mountainman

Nice one Toto.


Guess I cant work Asclepius into this one.



I fail to see how anything arcane might arise there at all.



Who first lavishly published the Christian God to the Greeks?



Did anyone resurrect Fausta and ask her?



Roman State Christianity started as a military operation. (See T. D. Barnes, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 69-72.) And Constantine personally appointed his male bishops. It was the Gnostics who ordained "Thecla".




i.e. Eusebius and Tertullian et al ~ IN WHOM WE TRUST



I think she's asking the right questions, but of the wrong century.


Having just read your link to Sex and the Serpent it is clear that a fair bit of reliance of the argument is being placed in accepting Tertullian - first as a living person and secondly as a reliable source of information. We are all very much aware, and if we aren't then we should be, that the 4th century witnessed the authorship and creation of a great mass of piously forged sources. The TF may as well have been found in the Historia Augusta.


DeConick's detective work needs more C14 and less reliance on the Eusebian GPS. But I think she's asking the right questions.


Best wishes



Pete

Toto

Chili posts split to here

Toto

The responses here are a bit astounding. The idea that women were written out of the early church is not especially radical, and not confined to hard line feminists.

stephan huller

I have no doubt that women were written out of the gospel, Look at St Berenice in the Latin Stations of the Cross. But there were men written out of narratives too. I see no evidence of sexism per se. It's just a lot of political posturing for a thoroughly modern agenda

The bottom line is that its like women's soccer or women's professional basketball. Who cares unless you're a woman

avi

I disagree. I think the "bottom line", appropriately a reference to financial affairs, concerns the fact that females outnumber males, yet, for a variety of reasons, possess far less than half the resources available to society as a whole, whether that resource concerns athletic gear for adolescents, cash available for investment projects, or performing a leadership role, whether at temple, synagogue, church, mosque, school, business or government.

The underlying justification for this discrimination is male superiority. Here one observes the ancient dispute between Sparta and Athens: strength versus intellect. Males claim superiority in both dimensions. I am unconvinced about the latter. It may well be that endocrinological factors do influence raw computing abilities, so that there could be some genuine physiological distinction between genders so as to render females less intelligent (however one defines intelligence) than males, but I remain skeptical of existing studies.

The analogy is with heart disease: for DECADES, medical textbooks taught, incorrectly as it turns out, various aspects of cardiology theory and practice, based solely on studies of male heart disease. Female's hearts were ignored, in those earliest studies, upon which treatment had been based until the past couple of decades when new research did include females, with results that overturned some of the most favorite prejudices.

Females' diminished role in the temple, mosque, or church is a logical consequence of an inadequate, incorrect, and unappreciated understanding of biology two millenia ago. The real shame, is that today, when one does have a superior understanding of reproduction, hormonal influence, and genetic roles in changing human affect, we are still, as a society, following dictates of ancient prejudices. Here's hoping this forum can help change that situation.

avi

judge

Um..when i was a christian people asked that all the time. the answers may have at times been lame but people do ask. semms to be an older idea than chritianity though


in all my time as a christian i never heard such an idea.

OLDMAN

Never heard of how Eve caused Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit? Didn't get very far in your bible reading classes or what?

bacht

The conservative argument would be that human nature hasn't changed since at least the last Ice Age, and that sex roles in human society are somewhat pre-determined. The liberal argument would be that we can educate our way out of any sort of tradition or behaviour or evolutionary programming.

It's hardly a slam dunk either way, too difficult to prove such sweeping claims.

judge

Of course I read the story, I just never had any experience of men using it to say women were sinful?
Maybe April's book is more needed in some places that others I guess.

Added in edit: Just out of interest, have you had the experience of men using this verse to say that women were sinful? If so can you say where this happened?

thanks

Toto

These days, few people will say so out loud. But that's only because Hell hath no fury as a Woman denigrated with ancient religious texts.

But not that long ago: