the beginning of bigger rebellion and sin against him, so he divides the people up giving all people a different language so they can't plot against God anymore. This is where the different races and languages came from.
Abram was a decendant of Noah's son Shem. He went with Terah his father, Lot his nephew (whose parents had died earlier) and Sarai his wife to the land of Canaan. God spoke with Abram and told him to get out of his country and from his father's house and that he would be the father of nations and God would bless him and those that blessed him and curse those who cursed him. So Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and went on his way into Canaan.
When they approached the land of Egypt, Abram was scared that men would kill him to get to his wife, Sarai, because she was so beautiful. So he had her tell everyone that she was his sister (which, actually, they were half siblings). The Pharaoh's princes saw that she was beautiful and suggested her to Pharaoh who followed their suggestions and took her into his harem. Abram was given great wealth in trade for her. But then God plagued Egypt and the Pharoah found out why and yelled at Abram and asked why he had brought this upon him; that he might have taken Sarai as one of his wives. He makes Abram and his party take their belongings and leave town.
Now, by this time Abram and Lot had both acquired many herd animals and servants and it came time for them to split because their men weren't getting along well with each other and the land couldn't support both of their herds. So Lot went down to Sodom and Abram went to Canaan. There was a war in the area that Lot went, and Lot was taken captive. When Abram heard that Lot had been taken, he brought up an army of over three hundred among his men and attacked the troops that had invaded and stolen away Lot. He won, and thusly won the war for the kingdom that Lot had lived in. Lot and his household was returned.
To be continued....
The book starts with the creation of the world. Creation is said to have taken place in six days, however an interesting translation point is that the word for days can also be meant to mean generations. Here I think that rather than focusing on the time involved, the important point is that God thought His creation was good. Evolution is a fact of science, and I don't think that it is necessarily opposite to the teachings of creationism. It is possible that God created the world to evolve and that man evolved from whatever animal you wish to point to (monkeys, fish, etc). In the Bible it could say that God created man and woman on the sixth day (or generation) to point out that at the end of creating everything else, man had evolved to be what is thought of as modern man in the species. Here are the lists of what God made in each day:
1. Day and Night.
2. Earth's atmosphere.
3. Land and oceans are separated. Plants and trees are created.
4. Sun, moon and stars are created.
5. Sea creatures and birds.
6. Land animals and people are created.
7. Day of rest.
Now, skeptics may say that the Earth is not the oldest thing in the solar system, so it couldn't have happened this way. I agree that Earth is not the oldest thing in this universe and it must have happened in a different order. This doesn't disprove God, just that the people who wrote (or rather told, as the Bible was an oral tradition before it was written down) this creation story didn't understand science as we understand it now and wrote it in a way that they could understand. The message to take from this story isn't the days or generations, time period, specifics of the story - but the fact that God made the universe and He thought it was good. After each passage in the Bible describing the creation of each bit of the universe, God looks at what He has made and He says that it is good.
In the creation story, God is Elohim. When the story of Adam and Eve begins, God gives his more personal name - Yahweh Elohim. This to me says that God wants to be known personally by mankind where before he was the One High God, creator of all, now he is a personal God because he finally has made a being that is sentient enough to walk with Him.
God names his creations Adam and Eve. Adam in Hebrew means "mankind" and there are scholars who argue that at this point in the Bible, God creates a species of people not just one man. In this scenario, the story of the garden of Eden would be a metaphor for how the species fell, not a factually specific story. In the story, God makes Eve out of Adam's rib. Eve is described as a "helper" for Adam, which many people have in the past considered to mean Eve was to be inferior to Adam. I don't believe this is true as God Himself is described as a "helper" to mankind in the rest of the Old Testament. God is certainly not inferior to man, and Eve is not inferior to Adam.
God gives Adam and Eve the responsibility of respecting and caring for the Earth and all its inhabitants. In Hebrew, instead of the word till, the word that God uses is serve and keep. I think that this is especially important for today's people. Being that the Judaic people (Jews, Christians and Muslims) are the majority in most of the economically advanced countries, I assume that most people have forgotten that it is our job to preserve the earth instead of destroying it. Too many people remember the fact that God gave all of this to us, and forget that we're put in the position of servant to it - to keep the earth whole, unpolluted and as close to how it was at creation as possible. I think a great environmentalist action would be to remind the world's Christians (many of whom are at the highest positions in corporations that do the most polluting) that we have been tasked by God to take care of the earth.
