Transcription
The Bible has been used as a tool of oppression for many occasions. The reason why the biblical myths are able to be used as tools of oppression is simply because that intention is what the authors had in mind as they were creating the story, at least that's one of the intentions. And so, when we understand that women played a very minor role relative to men in the biblical stories and the myths, and practically no role in the creation of any of those stories and myths, then we begin to understand how a male-dominant influence could find its way into the myths and be constructed in a way to oppress women.
And so, what we want to do is we want to go all the way back to the very beginning, to the Book of Genesis. Starting in this point is where we see the myths begin to become created and justified in the oppression of women. So let's go on this journey right now and let's find out how the Bible is used as a tool and has been used as a tool for a very long time to keep women subjugated to men.
Genesis 1:26: "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'"
"Hey, uh-oh. Let's stop right here. As soon as we start seeing people telling us what God said, a red flag should go up right away. Why is that? Because humans have this unique tendency to make God say whatever it is that they want God to say. And for this example specifically, we're going to see how people have taken God and made it say that women are supposed to be the subjects of men."
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion." So, man is supposed to be a reflection of God. That's why it says man was made in the image of God. And one of the attributes that's reflected down to man is this tendency in nature to dominate. That's why it says, "let them have dominion." So, this particular God that these, the, the Israelites are perceiving has a nature of being dominant, and it's passing that nature on to the people.
"Over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Verse 27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
Verse 28: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it."
So, at this particular part in the myth, we see that the humans are given two missions. One is to be fruitful and multiply. The other one is to, to subdue. Subdue what? The Earth, right? Take control over the things, right? This is how the myths are being created and fashioned and giving the humans a responsibility on the earth.
"And have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." So, we see again the recurring theme of dominance. God made man in its image, after its likeness, and afterwards, it's sent on a mission to go and dominate. And it's supposed to have dominion over the Earth and over all the animals and any other thing that's living upon the, uh, the Earth.
Now, as we begin to dig a little bit deeper, we're going to find out that this power of dominion is more specifically allocated for the man. The woman isn't going to have much part in this dominion because she's going to become the subject of the man, which is what we're going to read, uh, as we go into the next verse.
Genesis 2:19: "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them."
So, let's stop right there. This is a super important key in here. We got to turn the key in here. It says, "to see what he," who's he? Adam, the man, "to see what Adam the man would call them." What? Who's "them"? The fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, all the animals, and all the living things. You got to remember, remember in Genesis 1:28, which we just read, it says to go out and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and all the creeping things that are upon the earth.
When you come up to Genesis 2:19, it's showing you how Adam is demonstrating his power of dominion over the animals by providing names and naming them. And we have to understand the importance of names and naming things. The colonizers understood this very well. People who go out and colonize places and go and subdue other people, two ways where they use the power of naming: they rename the people, and they also rename the land. That's an establishment of dominion. This is coded in here. When you name something, you own it, right?
So, when it's saying that Adam, the animals were brought unto Adam to see what he would name them, this is, is going in, what it's saying subliminally is, you, when you name things, you own them.
"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them." And brought them unto Adam. Now, it says they brought them. Now, pay attention to this part because we're going to come back to this part too. And brought them unto Adam. God brought them to Adam to do what? To see what he would call them. For the purpose of showing his dominion.
"And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." So, whatever Adam called them, that's what they had to accept. When you rename people and when you name things, it also comes with an idea. This is, you, you can understand this very well when you study the colonizers, like I said. When colonizers went and renamed people, renamed, um, what we call indigenous people, and people who were brought over, um, in slavery, when they renamed them, the naming also comes with another idea behind it. So, when you name someone something and they accept that name and that idea, then they begin to see the world a different way, and now you own, basically, parts of their minds. So, this is just coded in here. It doesn't have anything necessarily to do, as we'll see, with just naming animals. There's nothing really that special about that. The message that's encoded in, in there, is what's special.
Verse 20: "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."
Verse 21: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof."
Verse 22: "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
Let's stop right here. Pay very close attention. "And brought her." The woman that God just made from Adam's rib, brought her unto the man. Let's pay attention to the pattern. Let's go back up to Genesis 2:19 and see what God did to the animals.
"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them." So, it's the same exact thing. God formed the animals, and it's saying that he brought them unto Adam to do what? To see what he, who's the he? Adam, what he Adam would name them. For what purpose? The purpose of dominion.
