[awareness]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

One of the issues I have with Bushnell is that she attacks the very definition of man by stating or at least toying with the idea, in her book, that Adam was a hermaphrodite.

She toys with a lot of stuff ; science, Darwin, the classical Greeks of old, and even that the Talmud teaches that before the fall Adam was so tall his head touched the firmament. That Adam was a giant.

But what do we know for sure. None of us were there.

Originally Posted by EvanG

The implications of this view is that if Adam was a hermaphrodite, then Jesus as the "second Adam" was a hermaphrodite.

I don't know about that. That may be reverse engineering. But given the verse in question, Gen. 1:27 :

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

It sure more than implies that if Adam was a hermaphrodite, God is a hermaphrodite too. That's silly, that God has ambiguous genitalia ; that God has genitalia at all. I guess it depends on how literal you take "image" to mean.

Originally Posted by EvanG

This is another example how Bushnell's books go beyond merely correctly interpreting the text, and espouse other theories which obviously come from the innate feminist bias in her.

I don't know that yet. I haven't finished her book. But Bushnell is undeniably going at all this from a feminine perspective. She claims that that is what the translating committees should have done. That they were missing the female perspective.

Originally Posted by EvanG

Because of these things it is hard to trust that her interpretations of singular Greek or Hebrew words do not contain any feminist bias.

Bushnell states clearly that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inviolable word of God, but only the originals, not our English translations. Our English translations were missing female translators, and so weren't balanced.

So we weren't there, and what do we know? According to Bushnell we know what the scriptures tell us, if only we can get at the unbiased original languages. Then we'll see that the Bible doesn't make women inferior, if translated correctly, with feminine influence.

However, that the Bible makes females inferior goes much deeper than the translations. It goes also to the original texts.

And fight as they may, female Christian's could have a feminist movement -- like the secular world -- but they're not going to defeat the Bible, unless they do it like Thomas Jefferson, and cut the verses out that they disagree with.

If they become radical feminists, they'll even have to cut one of the ten commandments out, cuz it groups women in with livestock :

"Exo 20:17* Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."