Adam and Eve fall from the grace of God. God gives them Eden, where everything is always wonderful, no sin happens, lives are forever and all food and shelter is readily available. He lets them take from any tree or plant they want save one - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they eat from it, they will surely die. The serpent comes in and tells Eve that she won't die but will in fact be like the gods if she eats from that tree. Eve sees that the fruit looks good and she and Adam eat from it. They realize they are naked and sew clothing for their waists with fig leaves. God comes walking that evening to see Adam and Eve as He normally does daily and He can't find them. He calls out to them and they respond that they are hiding from Him. When He asks why they respond that they are hiding because they are naked. God realizes what they have done and ejects them from the Garden because now that they have knowledge of good and evil, He doesn't want them eating any more from the tree of life and living forever. In this way they would be like God. He ejects them and puts guards at the entrance so they can no longer enter Eden.
Now, if this is a metaphorical story, and Adam really did stand for mankind in that God created a species of people, this could be the point of history where man evolved into a creature sentient enough to know good from evil. The people creating the story use the tree of life to explain why their lives end. I don't know which I believe, but am open to both.
Adam and Eve become farmers and hunters and have two children Cain and Abel. Everyone knows the story. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a herder. They both brought offerings to God. God accepted Abel's offering of a lamb but rejected Cain's because his attitude towards offering to God was one of bitterness. It had nothing to do with the offering itself, but that God cannot be bought off with sacrifices and acts - God needs an attitude of faith as well. God sees what we do, but it is not enough to be a good person. We have to have faith and love for God in our minds and hearts. Cain, with his bad attitude, gets angry that God didn't accept his offering but did of Abel's, and kills his brother. When God asks him where his brother is, Cain says the famous words "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?" Because of what Cain did, he is exiled and marked by God so that no one will kill him. In the next bit, it supports the idea that God created a species of people, because it says that Cain took a wife and his lineage created the first cities and music and the beginnings of civilized life. He couldn't have taken a wife if there weren't already people around the world for him to run into.
Adam and Eve had more children, and the begots begin in the Bible. There is a long passage about each first son, who their first son is and how old they were when they first had him, then how long they were alive before each died. The only exception is Enoch, who didn't die but was taken by God. This happens several times in the Bible and it usually means that a person was especially holy in their life.
Now we run into the story of Noah. But before Noah there is an interesting line. The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were beautiful and they took wives amongst them. Another name for the sons of God are Nephalim. They are also referred to as giants. This act is one of the things that makes God so angry that He wants to destroy the earth. Wikipedia puts forth that Nephalim's base in Hebrew is fallen and many scholars suggest that the giants refer to Angels. In my mind, this could be one of two things - that Angels (who are forbidden to marry in heaven) married women on earth and those women birthed half-angels "who were the heroes of old" (Genesis 6:4) or that fallen angels married women on earth and spread evil among man. I'm leaning toward the second, since the root of the word Nephalim is fallen.
Anyway, God sees that his creation has turned into a species so sinful that He is angry and decides that He wants to destroy it all because He wishes He had never created it. But there is one good, honest and faithful man on earth - Noah. So God tells Noah to build an ark, to take two (male and female) of every beast on land and bird in the sky, his sons and their wives and get on the ark when He tells him to. Something to note here is that it says nothing of Noah's neighbors laughing at him because of this. When I was in Sunday School we heard this story and it was said that everyone laughed at Noah for creating a boat but his faith was strong enough to get through that. I read nothing of the sort in my Bible. Perhaps it's in other Bibles, but its not in the New King James Bible or the version of the Tanakh that I've read.
The measurements in the Bible for the Ark makes it almost as big as a modern liner. Its bigger than a pilgrim ship and a clipper ship by alot. I suppose they needed the room for all those animals. Also there were three stories to this boat, and it was meant to float, not to sail.
When God told Noah, Noah gathered all the animals and his sons and their wives and boarded the ark. It rained for 40 days. The waters overcame the earth and raised the ark far above the mountains. Finally, God decided to stop the rain and eventually Noah's ark landed on top of a mountain. Noah does something a little weird now. He lets the raven out. There are no details as to why or to what purpose, but it states that he let a raven out of the ark. He also let out a dove and this was how he found out if it was dry outside. The dove came back a couple times with nothing, then one day the dove comes back with an olive leaf in it's mouth. Who knows what the raven did. Then God tells Noah to let everyone out of the ark and makes a covenant with them that He will never again destroy all of the world. And the covenant is remembered in the form of a rainbow.
