Was Jesus Himself an Actual "Feminist" in a way? Yes or no?

[RDKirk]

Until the last couple years, walking down the center of the road (a real road with cars going both ways), the drivers were courteous or observant enough to go around us.

As to acknowledging that one is on a different road, that would be nice, but it is against forum/site rules . (if someone says they are on the same road, we cannot say they are not)

I mean a different road from secular feminists. Or secular liberals. Or secular anybody.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I mean a different road from secular feminists. Or secular liberals. Or secular anybody.

The first two no problem . The last one, can't tell.

 

[Rion]

I'd say more of an egalitarian.

 

[mkgal1]

I hope it motivates you to read and study God’s Word for yourself. Maybe you’ll come to a better understanding of who God is by reading the words He left for us all

That's quite an assumption that I *haven't* studied the Bible for myself. That's precisely why I believe what I believe.

There are other interpretations and frames of thought than what you seem to have only been exposed to. The Gospel should be truly Good News for ALL (and what I've come to believe *is* just that)--as we mentioned earlier---the Great Reversal is great news.

 

[ToBeLoved]

That's quite an assumption that I *haven't* studied the Bible for myself. That's precisely why I believe what I believe.

There are other interpretations and frames of thought than what you seem to have only been exposed to. The Gospel should be truly Good News for ALL (and what I've come to believe *is* just that)--as we mentioned earlier---the Great Reversal is great news.

I didn't say that you have not.

Maybe it would be better not to continue the conversation if you are taking things overly personally. I find when this happens it usually leads to problems later.

 

[mkgal1]

I didn't say that you have not.

Maybe it would be better not to continue the conversation if you are taking things overly personally. I find when this happens it usually leads to problems later.

This certainly holds that implication:

I hope it motivates you to read and study God’s Word for yourself. Maybe you’ll come to a better understanding of who God is by reading the words He left for us all

 

[Phil 1:21]

Was Jesus Himself an Actual "Feminist" in a way? Yes or no?

In the context of first century near east culture, absolutely. He did not treat women as lesser-than. The fact that he would entrust a woman—Mary Magdalene—with the task of initially spreading the most important news in the history of mankind was no doubt quite unconventional for that time. This is a perfect illustration of how we should view and treat one another.

Of course, Jesus' style of what we may call “feminism” was/is not remotely the same as today’s third wave man-hating SJW frothing-at-the-mouth nonsense.

 

[mkgal1]

Here's a study of two prominent ministry women from the Bible: 11. Ministry Women Identified by Service: Lydia & Phoebe

and here: Acts 16:13-15 - Lydia: The Lord Opened Her Heart

and also here: Lydia and the ‘Place of Prayer’ at Philippi | Marg Mowczko

Lydia happened to be the first soul to be saved in Macedonia. And this resulted from the first Gospel preaching of Paul after he had sailed there from Troas. After Lydia was saved, her home became the first place where the Christians of Philippi met regularly. And this then became the first church of Jesus Christ to be planted in Europe! Seeing that there are many ‘firsts’ things in this sermon, let us first read the passage from Acts 16, beginning at verse 6 and ending at v.15.

So what made Paul go there? According to v.9 God gave Paul a vision in which he saw a man of Macedonia saying to him, “Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” Taking this to be God’s directive, Paul and his team immediately went to the port at Troas and they found a ship all ready to sail to Macedonia

...which is very similar to when Jesus was led through Samaria to meet the woman at the well.

 

[ToBeLoved]

This certainly holds that implication:

That’s what you implied from reading it

 

[RDKirk]

In the context of first century near east culture, absolutely. He did not treat women as lesser-than. The fact that he would entrust a woman—Mary Magdalene—with the task of initially spreading the most important news in the history of mankind was no doubt quite unconventional for that time. This is a perfect illustration of how we should view and treat one another.

Of course, Jesus' style of what we may call “feminism” was/is not remotely the same as today’s third wave man-hating SJW frothing-at-the-mouth nonsense.

