In todays socity women have fought for equal rights and they demand respect what ever religion ,job or part of the world they live in only a stupid male who belives it is the word of jehovah god or even allah can't or doesn't belive women should have a position of athority above a male shouldnt this be changed everyone is equal whatever gender or sexual orientation any man who beats, rapes or sexually assalts womien or children should be named and shamed in front of the kingdom hall
women and submission
by piledriver 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Simon
I think you mix up two things.
Physical and sexual assault are crimes.
Equal rights and submission is a different (although can be related) issue.
Some religions (Islam) fail on all counts.
JWs fail more on the "equal rights and submission" but on the whole preach respect toward women even though some of the atmosphere can lead to abuses.
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TD
--Not sure where you live. "Naming and Shaming" strikes me as a British colloquialism.
In the U.S., Religion, Civil Rights, Criminal Law and Civil Law are four separate things that don't really mix..
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Finkelstein
But in religions where the select god was a male, Judaism, Christianity, Muslim , Buddhism, Harri Krishna etc. woman have to be set and positioned as lower spiritual beings. After all to think the main creator of the universe is a female just doesn't invoke power and relevance to men/males.
The universe is just so vast and almighty that a mere little woman could never have made it had to be a big strong male.
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jhine
Actually Fink , in Judaism God is neither male nor female but purely spirit and the Shechinah , and now I quote from Judaism 101
" the manifestation of God's presence that fills the universe is conceived of in feminine terms , and the word Shechinah is a feminine word "
Jews just use masculine terms to refer to God because Hebrew has no neutral gender .
Jan
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Finkelstein
Interesting Jhine so god isn't referred to being male until Christianity started ???
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Finkelstein
Actually Jhine there is some information that supports the male suggestive gender.
Gender of God in Judaism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAlthough the Gender of God in Judaism is referred to in the Tanakh with masculine imagery and grammatical forms, Jewish philosophy does not attribute to God sex, but does attribute gender.[1] At times, Jewish aggadic literature and Jewish mysticism do treat God as gendered.
Contents
Biblical perspectives
The first words of the Tanakh are B'reshit bara Elohim — "In the beginning God created."[2] The verb bara (he created) suggests a masculine subject. Elohim is also masculine in form. The most common phrases in the Tanakh are vayomer Elohim and vayomer Y<small=2>HWH — "and God said" (hundreds of occurrences).
Genesis 1:26-27 says that the elohim were male and female,[3] and humans were made in their image.[4]
Again, the verb vayomer (he said) is masculine; it is never vatomer, the feminine of the same verb form. The personal name of God, Y<small=2>HWH, is presented in Exodus 3 as if the Y (Hebrew yod) is the masculine subjective prefix to the verb to be.
Main article: I am that I amIn Psalms 89:26 God is referred to as Father. "He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, My God, and the rock of my salvation."[5]
In Isaiah 62:5, God is compared to the bridegroom, and his people to the bride.
- "For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."
In Isaiah 63:16, God is directly addressed and called "our Father".
- "Thou, O Jehovah, art our Father; our Redeemer from everlasting is thy name." (ASV)
To God, according to Judaism, is attributed the fatherly role of protector. He is called the Father of the poor, of the orphan and the widow, their guarantor of justice. He is also called the Father of the king, as the teacher and helper over the judge of Israel.[6]
Some literary approaches to the Tanakh have argued that parallels between Biblical stories and earlier Sumerian, Akkadian and Canaanite creation myths show a matriarchal substratum that has been overlaid by a patriarchal approach.[7] "In the Bible, the earth is the feminine complement of God: the two combined to form man, who articulates their relationship, for example, in sacrifice."[8]
Rabbinical views
Judaism often relates to various "aspects" of God (cf. Sephirot). As Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan puts it, "[E]very name and every description that we may give to God can only apply to His relationship to His creation" [9] Although God is not generally regarded as gendered in Judaism, Benjamin Blech writes that God has both masculine and feminine aspects.[10]
In addition, God's "presence" (Shekinah) is a grammatically feminine word, and is often employed as a feminine aspect of God.
Many traditional rabbinic commentators, however, such as Maimonides, view any such beliefs as verging on avodah zarah (idolatry). Secondary male sexual characteristics are attributed to God in some piyuttim (religious poems). These include a description of the beard of God in Shir Hakavod (The Hymn of Glory), and similar poetic imagery in the midrash Song of the Seas Rabbah.
Traditional meforshim (rabbinic commentators) hold that these descriptions, like all physical descriptions of God, are metaphorical or symbolic.
Philo
Philo refers to God as Father in several passages:
"...discovering the nature of the one God, who is alone everlasting, and the father of everything else..."[11][12] Philo - A Treatise Concerning the World (1)
"...by whose intervention they might obtain a reconciliation with the Father. First of all, the merciful, and gentle, and compassionate nature of him who is invoked, who would always rather have mercy than punishment. In the second place, the holiness of all the founders of the nation, because they, with souls emancipated from the body, exhibiting a genuine and sincere obedience to the Ruler of all things, are not accustomed to offer up ineffectual prayers on behalf of their sons and daughters, since the Father has given to them, as a reward, that they shall be heard in their prayers." Philo - On Rewards And Punishments (166)[12][13]
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jhine
http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/48964511.html
Hi Fink , above is a link , I hope , to a Jewish website that gives an interesting explanation about the gender of God . The article is a bit long too copy and paste and is worth reading in full I think . The main point here is that rather than , as I said above , God does not have gender- both genders are present in the Divine Being .It does go some way to explain why male imagery is used at times and why the Shechinah is spoken of as female .
Jan
