{"id":580,"date":"2005-12-26T07:53:09","date_gmt":"2005-12-26T07:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html"},"modified":"2005-12-26T07:53:09","modified_gmt":"2005-12-26T07:53:09","slug":"women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html","title":{"rendered":"Women in the World of Jesus 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Today&#8217;s post will examine what the ancient Jewish sources tell us about how women and the legal system.<\/em><br \/>\nFirst, what about <em>Punishments and Judgments<\/em>? Women were treated <em>absolutely equally<\/em> in matters pertaining to punishment. Because of Numbers 5:6 (where men and women are seen as equals), R. Ishmael said: \u201cit [the scripture] has thus made it explicit in regard to all the laws about damages found in the Torah that women are to be regarded like men\u201d (Mekhilta de R. Ishmael, Mishpatim 6; cf. also bYebamot 84b; bTemurah 2b; bQiddushin 35a). <!--more|inline--><br \/>\n<strong>However<\/strong>, when it came to punishments (stoning, crucifixion, hanging, flogging), women were given more physical consideration (e.g., though a man was stoned naked, a woman was not; mSanhedrin 6:3). Cf. Jesus and the woman caught <em>en flagrant<\/em> (John 7:53-8:11).<br \/>\nSecond, what about <em>Women as Witnesses<\/em>?Some evidence <em>prohibits<\/em> female legal witness: Josephus, Antiquities 4:219;  Sifre Deuteronomy 190; bSanhedrin 27b.  Other evidence <em>permits<\/em> female legal witness: tSanhedrin 5:2 \u2013 \u201ctestimony that a woman is qualified to give\u2026.\u201d These included: the origin of a swarm of bees (mBaba Qamma 10:2), the death of someone\u2019s husband (mYebamot 16:5), chastity or defilement of a female war captive (mKetubot 2:9; mSotah 6:2), the elder of twins if the woman is a midwife (tBaba Batra 7:2), and that a specific male was a priest (mKetubot 2:3). Because of this, it is unwise to make the simplistic claim that the use of women as witnesses to the resurrection would never have been believed &#8212; though I think it is a fair argument, it deserves to be nuanced.<br \/>\nIt is safe and wise to see that there was a general prohibition that had many exceptions.<br \/>\nThird, what about <em>Inheritance<\/em>? The woman cannot be the legal heir of her husband\u2019s estate and a daughter can be legal heir only if she has no brothers (Numbers 27:8). The wife inherited only her ketubbah (mBaba Batra 8:1).  At the time of Jesus, debate ensued about daughters and inheritance and the laws were eventually developed that permitted daughters to inherit. Which led to principles of circumvention: men could write in extras into a woman\u2019s ketubbah (bBaba Batra 138a-b; mKetubot 8:1; tKetubot 9:2) to ensure that a woman was maintained adequately.<br \/>\nAnd there was the issue of guardieanship: a man could appoint his wife as guardian of his estate after his death (here the wife does not \u201cinherit\u201d the property but benefits from it)(mKetubot 9:4, 6); and she could be guardian as well over the children (tTerumot 1:11; mBaba Batra 8:17).<br \/>\nTechnorati tags:<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Women and Christianity\" rel=\"tag\">Women and Christianity<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Women and Ordination\" rel=\"tag\">Women and Ordination<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s post will examine what the ancient Jewish sources tell us about how women and the legal system. First, what about Punishments and Judgments? Women were treated absolutely equally in matters pertaining to punishment. Because of Numbers 5:6 (where men and women are seen as equals), R. Ishmael said: \u201cit [the scripture] has thus made&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women-and-ministry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Women in the World of Jesus 6 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Women in the World of Jesus 6 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today&#8217;s post will examine what the ancient Jewish sources tell us about how women and the legal system. First, what about Punishments and Judgments? Women were treated absolutely equally in matters pertaining to punishment. Because of Numbers 5:6 (where men and women are seen as equals), R. Ishmael said: \u201cit [the scripture] has thus made&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-26T07:53:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Women in the World of Jesus 6 - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Women in the World of Jesus 6 - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Today&#8217;s post will examine what the ancient Jewish sources tell us about how women and the legal system. First, what about Punishments and Judgments? Women were treated absolutely equally in matters pertaining to punishment. Because of Numbers 5:6 (where men and women are seen as equals), R. Ishmael said: \u201cit [the scripture] has thus made&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2005-12-26T07:53:09+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html","name":"Women in the World of Jesus 6 - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-12-26T07:53:09+00:00","dateModified":"2005-12-26T07:53:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2005\/12\/women-in-the-world-of-jesus-6.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Women in the World of Jesus 6"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}