Patriarchy and the New Testament

Abstract

Gender is constantly being defined - it is a combination of conscious and unconscious social and cultural construction. In ancient times, Plato and Aristotle provided us with two examples of gender theory. Aristotle's notion of natural order pre-elects a woman's role through recourse to her nature as natural subject - women are then the natural and biological inferiors of the patriarchal male. Plato, on the other hand, saw gender roles as flexible social constructions. It seems as if Aristotle's view played an important role in the way many understood and still understand the nature and roles of women. If gender theory is based on the difference between man and woman, in other words, following Aristotle, one ends up in patriarchy. For a long time modern researchers accepted that patriarchy was the only social organization in the ancient world. It seems, however, from new research, that Plato's view did not fall on deaf ears. In ancient society there were contradictory forces at work - therefore the position of women and the social attitude towards them were correspondingly diverse. We are thus confronted by two opposite social organizations in ancient society. The question is in which of these two social organizations the New Testament is partaking. The focus of this paper is to determine in what respects the New Testament is partaking in the patriarchal views of antiquity, and in what respects it is diametrically opposed to it?