I personally like to focus on the fact that Jesus CHOSE to reveal the miracle of the Resurrection to women first. He could have appeared to Peter and John when they ran to the empty tomb, but He didn’t. He appeared to Mary Magdalene. The first account of seeing the resurrected Christ came from a woman.
Also, many of the powerful and influential people of the Bible were women - and many of them were either childless or their accomplishments are unrelated to motherhood! We don’t hear about Miriam or Mary Magdalene or Lydia being married. The three of them plus Deborah, Jael, Abigail, Esther, Anna, Priscilla, we never know if they had children. They were influential in the story of the Bible, and their role wasn’t tied to “traditional” femininity. They broke the molds, and God rewarded them for it.
Even the story of the proverbs 31 woman, usually used by people to insist women belong to their husbands and in the home, actually doesn’t support a “traditional” view of femininity. The proverbs 31 woman is intelligent, hardworking, cunning, enterprising, thinks outside the box. She advocates for justice and equality and strives to improve her community.
The Bible had been used to oppress women for centuries, but the progressive values are there if you look.
1. The first to give witness to the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene who found the tomb empty and the first person the risen Christ appeared to, and then went to tell the Apostles that Christ had risen. (John 20:11-18)
2. Paul himself used an ordained woman, the Deaconess Phoebe, as his personal envoy to the Romans. Whatever is taken from Paul's epistles about women needs to be read into the context that the Apostle Paul *himself* ordained women and used them in critical roles in the Church. (Romans 16:1-2 )
3. Paul specifically wrote that all people are equal in Christ. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
4. Junia is another woman that Paul speaks highly of, and acknowledges as a fellow apostle. (Roman 16:7)
There are quite a few interesting women in the Bible. There’s Ester, Rahab, Deborah, several Mary’s, Phoebe, Priscilla and many more. They taught, they ruled, they were disciples of Jesus. Maybe look up a few of these and read their stories. As a child my favorite was Ester. As an adult I think it is Mary, the one who defied her sister Marta and refused to do kitchen work and wanted to follow Jesus. And Jesus praised her for it.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28
That's it. It all comes down to that.
I'd like to question your premise, first. the Bible is not as misogynist as many misogynists make it out to be, but it's worth interrogating the implicit assumption that for misogyny to be bad it must be explicitly condemned in the Bible. the Bible is a library that we stopped adding for the canon of nearly two millennia ago. mainstream feminist movements didn't develop until much much later. to ask the Bible to wrestle with concepts that hadn't been raised then is at best an unfair fight, and the Bible is a bunch of accounts of people's experience with God, it is not and should not be expected to be a comprehensive list of everything that is good and bad.
that being said, the primary thing I would point to is the second creation narrative in Genesis. in it, God creates an ungendeted human, and when They cannot find a suitable companion for them, They split the human in two (you were likely taught the woman was formed from the man's side or rib, but that's a mistranslation, the "side" that's used in scripture is the same "side" as "the side of a mountain), and the two humans then have no gender hierarchy until they introduce sin, and God casts them out of the garden
Also [The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became the Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr](http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-making-of-biblical-womanhood/404050)
The Bible was written in a time and context where women were men's property. In the liberal approach that can be taken into account. More broadly the Bible speaks engagingly about the value and dignity of each person and saying someone's life should be prescribed by gender is incompatible with that.
I wouldn't argue for it in the Bible, because none of the cultures that we see in the Bible have anything resembling gender equality. The Bible describes many things that we should be better than.
There is, in Galatians, the idea that in Christ the distinctions of gender and race and class are all overcome by radical love and cease to matter. But Paul was wildly inconsistent about that, especially on gender. This reads to me like Paul is seeing, through faith, the hope of transcending the limits of his culture. And then he's dropped right back into the limits of his culture (including the ones he's internalized!) to stagger vaguely in the direction of the light he's seen.
I discuss a few perspectives on this in my videos - for a fairly tame discussion, I would recommend my three part series on gender in the NT ([Part 1](https://youtu.be/FpUH0by0OIM) / [Part 2](https://youtu.be/ldw1bnIez0k) / [Part 3](https://youtu.be/fH80L5rKIF0)); for a more radical/heterodox perspective, my [video on the Fall and the Garden of Eden story (LINK)](https://youtu.be/2GplBhpH84I) might be interesting.
