Origin of Feminism

As with anything in this life, and you are probably tired of hearing us say this, the origins of feminism are lost to time. But one thing we do know, feminism has had a very long and storied history.

That history has provided many heroines for modern feminists. Due to the sparsity of records, it is hard to say which ancient woman was a true feminist and which were merely products of their cultural freedoms.

For example, what we know of the ancient Minoans is that what artifacts that have been recovered from their fallen society, is that women enjoyed a lot of freedom and equality with men.

How far that freedom and equality went is unknown as the language of the ancient Minoans has not been deciphered yet (some people have claimed to have deciphered the language but that is disputed at the time of this writing).

Having cultural freedom does not mean all women of the past were feminists or achieved those freedoms through feminist methods. One writer has mentioned that ancient Egypt was the cradle for equality in that country and era.  He wrote:

While Herodotus was wrong about Egyptian men, few of whom practised role reversal, he was right about the women, who could theoretically pursue any profession or career they wished. (source)

In the following paragraph he writes:

While Greek women could not practise medicine until the advent of Agnodice – who fled Athens to study in Alexandria – female doctors were highly regarded in Egypt. This included Peseshet, who was known as the “overseer of doctors”, and Merit Ptah, who is the first woman ever recorded to have practised medicine, some five millennia ago. (ibid)

While Agnodice could be regarded as an early feminist as she had to leave her country to pursue her dreams, the others may not have been rebellious but took advantage of the cultural freedom in Egypt. We cannot be certain.

Then other writers have said that the freedom of ancient Egypt extends far back into dynastic Egypt as they write:

It is often assumed that women in the ancient world held little power or influence. However, women in ancient Egypt could become highly influential physicians, political advisors, scribes, or even rulers. But like women in many cultures throughout history and today, they had to fight to acquire and hold onto their rights.

The first female ruler known in ancient Egyptian history lived during the reign of the First Dynasty. Her name was Merneith; she was a consort and a regent around 2970 BC.

After thousands of years of equal rights, Ptolemy IV tried to stop the strong tradition of cults of women. He changed the law and canceled many rights that had made women equal to men. (source)

That freedom may have been the result of the Minoan influence on the country at that time or the freedom and equality Minoan women enjoyed may have been influenced by those ancient Egyptians.

We cannot accept the statement that the first known female ruler of Egypt was Merneith because the first Pharoah of Egypt in the 1st Dynasty was Aha who reigned between 2972 and 2939 BC (Phaidon).

We will agree that later Pharaohs had a different role for women and made it difficult for them to do much outside of the home. Ptolemy IV may not have been the first to restrict women’s rights in ancient Egypt. he ruled between 222 to 205 BC during the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

A dynasty that included Cleopatra VII of Mark Antony and Julius Caesar fame. Even by the time of Herodotus, 5 women are said to have reached the ancient Egyptian throne:

• Nitokret: 2148 – 2144 B.C.
• Sobeknefru: 1787 – 1783 B.C.
• Hatshepsut: 1473 – 1458 B.C.
• Nefertiti: 1336 B.C.
• Cleopatra Vii was the 5th (source)

The most famous Egyptian ‘feminist’ may have been Hapatia. She was a well-known mathematician, astronomer, and so on. However, right now we are reading some very glossed over accounts of her life and death but she may not be as squeaky clean as her admirers are willing to admit.

There has been a lot of sugar coating involved in the subsequent re-telling of the Hypatia story and we cannot know for certain what she wrote,  because nothing of hers survives today (source).

We cannot find the source right now but we have read where she flaunted her position, dressed in unfeminine ways, and did other acts that infuriated the people of Alexandria. That behavior may be a myth like so  many other myths surrounding her:

Hypatia’s death began to be used to advance various narratives and agendas almost immediately. For Socrates, it was evidence of the ambition and greed for power of Cyril – the man who had persecuted Socrates’ Novatian sect. Damascius also made Cyril the villain, directly stating he orchestrated the murder. But Cyril went on to be something of a hero in both Orthodox and Coptic Christianity, so it is perhaps not surprising that about 200 years after the murder we find John, Bishop of Nikiû in the Nile Delta, depicting Hypatia as the pagan villainess who was rightly brought down by the righteous patriarch: (Ibid)

and

Similarly, Hypatia’s status as a female scholar and philosopher is often heavily emphasised, with claims made that she was “the first female mathematician” or somehow unique in her status as a female scholar. As already noted, most women in the Greco-Roman world’s highly patriarchal society did not advance beyond a rudimentary education, but while Hypatia’s advanced learning was unusual, it was far from unique. Centuries before she was born we have references to female scholars like Aspasia, Diotima, Arete, Hipparchia and Pamphile. Closer to her time we have Pandrosion in Alexandria and Sosipatra in Pergamon. Nor was she the last such female scholar. Just after her time the Iamblican Neoplatonist Asclepigenia studied and taught in Athens and in Alexandria Aedisia did the same, untroubled by any Christian mobs. (Ibid)

Her life is a prime example of what can happen when historians remain biased or have a specific agenda in mind. Staying in the ancient world, many so-called Christian feminists may hold Priscilla as a heroine of feminism as she seemed to be instrumental in the spiritual education of Apollo (Acts 18).