That would certainly include Paul as well. There are about 29 women named in the New Testament (excluding references to OT women like Sarah). Of those 29, Paul and his disciple Luke name 24 of them. Without Paul and Luke, we'd only know about Mary, Mary, Mary, Martha, and Salome.

Luke explicitly and overtly mentions women as being part of their ministry. It's so overt for that society that it could only be with specific intention that he did so.

Paul told people to whom women were the property of their husbands that the husband's body belonged to the wife as much as the wife's body belonged to the husband.

Paul named a woman as a deacon. Paul identified two women "who fought by my side for the gospel."

Paul speaks more about the importance of women in the work of the Lord (or any other endeavor) than any man until the end of the 20th century.

 

[Endeavourer]

From another thread:

Tobeloved, I have noticed in some of your posts that there are certain commandments of men that you have also accepted as doctrines. For example, you've referenced the "headship" doctrine, which is built on a word that is not found in the Bible. Therefore, by definition at least a hair of that doctrine is a commandment of man.

Have you ever studied the headship position from a skeptical perspective to confirm that you are indeed relying on the full counsel of Scripture and not following a man made doctrine that is in vain?

I don't intend my question as a thread jack to discuss the topic of headship .... I'm just pointing out that most of us have at least several blind spots where we assume the positioning and applications we've heard our whole lives are the truth.

If you study the skeptic's viewpoint and still rest on your original interpretation, then that's entirely fine too. Then you have personally verified it to be a doctrine of God and not a vain commandment of man.

At least you know at a deeper level what you believe and why you believe it.

There are some applications of the 'headship' doctrine that are unquestionably FAR outside of anything found in the Bible and extremely harmful to those being subjected to it, such as teachings that a woman must be subordinate to her husband EVEN if he commands her to sin because he will answer for any of her sins done under his command instead of her. Women living under this doctrine can be terribly abused without having a sense that they are being treated unjustly.

I have not studied your posts to ascertain where on that spectrum you are - I'm just mentioning that in some circles the headship doctrine morphs into its own animal - far beyond anything most Christians could stretch the words of the Bible into.

So, all of that to say => it is healthy for ALL of us to examine EVERYTHING we believe against the Bible. Particularly anything that is enslaving to our lives; things that we accommodate at great inconvenience. I'm HAPPY to be inconvenienced in service to my Lord; I have just learned during my spiritual journey that some of my inconveniences were Pharisaical fences and actually repugnant to the plain teachings in Scripture.

I personally study the skeptics positions until I'm satisfied that my position answers their questions satisfactorily, in my judgement.

So the Bible is incorrect?

1 Corinthians 11:3
3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

The Bible is beautifully, inerrantly and unfailingly correct, including that verse and all other verses.

The question I posed to you is: have you challenged yourself on whether your understanding of it is correct? Are you reading that verse through a filter that you don't even realize is there?

Be careful for which translations you use when studying out this issue, however. The ESV translation was chaired by a man who is heavily into a perversion of the headship doctrine, and he translated the verse this way:

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wifea]">[a] is her husband,b]">[b] and the head of Christ is God.

Notice he substituted "wife" for "woman" in the text, while including notes that imply the literal translation is "woman" and "man". Wife instead of woman is an enormous difference.

He also made this change in Gen 3:16:

..Your desire shall be contrary to a]">[a] your husband..

which is vastly different than:

...and thy desire shall be to thy husband...​

The specifics of headship per se are not the point of my comment. My comment was just pointing out that most (all?) of us have filters that we don't even recognize are filters. Some of our filters inadvertently pull doctrines of the devil into our sincerely held beliefs. We think we are understanding something as the pure, unadulterated Word of God when it isn't necessarily so.

Infamously, the devil's best line is "yea, hath not God said...." and then with a small twist you think you are understanding what God said but it is actually entirely different.

So, the only question I pose to you is: have you challenged yourself on whether your understanding of it is correct? Are you reading that verse through a filter that you don't even realize is there?

No, I'm really fine with this verse and the concept.

So, ToBeLoved, I'm surprised to see you debating this topic here when on the other thread you said you had not researched this exact topic and weren't interested in doing so.

