Deem it nothing but an occasion for joy, my brothers, whenever (on each occasion when ) you encounter trying assaults of evil in their various forms (The Epistle of James 1:2, translated by Adamson, p. 52).
James includes verses 2 through 4 in this section but this article will only discuss his commentary on verse 2. I think it’s important to include the citations and notes relevant to his arguments. If I include all three verses in this article it will be too long. I’ll discuss Jame 3-4 in the next article.
Peirasmos
According to Adamson, the dominant ideas of the Epistle are the duty and the reward of endurance under peirasmos, a ‘certain and not distant victory’. The words and example of Jesus inspire this approach. He cites Luke 6:22.
Reading Time: 4minutesThe foundation of the ancient Greeks’ project for civilization was their determination to turn the female sex into a subject population. But there were unintended consequences. Plato’s war on women helped bring about the end of monarchy.
Philo
There is evidence that the Greeks were toying with the idea of subjecting women before Plato. But it was Plato who influenced Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher born in 25 BC. Philo used allegory to harmonize Jewish scripture, mainly the Torah, with Greek philosophy.
If we were to judge Plato by today’s standards for hate speech we would conclude that he was a hater of women. However we don’t judge Plato or any other misogynist by that standard. The world accepts Plato’s animosity toward women because Philo enshrined it in the Bible’s creation story.
Aristotle
This story led some religious leaders to conclude that nothing is due women for their role in reproduction. They are merely repaying their debt to God. This seems to have been the goal of Plato’s student Aristotle who denied women credit for their part in the creation of life. (This points to the importance of childbearing in the status of women.)
The suspicion that certain influential people claimed God as a partisan gendered being with the sole aim of ruling will disturb many readers. But for those who merely want to defend biblical religion there is a solution.
The Bible
There are three ways to read the story of the Fall of Man: It’s a model for the way society should work; it’s a description of the way things are; or it’s warning or a prediction about a human tendency. The second and third possibilities are more revealing than Plato could have imagined. In practice, this myth reveals patriarchal intention.
Unfortunately, these last two possibilities are never used to interpret the Fall of Man. They are, however, used to interpret other biblical stories. The Tower of Babel for example is interpreted as an explanation for different languages and a warning against hubris.
We are told the Fall of Man is a lesson in how things should be. But a literal reading of the story perfectly describes human behavior as it is.
Customs that Guard Against the Subjection of Women
It’s likely that human societies have always had some degree of patriarchal authority. However ancient cultures purposely remedied the disadvantages of women. For example, according to the biblical creation story, equality between men and women is established in marriage. (I recently discovered that this sentence said ‘inequality between men and women is established in marriage’, which is the opposite of my meaning. Sometimes I suspect my wording is changed without my knowledge.) In ancient times, equality was accomplished through customs honored by the extended family.
Bride Wealth
The fundamental understanding of ancient cultures was the value of children (and their mother) to the marriage and to the extended family. Society acknowledged this in various ways. One was the custom of bride wealth. Another was the dowry. (Hardship can lead to a breakdown in this custom. In some parts of the world today the dowry justifies the abuse of women).
Matrilineal Kinship
Another custom that has been shown to benefit women and their children is matrilineal kinship. This is a system in which lineage and inheritance are traced through women.
The structure of matrilineal kinship systems implies that, relative to patrilineal kinship systems, women have greater support from their own kin groups and husbands have less authority over their wives. 1
Sara Lowes tested the hypothesis that matrilineal kinship systems reduce spousal cooperation. She found that men and women from matrilineal ethnic groups cooperate less with their spouses in a lab experiment. However she also found that matrilineal kinship has important benefits for the well-being of women and children.
The children of matrilineal women are healthier and better educated, and matrilineal women experience less domestic violence and greater autonomy.
Royal Succession in Egypt
Matrilineal kinship is not only a remedy for the inequality of women in marriage (Lowes didn’t measure for the effect of bride wealth or bride price), I believe it was the original system for royal succession in Egypt. Consider the tendency of pharaohs to marry their sisters.
Marriage to sisters was not a natural part of matrilineal succession. I believe it was a way for an ambitious pharaoh to escape the limits of matrilineal succession. Dynasties are impossible in a matrilineal system. The only way around this obstacle would have been for the son of a pharaoh to wed an heiress.
