Bearing Faithful Witness

Some Christian feminists give the impression that Jesus’ approach to women in the Greek Scriptures represents a radical discontinuity with the position of women in the Hebrew Scriptures. This negative portrayal of Judaism is used as a foil to emphasize Jesus’ own sensitivity and to illustrate the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. These are not just minor lapses or misunderstandings by individual scholars. Rather, they represent a body of material that contributes to anti Judaism and to the religious teaching of contempt.

Christians (feminists and others) sometimes present Judaism as Christianity’s prehistory - a quaint ancestor of the more enlightened church. It is not acknowledged that Judaism has developed as an independent alternative tradition. Instead Judaism is seen as the prologue to Christianity. As such, it can be claimed or rejected, appropriated or ignored, accepted or repudiated, at will. In fact, many Christians are ignorant about Jewish culture, history and religion. The growth and evolution of Judaism that happened independently and contemporaneously to Christian development is neglected.

It is common among secular feminists as well as among Christian feminists to identify Judaism as the source of patriarchy and of a "male God." Judaism is thereby made an historical scapegoat for sexism. Ever since Eve was interpreted as symbolically responsible for death, sin, alienation, and evil by Christians (e.g. Ecclesiasticus 25:24, extended by Christian writings like I Timothy 2:13-14), androcentrism has created a world from which women are either absent or eclipsed by men. Judaism, as the antecedent of Christian history, is blamed.

The patriarchal God of Judaism is seen as the antithesis of a loving Christian God. What is called for is more sensitivity to the issues, and radical changes in theology.

We know now that the women of the Jesus movement and of the early church did not suddenly and simply appear out of nowhere. Social change is not that easy. Feminist scholarship has revealed that within Judaism there were many openings and an emerging degree of freedom for women at the time of Jesus. Numerous women were leaders in the synagogue. Women interacted with Jesus because they were already questioning their culture and they sensed in him someone who supported and strengthened them. He was a Jew and his perspectives emerged from and built upon more widely shared Jewish traditions.

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