The Tribune

By Dr Cleveland W Eneas III

The Holy Qubtic Church

ankusara@gmail.com

NOW this should attract the attention of any truth seeker. The two most influential philosophers in the world of Christian theology in the Middle Ages were both of the Greco-Roman world into which Christianity was born – Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384 - 322 BC).

In Greek society, a woman’s status was very low. Her main function was to produce children, especially sons. She was confined to the parental home until a husband was chosen for her, at which time she would be in her mid-teens and her husband at least 15 years older. The Athenian woman of the citizen class would then be transferred to the home of her husband where she was to fulfil her principal function of bearing and rearing children. Of those children (on average four or five in number, one or two of whom might die at birth), the sons would be raised within the family, particularly in post-war years when there was a shortage of men, but ordinarily only one daughter, at most, would be reared.

Evidence suggests that other girl children were often exposed. If they did not die, they might be picked up by slave dealers or prostitutes and prepared for a life of slavery, prostitution, or both.

Athenian men had a variety of opportunities to satisfy their sexual drives: boys and other men, courtesans or hetairai, prostitutes, or their own slave women and their wives. The wife’s function was, however, primarily that of carrying on the family line and tending the family hearth.

The wife did not socialise with her husband and his friends; men’s social gatherings, even if held in her own home, were off-limits to her. As for going to the marketplace or communal well, that was an activity reserved for men or for women slaves.

(Sarah B. Pomeroy, “Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity”; M Maloney, “The Arguments for Women’s Difference in Classical Philosophy and Early Christianity”)

According to Aristotle, man rightly takes charge over woman because he commands superior intelligence. This will also profit the women who depend on him. He compares this to the relationship between human beings and tame animals.

“It is the best for all tame animals to be ruled by human beings. For this is how they are kept alive. In the same way, the relationship between the male and the female is by nature such that the male is higher, the female lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.” (Aristotle, “Politica”)

Reading these quotes one quickly begins to understand why some men in our country insist that Bahamian women who marry foreign men should simply “humble themselves and follow their husbands” despite the again obvious contradiction with the Bible: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

How much are these men listening to God. In fact, who are they actually listening to?

Of course if we really followed the Bible in this “Christian nation” of ours, we would be singing “Hear comes the Groom”. (I will leave the realities behind this verse for another article)

All of this being said, we can see why the Bible is saying what it is saying in the New Testament, not to mention the Old Testament.

Roland de Vaux, archaeologist and priest, wrote:

“The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position a wife occupied in the great countries round about... all the texts show that Israelites wanted mainly sons to perpetuate the family line and fortune, and to preserve the ancestral inheritance... A husband could divorce his wife; women on the other hand could not ask for divorce... the wife called her husband Ba’al or master; she also called him adon or lord; she addressed him, in fact, as a slave addressed his master or subject, his king. The Decalogue includes a man’s wife among his possessions... all her life she remains a minor. The wife does not inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their father, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a girl or married woman needs, to be valid, the consent of the father or husband and if this consent is withheld, the vow is null and void. A man had a right to sell his daughter. Women were excluded from the succession.”

So all sincere seekers of truth (John 8:32) should begin to query if these contradictions are the contradictions of god or those of men or Satan acting as if they he is God (Isaiah 14:14).