A Brief Look at Women's Roles in the Bible and What it Means for Women Today- Part I

One of the questions that often arise for the church in the modern age is that of a woman's role in the church. In some societies women were given virtually no roles at all, where as in others the matriarchs were powerful symbols of their culture. Today, as we still tackle the extremes of sexism and the failures and successes of feminism, we are often left with a bit of puzzle to untangle. How much of a woman's role in the church has been defined by societal norms instead of Biblical guidelines? And what role did women actually play in the Bible? The most popularized portions of the Bible seem to focus on a few key people and were give the impression that women played very few roles, if any, in the religion, culture, and ministries of the Bible; but again is this actually an accurate portrayal or merely a view of the Bible through patriarchal colored classes? Perhaps we should best answer this question simply by letting the Bible speak for itself.

Let us first look at what is often referred to as the “Old Testament”. What role do we see women in through out the writings of law, prophecy, and the histories of Biblical times? Unlike what we are often lead to believe women through out the Bible were often given positions of authority by God, Deborah was a judge and even led the armies of Israel, likewise people tend to forget that the Children of Israel were led not only by Moses but by Aaron and Miriam as well although the popular retelling of these stories tend to often omit his sister's role.

Of course Miriam is not alone, Queen Esther was heralded for her intervention in saving the Hebrews so much that God granted them permission to have a festival in her honor (which is still celebrated today as Purim). Both Miriam and Deborah were referred to clearly as prophetesses (Exodus 15:20; Judges 4:4)

Aside form the well known examples of Deborah and Miriam we see other prophetesses in the Bible, who were not merely playing support roles, or ministering only unto women as the modern day church often claims, but spoke with the explicit authority as the messengers of God just as their male counterparts did, consider Huldah's prophecy to the King of Judah in 2 Kings Chapter 22 (and 2 Chronicles Chapter 34). This is a great example of a female prophet that is constantly over looked yet she clearly played the same role as many of the male prophets of the day did.

So it does seem that God chose women for many roles during those times. If that is the case, we might ask why it is that we did not see more women in positions of authority in the past including the Biblical texts? I think this was a trend merely because of the atmosphere and conditions in which they lived after all it would not have exactly been safe for a woman to wonder the countryside alone as we saw many of the prophets or apostles do and likewise many political leaders often proved themselves on the battlefield which was not exactly suited to women at the time. I think a patriarchal tendency and cultural biases is why men have often over shadowed the prophetesses and other women of the Bible and history in general. But can this be used as reasons of excluding women now or is that merely the historical context and not a Biblical one? To better answer this questions, we will look at women in the Bible in the New Testament in part two of this article.