The Status of Women in New Testament and Lysistrata :: Lysistrata Essays

The Status of Women in New Testament and Lysistrata Since the beginning of time the treatment of women has improved dramatically. In the earliest of times women were mere slaves to men. Today women are near equals in almost all fields. In 411 B.C., when Lysistrata was written, men had many stunning advantages to that of their female counterparts. Although women's rights between 30 and 100 A.D., the time of the New Testament, were still not what they are today, the treatment of women was far better. Overall, the equality of women in the New Testament exceeds that of the women in Lysistrata in three major ways: physical mobility, society's view of women's nature, and women's public legal rights. Albeit in Lysistrata the women were shown as revolutionaries rising up against the men, women in classical Greece were never like that. Aristophanes created the play as a comedy, showing how the world might be in the times of the Peloponesian war if women tried to do something. It was the women's job to stay home and tend to the house, and never leave, unlike they did in the play, the women were shown as revolutionaries rising up against the men, women in classical Greece were never like that. The activities of women in Classical Athens were confined to "bearing children, spinning and weaving, and maybe managing the domestic arrangements. No wandering in the beautiful streets for them." The suppression of women went so far as to divide the house into separate areas for males and females. While the women stayed home, the men were usually out fighting, and when they weren't fighting, they were entertaining their friends and having sexual favors performed by courtesans. The rights of women in early Christianity were a far cry from today, although they were much better off than their Athenian counterparts. In the Christian church, women were treated as equals. The first evidence of this is when the woman with hemorrhages touches Jesus' clothing and he says that her faith has made her well (Mark 5:34). This shows that both sexes are treated equally in that eyes of god even though at this time the hemorrhages that the