Re: adultery

From: Jim West (jwest@highland.net)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 19:37:37 EST


At 06:19 PM 1/26/98 -0600, you wrote:

>Jim,
>
>Are you seriously saying that a married woman in biblical times never had
>an illicit affair, let alone was never caught in the act of doing so. It
>seems to me that in this instance you are importing what happened to a
>woman when her husband divorced her (according to Jesus' reading of such
>activity) into a story which says nothing about the woman in question
>being divorced.
>
>Jeffrey Gibson
>jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu
>

No, no, no. Once more (and for the final time) the import of the passive is
the simple fact that in 1st century Palestinian society, the woman was
powerless- the man was powerful- and as a result the adulterer was the man
while the adulterated was the woman.

Did women have flings- yep! Did they reap the social wrath for it- yep!
Did men get off "scot free"- yep! (there are too many contemporary events
which parallel this to mention!!). In sum, this is what Jesus protests
against in the synoptics and John. Where is the man in John 8? He must
have been there!!! Where is the divorced husband in the Synoptics? Living
life while the woman is left destitute.

The use of the passive is intentional, clear, and probably stems from an
authentic Jesus tradition (the famous criteria of dis-similarity).

Best, as always,

Jim

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Bible
Quartz Hill School of Theology

jwest@highland.net



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