The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjucation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Author:Beth Allison Barr [Barr, Beth Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493429639
Google: 5IooEAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 57795066
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

Writing Women Out of the English Bible

I STILL REMEMBER how frustrated I was. At our church, I led Wednesday night youth group, but because of the pastoral stance on male headship, I could only teach teenage girls. Usually, my husband and I avoided teaching directly on women’s roles in the church. We worked hard to not publicly contradict the pastoral position.

Tonight one of the teenage girls was leading. Part of our philosophy was to teach the youth the skills they would need to become leaders in the church, which included teaching the Bible. So we worked with them on how to prepare lessons, find resources, and actually lead a lesson. This student taught on what it meant to be a Christian wife. Because of the complementarian stance of the church, I couldn’t refuse her choice. I also couldn’t contradict her. I could only listen.

I sat staring at the Bible in front of me. It was my Today’s New International Version (TNIV), which my husband had given me early in our marriage. I listened as she read from the ESV. I listened as she argued from Scripture that women’s primary calling was to be a wife and a mother. I listened as she said that men were called to lead, because only men were mentioned in the Bible in leadership positions, while women were called to follow.

When it was over, I got in my car and sat there. Many of the verses the girl had read were shaped by the translation she was using. The picture of submissive wives and mothers, who sat under the leadership of their husbands and male leaders in the church, may have seemed crystal clear. But her translation, her very modern English Bible translation, made her believe that what she was teaching was a plain reading of Scripture, whereas as a historian, I know that all biblical translations are shaped by human hands.

Translations matter. And for women, translations of the English Bible have mattered more than most modern evangelicals realize.1

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.