First Person: Misogyny in the Bible” by Hershel Shanks originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2017. However, Mary’s story is one of strength, as Jesus healed her from demonic spirits ( Mark 16:9) and she went on to minister to men and women alike, attesting of Jesus’s power and miracles. She is also credited for being the most loyal to Jesus, even when His disciples had given up on His return ( Mark 6:11). Ware countered that appeals to Scripture have been used to support anti-female attitudes and that the non-sexist parts of the Bible are not given similar prominance. Even though the worldly cultures throughout time have oppressed and subjected women to abuse, God highly values women as people who are created in His image and for His glory ( Isaiah 43:7). 4. Respond with Grace and Love To find and maintain a spiritual balance between the God-ordained positions of authority, we must look to Scripture. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old, and in it we find principles that tell us the correct line of authority and the cure for sin, the ill of all humanity, and that includes discrimination based upon gender.

Many who take approach #3 rely on historical contextualization of a different sort than we saw in #2. Some see a chronological development from the egalitarian views in the undisputed Pauline letters to an endorsement of cultural accommodation and patriarchy in the later letters like 1 Timothy. For these folks, there is a Pauline equality tradition preserved in Galatians 3:28 that the earliest Jesus-followers were trying to enact, but that drew criticism from outsiders. 1 Tim. 2 is evidence, they say, that over time, the church turned to patriarchy as a means of placating hostile outsiders who were suspicious of Christians. For those who take interpretive option #3, such dividing lines around gender are more harmful than healing today and ought to be rejected. This interpretive option considers New Testament texts as only one side of arguments that were ongoing in the early church (with no privileged status simply because they were later included in the Christian canon). If you disagree with something the an author said, consider framing your response as, “I hear you as saying _________. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, here’s w As Western culture abandons its biblical roots, it predictably struggles to value women properly. On one extreme, it sexually commodifies women based on physical appearance. Yet, on the other, it suggests a woman's worth comes from sexual expression.What is the task of Christians, Ware asked, in confronting this ideology of the church and its Bible?

Jesus’s regard for women was much different from that of his contemporaries. Evans terms Jesus’s approach to women as “revolutionary” for his era. 2 But was his treatment of women out of character with Old Testament revelation, or with later New Testament practice? Other chapters in this volume will show that it was not. Disciples Come in Two Sexes, Male and FemaleRead the text that someone (or yourself) might have issues with, and try looking at it from multiple translations. See what the person (or you) thinks, and how sexism might be interpreted from this passage. What you will discover instead is that God believed in women as much as He did in men, seeing they were able to do anything because God created them to be leaders in faith. Strong, Resilient Women Charm may be false, and prettiness may be vain; [but] the woman that fears Jehovah is the one that procures praise for herself.

Questions about the New Testament and women raise even larger questions about authority, inspiration, relationship, human nature, and gender broadly construed (not just the male/female binary). We can’t discuss these matters unless we know where and why we disagree about biblical interpretation. Christians who care about God’s love and justice cannot ignore these conversations. There’s simply too much at stake. If you want to make a claim about women based on the texts in the New Testament, you can find your verses. The texts simply do not speak with one voice regarding women. How, then, should we adjudicate between these disparate messages, especially as Christians who hold these texts to be the Word of God for the people of God? How can we hope to communicate with Christians who hold different views about women/gender if we do not understand their approach to interpretation? In fact, the scholars said, the Hebrew original can only refer to the pains of labor and the only correct translation gives the verse a female image. At a recent meeting of the largest academic organization in my field, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), another scholar told me God would bless me if I teach “from behind a lectern” but not if I teach “from behind a pulpit.” “After all,” he declared, “Paul had some things to say about that.” He promptly walked away. The Bible affirms the equality of both men and women. Jesus died for all people, and salvation is offered to everyone by grace through faith. Scripture affirms the value of women and men, something the Lord has always done. We need to tell critics the truth about the Bible in love and grace.Approaches #1 and #2 above generally seek to value or redeem New Testament texts about women for our world today. Advocates of #3 instead consider texts like 1 Timothy 2 (sometimes dubbed “texts of terror”) to be harmful to women and thus reject them outright. Reading with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” or reading “against the grain,” these interpreters consider oppressive tendencies in a text to be traces of humanity’s fallen nature. Lastly, to anyone who reads this and hasn’t had the experience of the church and Christianity treating you with the dignity and honor you deserve as an image bearer of God himself, I am really sorry. The Archbishop managed - quite compellingly, in my opinion - to reconcile the seemingly sexist discourse of the Bible with our understanding of God as loving his children equally, who created both men and women in His image, and who would never regard a person as being of greater worth - or choose to bestow greater status on them - simply by virtue of their being a male. So choose your Bible translations carefully. Gender-accuracy matters and is important for all of us.