That's quite an assumption that I *haven't* studied the Bible for myself. That's precisely why I believe what I believe.

There are other interpretations and frames of thought than what you seem to have only been exposed to. The Gospel should be truly Good News for ALL (and what I've come to believe *is* just that)--as we mentioned earlier---the Great Reversal is great news.

I have to take mkgal1's side here. You are accusing her of arguing this topic without studying it while you have openly professed to not have studied it yourself.

 

[ToBeLoved]

So, ToBeLoved, I'm surprised to see you debating this topic here when on the other thread you said you had not researched this exact topic and weren't interested in doing so.

Look again at the quote. I said no such thing

 

[mkgal1]

That’s what you implied from reading it

...as would *most* people with any reading comprehension skills.

But.....I am glad to see you admit that people can draw different implications from written text (the same is true of the Bible as well). The use of the word, "head" for instance, has different implications/meanings. To a lot of people it's symbolism for unity and interdependence and life (when a person is beheaded--as was common in Jesus' day--life ceases).

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

That would certainly include Paul as well. There are about 29 women named in the New Testament (excluding references to OT women like Sarah). Of those 29, Paul and his disciple Luke name 24 of them. Without Paul and Luke, we'd only know about Mary, Mary, Mary, Martha, and Salome.

Luke explicitly and overtly mentions women as being part of their ministry. It's so overt for that society that it could only be with specific intention that he did so.

Paul told people to whom women were the property of their husbands that the husband's body belonged to the wife as much as the wife's body belonged to the husband.

Paul named a woman as a deacon. Paul identified two women "who fought by my side for the gospel."

Paul speaks more about the importance of women in the work of the Lord (or any other endeavor) than any man until the end of the 20th century.

Yes,
whenever anyone, man, woman or child, does what Yahweh appointed/ instructed,
much can be accomplished.

Just like TORAH, whenever it is used as Yahweh Instructed, is good.

If it is used out of place, in a way contrary to Yahweh's Plan, then not good.

 

[mkgal1]

An example of another view of 1st Cor 11:

I agree with what Gilbert Bilezikian has said on this: “The sequence that links the three clauses [of 1 Cor. 11:3] is not hierarchy but chronology. At creation, Christ was the giver of life to men as the source of the life of Adam (“by him all things were created” Col. 1:16.) In turn, man gave life to the woman as she was taken from him. Then, God gave life to the Son as he came into the world for the incarnation.” (From “I Believe in Male Headship”.)

While the first man was the source of the first woman, Paul’s real emphasis is the common origin of men and women, and the mutuality this implies, and so he wrote: “However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God” (1 Cor. 11:11-12). God is the ultimate source of both man and woman.[10]~The Chiasm in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 | Marg Mowczko

 

[mkgal1]

Look again at the quote. I said no such thing

Perhaps more clearly phrased posts would help avoid these misreadings of your posts?

This was the way that exchange went:

The question I posed to you is: have you challenged yourself on whether your understanding of it is correct?

.....and you responded with:

No, I'm really fine with this verse and the concept.

.....what else would that "no" mean? Most people would see that as your answer to that question.

We're all working with English in the same era were living in. Can you now see how much MORE complicated things get when we try to take a language from thousands of years ago that's not even our language used today? Also....keep in mind the Bible had to be somewhat covertly written as following Jesus was typically a death sentence.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

The WORDS WE SPEAK are SPIRIT, as TAUGHT by the SPIRIT, and they ARE LIFE.
The natural man cannot understand the things of the SPIRIT.

Jesus Christ the SAME yesterday, today and forever.

