Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
Place these by the side of the man and the woman, Hector and
Andromache, of the "Iliad," who called upon the immortal gods to bless
their child of love; the virgin Isis with her son Horus; the Vedic
virgin Indrance, the mother of the savior-god, Indra; Devaki and her
Divine child, Chrishna; Hipparchia, Pandora, Protogenia, Cornelia,
Plotina, and a host of the noble and virtuous of Pagan history. Prove
by comparing these with the position of woman in Christendom that woman
owes all that she is to the Bible.
Compare Ruth of the Bible with the magnificent Pagan, Penelope, who
refused the hands of kings, was as true to her love as the star is to
the pole, who, after years of waiting, clasped the old wanderer in
rags to her heart, her husband, her long-lost Ulysses; yet this
Pagan woman lived ten centuries before the laws of Moses and of Christ
were promulgated. While there are millions of Penelopes in Christendom,
there are other millions of women, after centuries of Bible teaching,
who lie outside the pale of motherhood, and even outside of the pale of
swine-hood. Under Bible teaching the scarlet woman is "anathema,
marantha," while the scarlet man holds high place in the Sanctuary and
the State.
The by-paths of ecclesiastical history are fetid with the records of
crimes against women; and "the half has never been told." And what of
the history which Christianity is making to-day? Answer, ye victims of
domestic warfare who crowd the divorce courts of Bible lands. Answer,
ye wretched offspring of involuntary motherhood. Answer, ye five
hundred thousand outcast women of Christian America, who should have
been five hundred thousand blessings, bearing humanity in your
unvitiated blood down the streams of time. Answer, ye mental dwarfs and
moral monstrosities, and tell what the Holy Bible has done for you.
While these answers echo through the stately cathedrals of Bible
lands, if the priest, with the Holy Bible in his hands, can show just
cause why woman should not look to reason and to science rather than to
Scripture for deliverance, "let him speak now, or forever after hold
his peace."
When Reason reigns and Science lights the way, a countless host of
women will move in majesty down the coming centuries. A voice will cry,
"Who are these?" and the answer will ring out: "These are the mothers
of the coming race, who have locked the door of the Temple of Faith and
thrown the key away; 'these are they which came out of great
tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the'
fountain of knowledge."
Josephine K. Henry.
My Dear Mrs. Stanton:--To say that "the Bible for two thousand years
has been the greatest block in the way of civilization" is,
misleading. Until the Protestant reformation, the Bible was hidden
from the common people by the hierarchs of the Roman Catholic Church;
and it is only about three centuries that it has been read in the
vernacular.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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