Interesting Links for 14-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• What I've Learned About Smart People.
  (tags: questions intelligence )
• A female apostle was erased from the bible during the middle ages.
  (tags: censorship christianity religion women )
• Metal substitutes are being tested to deter thieves
  (tags: materials uk crime metal )
• The Geek Social Fallacies of Sex.
  (tags: sex social geeks feminism )

Comments

[octopoid_horror]

Or who have arguably misinterpreted some other parts of the Bible to be more anti-women than they arguably were meant to be.

I was fully expecting to see the PAUL HATES WOMEN HE WANTED THEM TO JUST SHUT UP line trotted out in the comments to that article, and was not disappointed. There's a school of thought that suggests he did not, in fact, just want women to shut the hell up and stay silent. Some scholars* believe that he was adressing a very specific cultural problem. Since congregations in that area were segregated by gender in different parts of the church, and women were encouraged to be very vocal and ask their husbands for guidance in religious thought, what actually happened in church was that if the priest said something a woman didn't understand or wanted to comment on, she would shout to her husband, who was standing in a different part of the church, to ask him about it or to debate the point. Not wanting the female members of the congregation loudly shouting questions and debating theology with their husbands across a church is very different to just wanting women to be silent in general terms.

* - I can't remember which scholars - it was fifteen years ago that I studied this.