"There is no evidence of any such practice(s) as are described in this passage occurring in biblical times in Israel." (Briggs, 2009, p. 296)
The reason why I chose this passage is to clearly state how epistemology is created. It is not the evidence that drives our society and culture, but the ideas. The thoughts men produce is sometimes not questioned due to the theory that entails that most people do not examine the reasoning behind the understanding of man. Why would women take men's word for their accusations and methods when in fact, they have not found any evidence that what they have said is concrete evidence that hold any weight. People die and that is our fact or evidence that what we have as a language is nothing more than an experimentation of our own background experience and appreciation for imagination and creativity. It is within this suggestion that I will examine the work of men through the religious communities to evaluate the weight of language in reinforcement of behavior and practice that creates a lifetime enforcement and social construction for women to follow. It is within my mind to delve into the approach that women are forced to believe in words that do not hold any weight in theory or evidence. It is within our programming that women are encouraged and sometimes brutally pressured to live out men's accusations of ideas and verbal curses that have led women into oppression for centuries.
"So much for the world behind the text. But what has been explained?" (Briggs, 2009, p. 299) It is within this evaluation that women are forced to continue a practice of "inferiority" due to the texts that disclosed what evidence that the world was not possible for women to move without the permission of men? It is within this regard that the natural and functional text in scripture has been used as an "offensive" approach to subject women and objectification of their value in society and culture by a mere word a male have implemented by his imagination. The interpretations have not been changed because men have been allowed to abuse power and privilege using the "words of the text" to subjective women as a law. The social position of women have become a security for men and forced arrangement by male suspicion of what the law should be asserted by enslaving women. (Briggs, 2009, p. 303)
"Taken together, the double tradition of invisibility and palpable presence highlights the ambivalence of the biblical writers about representing God. The lack of consistency in biblical description of theophany is in itself an indication of the limitation s of language to capture the experience." (Savran, 2009, p. 322) This is the case that I have explored that women are allowing men to rule over them based on an experience that men have with God. In that experience, the imagination and creativity has allowed men to make this experience into a law and therefore a fact. In this process of creating evidence based on experience men have afforded themselves power and privilege over women. In this experience, "the male gaze" has been birthed. In the ideology of the "male gaze" women have been oppressed by the abuse of men. This process is what created scientific evidence that it was permissible under the law to give men the right to violate women and in any case commit violence under the law. It was within this "evidence," that an experience was made into an effect for a natural process that men were given the authority to subdue women by force by natural laws created by men. It was not questioned, examined nor rebutted by women due to that "experience," and "word" by men that dominated their presence over women.
Women as a nurturing component trusted men in their "word" and gave them by submission to that experience. In turn became the law, and so forth the women after each generation would not question the presence of God in the experience of men. "The divine is first glimpsed or perceived in some visual manifestation—a dream, which is followed by a verbal message which spells out the meaning and purpose of the theophany." (Savran, 2009, p. 323 & 324) This will entail that women were not able to go into the throne room of God but men. This was the "dream" factor that turned into law, fact and evidence that would become scientific for men. This process would create practices and habits of behavior that allowed men to abuse women as part of the natural process of social relations with women. In the end, women were not able to receive authority under the law because men had "a dream" that experience was the authority of men. Women were not allowed to trust their own dreams. It was within their own dreams men would claim was not validated that God was talking to women. Women were not listened or validated in their experience due to the law that states women were not given the power or privilege to "experience" God.
"Instead of understanding genre as fixed, biblical scholars have begun to view it as fluid." (Classens, 2009, p. 363) Women are initiated in this process by the means of an "experience" that men has had with God that helped them create the law against taking care of women. It is within this experience that men created the laws that we are govern by today. In some sort of gesture that men are able to be violent against women and violate women as a commodity under the privilege and control of men. It is within this framework that the natural process begins with the suggestion of an experience by men. "In other words, genres are no longer static entities to be classified but dynamic units that represent particular perspectives and worldviews." (Claasens, 2009, p. 363)
Men are not evidence, but due to the "language" of men these laws were formulated by the "words" men associated themselves as authorities over women based on the evidence from a dream. In the imagination of a man, women were not given the permission to lead lives of authority because a law had been enacted against their freedom to practice authority with men. In this natural process as the laws of gravity, evidence are formulated by men and their creativity of their imagination has they allowed their authority to govern over women.
"Chapter Two, "Critical Overview of Scholarship on Prominent Images in Philippians" provides a tour of recent Forschungbericht, highlighting scholarship on friendship and military images." (Lopez, 2010, p. 369) Using the feminist lens, men were able to use their religious practices in government under the law of religious laws to formulate government laws. It is within this practice of state and religion that secular government was created under the law of men. The whole ideology around men and their imagination of authority over women came from a dream. The practice of God giving men authority to violate women came from a "word" created by a thought. This idea was used as an evidence to formulate a natural right over women. In fact, men were given this right over women by programming women to believe that their word is validated against their own.
