Pro-Women

Keeping up with the resurrection theme (the Puritans believed every Sunday should celebrate the resurrection); I wanted to draw the insight of how pro-women Christianity is by its links to the resurrection.  I realize this is a minor exegetical point, but the subject of male/female roles is a major discussion in evangelical circles these days.  I will not deal with the arguments here, but suffice it to say it really boils me to hear people speak as if the Bible is a bunch of Neanderthal brutes of the male population that restricts women when nothing could be further from the truth.  It is fairer to say that the Judaism of Jesus day had a low view of the fair sex.

The resurrection helps us understand the noble view Jesus had of women.  Consider the following: all four gospel accounts give detailed information about the resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-11; John 20:1-10).  In each account, the gospels cite the initial discovery of Jesus resurrection to women.  The only Easter event to be explicitly related in detail by all four of the gospel writers is the visit of the women to Jesus.  Mark’s gospel even names the women, but fails to mention any male disciples who may have been around at the time.  This is in stark opposition to the Judaism of the day which suggested that an eyewitness in a legal case had to be male.  As Alister McGrath points out, “if the reports of the empty tomb were invented, as some have suggested, it is difficult to understand why their inventors should have embellished their accounts of the ‘discovery’ with something virtually guaranteed to discredit them in the eyes of their audiences.” (“Christian Spirituality, p. 70).  Those who distort Scripture’s view of women claiming it restricts women should rethink those claims using the evidence of the resurrection.