Marriage and Sexual Relations in the World of the Hebrew Bible

Author(s):  
Ken Stone

The Hebrew Bible is sometimes understood as the source of a ‘traditional’ Judaeo-Christian approach to marriage and sexual practice. A comprehensive examination reveals, however, that biblical assumptions about sex, gender, and kinship are complex and internally diverse. Some of these assumptions stand in tension with traditional Jewish and Christian norms for marriage and sexual activity. This essay reviews such matters as the biblical vocabulary for, and representations of, marital relations; the status of women in households organized around fathers; the role of polygyny; differing standards for the sexual conduct of husbands, wives, and concubines; intermarriage and inter-ethnic sexual relations; prostitution; the use of sex and marriage within male contests for power and honour; the use of sexual and marital images in representations of Israel’s relationship to God; and the attitudes towards sex and gender found in less frequently read books of the Bible such as the Song of Songs.

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Bani Syarif Maulana

Islam is a religion which has attempted to elevate the status of women so that there should be no discrimination between women and men from the Islamic perspective. However, in some fiqh texts, which are based on selected Qur'an and hadith, there is discrimination against women. On the other side, gender discourse now becomes an important issue and is used to improve the status of women. This article attempts to explore both the jiqh texts and gender discourse on the models of leadership in a family, especially on the role of women and men in the family and on the sexual relations, from the Islamic perspective.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Ken Stone

George W. Bush links the call of Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3) to his decision to run for US President. This article uses Bush’s appeal to Moses as a point of departure for reflection on the role of biblical rhetoric in and against the Bush Administration. Much attention has been given to the importance of religion in Bush’s 2004 reelection. However, Bush’s appeal to Moses provides openings for potentially subversive readings. Although the politics of marriage (especially as refracted through the “gay marriage” debates) played a role in Bush’s re-election, Moses’ own marriage is a source of contention in the biblical text; and matters of sex and gender create moments of potential instability at several points in the Moses traditions. The claims made about “Bible” by Bush and his supporters are performative rather than constative statements. Like the phrase “Burning Bush” itself, Bush’s Bible therefore remains open for resignification by those who read the Bible for very different purposes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamila Klingorová ◽  
Tomáš Havlíček

Abstract The status of women in society is very diverse worldwide. Among many important traits associated with the differentiation of gender inequality is religion, which itself must be regarded as a fluid concept with interpretations and practices ‘embedded’ and thus varying with respect to cultural and historical relations. Admitting the complexity of the issues, some religious norms and traditions can contribute to the formation of gender inequalities and to subordinate the role of women in society. Using an exploratory quantitative analysis, the influence of religiosity on gender inequality in social, economic and political spheres is examined. Three categories of states have emerged from the analysis: (a) states where the majority of inhabitants are without religious affiliation, which display the lowest levels of gender inequality; (b) Christian and Buddhist societies, with average levels of gender inequality; and (c) states with the highest levels of gender inequality across the observed variables, whose inhabitants adhere to Islam and Hinduism.


2019 ◽  
pp. 289-302
Author(s):  
Anat Pershitz

In the past decade, the Israeli Army (IDF) has been undergoing simultane-ously two ‘social revolutions’: a ‘feminist revolution’ and a “religious revolution”. The two revolutions have different and conflicting ideologies causing a clash of values. Feminist values demand the integration of women in the army without gender separation, whereas religious principles require modesty and gender separation. At the moment, in practice, religious values which under-mine women’s equal opportunities in the army outweigh democratic values. If the secular women and men in Israeli society will not act to deprive the IDF of its unofficial and unauthorized role of balancing conflicting values in society, the status and roles of women in the army will be downgraded, directly im-pacting gender inequality in the employment market.


