a bit of history of the Greek phrase en gastri, for “in the womb”

Joel Hoffman posted yesterday that "the Greek phrase en gastri" means "in the womb."  (He was looking at how Matthew used it with another Greek word "echousa" that Hoffman says means "holding."  Hoffman is wanting to suggest that, for this phrase, Bible translators tend not to produce a "myopic translation" that would reproduce each Greek word -- i.e.,  myopic with "the English words 'in' and 'womb'" or myopic as "Holding in the womb."  Matthew's phrase, Hoffman explains, "is Greek for 'pregnant,' or — as used to be common — 'with child'.")

But would anyone care to know that Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Xenophon did not ever use the phrase with specific reference to a woman or a woman's conception of a baby?  Rather, for these writers and storytellers, ἐν γαστρὶ referred to something in or around the "belly," "stomach," "paunch," and "[gluttonous] appetite."

And would anyone care to know that there was a metaphorical shift in how this word was used that seems to be traceable to Plato?  Plato, who railed against the poets, the sophists, and playwrights and their use of language, was the first to use this Greek phrase (i.e., ἐν γαστρὶ) for a pregnant woman.  In our extant texts of his, Plato only did this once, in his very last work, Laws, 792.e.3, where he puts the words in the mouth of the Athenian Stranger.

And would you be surprised that Aristotle, Plato's student, uses the phrase numerous times in his Generation of Animals and his History of Animals to refer (not metaphorically but rather scientifically) to the state of a female in conception or pregnancy?  In fact, Aristotle rarely uses the phrase in any other way.

And Greek writers thereafter nearly exclusively use the phrase in reference to a conception in or the very womb of a woman.

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update:  As if you might care, here's a bit of Homer and then the bit of Matthew, both translated by Richmond Lattimore:

νειαίρῃ δ' ἐν γαστρὶ πάγη δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος,

and the far-shadowing spear was fixed in the lower belly,

--Iliad 5.616

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ ἡ γέννησις οὕτως ἦν.
Μνηστευθείσης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ,
πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτούς,
εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα
ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου.

The birth of Jesus Christ came in this way:
Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph,
but before they came together
she was found to be with child,
by the Holy Spirit.

--Matthew 1:18

If Your Body's Sexed Female, Mind the Gap

Imagine the gap between the train door and the station platform being greater for you, if your body's sexed female, than for everybody else (i.e., for those whose bodies are sexed male).  Now, wouldn't that be absurd?

And yet, historically and currently, the gap between what a woman earns, because she's a woman, and what everybody else earns (i.e., men) is absurdly great.  Here's the latest:

No where among developed and developing nations has the gender wage gap been greater for women than in Korea (Catherine Rampell at Economix, HT Michael Kruse at Kruse Kronicle; go here for the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index with worldwide rankings).

Given John Hobbins's comments this week, I wonder why Korea. 

Hobbins has asserted that "Korean Christianity remains strongly complementarian [i.e., male is the leader over females] in the pulpit and the home: hardly surprising, given the compatibility of New Testament teaching with traditional Korean mores in that sense."  Hobbins is trying to argue that "complementarian" Christianity is "the primary cultural slope on which cultural change has occurred in South Korea."  He is attempting to debate the claim made by the Economist that, in Korea, it's been the "forces of modernity" that "first exacerbated [gender] prejudice--then overwhelmed it."  Hobbins cannot bring himself to acknowledge that "complementarian" Christianity is one of the forces of modernity.  (But it is.)  Hobbins likely won't bring himself to acknowledge the co-incidence between male-over-female cultural teachings and the persistent gender wage gap in Korea.

It's approaching a quarter of a century now since Korea passed its Equal Employment Opportunity Act, in 1988, which guaranteed protection by gender in employment, and still there's little improvement.  If you ask Koreans why, the answer typically is that it's the woman's choice.  But at least one Korean economist has compared "individual women’s rational choices" against "gendered devaluation and social closure"; and Dong-ju Lee concludes that "sex segregation" and "male chauvinism or social closure" have likely been "the most important mechanism[s] generating women’s low income and low economic status" in Korea since 1997.  As we all know, economic theories and speculations offer only so much in explaining co-incidence of societal attitudes and wage conditions.  (And yet, there remains this nagging suspicion of a causal co-incidence, as the person whose body's sexed female must continue to mind the gap between herself and everybody else.)

the Evangelical Caste System

The "evangelical caste system" is what Jocelyn Andersen calls an ecclesiastical and household construct based on "old arguments traditionally used to keep men and women enslaved in illegitimate bondage based on sex." After conducting "extensive personal research into the Patriarchy movement" and after reading the Bible carefully for herself with respect to the Patriarchy, Andersen is coming out with a book entitled Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System.

The last time I heard anyone use the word caste to refer to any part of the Christian church was toward the end of last year.  This raised an eyebrow, I imagine, but was hardly the passionate, provocative declaration that Andersen is making, and that she has to make, because she's a woman, a woman with an all too common story this late in human history.

In November last year, blogger Peter Kirk called the historical teaching that has promoted "Church leadership by a special caste of pastors or priests" a "deeply de-Christian doctrine."  In other words, the notion and practice of a caste system is not to be seen as Christian at all.  Kirk, an Anglican, doesn't look at the systematic construct of an ecclesiastical caste in relation to gender so much, and he casts blame for such a doctrine on the Christian appropriation of "the values of the world." Nonetheless, he sees as another "deeply de-Christian doctrine" the idea that "Leadership is male"; that's a "concept," he says, "which also seems to have been imported into the church from the surrounding culture." One of Kirk's responders, Gary Simmons, commented to speculate that pragmatism and not the assimilation of culture values is the source: "I agree there should be no formal 'caste,' but as an American of Protestant background from the Bible Belt, I will tell you that having no clear authority structure (like a caste) has its drawbacks and frustrations."  They, and none of Kirk's other responders with him, further discussed male leadership as part of the caste and how that, as biblical teaching, might be outdated or de-christian or damaging to women, men, and children.  Perhaps other things were more interesting to them in the conversation because they are not women and are men.

In a recent related post at another blog, John Hobbins defends Christians in general and bashes what he calls "standard-issue feminists" in particular (as if there's a necessary divide between the two beyond his own thinking); the former but not the latter, he says, have reduced the global gendercide reported by the Economist.  Hobbins asserts that "Korean Christianity remains strongly complementarian [i.e. the male is the leader] in the pulpit and the home" to suggest that such teaching and practice "stands in contradiction to femicide" but that, in contrast, "democratic capitalists and feminists ... have failed" [in opposing male-over-female hierarchies] to so stand against gendercide.  Hobbins is "an ordained pastor in the Waldensian Church" and a prolific blogger.

In a responsive post today at yet another blog, Suzanne McCarthy points out that male bible-bloggers who are the most read, Hobbins included, create a very odd position for female bible-bloggers.  It's not just the strong assertions, like Hobbins's, that complementarianism (i.e. the caste-like teaching and practice) is actually helping women in the church around the world but it's also the censorship that a powerful male bible-blogger engages in (albeit at his own well-read blog) that limits women in the conversation about the very caste system that silences many.

However, perhaps Andersen's new book will get more of us talking and will allow women to talk with men and with one another.  The comparisons of a caste with some domains of evangelicalism (along the lines of gender and slavery) should have more of us considering whether and how we rank.