Patriarchal Society
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From the beginning it was not so
- Imagers, male and female (treating each other as imagers)
- The spirit of the law goes back to Eden
- Jesus did not appeal to the Torah but the original creation order
- Feeling-based hermeneutics and forget the original design
- The culture that was handed down by God is the culture of Eden — not the cultures that develop after the fall
- Biblical content presumes these later cultures (Israelite and non-Israelite)
- Israelite culture shared a lot with ANE culture (social practices, crime & punishment, etc.)
- Biblical laws related to social-cultural practices will therefore have both similarities and differences
- Similarities may have a theological rationale
- Differences will have their logic in a theological rationale
In light of planned obsolescence of Israel’s theocratic society (moving forward gentile inclusion, which was “distinction neutral” and thus Edenic), we ought to focus on the theological rationale for the prohibition, not imitate the cultural practice.
Examples from Readings
Milgrom (Numbers 5)
- Adultery (na’af)
- Why “offended male orientation” only? (Dt 22:22-24; Lev 20:10)
- What is the theological logic of the offense to God? WHy no commutation of death penalty? Numbers 5?
- How does later post-Jesus context handle adultery?
- Relevance to the circumcision-neutral family of God?
- Hebrew roots?
- Violating the pattern
- Preserving the clan
Meyers
- Proverbs 31 - Exposes the women in Israel. Economy dies without women
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Feminists, in their need to understand and explain patriarchy, have given it powerful theoretical significance by raising profound questions about the relationship of ideology, economics, and society. The passions surrounding the political motivations have, however, clouded the theoretical quest.
- Politics gets in the way of clear thinking
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Male dominance cannot be equated with female passivity or lack of autonomy
- Myth: males were completely divorced from daily
Lemos
- Where Israelite women property?
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Notably, women as wives are never called “property” by biblical texts, and the Israelites do not refer to wives using the same terms they use to refer to slaves, unless the wives in question are in fact slaves. While one could marry a slave, marriage and slavery were not seen as equivalent by the Israelites themselves.
- Women were not viewed as commercial property