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The arguments produced by Rome do not prove Christ
broke with the social customs of his time.
Rome's Arguments
'Jesus Christ did not call any woman to become part of the
twelve. If he acted in this way, it was not in order to conform to the customs
of his time, for his attitude towards women was quite different from that of
his milieu, and he deliberately and courageously broke with it.
- For example, to the great astonishment of his own disciples Jesus
converses publicly with the Samaritan Woman (cf Jn 4, 27);
- he takes no notice of the state of legal impurity of the woman who
had suffered from haemorrhages (cf Mt 9, 20-22);
- he allows a sinful woman to approach him in the house of Simon the
Pharisee (cf Lk 7, 37ff);
- and by pardoning the woman taken in adultery, he means to show
that one must not be more severe towards the fault of a woman than towards that
of a man (cf Jn 8, 11).
- He does not hesitate to depart from the Mosaic Law in order to
affirm the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to
the marriage bond (cf Mk 10, 2-11; Mt 19, 3-9).
- In his itinerant ministry Jesus was accompanied not only by the
twelve but also by a group of women: 'Mary, surnamed the Magdalene, from whom
seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chusa, Susanna
and several others who provided for them out of their own resources' (Lk 8,
2-3).
- Contrary to Jewish mentality, which did not accord great value to
the testimony of women as Jewish law attests, it was nevertheless women who
were the first to have the privilege of seeing the risen Lord, and it was they
who were charged by Jesus to take the first paschal message to the apostles
themselves (cf Mt 28, 7-10; Lk 24, 9-10; Jn 20, 11-18) in order to prepare the
latter to become the official witnesses to the resurrection...
It must be recognised that we have here a number of convergent
indications that make all the more remarkable the fact that Jesus did not
entrust the apostolic charge to women.'
Quotation from Inter Insigniores
Reply
The document maintains that Jesus 'deliberately and courageously broke'
with the attitude towards women of his milieu. But the examples adduced do not
convince. In every single case Jesus' departure from Jewish custom involved a
judgement about sanctity and sin, not a judgement about the status of women.
In the four cases mentioned in which Jesus showed kindness towards
women: the Samaritan woman, the woman suffering from haemorrhages, the woman
who washed his feet, and the woman taken in adultery, the novelty of Jesus'
action lies in his compassionate behaviour towards persons supposed to
be impure on account of sin. That they were women adds to the degree of his
compassion but it does not change its nature. Jesus' compassion for sinful men,
such as the paralytic let down through the roof, Zacchaeus, the leper at
Capernaum, the good thief, etc, does not differ substantially.
Women were the first to see the empty tomb. As the document admits, it
would not seem correct to speak of them as 'witnesses'. In the official
list of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection of 1 Cor 15, 3-8, no woman is
mentioned. The account of the empty tomb originated in all likelihood from a
liturgical practice near Jerusalem (J. DELORME, 'Résurrection et Tombeau
de Jésus,' in La Résurrection du Christ et
l'Exégèse Moderne, ed. P. DE SURGY et al., Paris 1969, pgs
105-51). Only in later times did the text assume an apologetic purpose. In
harmony with Jewish thinking the apostles are then called in to function as
official witnesses (Mt 28, 1-10; Jn 20, 1-10). No departure from established
Jewish custom can be seen in this.
The text about divorce is interesting. The Pharisees ask, 'Is it
against the law for a man to divorce his wife on any pretext whatever?'. While
the rabbinical schools were divided on the gravity of the reason for which a
man could divorce his wife, Jesus states that an ideal marriage should exclude
the possibility of divorce. Notice how in the Jewish question itself male
predominance is implied. According to Jewish law divorce was the unilateral
right of the man. A husband could divorce his wife, not a wife her husband. In
the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus disapproves of divorce but implicitly accepts
divorce as the privilege of the husband. 'I say this to you: the man who
divorces his wife, except in the case of fornication, and marries another, is
guilty of adultery' (Mt 19, 9). This is probably the historical way in which
Jesus answered and which would, incidentally, illustrate how Jesus conformed to
the Jewish way of seeing the husband as the centre of marriage (see also Mt 5,
31-32, where again the husband is central). The formulation in Mk 10, 11-12,
which also speaks of a wife divorcing her husband, is surely an explicitation,
according to Jesus' mind, in the context of Mark's Roman audience (H. C. KEE and F. W. YOUNG, The Living World of the New
Testament, London 1960, pgs 111-12). According to Roman law, divorce
could be initiated both by the husband and by the wife. In other words, we have
here an example of Jesus' being sensitive to the rights of women; not an
example of Jesus' breaking with the social myth as such.
Jesus did, of course, have a new kind of relationship with women about
which I will speak elsewhere. The question here is whether in these
relationships with women he 'deliberately and courageously broke' with the
social customs of his time. The answer is clearly: No. It is true, in one or
two cases Jesus went beyond the limits which a Jewish rabbi would impose on his
dealings with women. As we have seen before, this can be explained as
compassion, an aspect of Jesus' overall neglect of rabbinical tradition when
mercy demanded it of him (Mt 9, 12-13).
There is, however, no question of a direct attack against
discrimination. Jesus did not fight for the emancipation of women in the same
way that he made a stand for the poor. He has frequent clashes with the
pharisees about the sabbath and other traditional observances. Not once is he
recorded as having a dispute to remedy the oppression woman was under. The
question of emancipation simply never arose. It could not arise. The social
climate was not ripe for it.
John Wijngaards
Follow @JohnWijngaards
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