Kevin H and what he said about the place of women in Biblical times

[Gail]

The book I am reading now, Kenneth Bailey's book on Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, has a chapter all about the place of women in Jewish society at the time.

The stuff he has recorded agrees with what our friend Kevin H has been posting for a while: That Jewish women had it not too bad in OT times. It was in the Intertestamental period and thanks to Ben Sirach that men got very strict regarding the place of women in the home and in the synagogue.

The author lauds Mary, the mother of Jesus, for instilling in Jesus a big respect for women. He did things that were culturally quite revolutionary. Namely, that Mary sitting at Jesus' feet was typically not done as it was telling everyone that she was a disciple of His. A woman!

The passage in Luke 8:1-3 about Jesus being accompanied with both men and women disciples and that He also was provided for out of their means would not bat an eye today but in the culture of the area even today is considered shocking. Women are allowed to travel with men but were only permitted to sleep with relatives.

Bailey found this statement of Luke's absolutely astonishing, first, because women were included as disciples, secondly as they helped provide for Him of their personal means, and thirdly because a mixed group travelled and lived together.

[Gail]

I think we will be very much surprised about the Who's Who in God's kingdom. More and more it seems to me to be not the Christian against all others but according to the Bible, the rich, famous, educated and advantaged against the material poor as well as the poor in spirit, widows and fatherless. And guess which side God is for...

That is a big food for thought!

[Gary K]

Quote

I think we will be very much surprised about the Who's Who in God's kingdom. More and more it seems to me to be not the Christian against all others but according to the Bible, the rich, famous, educated and advantaged against the material poor as well as the poor in spirit, widows and fatherless. And guess which side God is for...

I see a lot of Biblical evidence against such a position.  Job was extremely wealthy, and God said he was a righteous man.  God trusted him to the point he allowed the devil to go after him in all ways except the taking of his life when the devil challenged God over Job.  That is an amazing amount of trust for God to display in a human being.  After the devil took away Job's wealth God gave it back to him. Noah had to have had a lot of resources to build the ark.  That means he had to have had a fairly high degree of wealth, and the Bible tells us that Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord, that he also was a righteous man.  Noah spent 120 years building the ark and during that time according to the Biblical and SOP accounts he either preached or worked on the ark.  Besides just the time frame think about the tooling the job required, for to work with wood that was like stone took some pretty incredible tools.  Good tools have always been expensive.

Daniel had to have been pretty well-off too.  You do not rise to the levels of government that he did and not be pretty wealthy.  The angel Gabriel told Daniel that he was beloved of God.  When Solomon asked only for wisdom God, because of that request, made Solomon extemely wealthy.  He was probably the wealthiest individual of all time as his yearly income was staggering.  A talent of gold is 250 lbs of gold and Solomon had a yearly income of 666 talents of gold.  At $1200/ounce that comes to $3.1968 billion a year in today's money  And the gold income was only a part of his income.  He had yearly income in silver, gemstones, timber, grain, almost everything imaginable.  His wealth is almost unfathomable.  No individual today that I know of comes anywhere even close to that kind of wealth.

Nicodemus was also a very wealthy man.  He died poor, but he did so because he gave everything he had to the cause of God.

What I find in the Bible is that God is for those who allow Him to implant His principles and ideals in their hearts and then by abiding in Him they live by those concepts.  It doesn't matter if we are wealthy or poor to God.  What matters is what is in our hearts and whether or not we live accordingly. 

[CoAspen]

What she is referring to is the Gospel of Christ when His desciples and others asked what the gospel was, to care for the widows, less fortunate, orphans, those in need, etc. A state of mind, in other words, I have all of this so I must be blessed by God, those others are not! A rather common idea in Christ day.

[phkrause]

The Unlikely Role of the Biblical Woman

In Torah we read the following about Eve’s primary function:

https://weekly.israelbiblecenter.com/the-unlikely-role-of-a-biblical-woman/?

I'm posting this here, if its not the place than please move to where it belongs, because I couldn't find the thread I was looking for to post!