"Critical attention to ancient sources generally ignored by Pauline studies shows that rhetorical strategies of Roman maleness—bound up with friendship and military imagery—emphasize impenetrability, dominance over "the (female) other" through violence, and racial assertions denigrating "barbarians" including, importantly, Jews." (Lopez, 2010, p. 370 and 371) Women were not validated or their "experience" ever validated because men were given authority over women through an experience they had with God. The evidence has never been provided for the account of the garden of Eden that Adam and Eve was in the garden hearing and seeing God together with the account that God told them that men would rule over women. This account has not been a historical artifact that women and men were in the garden with a omnipresent from another world to speak through them without a dream. This account of Eve starting the slavery process under the authority of men is an experience dictated by male writers that created this ideology of male domination over women.
This experience has not been given any artifact that time has shown humanity that this "experience" existed. Personally, I am a Christian, and this research disturbs me due to the fact that I have never questioned this "experience." But, in my research women are taught not to question the authority of men or their experiences with God and each other.
"The book of Judges is the focus for a number of reasons, including: it is less recognizable to students; it contains absorbing and terrifying stories; it is about murder, death, betrayal, and war; and it deals with many women characters, including the violence they inflict and endure." (Schneider, 2010, p. 364) This is the examination that narration and gender is the main point of formulating methodologies and social construction of race, gender, ideology and structures that dictate society and culture through narration of one's experience or standpoint. This is the main point that will weave in Collins (2001) Black Feminist Epistemology that women are not validated in the "experience" of men. This book Judges were stories that have allowed men to "experience" a story through their standpoint.
Women were therefore associated through these experiences through the "male gaze" and in that experience women were abused and laws were made to abuse them. This male's "experience" had accounted women as a judge, Deborah, but she was not given the authority to govern men. She was used as a spy and women were not given the authority to govern men, but due to their cunningness and ability to break the law, women were able to afford themselves liberation as a criminal or rebel against the law. This suggestion that women had to give up approval and therefore in an experience with men, women were not able to validate themselves with men.
"The first set of essays under the section on "biblical Interpretation" explores understanding of "creation."" (Marbury, 2008, p. 383) These essays explain the trational models of leadership that had never been investigated by the socio-historical matrix of ancient Israel. (Marbury, 2008) It is within this discipline that men were taught to behave as leaders to denounce women liberation, equality and equity with their maleness. It is beyond the social scientific readings to associate research with indigenous people of the Cannanite and Hebrew nations in the ancient study of civilization. It is within the biblical context that people were researched by this text to understand history and society under the practices of laws and government. The moral formation of ancient Israel begins in the creation story of the Hebrew Bible text as Israelites practice a belief under the law.
The contributions of social construction of ancient historical text have integrated the Genesis story in the contentment of Africa privilege of ethics and resistance. These texts were formulated by the elite class of consciousness of ideologies to fight against resistance and dominance uprising of the rebels. These texts began to dismantle the social locations of culture and societies that were known as the "elect" cultures to overthrow such practices of violence against women. These societies were classified as the non-violence societies that practiced dominance through equality. "If the project falls short in any measure, it is from a lack of methodological rigor in ethics." This biblical proves that the violent elite groups were in war against the non-violent elite groups that formulated evidence of an "experience" that may have been ignored in the biblical texts.
"At the time my critique of biblical scholarly epistemology was one of the early attempts to resist mainstream (and male-stream) discourses of authoritative knowledge." (Fuchs, 2010, p. 209) This androcentricism religion proves that the story of creation was based on a male centered idea. The feminist epistemology is the questioning and critique of the conventional norms and procedures that are interlocked with regimes of truth and the "objective phallacy" that knowledge is political and male centered. (Fuchs, 2010, p. 209 and 210) It is not an attack against the maleness of men and their society that is questioned, but the woman's experience that position and her social location to create an identity that qualifies her as correct and the sexual politics around biblical implementation in government and society.
It is within this academic feminism that epistemological domination is used to validate women through "malestream" scholarship and the perspective. In this "experience" men's perspective has allowed their knowledge to become a scientific approach and a law through the natural laws of gravity and human rights for men only. It is within this framework that women and her experience is denied access to power and privilege by one word, the experience of God through the imagination of men. (Collins, 2008) The standpoint of "white men standpoint" is an experience that has afforded these men opportunity to write laws and govern by their imagination of what is ethic and true.