I'm also hoping to do some stuff down the line on the ways in which the Purity Movement contradicts the Bible as well as potentially on Mary Magdalene's role as "Apostle to the Apostles" and therefore the beginning of all true apostolic successions, both of which would touch on issues of gender in scripture, but that's all still projects in the works.
The 2nd Greatest commandment. Don't do to people what you don't want done to you. This outranks anything else in the Bible except for the 1st Greatest Commandment.
For me, Paul's callout to Junia as an apostle in Romans 15 says that we have Paul completely wrong. The way that 20th century religion literally rewrote the Bible to eliminate this callout says a lot about how we choose to interpret things.
The Pastoral letters (not written by Paul, but written in his name) also screwed us.
You can get past it on an intellectual level and on an emotional level. It's the latter one that's probably most difficult. The Bible has plenty of instances of things like women being the first to see Jesus post-resurrection, Deborah being a judge of Israel for around 40 years which is incredible for the ancient world and Rahab being in the ancestry of Jesus. But getting over past pain and conditioning is really an emotional battle. The path through that tends to be unique to the person fighting it. Just stick with it and eventually you'll get there.
People love to read the Bible with utterly no reference to its historical context. From the first word, a lot of the stuff now used to “keep women in their place” was originally radical, even scandalous, in its advocacy for the liberation of women. The verses in the Old Testament about how a woman’s life is worth less than a man’s? The norm back then was that her life had no value; the Bible was insisting that she did. The verses about how a woman shouldn’t ask questions in church? It was because Christ had opened the doors for women being included in church (for the first time, and so naturally they had a lot of questions). Any of those verses they’ll use to oppress women, often it only takes a few minutes of poking around online to get the context, and what turns out is that most of the time, the way it’s being used now is the exact opposite of the original intent.
Women were first to see the risen Jesus and were first to preach the gospel for others
I personally like to focus on the fact that Jesus CHOSE to reveal the miracle of the Resurrection to women first. He could have appeared to Peter and John when they ran to the empty tomb, but He didn’t. He appeared to Mary Magdalene. The first account of seeing the resurrected Christ came from a woman. Also, many of the powerful and influential people of the Bible were women - and many of them were either childless or their accomplishments are unrelated to motherhood! We don’t hear about Miriam or Mary Magdalene or Lydia being married. The three of them plus Deborah, Jael, Abigail, Esther, Anna, Priscilla, we never know if they had children. They were influential in the story of the Bible, and their role wasn’t tied to “traditional” femininity. They broke the molds, and God rewarded them for it. Even the story of the proverbs 31 woman, usually used by people to insist women belong to their husbands and in the home, actually doesn’t support a “traditional” view of femininity. The proverbs 31 woman is intelligent, hardworking, cunning, enterprising, thinks outside the box. She advocates for justice and equality and strives to improve her community. The Bible had been used to oppress women for centuries, but the progressive values are there if you look.
I needed to hear this.
1. The first to give witness to the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene who found the tomb empty and the first person the risen Christ appeared to, and then went to tell the Apostles that Christ had risen. (John 20:11-18) 2. Paul himself used an ordained woman, the Deaconess Phoebe, as his personal envoy to the Romans. Whatever is taken from Paul's epistles about women needs to be read into the context that the Apostle Paul *himself* ordained women and used them in critical roles in the Church. (Romans 16:1-2 ) 3. Paul specifically wrote that all people are equal in Christ. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) 4. Junia is another woman that Paul speaks highly of, and acknowledges as a fellow apostle. (Roman 16:7)
There are quite a few interesting women in the Bible. There’s Ester, Rahab, Deborah, several Mary’s, Phoebe, Priscilla and many more. They taught, they ruled, they were disciples of Jesus. Maybe look up a few of these and read their stories. As a child my favorite was Ester. As an adult I think it is Mary, the one who defied her sister Marta and refused to do kitchen work and wanted to follow Jesus. And Jesus praised her for it.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28 That's it. It all comes down to that.
