Biblical Ponderings

[wlotus]

To the woman [God] said, “...Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
~Genesis 3:16b, NKJV

In the later years of my identification as an evangelical Christian, I understood this account of God's word to Eve after Adam and she sinned to be a warning: God was warning Eve that because they were no longer sinless, men would oppress women, rather than women and men living and ruling the earth (not each other) as complete equals as Eve and Adam had done up to that point (Genesis 1:27-30). But it was only this afternoon that I realized God made no mention to Adam of a backlash against men because of the way they had oppressed women. It couldn't be because God (as the writer of this account knew God) did not know; according to the Bible, God knows everything. So was that part of God's word left out by the writers (or later editors), who were products of their misogynistic culture? Or, perhaps, did God not say anything to Adam about the inevitable backlash, because he knew Adam's sinful state would not allow him to hear and understand the danger of giving in to that sinful desire to rule over women?

Discuss.

Comments

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

The thing that confuses me is the idea that one God is Jewish and the other is Christian. The way I was raised is that it is the same God in both the Old and New Testaments, and at some point, for some reason, God changed how God dealt with the Jewish people, moving from a law-based relationship to a redemptive one.

The first Christians, after all, were Jews (and devout Jews, at that), and they had no interest in sharing their belief in Jesus Christ as Messiah with non-Jews. As the account goes, it took a divine revelation from God to the Apostle Peter for Peter to preach the gospel to a household of Gentiles who were interested in learning more. Before that, Christianity was a purely Jewish thing. Christians who use Christianity to justify their anti-Semetic prejudices totally miss that aspect of their religion's foundation.

[iswari.livejournal.com]

I believe much of that particular idea would be traced back to Marcion, in the early church:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion

His theology was eventually officially repudiated, but continued to have some influence.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Marcion seems to be tied to the Apostle Paul, not the Apostle Peter, according to that article. Peter was the first Christian to preach the gospel of Christ to non-Jews, if the account in the book of Acts can be believed.

[nimbrethil.livejournal.com]

This blows my mind completely. I know a woman who adamantly believes that Jesus literally ceased to be a Jew at some point, and who blames all Jews, everywhere, then and now, for his execution.

I know that blame for the murder of Christ is part of the psychology of Christian anti-semitism, but having a person actually express the belief that every Jew ever born in history is personally responsible for nailing him on the cross...it's mind-blogging.

She's an extremely devout woman, but when I tried to discuss the matter with her once, pointing out that Christ's mother, relatives, and closest disciples were all Jews, all I got was a blank expression.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

More than likely, this brand of anti-semitism comes from believing uneducated preachers who did not actually study the scriptures or history.