They obviously considered the daughter of the Pharaoh eligible to inherit royalty from her father, otherwise there would have been no motive for marriage to her brother. However this would have gone against custom, if not law. Traditionally, a sister’s offspring (the child of the daughter of the former pharaoh) would not be legally eligible to succeed him.
This patriarchal strategy can be demonstrated in other countries besides Egypt. The Achaean invader Menelaus married Helen, a kidnapped heiress, because without her he had no right to be king. That’s why Helen’s rescue by Paris led to the Trojan War 2.
Finally, Patrilineal systems inevitably lead to a narrowing of the gene pool for succession. This narrowing of the gene pool has played out in the lineage of European kings. This breakdown in the system of royal succession points to a departure from ancient custom and law.
Plato’s Anti-Democratic Focus
Plato did not only weaken the monarchal ideal. His writings are anti-democratic. He literally condemned democracy, but he condemned it figuratively by his hatred of women. Patriarchy weakens participation by women.
Reading Time: 4minutesThe dialogue about women has not been flattering lately. Officially, it’s centered around reproductive rights, but in between the lines the brutal tactics convey something else. Most recently we’ve been confronted with callous hospital policy. One hospital risks a mother’s death from complications of pregnancy. The other keeps a dead woman on life support against her wishes. Supposedly the abortion debate is about protecting life, however these extreme cases represent a clear statement of low female status. How did it come to this?
Status is the value of one person in relation to another. There is evidence that female status was high at one time. The belief in the gigantic size of the Amazons was probably based on a misunderstanding—they were depicted that way to indicate high status. By contrast, pictures of Hindu gods with their consorts, indicate low status for females.
Vishnu & Lakshmi on Sesha or Ananta
Unfortunately, because hospital policy is premised on the absolute equality of a woman’s life with the life of her fetus, women in the United States would have to be drawn no taller than a man’s ankle. This doesn’t seem consistent with our ideals, but we don’t realize what it means when the issue of status is built into the world’s three main religions. The Bible wastes no time in ranking the first two humans in relation to each other.
We don’t know what factors were behind the high status of the Amazons. However, there is evidence in the custom of bride wealth that it had something to do with the female role in procreation. Defenders of patriarchy claim that this changed after the discovery of the male’s part in conception. However, that’s not supported by the evidence. In any case, the male part is minuscule compared to the female part, and this was recognized in the custom of bridewealth.
The value of the female role in procreation can be framed in the form of a cost analysis. Costs to the female include physical hazards as well as the time required for each pregnancy—9 months, not counting 2 or more years of breast feeding. Costs to males are non-existent.
Consider also what bridewealth says about the value of females to their families. Bridewealth was a form of compensation to the bride’s family, especially to her mother, for the loss of her companionship and help. it was also compensation to the bride’s parents for the loss of her offspring. If not for the payment of bridewealth, her children would keep their name and remain with them.
It was not the discovery of the male role in procreation that began the loss of female status. It was a philosophical attack on the relative contribution of the female. We know that Aristotle asserted the superior contribution of the male in the creation of life, and much later, Aquinas concurred. They claimed the father was the active agent and that the man’s sperm and the physical motion of intercourse ‘organized’ the lifeless matter in the menstrual blood. Further, both Aristotle and Aquinas said the ‘sensitive soul’ was entirely produced by the male. The semen is an instrumental cause, while the soul of the male parent is the principal cause.
Aquinas added to Aristotle’s scheme by saying that the human soul was directly created by God. Nevertheless, he didn’t alter the superiority of the male’s contribution over the female’s. Theologians in the Middle Ages thought the spiritual soul was not present until after the first few weeks.
Later, Thomas Fieinus (1567-1631) argued that the soul is present from conception. The development of the fetus consists of successively emergent functions attributable to a single original principle brought to life by the motion of intercourse. Following Fieinus, Paulo Zacchia (1584-1659) argued that the soul which organizes the development of the ‘conceptus’ is internal to it.
Finally, an 1879 article, Aquinas on Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life, argued that the principle of formative development is ‘immanent’
With the development of embryology, you might think the female role would be vindicated, but that was never in the cards. On the contrary, the fetus is now said to be a separate individual whose right to life rivals the mother’s.