Its interesting to note here that the Babylonian story of Gilgamesh incorporates almost the same story of a flood and a boat as Noah's story. Except in the Babylonian story, the Gods decide to destroy the world because human beings are being so noisy that they can't sleep. I feel that way about my dogs sometimes :)
Now there are a lot of begats again, and the descendants of Noah and his sons is traced. The one thing of note other than the different kingdoms is that Noah's son Cush begat Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter. He is referred to in some Biblical commentary to be the first king of in a kingdom on earth.
At this time the whole world spoke the same language. In Shinah, which is ancient Babylonia and in the kingdom of Nimrod the hunter, they decided to rebel against God and build a tower so tall that it reached the heavens. God saw this as the beginning of bigger rebellion and sin against him, so he divides the people up giving all people a different language so they can't plot against God anymore. This is where the different races and languages came from.
Abram was a decendant of Noah's son Shem. He went with Terah his father, Lot his nephew (whose parents had died earlier) and Sarai his wife to the land of Canaan. God spoke with Abram and told him to get out of his country and from his father's house and that he would be the father of nations and God would bless him and those that blessed him and curse those who cursed him. So Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and went on his way into Canaan.
When they approached the land of Egypt, Abram was scared that men would kill him to get to his wife, Sarai, because she was so beautiful. So he had her tell everyone that she was his sister (which, actually, they were half siblings). The Pharaoh's princes saw that she was beautiful and suggested her to Pharaoh who followed their suggestions and took her into his harem. Abram was given great wealth in trade for her. But then God plagued Egypt and the Pharoah found out why and yelled at Abram and asked why he had brought this upon him; that he might have taken Sarai as one of his wives. He makes Abram and his party take their belongings and leave town.
Now, by this time Abram and Lot had both acquired many herd animals and servants and it came time for them to split because their men weren't getting along well with each other and the land couldn't support both of their herds. So Lot went down to Sodom and Abram went to Canaan. There was a war in the area that Lot went, and Lot was taken captive. When Abram heard that Lot had been taken, he brought up an army of over three hundred among his men and attacked the troops that had invaded and stolen away Lot. He won, and thusly won the war for the kingdom that Lot had lived in. Lot and his household was returned.
To be continued....
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Bible Through Women's Eyes
Before I start writing my post about Genesis, I want to copy an essay in the Bible commentary book I'm reading so that you can read it too. The book is called Zondervan Handbook To The Bible, and the essay is written by Claire Powell.
"The 20th century saw great changes world-wide in attitudes to the status and role of women. Education of women was one of the keys to opening new spheres of opportunity in the workplace, and in giving greater respect to work traditionally done by women.
A change of perspective on the Bible was also needed, not because women relate to God or see the Bible differently from men, or that all women think the same way, but because, until recently, almost all Biblical interpretation has been by men.
In secular culture and in the church, masculinity had become the norm of what it means to be human, and it was an easy step to marginalize, however unconsciously, the contribution and significance of women. Theologians had focused mainly on God's dealings with men, including as of most importance in theology and Christian history the things which men do, while women, their roles, faith, experience and interests took a back seat. Both women and men grew used to learning about faith from Biblical examples of men like Peter, while examples of women like Mary were subconsciously labeled 'for women only.'
It therefore benefits the whole church, women and men, to value the experience of faith through women in scripture, to recover the forgotten importance of women in the history of the church's mission, and to redress an imbalance where women and the feminine have tended in the past to be marginalized in translations of the Bible, in theology and in the church.
Genesis begins with the fact that men and women are created equal in the sight of God and each other. The creation of both is pronounced 'very good' (Genesis 1:31). Woman is created out of man, not to show subordination,, but to show that she is like him rather than like the other created beings, and to show the interdependence which Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 says is forever characteristic of the human race: 'In our life in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman was made from man, in the same way man is born of woman.'
Trouble between man and woman does not begin until disobedience brings about humanity's 'fall' in Genesis 3. Then, instead of the mutuality and complementarity of Eden, rivalry and competition begins. From Genesis 4 onwards, it is played out in fulfillment of the prediction that the man would rule over the woman (Genesis 3:16). This was not God's ideal, but part of the inevitable consequences of the fall.