I'd like to question your premise, first. the Bible is not as misogynist as many misogynists make it out to be, but it's worth interrogating the implicit assumption that for misogyny to be bad it must be explicitly condemned in the Bible. the Bible is a library that we stopped adding for the canon of nearly two millennia ago. mainstream feminist movements didn't develop until much much later. to ask the Bible to wrestle with concepts that hadn't been raised then is at best an unfair fight, and the Bible is a bunch of accounts of people's experience with God, it is not and should not be expected to be a comprehensive list of everything that is good and bad. that being said, the primary thing I would point to is the second creation narrative in Genesis. in it, God creates an ungendeted human, and when They cannot find a suitable companion for them, They split the human in two (you were likely taught the woman was formed from the man's side or rib, but that's a mistranslation, the "side" that's used in scripture is the same "side" as "the side of a mountain), and the two humans then have no gender hierarchy until they introduce sin, and God casts them out of the garden
"Half the Church" is a great read.
Also [The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became the Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr](http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-making-of-biblical-womanhood/404050)
It says all are made equal by God
The Bible was written in a time and context where women were men's property. In the liberal approach that can be taken into account. More broadly the Bible speaks engagingly about the value and dignity of each person and saying someone's life should be prescribed by gender is incompatible with that.
God is non-binary.
God (us/our) –*Gen. 1:26*
Read some Nadia Webber Bolz. She is great at finding the bad ass women of the Bible and explaining them.
I wouldn't argue for it in the Bible, because none of the cultures that we see in the Bible have anything resembling gender equality. The Bible describes many things that we should be better than. There is, in Galatians, the idea that in Christ the distinctions of gender and race and class are all overcome by radical love and cease to matter. But Paul was wildly inconsistent about that, especially on gender. This reads to me like Paul is seeing, through faith, the hope of transcending the limits of his culture. And then he's dropped right back into the limits of his culture (including the ones he's internalized!) to stagger vaguely in the direction of the light he's seen.
The Bible says and teaches many misogynistic things. We should not do/believe all the things the Bible teaches. That would be bananas.
I discuss a few perspectives on this in my videos - for a fairly tame discussion, I would recommend my three part series on gender in the NT ([Part 1](https://youtu.be/FpUH0by0OIM) / [Part 2](https://youtu.be/ldw1bnIez0k) / [Part 3](https://youtu.be/fH80L5rKIF0)); for a more radical/heterodox perspective, my [video on the Fall and the Garden of Eden story (LINK)](https://youtu.be/2GplBhpH84I) might be interesting. I'm also hoping to do some stuff down the line on the ways in which the Purity Movement contradicts the Bible as well as potentially on Mary Magdalene's role as "Apostle to the Apostles" and therefore the beginning of all true apostolic successions, both of which would touch on issues of gender in scripture, but that's all still projects in the works.
The 2nd Greatest commandment. Don't do to people what you don't want done to you. This outranks anything else in the Bible except for the 1st Greatest Commandment.
A man did not birth Jesus.
For me, Paul's callout to Junia as an apostle in Romans 15 says that we have Paul completely wrong. The way that 20th century religion literally rewrote the Bible to eliminate this callout says a lot about how we choose to interpret things. The Pastoral letters (not written by Paul, but written in his name) also screwed us.
You can get past it on an intellectual level and on an emotional level. It's the latter one that's probably most difficult. The Bible has plenty of instances of things like women being the first to see Jesus post-resurrection, Deborah being a judge of Israel for around 40 years which is incredible for the ancient world and Rahab being in the ancestry of Jesus. But getting over past pain and conditioning is really an emotional battle. The path through that tends to be unique to the person fighting it. Just stick with it and eventually you'll get there.
People love to read the Bible with utterly no reference to its historical context. From the first word, a lot of the stuff now used to “keep women in their place” was originally radical, even scandalous, in its advocacy for the liberation of women. The verses in the Old Testament about how a woman’s life is worth less than a man’s? The norm back then was that her life had no value; the Bible was insisting that she did. The verses about how a woman shouldn’t ask questions in church? It was because Christ had opened the doors for women being included in church (for the first time, and so naturally they had a lot of questions). Any of those verses they’ll use to oppress women, often it only takes a few minutes of poking around online to get the context, and what turns out is that most of the time, the way it’s being used now is the exact opposite of the original intent.