But what about the physical costs of each pregnancy? They can’t explain that away, can they? You will recall that in Eve’s case, marriage was a punishment, and according to Christianity, there is no value attributed to the female for her role in procreation. At best, it might redeem her from her wretched state! The strange thing is that we see the practice of bride wealth, or rather bride service, in the Old Testament. Jacob worked 7 years for each of his wives. Jacob and Adam seem to represent two entirely different cultures.
We can’t improve things for women if we don’t understand the problem. The female role in procreation was the basis of female status, but the protections and privileges associated with it have been systematically removed.
The President is currently talking about higher wages for certain groups of people. This would be an improvement, but the lower wage paid to women is a special case. It is a conscious statement of lower status. On the other hand, if you think that your becoming a priest will improve the status of women, you don’t understand your own religion. And the abortion debate? It’s simply the effort to close the last loophole available to the world’s perennial subject class. In the process, its extreme nature masks the attack on female status. Those who are fighting Roe v. Wade may not realize how this draws women into the debate who would never consider an abortion for themselves.
This was written for the Wikipedia article. Much of that article was deleted in a dispute.
What is Patriarchy?
Patriarchy is a social system in which the father or eldest male is head of the household, having authority over women and children. Patriarchy also refers to a system of government by males, and to the dominance of men in social or cultural systems. It may also include tracing title through the male line (Webster’s New World College Dictionary). Feminist theory considers rule by men to be detrimental to the rights of women. However, patriarchal systems of government do not benefit all men of all classes.
Patriarchal Institutions versus Patriarchal Attitudes
The term patriarchy generally refers to institutions but the term is sometimes used for societal attitudes. It has been argued that “Institutions are very persistent and may last, with little change, into a period in which attitudes have altered considerably since the institutions were devised.” Gordon Rattray Taylor used the words “patrist” and “matrist” to describe these attitudes. He noted that the outlook of the dominant social group seems to swing between the two extremes. However, the patrist assertion that the patriarchal system of authority was the original and universal system of social organization leads to the establishment of corresponding institutions (Taylor, Gordon Rattray. Theories of Matriarchy and Patriarchy. Sex in History ).
History of Western Patriarchy
Aristotle
Antique illustration of Aristotle Credit: ilbusca
In the third century BC, Aristotle taught that the city-state developed out of the patriarchal family. However, he thought the family and the state were different in kind as well as in scale.[mfn]Lock, John, “Two Treatises of Government, with a supplement Patriarcha by Robert Filmer, edited with an introduction by Thomas I. Cook, New York. Hafner Press, 1947[/mfn] He wrote that the highest form of human community is the political community.
The Politics
In The Politics, Aristotle attempts to illustrate the nature of the hierarchies that exist in the political community and its subordinate communities. He then argues for an origin of male rule. In Chapter Thirteen he states that men and women have different kinds of virtue, “just as those who are natural subjects differ (from those who rule by nature.)” Other types of community, such as the household, are subordinate and inferior to the polis.
Aristotle proposed that the household is subordinate to the political community because the aim of life in the household is the mere preservation of life, or the satisfaction of life’s daily needs, whereas the aim of membership in the political community is to live well. He also proposed that the household is inferior to the political community in the character of its rule. In the household, the man rules by virtue of his age and sex, monarchically at best and tyrannically at worst. In the polis, citizens choose their rulers on the basis of merit. (Stauffer, Dana Jalbert Aristotle’s Account of the Subjection of Women
Socrates
Illustration of a bust of the Greek philosopher Socrates after Visconti. credit: Gwengoat
Both Plato and Aristotle seem to have followed the lead of Socrates. Socrates denied that citizens had the basic virtue necessary to nurture a good society. He equated virtue with knowledge unattainable by ordinary people. During Athens’ struggle with undemocratic Sparta, Socrates favored Sparta (Linder, Doug, The Trial of Socrates).
