By Kay Leuschner, C. S. J.

The Bible and the Role of Women was the recent topic discussed by John McKenzie, S. J. at the Interfaith Conference on the Myths and Realities of Religious Leadership of Women, held September 6-7 in Athens, Ga.

McKenzie stated bluntly, “What was the role of women in ancient Israel? None. A Jew is male. Woman is wife of a Jew, mother of a Jew, but not a Jew. She is a spectator not a participant.”

He continues to point out that she was property, listed along with the livestock (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5), to be purchased, bartered (dowry), protected and passed on. However, this attitude towards women must be seen in its cultural milieu and perhaps as an advanced evaluation in the common history of woman’s subordination.

But then, McKenzie lists women of the Old Testament who did “break print” and were reported with some claim to glory and ignominy in the canons of sacred writing.

Eve, who really was the major actress in the Genesis story of creation and the fall. She makes the decisions; the man is speechless.

Sarah demands that wife number two be turned out, and her husband, contrary to his rights according to the law of the time, obeyed her ultimatum – and gave up the younger woman and her son.

There was Miriam, the sister of Moses, who seems to have made herself so obnoxious that her brother prayed a case of leprosy upon her. But then, he generously effected her cure through his prayer also.

Deborah led the Israelites in battle; Judith cut off the head of Holefernes in a dastardly way (is there any other way of cutting off a head?); Jezebel, well, we all know about her; and then Bethsheba…

And so the list of “significant” women in the Bible was enumerated along with the list of their virtues: tempting, clever, manipulating, deceiving, termagant. And poor man was always the victim.

When McKenzie turned to the New Testament writings, he cited only the problems women caused in the early Church as experienced by Paul.

My chief disappointment with McKenzie’s remarks (and those of his respondent, Dr. Keck of Emory University) was not in what he said, which tended to be negative and problem-oriented; but in what he did not say.

He did not mention Mary. It seems to me that a theologian interested in principles for woman’s liberation in Scripture would need to speak of Mary as model.

I do not claim this because she was the mother of God. I claim this on the terms and principles of woman’s liberation.

Here was a woman who was not used. Rather her judgment and free decision were invited and respected. She became mother by choice. She had a right to question the alternatives. She was free to say “yes,” or “no.” Because she was a person, not an instrument, and her very preciousness and value in the eyes of God lay in her being fully herself. She was capable of declaring out of her intellectual, psychological and religious self, “Let it be.”

Mary was a woman praised by Jesus, not because of her function as a sexual object, i.e., mother or lover. He said, “rather is she blessed because she hears the word of God and keeps it.” She is praised because of her responsiveness to reality (the word of God), because she sank into the holy wholly herself. Her value and worth was in her being an open, discerning, responsible person.

Though not a Jew by legal or religious status as any other woman of her day (A Jewish woman still cannot be counted for the quorum required for Jewish worship), she must have been at the center of the early Christian community. Again, not because she was mother of the Resurrected Lord, but because she knew the heart and ways of the God of Israel better than any one else. She had rich experience in listening and interpreting the Word of God, had been trusted by Yahweh Himself.

Contemporary praise came to the Church from C. Jung when he hailed the proclamation of the Assumption of Mary as in tune with the times. For in this doctrine, the feminine principle of frailty is acknowledged and given status.

The feminine principle is in all of us – the need to touch Earth, to be whole persons, to appreciate the world of feeling and senses, to be tender, vulnerable, maternal as Earth. These qualities of being are greatly ignored in our cerebral world of paternal Protestant rationalism.

Thus Mary again embodies the tradition and principles for woman’s and man’s liberation.