by Island Man 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Athos, it seems to me that there is an underlying theme of "feminism" in the Deborah story.
Interestingly, the Song of Deborah in chapter 5, on which the preceding prose passage in chapter 4 is based, is said to be some of the oldest text in the Bible.
In "My Book of Bible Stories", they say that Deborah is a judge, word for word.
"Deborah is a prophetess. Jehovah gives her information about the future, and then she tells the people what Jehovah says. Deborah is also a judge. She sits under a certain palm tree in the hill country, and people come to her to get help with their problems."
I guess they must have forgotten about it, lol.
Ha, that's funny, nice catch.
Onager: So, let me get this right, there's a glimmer of gender equality in a story in the bible (which is a wildly misogynist book overall)
I wouldn't go so far as to call it gender equality. If Deborah served as a warrior herself leading the army and taking part in the battle without having to call a man to do the actual fighting, then yeah, maybe I'd say it's gender equality. What I think it is, is an attempt at toning down male chauvinism and making patronizing overtures toward disenfranchised women of the time. From the fact that the story mentions a woman ia judge to the fact that Sisera is given into the hand of a woman is more than mere coincidence. There's clearly an attempt at elevating women. It seems obvious that the writer or later editor of the book had this as one of his (or dare I say, her) goals.
The fact that the bible is a mysoginistic book overall does not preclude it from having a story that seeks to exalt the image of women. Let's not forget that the bible is a book of contradictions. For example, it says God is just and loving but at the same time portrays him as a harsh genocidal brute who condones injustices like slavery and the subjugation of women. If anything, the general mysogynistic tone of the bible to gives credence to the idea that the story of Deborah is a deliberate attempt at improving the image of women and/or rebelling against patriarchy and misogyny. It could very well be an attempt at improving the image of God as not being a misogynist by a more liberal, forward-thinking bible writer who was painfully aware of the misogynistic nature of other writings and Israelite culture in general.
The reason why I mentioned the antiquity of the Song of Deborah is that it's been theorized that earlier human societies were matriarchal. There's not a lot of direct evidence for it because we're talking about prehistoric times, though a number of primitive societies that have survived until modern times are more gender-equal than we are accustomed to. A number of examples are given in the Matriarchy article on Wikipedia.
Though it's indirect evidence, it's interesting to note that some of the oldest stories in mythology have strong women in them. I just got done re-reading the Cattle Raid of Cooley, which has a number of strong women in the story. Cuchullain, Ireland's greatest folk hero, gets the finest training in the world from a fearsome woman anmed Scathach (Shadowy). Beowulf has the mother of Grendel being stronger than Grendel.
At the very least, it seems that earlier societies may have been more gender-egalitarian. By the time of the writing of the Bible, things had changed and so almost all the stories are notably patriarchal. But the ancient song of Deborah may harken back to a previous era in human history.
On an evolutionary note, it's interesting that our two closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, are very yin and yang; chimps are patriarchal and fairly violent, and bonobos are matriarchal and pacifistic. We have various attributes that are closer to chimps and some that are closer to bonobos.
Did anyone attending the meeting try to comment on paragraph 12 to mention that Deborah was a judge? stuckinarut2?