Plato
Plato (Greek philosopher, 428/427 BC – 348/347 BC). Lithograph after an antique bust by Joseph Brodtmann (German-swiss engraver and publisher, 1787-1862), published c. 1830. Credit: ZU_09
Plato never mentioned Socrates’ sedition against Athens. However, the cosmology of the Timaeus includes the idea that a man who lives well will live a happy and congenial life on his consort star. Failing this a man’s second birth will be as a woman. (41E-42D, on the Creation of Souls).
The Athenians and the Egyptians Compared
Other ancient societies contemporary with Aristotle, as well as many Athenians, did not share these views of women, family organization, or political and economic structure.[mfn]del Giorgio, J.F. The Oldest Europeans. Guadeamus, Caracas, Venezuela, 2003[/mfn] Egypt left no philosophical record. Herodotus, on the other hand, left a record of his shock at the contrast between the roles of Egyptian women and the women of Athens. He observed that Egyptian women attended market and were employed in trade. In ancient Egypt a middle-class woman might sit on a local tribunal, engage in real estate transactions, and inherit or bequeath property. Women also secured loans, and witnessed legal documents.
This changed, however. Greek influence spread with the conquests of Alexander the Great, who was educated by Aristotle.[mfn]Bristow, John Temple. “What Paul Really said about Women: an Apostle’s liberating views on equality in marriage, leadership, and love”, Harper Collins, New York, 1991[/mfn] Eventually, when Alexander wanted to unite his two empires in equality, Aristotle was adamant that all non-Greeks should be enslaved.
Aristotle and the Jews
About 200 BC the Jewish Philosopher Aristobulus of Panaeas claimed that Jewish revelation and Aristotelian philosophy were identical. Within 200 years, it was assumed that Aristotle derived his doctrine directly from Judaism. In the 12th century the Talmudist philosopher and astronomer, Maimonides harmonized Aristotlianism with Judaism. Subsequent rabbinical thought includes such pronouncements as “Eve was not created simultaneously with Adam because God foreknew that later she would be a source of complaint (Gen. R. xvii). “Nine curses together with death befell Eve in consequence of her disobedience” (Pirke R. E. Xiv.; Ab. R.N. ii. 42). While Maimonides dared to contradict Aristotle’s ideas in matters of faith, it wasn’t long before the Islamic Philosopher Averroes, endorsed them without reserve. Aristotle in Jewish Legend
Adam and Eve: Patriarchy in Christianity
For the last 1800 years Christian leaders have placed great emphasis on the creation of Eve, believing that the story was historical fact, rather than androcentric myth. This has been used as evidence of insurmountable character defects, not just for Eve but for all women. In the 2nd century Tertullian, the son of a centurion and a pagan until middle life, told women believers, “Do you not know that you are Eve?…Because of the death which you brought upon us, even the Son of God had to die” (De cultu feminarum, libri duo I, 1).
In the 4th Century, the basic attitude was one of puzzlement over the fact of woman’s existence. Augustine of Hippo said he could not see how a woman could be any help for a man if the work of childbearing is excluded. However, it was only with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century that Aristotle’s teachings emerged in the official teachings of Roman Catholicism. In the Summa Theologica, Aristotle asserted that women are misbegotten males (I 92 I ad 1). The influence of combining Aristotle’s theory with Biblical interpretations can’t be overestimated.
Christine de Pizan on the Christian Canon
In about 1404 Christine de Pizan wrote “Le livre de la cite des dames”. This was a systematic feminist treatise arguing against the misogyny in classical works and the Christian Canon. After the advent of printing, the discourse became known as “the Querelle des femmes” and continued for the next 400 years.
Sir Robert Filmer and the Divine Right of Kings
From the time of Martin Luther, Protestantism regularly used the commandment in Exodus 20:12 to justify the duties owed to all superiors. ‘Honor thy father,’ became a euphemism for the duty to obey the king. But Aristotle’s appeal took on political meaning primarily as a secular doctrine. Although many 16th and 17th century theorists agreed with Aristotle’s views concerning the place of women in society, none of them tried to prove political obligation on the basis of the patriarchal family until sometime after 1680. Sir Robert Filmer is primarily responsible for the patriarchal political theory. Sometime before 1653, Filmer completed a work entitled Patriarcha. In it he defended the divine right of kings as having title inherited from Adam, the first man of the human race. He based this theory on the Judeo-Christian tradition.
