Biblical Gender Roles?

[gigglygirly]

Just something I have been thinking about!

I read a few blogs and have seen posts about men and women having different roles designed by God and described in the Bible. These posts generally talk about husbands being the head of the home, men being stong / dominant / providers and women being softer / submissive / helpers.

What are your views on gender roles?

It's rubbish IMHO but then being a woman I would say that wouldn't I?

I think it's less about obedience etc and more about men and women respecting one another's skills and good points. Acknowledging that some things I do might be done better and others he might have strengths in.

I don't see any gender specifics in it though. The Bible represents a different time and you take the positive gist of it and apply it to how you live now. So I am not "a little wife" doing all the childcare and housework but a woman with strengths and weaknesses like others.

You can see the benefits for men but it is a bit odd for wives. Can't really see what they get out of it.

It seems like those that follow it do so because it is the traditional Christian way and is in the Bible.

Yet there are strong women in the bible, breaking gender stereotypes. In the OT there is Deborah, and then there are various church leaders referred to by name in Paul's letters, Prisca and Junia to name but a few!

Lydia would break the mould.

I believe God made us all equal but not all identical even within genders.

I believe we all have different calls on our lives and as part of that we are walking towards becoming the better version of ourselves rather than all the same even if we are the same gender.

If you're genuinely interested, there's a new book called 'God's good design' by Claire Smith that discusses in some detail without being too long to bear.

I am intrigued by the church in acts 1: it lists the disciples, mentions Mary and the brethren of Jesus, and 'women' . It then goes on to say there were there about 120.. could it be that 105 out of those were women?

I've read some of that book and really disagree with many aspects of it. There are ways of reading the 'tricky' Bible verses about women without needing to say that every one of theose verses must be taken absolutely literally - if they were all to be taken absoutely literally, we'd run into problems pretty quickly because 1 Corinthians 11:5 describes a waomen praying or prophesying, presumably in church (cf. 14:4; 'those who prophesy build up the church'), whereas 1 Cor. 14:34 women are 'silent.' So the 'silence', whatever that means, has to be somehow balanced with the praying or prophesying. And that's just within one letter, whose authorship is agreed...balancing the ideas between different texts and writers is obviously more complex yet. All of which makes the Bible much more interesting to me, personally...

Given that most of the patriarchs were in incestuous relationships then I don't really care what their views on the role of women are. Someone who is married to their sister isn't really someone I want to listen to.

Which patriarch married his sister, Faerie? Not doubting you here, just can't remember. Abraham pretended that his wife was his sister...

She was actually his step sister. I always picture him justifying his untruthfulness to himself.. "well, she is my sister, so ner". Very childish of me, I know.

Sorry, half sister. Genesis 20.12. Hth.

Don't forget Jael and what she did with tentpegs!

And Judith (there's a poster who frequents this topic who is called HolofernesHead... I'm not quite sure why but I wouldn't diss her )

Well wouldn't ya know? I never noticed that before. Here's a question though - so, Abrsham married his half-sister; does that invalidate everything the Bible says about marriage?

Grimma - I love the Jael and Deborah story! Kind of reminds me of Buffy the Vampire slayer!

Do bible literalists think Adam and Eve had some daughters (not even worth mentioning) who bred with Cain and Seth then?

I am not a bible literalist, so wouldn't know... but would be interested in finding out :)

Well, they lived almost a thousand years
yeah, right. I remember my minister trying to rationalise the ages ascribed to Methusela etc and deciding there must have been a mix-up between months and years. I wasn't very convinced at the time - even quite young I could see that trying to make sense of myths was pretty pointless.

Abraham was married to his half sister, his son married the child of her full brother. Moses's parents were aunt and nephew, Lot slept with his daughters after offering them to be raped by the townsfolk. Noah was a drunk who exposed himself to his sons.

Abraham's brother Nachor also married his niece, Jacob's son Rueben slept with his stepmother. King David's son rapes his half sister in an attempt to force a marriage. Also if all humanity came from Eve, Cain must have married a sister.

Plus all the cousin marriage, which technically isn't incest.

Here's an interesting exercise to show how much our culture and presuppositions shape our reading of the Bible.

In Genesis, it says that,

'it was not good for Adam to be alone, so God created Eve, a helper' (I paraphrase).........your instant response is that (strong and ruggedly independant) Adam needed a housekeeper/minion/'lesser' companion, no?

Now just imagine the text said, instead,

'It was not good for Eve to be alone, so God created Adam, a helper..'......isn't your immediate assumption that poor weak ikkle Eve needed a big strong man to help her get by in the big, bad world?

Not for a minute do I suppose that either of those reactions would be your considered assessment of the passage, but the first time I was led through it I was shocked by how much cultural 'baggage' I read back into a story that I think is really about interdependance and companionship.

I prefer the Genesis 1 version of creation 'male and female he created them' that way neither gender if inferior or superior.

As for Gen 2-3 of course Adam needed company look at what men get up when they are on their own.

Heeheehee Faerie, that is quite some summary of the Hebrew Bible! Personally I'd way be way more as to its authenticity if it were a naice, twentieth-century liberal story. In fact I think I'd be bored stiff by it.

Timetosmile - your post reminds me of Psalm 46 - 'God will help her in the turning of the morning' - that 'help' is the same word in Hebrew as the word used of Eve in Gen. 2:18 (except that obviously it's a noun in Gen and a verb in Psalm 46). So the idea of the 'helper' being a minion is blown way out of the water! Which was your point, I know...