Now, let's stop here. Let's go back and let's finish the account in Genesis 2:22 and let's see if it's going to be the same exact pattern of exactly what Adam just did to the, to the animals, to show dominion.
"And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." He's bringing the woman unto Adam, just like he brought the animals unto Adam.
Verse 23: "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."
"She shall be called Woman." Remember the animals? He gave names to the animals to show dominion. The woman is being brought to him, and the first thing that he does, it says, "she shall be called Woman." He gave a name to her too, showing that the man is supposed to have dominion. And it's going to be clear. We're going to get way more into this, so it's going to, you're going to see how the creators are fashioning this and making the myths justify ways to keep women at a subjugated level. Right? This is how they're building their culture and the rules of operations, using the myths to justify it. Some hot stuff here, right? It gets real spicy.
Now, let's go over this one more time. "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." So, Adam is showing his dominance over the woman by giving her the name Woman. And the reason why he gave her the name Woman, that specific name, is because she's supposed to be taken out of Man. This is how they're constructing the myths, creating a, a scenario where the woman is supposed to be at the bottom, and the man is supposed to be in rulership over the man, over the woman. It's going to get even more spicier.
So, let's go now to Genesis the third chapter, and we're going to see how they tie the myths, the priest, and all the people who are constructing this, how they tie it together.
Genesis 3:1: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"
So, here we go. It's getting ready to get super spicy in here. So, now we're seeing another creation myth, right? Now we're seeing the woman talking to the snake. And when we see that, obviously, any rational person should automatically, it should fling in your mind right away, this is myth. Now, a myth doesn't mean that it's something that you throw away. A myth means that it's covering something, some underlying meaning in which usually the people writing the myths are veiling it, right? And it's something that you have to kind of like scramble to get to the bottom of. So, this is the backdrop or the backstory of the myth on how you're going to see how they fuse it in in order to create, um, a culture where the women are supposed to be on the bottom. So, we have the serpent and the woman talking.
Verse 2: "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden."
Verse 3: "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."
Verse 4: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die."
Verse 5: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
Verse 6: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."
So, we see that the writers created a scenario to where the woman falls victim to the, the, the tricks and the guiles of the serpent. And as a result, she, because she fell victim, she also created a, like a domino effect, to where her husband also fell victim as well. This is how they're pushing the blame, right now. It's trickling down.
Verse 7: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."
Verse 8: "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden."
Verse 9: "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"
Verse 10: "And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."
Verse 11: "And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"
Verse 12: "And the man said, The woman who thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
Here we go. Adam is now pushing the blame onto the woman, saying that this woman that you gave me, she's the one that caused me to fall short or to eat and and disobey the word that you have given. She's the one that's responsible for this.
Verse 13: "And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."
Look at the subtlety of this here. Watch how clean this is. We can see that Adam is blaming it on a person. He's saying, "This woman, this actual human that you gave me, she's the one that tricked me into doing this." Then, when the Lord God asks the woman, the woman turns around and she blames it on something like a snake, a talking snake, which is absolutely irrational. Adam gets the blame in on a human, the woman. And the woman has to blame it on a talking snake, showing, making a connection there that the woman can't decipher between anything that's reasonable. She gets tricked by a talking snake. Look how the craftiness of the craftiness of it is real crafty.
Verse 14: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."
Verse 15: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
And so, we see the punishment of the serpent that's involved in his deed. Now, here's where it gets super spicy. Watch this. This is where it starts to really tie together. Watch how the writers created the punishment for the woman, and then you start to see with your eyes open how clear and crafty these people are with the myths.
Verse 16: "Unto the woman he said," Stop right there. Who's the "he said"? We always got to catch these. Who's the "he said"? We go back up to Genesis 3, uh, 3:13. We'll see that it's the Lord God. So, when it says, "And he said," here we go again. "And God said." Every time we see "and God said," red flags have to go up. Humans to make it say whatever they want it to say. And we're about to see exactly what a human wants to make God say. Let's keep on reading.