John Locke on Filmer
In 1688 John Locke called Filmer’s all-powerful prince “…this strange kind of domineering phantom called the ‘fatherhood’ which, whoever could catch, presently got empire and unlimited, absolute power.” Locke asserted that if ‘honor thy father’, places everyone in subjection to political authority, then it couldn’t mean the duty owed to natural fathers, since they are subjects. By Filmer’s doctrine fathers have no power since power belongs solely to the prince. Locke also observed that those who propose political rights based on this commandment invariably omit the word ‘mother’ which is present in the Biblical verse. (His editor, however, made a note of Locke’s inconsistency in attributing natural law to the governance of relations between a father and his children, while stating that the law governing relations between a man and his wife is based on legality, or on Eve’s punishment after the Fall. Two Treatises of Government).
Aristotle’s view was not weakened by this argument. It had been elevated to an anthropological doctrine.
Nineteenth Century Feminism
In the 19th Century, Sarah Grimké dared to question the divine origin of the scriptures. Later, Elizabeth Caddy Stanton used Grimke’s criticism of Biblical sources to establish a basis for feminist thought. She published The Woman’s Bible, which proposed a feminist reading of the Old and New Testament. Subsequently, feminist theory denounced the patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition. [mfn]Castro, Ginette. American Feminism: a contemporary history. New York University Press. 1990[/mfn]
“Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman’s movement. Illustration was published in 1882″Credit: denisk0
Theosophy, Evolution and Racism: Patriarchy at its Worst
In Europe, from about 1770, the rationalist Enlightenment and the desire for mystery had brought about a resurgence of a synthesis of Gnosticism, neoplatonism and kabbalistic theosophy. This particular version arose first in the utilitarian and industrial countries of America and England with the theosophy of Madame Helena Blavatsky. This had a profound impact in Germany where it fit into the lebenzreform movement. Blavatsky probably influenced Adolf Hitler through the writings of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.
Guido von List
List sought a chauvinistic mystique for the defense of Germandom against the liberal, socialist and Jewish political forces in the late Wilhelmine Era. His blueprint involved ruthless subjection of non-Aryans in a hierarchical state; qualification of candidates for education or positions in public service, as well as in professions and commerce, based on racial purity. All non-Aryans were to be slaves. His political principles included racial and marital laws, and a patriarchal society where only male heads had full majority and where only Ario-Germans had freedom and citizenship. Each family was to have a genealogical record, proving Aryan lineage. he proposed a new feudalism where only the first-born inherits. These ideas were published as early as 1911. They were similar to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
Lanz von Liebenfels
Darwinist writers, who wrote of blond, blue-eyed Aryans, were influential in the writings of von Liebenfels. Von Liebenfels had illiberal, pan-German and monarchical sentiments. He believed the lower classes were inferior races. It followed that they must be exterminated along with the weak. Socialism, democracy and feminism were his most important targets. Women were a special problem in his view because they were more prone to bestial lust. He advocated brood mothers in eugenic convents, sterilization and other practices that later influenced the Third Reich, apparent in Himmler’s anticipation of polygamy for his Schutzstaffel (SS), care of unmarried mothers in SS homes, and musings on the education and marriage of chosen women.[mfn]Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan cults and their influence on Nazi ideology: the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935, New York University Press. 1992[/mfn]
Romantics and Marxists
By 1673, Francois Poullain de la Barre, “On the Equality of the Two Sexes”, had turned feminism into a systematic Enlightenment philosophy (as opposed to the previous Renaissance feminism). However, in 1861, Johann Jakob Bachofen, a German romantic and writer of the counter-Enlightenment said that matriarchy preceded patriarchy, and is superior to patriarchy on moral grounds. Bachofen influenced Karl Marx and Frederick Engles. Marxist analysis has been a basis for subsequent feminist thought.[mfn]Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović, Durkheim and postmodern culture. A. de Gruyter, New York. 1992[/mfn] From the beginning, socialist feminists in France, for example, were challenged by the republic, which “oppressed them as workers and women; by Marxism, which ignores gender; and by the misogyny of their socialist brothers. This struggle continues within all parties of the left (History of Feminism).
error: Content is protected !!
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to cookies.
