gaillardia

I'm entering into an impromptu debate on abortion, Biblical veracity, and church/state separation via the Letters to the Editor page of our local paper. One writer states that the differing gender valuations in Lev 27:1-7 refer to the hard-manual-labor-potential of men v. women, and that this was how the priests reckoned their value when redeeming their vows. I'll just quote: "When a person under the Law of Moses committed themselves to a vow for service to God, it cost them. They paid for it usually by giving money to the support of the Levitical priests. The valuation that a male or female had, was not their worth to God, but rather to their hard manual labor potential. A male will have more labor potential than a female. These verses refer to labor potential and the value associated with it. It has nothing to do with a Biblical general consensus of a man being worth more than a woman."

The text of this passage does not say this, of course, and I can find no other passage which gives hard manual labor potential as the criterion for valuation when redeeming a vow, or fulfilling a vow, etc. Does anyone have anthropological knowledge of historical ancient Hebrews that would shed light on this? I can and will ask for proof for this statement of course, but I would like some background first, if possible, cause it'll probably be messy. This is all in the context of "The Bible calls abortion murder," "Look at all the things the Bible says that we don't practice now," and "It doesn't matter anyway as long as you keep it out of government."

Thanks for any info.

Edited for typos, sorry.

gaillardia

Now I do see that the passage itself states in v. 5 that the valuation from one month to five years old is 5 and 3 silver shekels, for male and female respectively. Naturally a one month old would have a hard manual labor valuation of zero, which invalidates the letter writer's assertion based on a simple reading of the text. But I still wonder if I'm missing a social context, such as 5 shekels equals a delayed valuation, just for kids, something like that.