Author(s):  
Rosamond C. Rodman

Expanding beyond the text of the Bible, this chapter explores instead a piece of political scripture, namely the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Over the last half-decade, the Second Amendment has come to enjoy the status of a kind of scripture-within-scripture. Vaulted to a much more prominent status than it had held in the first 150 years or so of its existence, and having undergone a remarkable shift in what most Americans think it means, the Second Amendment provides an opportunity to examine the linguistic, racial, and gendered modes by which these changes were effected, paying particular attention to the ways in which white children and white women were conscripted into the role of the masculine, frontier-defending US citizen.


Author(s):  
Aga Skrodzka

This article argues for the importance of preserving the visual memory of female communist agency in today’s Poland, at the time when the nation’s relationship to its communist past is being forcefully rearticulated with the help of the controversial Decommunization Act, which affects the public space of the commons. The wholesale criminalization of communism by the ruling conservative forces spurred a wave of historical and symbolic revisions that undermine the legacy of the communist women’s movement, contributing to the continued erosion of women’s rights in Poland. By looking at recent cinema and its treatment of female communists as well as the newly published accounts of the communist women’s movement provided by feminist historians and sociologists, the project sheds light on current cultural debates that address the status of women in postcommunist Poland and the role of leftist legacy in such debates.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Cloutier ◽  
Paul Bernard ◽  
Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay

Using a new typology based on information available from the Labour Force Survey, the authors analyse how job quality evolved in Québec for both women and men over the last decade (1997-2007). Results show that family situation and educational attainment are two important factors in the determination of gender inequality in the labour market. The analysis emphasizes the very significant decline in gender differences with regard to job quality (from 23% to 35% according to groups), especially for persons without children and individuals who achieved higher education. The changes represent a definite progress in the status of women in general, although some indicators also reveal degradation with respect to job quality in some of the sub-groups.  


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Humera Sultana ◽  
Nasreen Aslam Shah

Historically, the status of women was very low all over the world however Islam is the only religion which help in changing the status of women and improve her status in the society. This paper explores the lives of Muslim women in the period of early Islamic society which reveals that these women gave the lesson of virtue, piety, devotion and sacrifice to every women and daughter of Islam. These ladies bore exemplary moral character, and in performance of their responsibilities they sacrificed their luxuries, comforts and happiness. Following footprints of these ladies can make every daughter a proud human being.


Author(s):  
G Paranthaman ◽  
S Santhi ◽  
R Radha ◽  
G Poornima Thilagam

Woman constitutes the key role in the Indian society. Women in ancient India enjoyed high status in society and their condition was good. The Ancient and medieval status of women in modern Indian society regarding Equality, Education, Marriage and Family life, Race and Gender, Religion and Culture is maintained or deteriorated. The Vedic women had economic freedom. Some women were engaged in teaching work. Home was the place of production. Spinning and weaving of clothes were done at home. Women also helped their husbands in agricultural pursuit. In the religious field, wife enjoyed full rights and regularly participated in religious ceremonies with her husband. Religious ceremonies and sacrifices were performed jointly by the husband and wife. Women even participated actively in religious discourses. The status of women improved a little during the Buddhist period though there was no tremendous change. The role of women in Ancient Indian Literature is immense. Ancient India had many learned ladies. The Medieval period (Period between 500 A.D to 1500 A.D) proved to be highly disappointing for the Indian women, for their status further deteriorated during this period. Through this study we come to the conclusion that as the women has equal participation in human development. She is half of the human race. But she lacks in society. Women are not treated with respect as in the Ancient Indian society. Lot of crime against women is seen in the modern society. The Constitutional provisions are not sufficient to get the respectable position in society. The paper will help us to imagine the participation of women in social, religious, economic and household matters from Ancient to Modern.


Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan

W hen Saddam Hussein infamously proclaimed that the word and the bullet came from the same barrel, he created an embattled cultural space which would persist because of, and in spite of, his dominance of Iraqi politics for almost twenty-five years. This book is not an analysis of the status of women in Iraq under Saddam Hussein; nor is it exclusively about Iraqi women writers inside or outside the country, or about constructions of gender and gender identity. Instead the focus of the book is, to use the words of Abir Hamdar, on the ‘ongoing struggle for symbolic power in the Arab world’....


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document