Silke, your complaint about the use of "cult" is a reasonable
criticism in the U.S. I don't know about other countries, but here
it is definitely pejorative in the popular culture and used as justification
for doing some pretty horrible things to "weirdos". Academics are generally
using it in a non-emotional way, but these are exceptions to the general
connotations of the word here these days.
As for the Bible saying bad things about women, it also says bad things about
men. There are things about the emission of sperm making men unclean, for
example, as well as stuff about menstruation and women's uncleanness. I think
it's interesting that most feminist critiques of the Bible have taken a
traditional fundamentalist reading of the passages, conveniently ignoring the
parts that implicate men as well as the parts which praise women. Part of
this, I know, is that the culture particularly of the Hebrews is still pretty
mysterious (look at the story of Tamar and Judah, for example, or the motions
that Ruth and her second husband went through for their betrothal or see how
Zipporah's cutting of a foreskin seems to have prevented a murder) so
it's been much easier to just plop it all into modern culture and make value
judgments based on 20th century norms. I think that another reason that it is
so often the case that the Bible is portrayed as singularly poisonous for women
is that there is the assumption that the loudest and most abrasive voices, the
angry reactionaries or fundamentalists, speak for the whole of the faith. It's
kind of like a newcomer to feminism thinking that Andrea Dworkin is the
essential defining voice.
Carolyn
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