The Contemporary Women reviewed by Jane Walters
The Contemporary Woman is an update of Guinness’s 2003 book: Woman, the Full Story. The author is a skilled communicator, who has experienced many of the ‘typical’ woman’s issues, as well as some unique to her Jewish heritage and varied working life. It offers an impressive, well-researched investigation into what it means to be a woman.
The book begins, as it must, in the Garden of Eden. Misinterpretations of the Biblical text over the years have produced erroneous teaching which has caused damage down through the generations. The early Christian fathers, for example, taught that it was only man, not woman, who was made in the image of God. Guinness digs deeply into the original language and I found this illuminating. The phrase, ‘ezer kenegdo,’ usually translated ‘helper,’ tends to imply a subordinate role for Eve when, in fact, out of the fifteen times ezer is used in the Old Testament, fourteen refer to God Himself. The kenegdo part is a kind of nose-to-nose facing of each other – implying an equality as the two humans reason together. The name Eve is often translated ‘the mother of all living’ but the root of the word includes ‘declaration’ as well as ‘life.’ Guinness returns to this idea throughout, highlighting where women have seized opportunities to speak life into situations and into the lives of their loved ones.
At the Fall, Eve forfeits her authority and man will now tend to dominate and subjugate women – costing him intimacy and closeness with her. With no voice, no power and few rights, women down the ages have had to choose from three options in order to be heard: aggression, passive acquiescence and manipulation. We see the latter in some of the founding women of the Judeo-Christian tradition: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. Guinness herself has experienced the effects of this. Her highly-matriarchal paternal grandmother, disliking the French side of the family, decided to destroy all letters that came through. Hearing nothing from them, the rest of the family could only assume they had fallen to the Nazis during the war. Only much later, some cousins still living in France were able to re-connect and tell a very different story.
In discussing the ‘assertive woman,’ Guinness highlights five daughters in Numbers 27 who stood up for their rights. She says that God advises Moses, pretty much, ‘Do me a favour. Don’t argue with assertive women like that!’ As a result of their tenacity, Mosaic law was changed so that women could own and inherit property. Their risk changed history. In non-Jewish nations, however, such rights weren’t acknowledged. It was centuries later that mothers could finally have sole custody of their children and married women could own their own property.
The historical sections of the book are very powerful, with moving stories of other women – among them Gladys Aylward, Mary Slessor and Josephine Butler – daring to speak up and effect change for generations to come.
In part two, Guinness unpacks some of the myths surrounding women in Biblical times. How strong Jewish women were, for example, being able to initiate divorce, retain property upon marriage and have a great deal of social freedom. Segregation in synagogues didn’t happen until the seventh century, under Islamic influence. These women were educated and knew their scriptures from personal study, as evidenced in Mary’s Magnificat.
For the first hundred years of the church, women flourished. Jesus had many women followers and, later, Paul had women co-workers. Guinness points out that Saul carted both men and women off to prison during his persecutions. Why? Because women had become influential figures and leaders in the early church. But as Greco-Roman thinking distorted Christian teaching, women found themselves pushed towards the periphery. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) declared that woman was ‘defective and misbegotten…Biologically, spiritually and intellectually inferior.’ What a tragic distortion of God’s plan!
Guinness doesn’t shy away from the more contentious aspects, giving full consideration of the difficult verses within Paul’s letters that seem to subjugate women. Examining them in their cultural setting, she offers a helpful balance while addressing the issue of Paul’s apparent misogyny.
Her thorough approach extends to considering today’s woman in her working life, sexual expression and dealing with ageing. The author writes passionately and persuasively, drawing on story after story of pioneering, daring and sacrificial women. However, I found some of her own personal anecdotes intrusive at times. Inevitably, she has written through the lens of her enduring, happy marriage and satisfying family life. This may be alienating for the reader who hasn’t experienced that.
Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book – surely a handbook to refer to again and again – to both men and women who seek to understand God’s purpose in creating woman.
Together Magazine
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