If Genesis sets the scene, the drama is played out in the story of salvation in the rest of the Bible. there is no unequivocal command in the Old testament about the position of women, yet men are seend to prevail, assume power even in religious life, and the women seen rarely to be seen or heard. what is recorded is most often in the form of descriptive narrative. the question posed by this is whether the narrative asserts God's will for the roles and status of men and women in every culture for evermore, or simply describes what was happening at the time (in the same way as, for example, polygamy or slavery), which is for us to learn from , by emulating what was good, but correcting what was not. Scripture records many things that it does not advocate!
Is the Bible itself more biased toward men than women? And is patriarchy (in its widest sense, the system of men in power) justified by the very text itself? Is God treating women this way? Much more likely, what we find described is how women's status, function and experience fall short of God's ideal of equality. there are sufficient indications in the text itself that this is so.
Although much of the history focuses on the activities of men, even so, the women are there and play important parts. Leadership is not restricted to men. Both Deborah the judge (Judges 4) and Huldah the prophet (2 Kings 22) take responsible roles of leadership which are not commented on in the text as exceptional in any way. Instead they are respected.
The fact that most leaders were men represents the developed patriarchal culture of the time. there is no divine mandate for it. Women were excluded from the Old testament priesthood, but so were many of the men! And the New Testament presents us with a priesthood of all believers, male and female.
In the Old Testament, circumcision was the sign of belonging to God's covenant people - a sign physically performed exclusively on men. But with the birth of the church came a new sign of belonging. Baptism was physically inclusive of men and women, Jew and Gentile.
In the New testament Letters there is every indication that any restrictions on women apply within a specific culture and context. Where the particular details of a 1st century situation differ from ours, it is the principle behind the teaching which is properly binding for the all time. Thus, when Paul indicates in 1 Timothy 2 that women should not teach or have authority over men, he is addressing a particular problem of false teaching and wrongful authority in Ephesus. In such a context the women were to stop what they were doing.
the abiding principle for today is that women are forbidden to teach what is wrong, but therefore not forbidden to teach what is right! In this they may function as an object lessen for men, too, just as examples of men are usually understood as applicable to women.
We know from Acts and the Letters that women were prominent among the leaders in almost all the earliest house-church groups. Lydia was a leader in Philippi; Phoebe was a deacon in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1); Junia (the majority manuscript evidence points to Junia as a woman) was an apostle (Romans 16:7).
Believers are told by Paul to teach one another (eg. Colossians 3:16) and no caveat here bars women from teaching men. Priscilla is on record as teaching Apollos (Acts 18:26).
The New Testament lists of giftings (eg. Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4) do not specify gender at all. Given the patriarchal culture of the time, it is not surprising that men in leadership outnumbered women, but this is a description, not a blueprint.
One indication of this may be seen in 1 Timothy 3:2, where someone must be the 'husband of one wife' to qualify as a bishop. This could point to a necessity of being married, to a monogamous marriage or, most probably, to purity and faithfulness within marriage. Where the likelihood is that most leaders would have been men, and almost certainly married, this functions as a regulation for the known situation in Ephesus,, not a future prohibition for all women or single men! 1 Timothy 3:12 uses exactly the same stipulation about deacons, yet cannot mean that all deacons are to be men, since Paul calls Phoebe a deacon in Romans 16:1. Biblical leadership and responsibilities in the church are to be based on character, calling and Christian commitment, not gender.
Many people hold a mental image of God as male, or at least somehow more male than female. this is largely due to the images of God in early art, and to the description of God as 'He' and 'Father'.
Deuteronomy 4:15-16 reminds Israel that God is without form. they were not to make graven images (or presumably to form mental images) of God as either male or female. Male and female are biological differences in created humanity. Both sexes equally reflect an image of the Creator.
In languages which do not have an inclusive pronoun, either masculine or feminine must be used to reflect the fact that God's nature is personal, not impersonal. 'It' will not do. The use of 'He' for God points to god as a person. It is nothing to do with sex (that which is biologically determined) or gender (that which is socially described).
