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Chapter 5

Context and History

When I was on the elliptical trainer one morning, I found myself watching reruns of an old program called All in the Family. It would be an understatement to suggest that the main character, Archie, has issues. He is insensitive to U.S. minorities, like African Americans and Hispanics, and buys into any stereotypes society might give them.

One day, Archie is stuck on an elevator with a very pregnant Hispanic woman, her very rich, accomplished African American husband, and a claustrophobic white woman who is socially challenged. The inevitable happens. The pregnant woman goes into labour. Everyone but Archie huddles together to assist in the birth, while Archie squirms in the corner, wincing at each scream and each carefully narrated description that the others are only too pleased to share with him.

When rescued, Archie retells the story with himself as the hero—taking all the credit for the baby’s birth and, by his account, being the only one who displayed courage and strength to get the others through the ordeal—when, in fact, he was the only one who panicked. The people who lived through the incident would have known that Archie’s version was contrived. Probably the people who knew Archie well also would have suspected that his story was misleading. That is because his words and description didn’t tell the whole story.

Knowing about Archie’s hang-ups and misperceptions connects us to his personal history. We better understand the scenario and what actually happened by better knowing Archie. Context is explained by Archie’s character.

Similarly, we understand biblical context by better knowing the character of Jesus. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus, by his own revelation, we better understand his teaching and those who followed him.

Likewise, knowing biblical culture also helps us understand the context of a biblical text. What might be easily understood by one generation or culture might be totally misunderstood by another. Misunderstanding can lead to us feeling smug and labelling or considering what we don’t understand as stupid. Take for example an article published in The Globe and Mail called “Britain’s Stupidest Statutes.”8

In this article, a number of outdated laws are listed.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 Kenyan village with a group of pastors and their spouses. I was enjoying light conversation with one pastor when he pointed out his wife to me. “There she is—the fat one!” My Kenyan translator, more familiar with Canadian culture, immediately understood my alarm in hearing a man describe his wife as fat. He quickly leaned toward my ear and explained that in their village, being fat was a good thing because it meant that she had a good husband who provided for her. The insight of my translator gave me understanding of the pastor’s reference to his wife being fat. His helpful explanation combatted my offence as it put things into perspective for me.

As we continue this discussion in light of Jesus’ time and his interaction with women, we need to be careful not to impose our worldview on the text but rather to view the text in light of what we know of this ancient culture.

God’s worldview transcends ours. That’s the story we want to tap into.

8 Philip Jackman, “Britain’s Stupidest Statutes,” The Globe and Mail, November 7, 2007, accessed January 14, 2017, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/britains-stupidest-statutes/article1089086/.

9 Susan Hylen, A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

10 Mary Evans, Woman in the Bible (Devon: Paternoster Press, 1983), 40.

11 Lynn Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families in the Roman World,” in The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, eds. Joel Green and Lee Martin McDonald (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 183.

12 Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families,” 180.

13 Westfall, Paul and Gender, 14.

14 Evans, Woman in the Bible, 40.

15 Westfall, Paul and Gender, 13.

16 Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families,” 183.

17 Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families,” 180.

18 Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families,” 181.

19 Westfall, Paul and Gender, 13.

20 Ruth Tucker, “The Changing Roles of Women in Ministry: The Early Church Through the 18th Century,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, eds. Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), 26.

21 Humphrey Mwangi Waweru, “Jesus and Ordinary Women in the Gospel of John: An African Perspective,” Swedish Missiological Themes 96, no. 2 (2008), 142.

22 Cohick, “Women, Children, and Families,” 182.

23 Evans, Woman in the Bible, 40.

24 Steven Katz, ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 10.

25 William Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001), 160.

26 Craig S. Keener, preface to Paul, Women, and Wives, Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, 8th ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992).

27 Evans, Woman in the Bible, 35.