Although the Bible includes great wisdom and has been a positive source of guidance throughout the centuries, it also has passages that have been responsible for the subjugation and degradation of women. Over the centuries these Biblical views have been absorbed into the fabric of our culture as nothing less than "The word of God." Consider the impact of the following sample of Bible verses.

You may find the following Bible verses hard to believe even though fundamentalist Christians claim  they are inspired by God and everything in the Bible is true for all time and must be taken literally. 

1. In the Bible's book of Deuteronomy it says that if a man marries a woman and then decides that he hates her, he can claim she wasn't a virgin when they married. At that point her father must prove she was a virgin. (How is not explained.)  If he can't, then the woman is to be stoned to death at her father's doorstep. (22:13-21)

2. If you see a pretty woman among your captives and would like her for a wife, then bring her home and "go in unto her." Later, if you decide you don't like her, you can simply "let her go." (Deuteronomy 21:11-14) 

3. If a betrothed virgin is raped in the city and doesn't cry out loud enough, then "the men of the city shall stone her to death." (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)

4. In the book of Esther the king apparently decrees a sex contest among young virgin women to see who can best please him. He subsequently finds Esther the best at this, so he makes her queen. (Note ancient painting on the left.)

However, since women are viewed as inherently dirty, Esther must be "purified" for twelve months before she can be made queen. (Esther 2:8-9, 12-17)

5.  Paul points out in New Testament Romans that "the natural use" of women is to provide men with sex. (Romans 1:27)

6. Heaven is to be inhabited by 144,000 virgin men who have not been "defiled" by women. (RE 14:1-4) [One wonders how this squares with God's command  to, "Be fruitful and multiply...(Genesis 1:28)?]

7. A group of sexual depraved men beat on the door of an old man's house demanding that he turn over to them a male house guest. Instead, the old man offers his virgin daughter and his guest's wife: "Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine (wife); let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do with them what seems good to you; but against this man do not do so vile a thing." The women were subsequently ravished and killed. (JG 19:22-29)

8.  In Exod. 21:7 we see that it is permissible to sell one's daughter (but apparently not one's son) into slavery.

9. According to St. Jerome, "Nothing is so unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to be unclean."  In Leviticus (12:2:5) it states, "If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days...if she bears a female child she shall be unclean two weeks...." 

10. "A woman dropped a stone on his head and cracked his skull. Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, 'Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can't say a woman killed me.' So his servant ran him through, and he died." (Judges 9:53-54)

11. Under God's direction, Moses' army kills all the adult males, but they mercifully just take the women and children captive. When Moses learns that they left some women and children alive, he angrily says: "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him." (31:1-54) Throughout Bible history God is said to demand that thousands, if not millions, of men, women and children be slaughtered.  And they are.

12.  And where do these go? - A man has an obligation to produce a child with his brother's widow. If he refuses, his sister-in-law is to spit in his face in front of the elders. (Deuteronomy 25:5-9) And in case you are Jewish, you may be familiar with the Jewish prayer: "Blessed be the God who has not created me a heathen, a slave or a woman."

We've only listed a dozen Bible quotes of this type, but there are many more.

Would we be wrong in assuming that even Bible literalists wouldn't want these verses read to their children in Bible School? Plus, what parent would want their children reading Bible verses comparing the size of men's penises to donkey genitals and their sperm flow to that of horses?  Books are commonly banned from school libraries for much less.

Most Old Testament law dates back centuries to Jewish tribal law and would be considered not only immoral but illegal today.  At the same time, fundamentalist, Bible-carrying  Christians claim they are the for-all-time, inviolable Word of God.