 

[Endeavourer]

Here's an interesting study of the definitions the word "head" or "kephale" carried during the time of the apostle Paul:

The most complete Greek-English lexicon (covering Homeric, classical and koine Greek) in current existence is a two-volume work of more than 2,000 pages compiled by .Liddell, Scott, Jones and McKenzie, published first in 1843. It is based on examination of thousands of Greek writings from the period of Homer (about 1000 B.C.) to about A.D. 600 -- a period of nearly 1600 years, including the Septuagint and New Testament times. This lexicon lists, with examples, the common meanings of kephale. The list includes more than 25 possible figurative meanings in addition to the literal meaning of physical head of man or beast. The list does not include “authority,” “superior rank,” “leader,” “director,” or anything similar as a meaning. There is an older Greek-Latin thesaurus published in 1851, but written primarily in the sixteenth century. It also gives no meanings such as “authority” or “supreme over.” Apparently, ordinary readers of Greek literature during New Testament times would not think of “final authority,” “superior rank” or “director” as common meanings for the word translated “head.”

The entry looks somewhat like this in the 1940 edition of Liddell, Scott, Jones and McKenzie lexicon:

I. a. Physical head of man or beast. Frequently used with preposition such as “down over the head,” or “above the head” or “from head to foot” or “head foremost” or “thrust headlong.” [In our day we would say “head first.”]

b. As the noblest part, periphrasis for the whole person.

c. Life, as in “staking their heads on...”

d.. In imprecation, as in “on my head be it!” [Or Paul’s response in Acts 18:6 to the Jews who opposed him in Macedonia, “Your blood be upon your own heads!”]

II. Of things, extremity.

a. In botany, head of garlic, tubers.

b. In anatomy, base of heart, but also apex; of muscles, origin.

c. Generally, top, brim of vessel; coping of a wall; capital of a column.

d. In plural, source, origin of a river, but singular, mouth; generally, source, origin, starting point.

e. Extremity of a plot of land.

III. A bust of Homer.

IV. Wig, head-dress.

V. Metaphorical

a. Piece de resistance [i.e. main dish of a meal]

b. Crown, completion, consummation.

c. Sum, total.

d. Hand of men; right hand of phalanx

e. Astronomy, Aries [as the gable of the world]

The lexicon gives references to Greek literature for each of these meanings. The lexicographers (with various editions spanning more than 100 years, from 1836 to 1940) apparently found no examples in their study of Greek literature where kephale could have the meaning “one having authority,” “supreme over” or anything similar. (Where other recognized meanings are possible, one cannot assume that the word kephale means chief, authority or superior rank.) These scholars living in 1800s and early 1900s surely could not be accused of being blinded by the “feminist movement,” and thus ignoring references in Greek that supported kephale as meaning “authority.” [1]

****

The most common lexicon used by pastors and teachers of the Bible in our day is the koine Greek lexicon by Arndt and Gingrich, commonly known as Bauer’s. This lexicon is less than half the size of Liddell, Scott, Jones and McKenzie. The following is a basic condensation of the entry for kephale in Bauer:

[kephale, es, he,] (Homer,+ inscriptions, papyri, Septuagint, Enoch, Epistle of Aristotle, Philo, Josephus)

1 . lit.- a. actually of the head of man or beast [followed by thirty-six lines of entry giving examples of this obvious meaning, ranging from the New Testament to Aesop’s fables]….h. metaph... Christ the [kephale] of the [church] thought of as a [soma (“body”)] Col. 1:18;cf. Col. 2:19.

2. fig- a. In the case of living beings, to denote superior rank. (cf. Artem. 4:24. p.218 where [kephale] is the symbol of the father; Judg 11:11; 2 [Sam] 22:44) head (Zosimus of Ashkelon[500 A.D.] hails Demosth. as his master: [“0h, divine head”] [Biogr. p. 297]; of the husband in relation to his wife I Cor 11:3b; Eph 5:23a. Of Christ in relation to the church Eph 4:15; 5:23b. But Christ is he head not only of the church but of the universe as a whole, [“head over all things”] Eph 1:22, and of every cosmic power... the head of all might and power or all rule & authority]. Col. 2:10. The divine influence on the world results in the series (for the growing distance from God with corresponding results);...God the [kephale] of Christ, Christ the [kephale] of the man, the man the [kephale] of the woman, I Cor 11:3c,a,b.

