”What the Bible ACTUALLY says about women...
I'm deconstructing what the church teaches about women. Most of the church (though not the entire church) teaches that husbands are supposed to RULE over their wives.
Wow has this done a LOT of damage to marriages and done a LOT of damage to women. This is wrong, and it deserves to be called out.
I went to seminary. Graduated in 2010. I have a Master of Divinity degree. I read the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew. I'm not trying to brag or boast about that, just bringing receipts. I never did get fully ordained, though I was licensed for a while.
But since then, I've been reading the Bible for myself in the original languages, and something I know for CERTAIN is that the English translations are all corrupt.
When I read the Bible, I read the original languages alongside the ESV translation, which is supposed to be a fairly accurate translation. But please know that when I do so, I get very frustrated with the English translations - all of them - in every verse.
Every single verse of the Bible is pretty much mistranslated. Part of that is because translation is very difficult. It's impossible to do it accurately.
But what does the Bible actually say about women? In Gen 2:18, English translations refer to a phrase "help meet", as in the King James, or "helper fit for him" in the ESV.
But the Hebrew words this phrase translates mean something different. First, the word that's translated as "helper", which we take to mean something like "assistant", and we understand to mean something like "secretary", actually means something more like "ally". Think of when one country is attacked by another, and they call upon an allied country to help them defend themselves. Does that sound like a "lesser" person?
Next, the word that's translated as "meet" or "fitting" actually means something else too. It literally means "as his equal" or "as his opposite". Kind of like a reversed mirror image.
Back in Gen 1:27, it says God made Adam (not man, ADAM) "in the image of God...male and female he created them." It is not the case that men are created in the image of God, and then females are something else. Male and female TOGETHER constitute the image of God.
And God is described, even right there in Gen 1, as a plurality. The word for God in Gen 1 is Elohim, which is a PLURAL word, which SHOULD be translated as "gods" in my opinion, and when Jesus quotes from Psalm 82, "I said you are gods", he quotes it in the Greek (he's quoting the Septuagint translation that was common at the time), and he quotes it with the PLURAL word "gods". And the Hebrew word there in Psalm 82 is ELOHIM.
There's a lot to say on THAT, but at the very least, God reveals himself to be a plurality, and that's why Adam being ALONE is "not good", as it says in Gen 2:18. So God created Eve in order to COMPLETE his creation of humanity in his image.
So as created, Adam and Eve were EQUAL. They were ALLIES. They were in this thing called life TOGETHER. Equal partners.
After the fall, in Gen 3:16, when Eve is cursed, it says "toward your man, your desire, BUT he will rule you". Yes, this DOES mean he will subjugate her, or something like that.
But here, we don't need to explain this away as if it doesn't mean he will have authority, or that somehow it doesn't mean something bad, or that it can still mean they'll be equal.
No - after the fall, it means that Adam will OPPRESS Eve. And if we just glance casually at history, we'll see that yes, it's very clear that men have OPPRESSED women throughout history.
But this is a CURSE! It's a PUNISHMENT!
And Christians seem to think this is a GOOD thing and the way things OUGHT to be!
But Paul - the one who supposedly hates women, says:
"Gal. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
And that's even the ESV translation. He's talking about how things ARE in the church, in the visible expression of the coming Kingdom of God.
Jesus said that in the resurrection, there will be no more marriage between male and female, because we'll all be like the angels (Matt 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:34-36).
So in the coming age, there will no longer be a male/female distinction.
So in Gal 3:28, is Paul saying that male-female relations should look like the CURSE??? Or is he saying that in the church, male-female relations should look more like the coming kingdom of God?
He's CLEARLY suggesting that it should reflect what's coming, what we're going TOWARD, not the curse of this fallen world.
The CURSE in Gen 3:16 isn't portraying how things SHOULD be, nor is it a command to men to subjugate women.
Many men in the church love to quote from Eph 5, which in English translations says "wives submit to your husbands". The translations don't get it right.
In fact, in Eph 5:33, there's no command to women. There's only a command to MEN. It basically says, men, if you want your wife to respect you, then love her as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? By beating her? By enforcing obedience? NO. He loved the church by sacrificing himself in her place, but GIVING HIMSELF, giving his LIFE to save her.
The church loves to insist that women OUGHT to submit to their husbands, but it HATES calling men out for their failures.
And the rest of the passage in Eph 5 is horribly misunderstood. Culturally, as a result of the curse on Eve, yes, at the time of the writing of the Bible, wives were considered under the authority of their husbands. But in the rest of the passage, it says that everyone in the church ought to be submitting to one another, JUST AS wives submit to their husbands.
Is this a COMMAND for wives to submit to their husbands? Nope. It's a COMMAND TO MEN to submit to everyone in the church, just as their wives ALREADY submit to them. And THEN it goes even DEEPER, calling men - who thought themselves in authority OVER their wives, to follow Christ's example of laying down his LIFE for his bride, the church.
And he even QUOTES from Gen 2, before the fall, to help make his point. He's reminding them of the EQUALITY that men and women had BEFORE the fall, and attempting to persuade men to RESTORE that equality.”
- exert from anonymous Facebook post. Published with permission.
This is very profound for me and I really want to learn more. Im so sick of patriarchy being forced to us through Bible.
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