In recent years the female images of God in Scripture (such as birthing, or providing food) have been rediscovered. So too has the use of feminine terms for God, eg. the holy Spirit and wisdom in the Old Testament. Both masculine and feminine grammatical labels are used, but do not necessarily thereby convey being or essence.
There has also been progress in recognizing the social masculine bias inherent in many languages and the consequent marginalization of women - pushing them to the side, ignoring them, or regarding them as atypical of human experience. This is not the Biblical view. In the past, where God was seen as male, the fallacy lay in seeing male as more like God.
Jesus brought in no revolutionary movement to overturn the male dominated Jewish culture of his time. Yet he clearly broke with the norms of his day. He taught women; discussed theology with them; accepted worship from them; elevated their position in debates on divorce; and touches ritually 'unclean' women. these are not major by today's standards, but they were noticeable then, and they pushed out the boundaries of what was acceptable. This paved the way for his followers to do the same.
In the past, the fact that Jesus was born as a man was seen as giving greater status to men. If the point of the incarnation is 'God made male', then redemption of women is in doubt, or at least secondary, and jesus is better represented in the priesthood by men than by women.
But the Bible nowhere makes the maleness of Jesus a point of comparison,, only his humanity, which is common to both women and men. And the New Testament clearly teaches a priesthood of all believers; all believers; all are able to approach Jesus and all are able to represent him on earth.
In the incarnation Jesus represents a model of humanity, not of masculinity. Women, as much as men, may find their pattern in Him and follow His example in every respect."
"The 20th century saw great changes world-wide in attitudes to the status and role of women. Education of women was one of the keys to opening new spheres of opportunity in the workplace, and in giving greater respect to work traditionally done by women.
A change of perspective on the Bible was also needed, not because women relate to God or see the Bible differently from men, or that all women think the same way, but because, until recently, almost all Biblical interpretation has been by men.
In secular culture and in the church, masculinity had become the norm of what it means to be human, and it was an easy step to marginalize, however unconsciously, the contribution and significance of women. Theologians had focused mainly on God's dealings with men, including as of most importance in theology and Christian history the things which men do, while women, their roles, faith, experience and interests took a back seat. Both women and men grew used to learning about faith from Biblical examples of men like Peter, while examples of women like Mary were subconsciously labeled 'for women only.'
It therefore benefits the whole church, women and men, to value the experience of faith through women in scripture, to recover the forgotten importance of women in the history of the church's mission, and to redress an imbalance where women and the feminine have tended in the past to be marginalized in translations of the Bible, in theology and in the church.
Genesis begins with the fact that men and women are created equal in the sight of God and each other. The creation of both is pronounced 'very good' (Genesis 1:31). Woman is created out of man, not to show subordination,, but to show that she is like him rather than like the other created beings, and to show the interdependence which Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 says is forever characteristic of the human race: 'In our life in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman was made from man, in the same way man is born of woman.'
Trouble between man and woman does not begin until disobedience brings about humanity's 'fall' in Genesis 3. Then, instead of the mutuality and complementarity of Eden, rivalry and competition begins. From Genesis 4 onwards, it is played out in fulfillment of the prediction that the man would rule over the woman (Genesis 3:16). This was not God's ideal, but part of the inevitable consequences of the fall.
If Genesis sets the scene, the drama is played out in the story of salvation in the rest of the Bible. there is no unequivocal command in the Old testament about the position of women, yet men are seend to prevail, assume power even in religious life, and the women seen rarely to be seen or heard. what is recorded is most often in the form of descriptive narrative. the question posed by this is whether the narrative asserts God's will for the roles and status of men and women in every culture for evermore, or simply describes what was happening at the time (in the same way as, for example, polygamy or slavery), which is for us to learn from , by emulating what was good, but correcting what was not. Scripture records many things that it does not advocate!
Is the Bible itself more biased toward men than women? And is patriarchy (in its widest sense, the system of men in power) justified by the very text itself? Is God treating women this way? Much more likely, what we find described is how women's status, function and experience fall short of God's ideal of equality. there are sufficient indications in the text itself that this is so.
Although much of the history focuses on the activities of men, even so, the women are there and play important parts. Leadership is not restricted to men. Both Deborah the judge (Judges 4) and Huldah the prophet (2 Kings 22) take responsible roles of leadership which are not commented on in the text as exceptional in any way. Instead they are respected.
