Anyway, did my reading of that kiddie Bible make me think that God didn't like girls as much as he liked boys? Yes, in fact, it did.
Ann, I'm afraid you might have misunderstood some of what I wrote earlier. I don't mean to imply that your interpretation of your reading of the Bible (either as a child or an adult) is wrong. I don't know the Bible well enough to make any kind of judgment.
But what I am trying to say is that you are viewing an ancient society through very modern eyes, and faulting it for not upholding to the moral standards of a
modern Western society. And you can't do that. That society is gone. Unless new evidence is unearthed, we're not going to learn anything new and radically different about it. You know how long it has taken in many cultures for women to be treated equally to men - it obviously should be no surprise to you that thousands of years ago, women were not.
As far as God condoning or even encouraging the treatment of women that way, I don't think that he was. God does not micromanage events in peoples' lives. If so, then why would God let any of the terrible things happen - natural disasters, war, terrorism...
It was man - men with the sexist attitudes of the time - who lived the events as detailed in the Bible, and man who wrote them down.
Kathy
