Below I have quoted various writings from the ancient Mediterranean on women in relation to specific questions and issues. I have not included references to the sources/authors from which the quotes come—I will provide them later. For now I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the snapshots of the varied ancient Mediterranean discourse on women, specifically how components of the varied patriarchal consciousness connect with views of women as inherently deficient.
There are many many more passages from which I could draw. Below is simply a minor sampling…
[on womankind] “…is inclined to be secretive and crafty, because of its weakness…You see, leaving women to do what they like is not just to lose half the battle (as it may seem); a woman’s natural potential for virtue is inferior to a man’s, so she’s proportionately a greater danger, perhaps even twice as great…”
“How can one reach agreement with a woman?” “By recognizing,” he replied, “that the female sex is bold, positively active for something which it desires, easily liable to change its mind because of poor reasoning powers, and of naturally weak constitution. It is necessary to have dealings with them in a sound way, avoiding provocation which may lead to a quarrel. Life prospers when the helmsman knows the goal to which he must make the passage…”
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel…
…females are weaker and colder in nature, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural deficiency.
In all genera in which the distinction of male and female s found, nature makes a similar differentiation in the characteristics of the two sexes. This differentiation is the most obvious in the case of humankind…For the female is softer in character…woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and strike. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame, more false of speech, more deceptive…
…because a male is more complete, more dominant than the female, closer akin to causal activity, for the female is incomplete and in subjection and belongs to the category of the passive rather than the active. So too with the two ingredients which constitute our life principle, the rational and the irrational; the rational which belongs to the mind and reason is of the masculine gender, the irrational, the province of sense, is of the feminine…
Why did the serpent accost the woman, and not the man? …But the woman was more accustomed to be deceived than the man. For his counsels as well as his body are of a masculine sort, and competent to disentangle the notions of seduction; but the mind of the woman is more effeminate, so that through her softness she easily yields and is easily caught by persuasions of falsehood, which imitate the resemblance of truth…
…woman is accustomed rather to be deceived than to devise anything of importance out of her own head; but with the man the case it just the contrary.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
The woman, being imperfect and depraved by nature, made the beginning of sinning and prevaricating; but the man, as being the more excellent and perfect creature, was the first to set the example of blushing and of being ashamed, and indeed, of every good feeling and action.
But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning…
But the woman first became a betrayer to him. She gave, and persuaded him to sin in ignorance.
Adam said to Eve, “Why have you wrought destruction among us and brought upon us great wrath, which is death gaining rule over all our race?”
And he [Adam] said to me [Eve], ‘O evil woman! Why have you wrought destruction among us? You have estranged me from the glory of God.’
From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.
So, any thoughts?
June 14, 2008 at 8:40 am
Okay, I’ll bite. This is an interesting post and since no one has offered any thoughts, I’ll be so bold as to offer a few of my own – though admittedly my expertise on late antiquity is relatively thin (at least outside of philosophical texts) and I’m not a biblical scholar.
First, your catena of quotations gives evidence that the biblical texts you included are part of their historical context, speaking from within it and into it.
But that, in itself, doesn’t tell us much. One may speak from within a context, taking up its language and thought forms in a variety of ways: merely in passing, in substantive agreement, in support, in opposition, in subtle subversion, etc.
Thus, the differences between texts and their surroundings are just as important as their similarities, even if the similarities alert us to the discursive context in which the texts are situated.
Second, the catena of quotations appear to fall into two general, though related, sorts.
The first set of texts have to do with the relative “weakness” of the female sex compared to the male. In particular, the texts portray reason’s rule as weak in women. Thus, women are unlikely to fully exercise virtue and are liable to various forms of unreason. How this played itself out socially in the ancient Mediterranean world was, of course, diverse – for instance, from what I understand, Roman law and culture offered women relatively more equity with men than did Hellenistic law and culture.
The second set of texts focus this general female weakness upon their liability to deception and, thus, Eve’s responsibility for the fall. These texts are thus more firmly embedded, I suspect, within Jewish and Christian traditions that are aware of the Genesis narrative. Several of them seem to lay the blame for sin squarely upon Eve and her feminine weakness.
Since the are all interpretations of Genesis, however, it is difficult to say to what degree their commonality is one of co-existence within a shared cultural and biblical-hermeneutical context and to what degree it is simply a matter of ultimate dependence upon a common text: Genesis 3, which depicts the serpent’s deception directed at Eve and Eve’s accusation that the serpent deceived her.
Third, the biblical texts do not appear to me to be straightforwardly all of a piece with their wider cultural contexts – at least, it isn’t clear that they are, even though they are, of course, situated and contextual.
In the case of the text from 1 Peter 3, there are several interpretive decisions to make.
[1] Is the “weakness” here the sort of weakness of moral constitution that some of the other related texts mention?
[2] Or is the “weakness” here speaking more loosely of relative physical strength, a way of speaking also attested to by other nearly contemporary texts (though that physical defect is often connected with the moral)?
