Was the Bible written by men to control women?
A popular form of the social-control theory says men wrote the Bible to keep women in line. The theory makes a testable prediction: rules written by one group to control another bind the other group and leave the writers free. The New Testament's moral teaching runs the other way. Its hardest demands fall on men.
- Jesus counts looking at a woman with lust as adultery committed in the heart (Matthew 5:27-28). The command is addressed to men.
- He puts anger at a brother under the same judgment as murder (Matthew 5:21-22). The command applies to everyone, but the sin it targets is mostly a male one.
- On average men report a stronger sex drive than women, and men commit about 90% of the world's homicides. Both commands land hardest on the sex supposedly writing the rules for its own benefit. Sources to check: Baumeister, Catanese and Vohs (2001), the review of sex differences in sex drive; UNODC, Global Study on Homicide (2019), on the sex of offenders.
- Jesus says a man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her (Mark 10:11). Under Jewish and Roman law adultery was a wrong done to a husband, not by one.
- His disciples find the divorce teaching so hard on husbands that they say it is better not to marry (Matthew 19:10).
- Paul says the husband's body belongs to his wife, as hers belongs to him (1 Corinthians 7:3-4).
- Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).
The contrast is Roman law. The Lex Julia on adultery (18 BC) made a wife's adultery a crime, while a husband's sex with slaves or prostitutes was not adultery at all. Gregory of Nazianzus made the same point in AD 380 (Oration 37, on Matthew 19): Roman law was hard on women because men wrote it, and God's law treats husband and wife alike. Verify his wording in the Greek or the NPNF translation (second series, volume 7) before quoting him.
The weaknesses have to be stated plainly, because a skeptic will raise them:
- Old Testament law has real asymmetries. Adultery is defined by the woman's marital status (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22). The jealousy ordeal applies only to wives (Numbers 5:11-31). A father or husband can cancel a woman's vow (Numbers 30). A man can have more than one wife. See Women and Sexuality in Old Testament Law.
- The New Testament has the submission and silence passages (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22, 1 Timothy 2:11-12). See Women in Church Leadership.
- So the argument defeats the strong claim, that the book exists to let men control women. It does not defeat the weaker claim, that the texts come from a male-led society. It also counts against the alleged motive without showing, by itself, that the book is from God.