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Super spicy in here. It gets super spicy in here. Look how they molded it. Look how they put it together. Super spicy in here. Wow. I got to rub my hands on this one. We get super spicy in here. When you start to see it, "the desire shall be towards thy husband, and he, your husband, shall rule over thee." This is how they've crafted the message. From a slithering snake, a woman, woman being tricked by the slithering snake that talks, tricking the man, and God said, "Your punishment is to be the subject, the object of the man. You're going to let, he's going to rule over you." This is how they're setting up their culture. This is how they're setting up the rules of society. This is how they are creating the myths in order to justify what it is that these group of men had in their minds and wanted to be established, right? That's, this is how this stuff is used. And it's not only the Bible that does this. Many, most of the other religions that have some formalized like decree and doctrine, many of those religions have pieces in there that have been abused, written in there to take advantage of people, right? This is a human tendency, and we can see it unfold right here before our eyes. It's so crafty, real, real clean and cunning, but you have to have the eyes to see it. If you're thinking that this is a literal story, then you won't see what, what people are doing and how they're, they're crafting it. They were able to get away with messages like this back then. A lot of the times, the people were more gullible and credulous, and it's still that way today. A lot of people still fall for it, but a lot more people are asking questions like, "Hold on, man, I'm not going to just fall for this, right?" The people who formulated this stuff, the mythmakers, they're really crafty, really, really crafty, and really skilled at what they do.
Verse 17: "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."
Verse 18: "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field."
Verse 19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
Verse 20: "And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living."
What did he do? He named her. The first time he named her, he named her Woman. The second time he named her, he named her Eve. Understand that she didn't have any participation in any of the naming. Why? Because we understand that the naming is supposed to be one of the demonstrations of domination, and it's a practical tool of domination, and it still works today. When you name something, you own it. Adam is sewing his dominance over Eve by placing her with the name Eve.
Now, this is all very important here. Let's see as the time, times continue to go, as we go into the New Testament, let's see if there's anything that has changed or if it's still the same thing. Are the people in the New Testament, which is sometime later on, are they still subscribing to the doctrine of women being on the bottom and the men on the top? Let's take a look.
1 Corinthians 11:3: "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."
So, we can see according to the New Testament, the authority over the woman is still the man, and that stems all the way back from Genesis. And they're saying now that the head of the man is Christ. What is Christ? Christ is, according to the Bible, is supposed to be a man. And the head of Christ is supposed to be God. And God, according to the Bible, is God the Father. It's supposed to be a man. In reality, you have the woman at the lowest part of the totem pole, you have the man, then you have the Christ, who's also a man, then you have God the Father, who's also a man. But the reality of the situation is, you only have two there: you have a woman and and a man. The man has created all these back authorities to keep himself in authority over the woman. This is the, the reality of the situation. The Christ and the God the Father, all those he made in, in, in male deities, creating back authorities to keep the woman in a specific place. Real crafty, right? It's real crafty. And this is their idea of it, of how a society, um, should be, right? We're not mad at that. We're trying to condemn the people for coming up with that. This is a product of its time, right? And so, during that time, maybe that was the acceptable occasion. What we have to understand is that coming up forward into today's society, we look back and reexamine many of these things and seeing, "Do these ideas fit for today?" And obviously, we know that they don't.
Another issue is that if you have to resort, a man specifically, if a man has to to resort to saying, "And God said, that you have to listen to me," the reality is that the man has a totally different problem that has to be dealt with, right? If that's how you have to course a woman into, um, being a partner and to cooperating, then you have totally different issues that have to be dealt with. The point is that a man shouldn't have to do that, right? When a man develops himself to a certain character, you don't have to try to go in and find doctrines to to make a woman have to submit or do any of, or cooperate, I should say, that's the better word, to cooperate. And so, maybe these guys who wrote this, they felt the need to do that, right? They felt the need that it was, it was a benefit to do that for that society. And it's important for us to go through and look at these things and to get into the minds of the, of the writers and to see the purposes behind creating many of these stories and myths, and what's the reason behind it? Because there's always reasons behind why people do things. No one's just getting up and just writing it for no reason.
And so, hopefully, we're able to take a look at how the Bible and the myths written in the Bible and some of the doctrines written in the Bible were used and still are used to justify holding women down. Now, women should look at this and should be some of the biggest advocates for freeing themselves of many of these old ideas and doctrines because these things aren't beneficial for you. They're beneficial for men, some men, I should say. It's not, it doesn't do any difference for me. I don't have to do anything, anything like this, right? There's no need. So, but for some men, they do feel the need that they have to use these other authorities, the, in that were developed by the creators of this book, and, and there's, in, in other religions as well, to find justification in a woman cooperating with them. But the women, like I said, it doesn't benefit. It keeps women's, um, voices unheard, and it keeps them in the background with these type of ideas. So, coming into today, we see the ideas, we reexamine them, and a lot of them just have to be, uh, just thrown away.
And so, my name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I want to thank you for watching the video, and I'll see you on the next one.