Women in the Bible

The guest speaker for class was interesting, though I think she was disappointed that not many of us had more pressing questions about the role of women in the Bible. To be honest, I didn't find the guests presentation to be more centered around the role of women in the bible than any of our other classroom discussions, so I was a bit disappointed. Still, she brought to my attention some important points I have not been fully aware of while reading the Bible.

Important Point #1: Women are largely represented in the Bible in the form of metaphor.

Important Point #2: Gender Assymetry: Metaphors of masculinity are on the top while metaphors of feminity are on the bottom/distrusted/etc though many men in the Bible are represented as incredibly feminine characters.

Important Point #3: When Israel is mentioned in the Bible, is is over and over again likened to a woman and when it is likened to a woman SHE is always characterized as unfaithful. Why is that?

Important Point #4: Don't you dare say the women in the Bible are all prostitutes (at least not to our guest speaker)

Two things were most interesting to me during the presentation. Whenver I read about Lot and his Daughters, I get an uneasy feeling about the whole situation. After all, what kind of daughters would convince their own father to get so drunk he would sleep with them (and not just one of them, but the whole lot of them)? I have always thought about this story with a modern twist and this would just not be considered 'ok' in our society, no matter what kind of tale a person would like to spin around it. After the presentation, I realized Lot's daughters were no fools, rapists, or rabid incestual beings; they were simply level headed and like minded women who were trying to preserve their history. They certainly were not doing it for pleasure or because they secretly had a dark wish to sleep with their own father. These women, like so many women in the Bible, are the turning points in the story and the men would be nowhere without the women. Maybe they weren't sick... they were smart.

The other interesting thing to me about the class was her representation of the 'menstruating female' in the Bible. There is nothing about a menstruating female the Bible likes, made abundantly clear by all the rules laid out for those who come in contact with a woman on her period. Dr. Sexson has mentioned this in class before, but if people still felt presently the way they used to feel about menstruation, men would have time to do little else but scrub and cleanse themselves. Actually it would probably be pretty comical to see that happening all the time. I was having a discussion about this with a male friend of mine and he said he would rather not discuss 'periods' because he does not care for them. He does not CARE for them? Well, it's a good thing he doesn't have to actually have them once a month, never has to carry a child to term, and will NEVER have to go through the absolutely painful and wonderful experience of child birth. As a woman, reading the Bible's take on menstruation was pretty difficult for me, especially when I think of the men who probably instituted those rules.