In this article, a number of outdated laws are listed. What we need to keep in mind is that these laws at one time responded to real needs. They were laws that probably reacted to real situations. For laws to pass in any culture or context, real people had to spend time thinking about them. But pulled out of context and landing within the context of our 21st century worldview, they may seem nothing less than stupid!
Here are some examples that are listed:
• It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside down.
• In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless, unless she is a clerk in a tropical fish store.
• A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet.
• Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day.
And the number one dumbest of dumb statutes in Britain is…
• It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.
We read these laws and find them funny, realizing that to each piece of legislation there is history that no longer connects to us. Understanding each of these statutes is possible only when we have the benefit of the fuller context and history. As we discussed how knowing a person can define context, so too can history complete the story. That’s what we want to keep in mind when we look at the Bible.
God divinely inspired 66 different books through different people at different points in history for different reasons. Understanding how women were treated and viewed in the time of Jesus is important to our better understanding the books that were written after his having been here.
The culture at Christ’s time was influenced by Roman, Greek, Qumranic, and ancient Jewish thinking. Each of these groups held distinct yet somewhat similar perspectives on women. Perhaps this is why we see different communities of early Christian faith adapting to new opportunities for female leadership differently. Scholar Susan Hylen makes this point well as she recognizes women’s leadership within the early church as a reality but demonstrates how communities adapted for that change based on respective gender bias.9 Here are some examples of how each group reflected gender bias by community.
Greek women were considered a means of creating healthy citizens.10 In the Greco-Roman world, women could not sign or pay for another’s debt. Women who worked alongside their husbands might be trained as skilled tradespeople. More privileged women might have published poetry, studied philosophy, or painted, but typically under the direction of their husband.11 If there were evening dinner events, women would not participate in cases where there were men unrelated to them present.12 Women were prevented from holding political office and serving in the military.
The Roman view was that women were generally inferior13 and were to remain under the dominance of their husbands.14
In Greco-Roman society, legislating and enforcing the “proper” behaviour of women was a major concern for authorities because they believed that disorder in the household had seditious ramifications for the welfare of the empire.15
In wealthy homes, women might have owned property and slaves and were tasked to run operations for the familial home.16 Women were allowed to be present for evening parties, but the guests were primarily male and the parties were focused around political kibitzing.17 Both men and women could be priests, provided the cult’s beliefs allowed it,18 but “cults and sects were often attacked because of the wild behaviour of the women participants.”19
So with this backdrop, “there were women who gravitated to the study of Scripture and formulation of theology.” This usually happened in wealthy matrons’ homes, and later less formal monastic communities developed.20 Their stories—that is the early church mothers who contributed to formational theology—haven’t been well documented. Tucker professes that is because theologians from Augustine to Aquinas to Luther and Wesley and Barth were men. She adds that a fitting sign on their clubhouse door could have read “No Daughters of Eve Allowed,” arguing that daughters of Eve were the ones tempted by Satan first and who fell into sin.
In the Talmud, a woman is described as “a picture full of filth with its mouth full of blood.”21
In regards to marriage, it is believed that some Jews had two or more wives. Women were only to be sexually intimate with their husbands; however, men were only considered adulterers if they had sexual relations with another man’s wife.22
Finally, the Qumran people had a view of women that was considered more narrow and restrictive to women’s rights than that of the Jews.23
Since Jesus was a Jew, the Jewish perception is valuable to better understanding the passages we will review in John. One Jewish historian writes, “The rabbis were ideologically inclined toward the exclusion of women from Jewish religious life.”24 Webb gives a common benediction that was recited by Jewish males in their morning prayer: “Blessed be He who did not make me a Gentile; blessed be He who did not make me a boor [i.e., an ignorant peasant or slave]; blessed be He who did not make me a woman.”25
Keener explains that “Jewish women attended synagogue and learned the law, but with possibly rare exceptions, were not raised to recite it the way most boys were.”26 Judaism was also influenced by the broader cultural view of women being inferior to men.
One source points out that women, like slaves and children, could not make moral decisions. This is reflected in the Talmud by the repeated references to women as manipulative seducers: “Do not converse much with women as this will ultimately lead you to unchastity.”27
It is important to note that such restrictions on women are not biblically founded. For example, the requirement for a lower court for women cannot be found anywhere in the Old Testament. Leviticus 12:6 and 15:29 indicate that women were even expected to have an independent role in the sacrificial system. There is no sign in 1 Samuel 1 that there was any problem with Hannah approaching the sanctuary.
I do not intend to exhaust the historical context of the time of Jesus, but I hope these examples reinforce some of the earlier discussion in the opening chapters. As readers, we need contextual reference to understand the biblical message properly.
One last example on this point recalls a visit I made to Kenya. I was in a small