The fact that most leaders were men represents the developed patriarchal culture of the time. there is no divine mandate for it. Women were excluded from the Old testament priesthood, but so were many of the men! And the New Testament presents us with a priesthood of all believers, male and female.
In the Old Testament, circumcision was the sign of belonging to God's covenant people - a sign physically performed exclusively on men. But with the birth of the church came a new sign of belonging. Baptism was physically inclusive of men and women, Jew and Gentile.
In the New testament Letters there is every indication that any restrictions on women apply within a specific culture and context. Where the particular details of a 1st century situation differ from ours, it is the principle behind the teaching which is properly binding for the all time. Thus, when Paul indicates in 1 Timothy 2 that women should not teach or have authority over men, he is addressing a particular problem of false teaching and wrongful authority in Ephesus. In such a context the women were to stop what they were doing.
the abiding principle for today is that women are forbidden to teach what is wrong, but therefore not forbidden to teach what is right! In this they may function as an object lessen for men, too, just as examples of men are usually understood as applicable to women.
We know from Acts and the Letters that women were prominent among the leaders in almost all the earliest house-church groups. Lydia was a leader in Philippi; Phoebe was a deacon in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1); Junia (the majority manuscript evidence points to Junia as a woman) was an apostle (Romans 16:7).
Believers are told by Paul to teach one another (eg. Colossians 3:16) and no caveat here bars women from teaching men. Priscilla is on record as teaching Apollos (Acts 18:26).
The New Testament lists of giftings (eg. Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4) do not specify gender at all. Given the patriarchal culture of the time, it is not surprising that men in leadership outnumbered women, but this is a description, not a blueprint.
One indication of this may be seen in 1 Timothy 3:2, where someone must be the 'husband of one wife' to qualify as a bishop. This could point to a necessity of being married, to a monogamous marriage or, most probably, to purity and faithfulness within marriage. Where the likelihood is that most leaders would have been men, and almost certainly married, this functions as a regulation for the known situation in Ephesus,, not a future prohibition for all women or single men! 1 Timothy 3:12 uses exactly the same stipulation about deacons, yet cannot mean that all deacons are to be men, since Paul calls Phoebe a deacon in Romans 16:1. Biblical leadership and responsibilities in the church are to be based on character, calling and Christian commitment, not gender.
Many people hold a mental image of God as male, or at least somehow more male than female. this is largely due to the images of God in early art, and to the description of God as 'He' and 'Father'.
Deuteronomy 4:15-16 reminds Israel that God is without form. they were not to make graven images (or presumably to form mental images) of God as either male or female. Male and female are biological differences in created humanity. Both sexes equally reflect an image of the Creator.
In languages which do not have an inclusive pronoun, either masculine or feminine must be used to reflect the fact that God's nature is personal, not impersonal. 'It' will not do. The use of 'He' for God points to god as a person. It is nothing to do with sex (that which is biologically determined) or gender (that which is socially described).
In recent years the female images of God in Scripture (such as birthing, or providing food) have been rediscovered. So too has the use of feminine terms for God, eg. the holy Spirit and wisdom in the Old Testament. Both masculine and feminine grammatical labels are used, but do not necessarily thereby convey being or essence.
There has also been progress in recognizing the social masculine bias inherent in many languages and the consequent marginalization of women - pushing them to the side, ignoring them, or regarding them as atypical of human experience. This is not the Biblical view. In the past, where God was seen as male, the fallacy lay in seeing male as more like God.
Jesus brought in no revolutionary movement to overturn the male dominated Jewish culture of his time. Yet he clearly broke with the norms of his day. He taught women; discussed theology with them; accepted worship from them; elevated their position in debates on divorce; and touches ritually 'unclean' women. these are not major by today's standards, but they were noticeable then, and they pushed out the boundaries of what was acceptable. This paved the way for his followers to do the same.
In the past, the fact that Jesus was born as a man was seen as giving greater status to men. If the point of the incarnation is 'God made male', then redemption of women is in doubt, or at least secondary, and jesus is better represented in the priesthood by men than by women.
But the Bible nowhere makes the maleness of Jesus a point of comparison,, only his humanity, which is common to both women and men. And the New Testament clearly teaches a priesthood of all believers; all believers; all are able to approach Jesus and all are able to represent him on earth.
In the incarnation Jesus represents a model of humanity, not of masculinity. Women, as much as men, may find their pattern in Him and follow His example in every respect."
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