[3] Or is 1 Peter simply speaking in terms of social norms attested to in other text, under which women are regarded as “weak” and because of which, within a Hellenistic context, woman were legally and socially vulnerable – without committing itself to any particular view?
The wider context of the verse demands that men honor their wives, living with them in understanding, and recognizing that they are co-heirs of the grace of life. Thus, whatever interpretation we take, the verse seems to be at least subtly undermining cultural expectations and norms.
In effect, the verse could be saying, “You may think your wife is the weaker vessel, but if that is so, be understanding of this and honor her, recognizing that her weakness is relativized by the fact that she is an equal co-heir with you.” After all, the Christian gospel made a point of seeing God’s power manifest in weakness, salvation manifest in vulnerability – themes that run through 1 Peter as well as the rest of the NT witness.
But the verse might also be saying something slightly more subversive perhaps, in effect: “Look, in your context, your wife is legally and culturally vulnerable. But don’t take advantage of that inequity. Rather, honor her and be understanding of her situation because, as you know, in the end you are equal in terms of your eternal inheritance.”
Of course, one would also have to look at the verses immediately preceding, which exhort wives to accept their husbands’ authority – though the context seems to be one of unbelieving husbands and the goal seems to be that our freedom and equity in Christ should not be used as an excuse to subvert cultural norms in scandalous ways, since that would alienate the husband from the gospel.
In the case of 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul seems to operating in a general paradigm of the church as the bride, a chaste virgin, a sort of new Eve, betrothed to Christ as her husband. In this context, he worries about the church being “led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ,” which he compares to Eve’s deception by the serpent’s cunning.
One could read this, I suppose, as implying that, for Paul, Eve was prone to deception, that Eve’s deception was primarily one of being led astray from her husband, Adam, and perhaps that Eve’s deception even involved some kind of sexual temptation. Yet, I think that’s likely over-reading the passage and forgetting the OT analogy drawn between adultery and idolatry.
Thus, the implicit parallel for Paul is that, as Eve was drawn away from God into idolatry by the lies of the cunning serpent, so the church is danger of being drawn away from Christ by a false gospel of different spirit. Since idolatry is, metaphorically, adultery and given the use of the husband-bride metaphor, Paul’s allusion to Eve is apt and resonant.
Moreover, it’s worth noting, I think, that Paul elsewhere seems to place the blame for sin’s entrance into the world squarely upon Adam, without even mentioning Eve. I suspect this emphasis comes through his christological reading of Adam and of Israel’s history and, thus, marks some measure of discontinuity with his immediate context.
And here in 2 Corinthians he seems to lay the blame, not upon Eve, but upon the serpent’s powers of cunning and deception. Thus he warns his readers about the so-called “super-apostles,” so the church can be alert to possible deception. Perhaps Paul even sees himself as giving the church the kind of heads-up that Adam, as co-guardian of the garden, failed to give Eve, though that’s pure speculation on my part and seems unprovable from the text.
In the case of the text from 1 Timothy 2, the interpretative decisions are even trickier, since almost every phrase in the immediate context contains ambiguities. Within a Pauline context, it seems hardly any great compliment to men to say that “Adam was not deceived,” while Eve was. After all, this would imply that Adam sinned, fully knowing what he was doing, rebelling against God with eyes wide open, whereas Eve’s blame is diminished by the serpent’s deception. This would square with the way in which Pauline letters often focus upon Adam’s culpability.
Given the wider context of 1 Timothy, however, the text seems to generalize from the instance of Eve to the situation of women more widely, at least the women in the context to which the letter is written. The text, however, doesn’t state that women, as modeled by Eve, are constitutionally weaker and more deception-prone, though that could be a background assumption. Rather, the immediate context appears to be problems with false teachers leading people astray, a situation that in its particularities resonates with the Genesis narrative.
Thus the allusion to Eve could, in part, reflect a worry that, particularly given societal patterns (and perhaps even given the context of Ephesus, if that’s the locale of the target audience), there’s a danger that the deception of Eve and the fall of Adam could be recapitulated. While Adam is to be squarely blamed for his deliberate sin, Eve’s deception was the occasion for Adam’s downfall.
Likewise, while the men of the church would be blamed for their own sin, the text suggests a worry that false teachers might lead men astray by deceptions directed at the women of the church. If I’m reading the context correctly, then that would have to shape how one reads the rest of the passage, a task I won’t attempt here.
In the case of both 2 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, then, I’m inclined to say that the texts reflect less their immediate biblical-hermeneutical context and more a fresh appropriation of the Genesis narrative. That appropriation may certainly be shaped by and accommodate itself to patterns of previous interpretation, particularly the attention granted to Eve’s deception. Yet it seems to me that, given some of the subtle discontinuities with other texts from late antiquity, a christological re-reading of Adam provides the more immediate hermeneutical context, along with the situations of false teaching that occasion what the texts say and which seem to resonate with the Genesis narrative.
Well, that’s my non-expert take. Have at it.
June 13, 2008 at 3:41 pm
It appears that now, as then, we just don’t care for women much.