However, there is no indication that Priscilla violated one command of God as she was not listed as a pastor or leader of an ancient congregation. Nor did she hold authority over her husband or Apollo.

The same can be said for another heroine of the so-called Christian feminists, Deborah. we are introduced to her in Judges 4:4 and all we know about her rise to judge is what is stated in that verse:

⁴ Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. ⁵ She used to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the sons of Israel went up to her for judgment. (NASB)

We know nothing of how she became a judge or if God had appointed her or not. However, she was a prophetess, a gift from God, but what most people do not realize is that a prophet or prophetess are not priests, pastors, or church leaders.

She held no authority over the temple as her duty was to be a direct conduit passing on God’s words to his people. Neither woman could or can be considered a feminist.

Then what happened between Hypatia’s time and Helen of Anjou’s time is something that deserves further study. In Wikipedia’s list of famous feminists, Helen was the first of the modern era. She appeared on the scene in the 13th century AD and went about establishing schools for girls.

To some that qualify her as a feminist. To others, it simply means she saw a need and went about meeting that need and filling a void. We are only using Wikipedia as it has the most detailed list of feminists than other resources we looked at.

Whether all the women listed were truly feminists or not remains to be seen. there are just too many of them to adequately deal with here.

In TheBook of the City of Ladies, 15th-century writer Christine de Pizan protested misogyny and the role of women in the Middle Ages. Years later, during the Enlightenment, writers and philosophers like Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, argued vigorously for greater equality for women. (source)

Or they may have only heard of Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams. She may have been the bluntest of the feminists before her and between the time of Hypatia and her but it is hard to say. Her words sent a very harsh message to her husband:

In letters to her husband John Adams, Abigail Adams warned, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice.” (Ibid)

However, women rebelling against laws is not a modern practice. It took place long before Mrs. Adam’s husband reached the presidency:

The earliest evidence of a display that would today be called feminist came in ancient Rome during the 3rd century BCE, when a group of women barricaded the Forum in an attempt to force consul Marcus Porcius Cato to repeal laws that limited women’s use of expensive goods. (Source)

That source said those protests were a rare occurrence and possibly they were. Too many ancient records have been lost to know with any certainty. If the modern era is any gauge, then the source is correct. Women protest in different ways than creating mass protests.

We know of other feminists that have provided lots of help to future feminists through their writings:

Another important feminist development came when French author Olympe de Gouges wrote her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (“Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”) in 1791, a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (“Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”), which did not address the rights of women. (Ibid)

In other words, throughout history, women have responded to their treatment in various ways. Who started is unknown although Jezebel of Ahab fame certainly gave the movement a very bad reputation. As have other women who preceded and followed her.

We need to mention Christopher Rollston here. He is a very respected historian and philologist as well as epigrapher who specializes in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages, especially the biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), as well as Ugaritic, Phoenician, Akkadian, Ammonite, and Moabite. (source)

We have had our own encounters with him so we are not speaking out of turn. he was also involved in a controversy when he wrote a paper called ‘The Marginalization of Women: A Biblical Value We Don’t Like to Talk About‘. This paper cost him his tenure at Emmanuel Christian College. (source) Here is what he wrote:

But they’re part of the historical record and Ben Sira wasn’t alone. From Mesopotamia to Egypt, women in the ancient world were considered property — valuable property, but property nonetheless. And it’s true of the Bible’s view as well. Yes, there were biblical women who flourished in spite of the patriarchy, women like Ruth, Esther, Lydia and Priscilla. But women in the Bible were normally viewed as second class, if even that.

The Decalogue is a case in point. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male slave, his female slave, his ox, his donkey or anything which belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21). Because the Ten Commandments are so well known, it’s quite easy to miss the assumptions in them about gender. But the marginalization of women is clear. The wife is classified as her husband’s property, and so she’s listed with the slaves and work-animals. (Ibid)

His article goes to show that even top-rated, well-respected supposedly Christian scholars can get it very wrong. He does not understand why God worded the commandment in that way and only assumes that God copied secular thinking when he did.

While Dr. Rollston is not a feminist, he is very much a feminist supporter. As his article attests. We can have no doubt that the many feminists of history had male support helping them get their message across, whether right or wrong, to the rest of their fellow citizens.

He and many other ‘Christian’ pastors, scholars, and so on, forget that God has his way of writing and communicating. It is not the same as the unbelieving world’s ways.

Women have never been treated as property in the Bible. Instead, Dr. Rollston and others have misunderstood what God has been saying and ignore the fact that God has his rules for his kingdom.

Those rules do not stop women from using their gifts from God, see Deborah and Priscilla, in a very godly manner. However, when women rebel against God and his rules, they are not being a ‘Christian’ or other feminist, they are being disobedient and a sinner.

They are in need of repentance and to get right with God. Women do have talents and gifts. They just have to express them in the right way which is obedience to God as he latter lays out the rules, guidelines, and instructions on how women can be holy and meet his command ‘be ye holy for I am holy’.

That command is not for men only. To know how to be holy, one must know the rules, etc. Feminists want their own way and they are missing the mark while helping evil destroy God’s work.