B. of things the uppermost part, extremity, end, point... [kephale gonias] the cornerstone (forming the farthest extension... of the corner, though Joachim Jeremias... thinks of it as the keystone or capstone above the door;... Mt 21:42; Mk 12:10; Lk 20:17,...Ac 4:11; I Pt 2:7 B[arnahas] 6:4 (all [quoting] Psalm 118:22 [LXX Ps 117:22]).” [3]

The following are some criticisms of Bauer’s definition:

Under section two, where Bauer gives “superior rank” as a meaning for kephale, he cites only two references from secular Greek. One comes from Zosimus and is dated A.D. 500 -- at least 400 years after the New Testament was written. (Our question is not what kephale meant in A.D. 500 but rather what Paul meant when he used kephale when writing his letters to the churches in the first century.) Bauer’s only other reference to secular Greek to support the meaning of “superior rank” is to Artemidorus in the second century, where kephale is used as a symbol of the father. What Artemidorus said (Lib K, Capt 2, Para 6,) was “He [the father] was the cause (aitos) of the life and of the light for the dreamer [the son] just as the head (kephale) is the cause of the life and the light of all the body.” He also said: “the head is to be likened to parents because the head is the cause [source] of life.” Bauer’s reference may be an example of a lexicographer reading his own cultural understanding (i.e., fathers have “superior rank”) into the text.”[4]

EDITED TO ADD:
Phillip Payne rightly comments:

The Mickelsen’s criticism of Bauer’s treatment of kephale is well founded. The inappropriateness of citing the Zosimus statement as an example of kephale denoting “superior rank” is not due only to its late date. It is virtually certain that this passage does not imply a position of authority over anyone. Stanford classicist Mark Edwards stated that ho theia kephale in the Zosirnus document is a salutation implying dignity, not authority. Presumably the Demosthenes referred to is the great Athenian orator (384-22 B.C.), who could not have had a position of authority over Zosimus since Demosthenes had died over 800 years earlier. [5]

more at: http://www.searchingtogether.org/kephale.htm

 

[Endeavourer]

Abridged version:

Under section two, where Bauer gives “superior rank” as a meaning for kephale, he cites only two references from secular Greek. One comes from Zosimus and is dated A.D. 500 -- at least 400 years after the New Testament was written. (Our question is not what kephale meant in A.D. 500 but rather what Paul meant when he used kephale when writing his letters to the churches in the first century.)

Bauer’s only other reference to secular Greek to support the meaning of “superior rank” is to Artemidorus in the second century, where kephale is used as a symbol of the father. What Artemidorus said (Lib K, Capt 2, Para 6,) was “He [the father] was the cause (aitos) of the life and of the light for the dreamer [the son] just as the head (kephale) is the cause of the life and the light of all the body.” He also said: “the head is to be likened to parents because the head is the cause [source] of life.” Bauer’s reference may be an example of a lexicographer reading his own cultural understanding (i.e., fathers have “superior rank”) into the text.”[4]

The inappropriateness of citing the Zosimus statement as an example of kephale denoting “superior rank” is not due only to its late date. It is virtually certain that this passage does not imply a position of authority over anyone. Stanford classicist Mark Edwards stated that ho theia kephale in the Zosirnus document is a salutation implying dignity, not authority. Presumably the Demosthenes referred to is the great Athenian orator (384-22 B.C.), who could not have had a position of authority over Zosimus since Demosthenes had died over 800 years earlier. [5]

quoted from, and more at: http://www.searchingtogether.org/kephale.htm

 

[ToBeLoved]

...as would *most* people with any reading comprehension skills.

But.....I am glad to see you admit that people can draw different implications from written text (the same is true of the Bible as well). The use of the word, "head" for instance, has different implications/meanings. To a lot of people it's symbolism for unity and interdependence and life (when a person is beheaded--as was common in Jesus' day--life ceases).

If you read the verse it is obviously hierarchical in nature. I think four are mentioned; God, Christ man and woman. From the sentence you can see the meaning, but I can go find the exact Greek word since the New Testament was written in Greek.