In response to Frank Schaeffer’s characterization of first century Jewish women in And God Said, “Billy!”, Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University critiques what she believes is a distortion of Jesus’ Jewish context in Getting Jesus, and Judaism, Wrong at the Huffington Post:
Once again, in the attempt to make Jesus relevant to the twenty-first century, another of his followers winds up mischaracterizing first-century Judaism. These seekers after relevance make Jesus’ Jewish context represent everything we don’t like — sexism, elitism, militarism, you name it — and then depict Jesus as the one Jew to stand against his oppressive culture. Jesus can stand very well on his own without having to make Judaism look bad; alas, some of his followers have not yet figured this out.
Mr. Frank Schaeffer falls into the standard “early Judaism hated women” mode — a view that has been dismissed by biblical scholars for well over thirty years. For just a few examples of his common but nevertheless wrong approach.