Gerda Lerner

Western civilization draws many of its leading metaphors and definitions of gender and morality from the Bible.

The combined pressure of the need for agricultural labor in settling a desert environment and the concurrent loss of population due to wars and epidemics crisis in the very period when the rudimentary principles of Jewish religious thought came into being may explain the Biblical emphasis on the family and on woman’s procreative role. In such a demographic crisis women would most likely have agreed to a division of labor which gave their maternal role primacy.

David Bakan, in a highly original and stimulating interpretation of the Book of Genesis, argues that the central theme of the book is the assumption of paternity by males. When men make the “scientific” discovery that conception results from intercourse between men and women, they understand that they have the power to procreate, which previously they had believed only the gods possessed.

In the prayers to Ishtar, as to other fertility-goddesses, one of the praiseworthy attributes of the goddess was that “she opened the wombs of women.” In Genesis, that language is used solely in reference to Yahweh:

In the historical context of the times of the writing of Genesis, the snake was clearly associated with the fertility-goddess and symbolically represented her. Thus, by God’s command, the free and open sexuality of the fertility-goddess was to be forbidden to fallen woman. The way her sexuality was to find expression was in motherhood. Her sexuality was so defined as to serve her motherly function, and it was limited by two conditions: she was to be subordinate to her husband, and she would bring forth her children in pain.

The development of monotheism in the Book of Genesis was an enormous advance of human beings in the direction of abstract thought and the definition of universally valid symbols. It is a tragic accident of history that this advance occurred in a social setting and under circumstances which strengthened and affirmed patriarchy. Thus, the very process of symbol-making occurred in a form which marginalized women.

We have shown in the preceding chapters how in the historic period, when humankind made a qualitative leap forward in its ability to conceptualize large symbol systems which explain the world and the universe, women were already so greatly disadvantaged that they were excluded from participation in this important cultural advance.

The exclusion of women from the creation of symbol systems became fully institutionalized only with the development of monotheism.

Human society is divided into two sexes: the male—rational, strong, endowed with the capacity for procreation, equipped with soul and fit to rule; the female—passionate and unable to control her appetites, weak, providing only low matter for the process of procreation, devoid of soul and designed to be ruled. And because this is so, the rule of some men over other men can be justified by ascribing to those men some of the same qualities ascribed to the female.

The fact that sex dominance antedates class dominance and lies at its foundation is both implicit and explicit in Aristotle’s philosophy.