Women’s Subjective Worship Participations in Ancient Israel

Abstract

Biblical narratives in the Old Testament and archeological evidences related to ancient Israelite lives proposes that ancient Israelite women were equally included in all the cultic activities and took some official roles, further some leading roles in the cult. Some differences between the cultic regulations for man and woman should be understood that they reflected their living conditions and socio-cultural phenomenon. No sexual discrimination against women is founded though the biblical witnesses are limited by the androcentric perspectives. As a member of covenantal community, woman could not be excluded. It is clear that the Deuteronomic family laws presuppose that male is the head of the family. However, it does not mean that the power and authority of the male head of household is unlimited. Although women’s decisions are dependence on men’s decision in some laws, it comes from consideration for a family’s social and economic well-being. Therefore, when we read the Deuteronomic family laws, we should mind the sociological perspective in our mind, not just literal understanding. To preserve their economic and territorial condition, which was acquired earned by the sweat of one’s brows, is the main purpose of their family legislation. One of the chief aims of Israelite law is to assure the integrity, economic stability of the family as the basic unity of society. When we examine the Israelite cultic laws, we can recognize that the congregation of YHWH includes the family and neither age nor sex bestow any special privileges, and there are the equal chances of women for participating in Israelite cultic events in the Old Testament and some cultic laws that obviously express the equal obligation or right for the cult for both, men and women. We can not imagine that without wives and mothers the family-centered cultic festivals would be possible. Women were only omitted by male elite biblical writers, not excluded or eliminated. The most important thing in the women’s purification regulations is that woman should be presented as individual and subject for the ritual, not by any male representative of the family. Besides women’s purification rituals and the Israelite cultic feasts that all people attended, there are many cultic activities done voluntarily by Israel women in the Old Testament. When we examine these activities, we can see that women were not much more disadvantaged in communal religious activity than general(non-priestly) males. The richest portrait of women in leadership roles is shown in the literature pertaining to the pre-monarchic period. In the monarchical period, Israel’s cultic activities became centralized and standardized in Jerusalem Royal Temple. Consequently, many cultic activities done by women in the shrines or the houses, in which pre-monarchial women were active and used to take the leading roles like Deborah, Miriam, Hannah or the mother of Micah (Jud.17), became weak. Nevertheless, during the monarchial period some women took the official place in the public worship such as women choir, women who served in the temple, or prophetesses. Therefore, in spite of some different regulations between sexes in the family cultic laws we should not regard it as discrimination or prohibition against women’s cultic participation. Although the different sociological conditions in the history had made women’s religious status changed, but women were always successful to continue their religious lives as the subjects, and will never stop doing it.