Ten Objections to Women Priests

Alice C. Linsley

As a woman who served as a priest in the Episcopal Church for 16 years, I have some experience of the nature of the priesthood. In 1982, with the encouragement of my parish clergy, friends and family, it seemed the right course for my life. Over the years, I began to question the rationale for women priests. I remember feeling that I was standing in another's shoes, not appropriately mine. I wanted to explain this to my bishop, but he clearly did not want to hear it.

Galatians 3:28 has been used to justify the innovation of women priests: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In the fourth century, St. Epiphanius remarked that the heretical Cataphyrgians (Montanists) employed Galatians 3:28 to elevate women as "bishops and priests and they say nothing makes a difference 'For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.'''

Reading Galatians 3:28 in context, it is apparent that Paul is speaking of the unity of the body of Christ. He is not promoting gender equality as it is framed today. As the Supper was intended to unite the participants to the Head, Jesus Christ, the idea of a woman presiding at the Feast would have been unthinkable.

My doubts made the priestly ministry increasingly burdensome and problematic. As a heterosexual, Bible-believing, Anglican Traditionalist, I found no affirmation in the Episcopal Church as it moved toward a radical revision of the Gospel, setting aside the Apostolic Tradition for its social justice agenda.

Eventually, I renounced orders in the Episcopal Church and left that body. This initiated a decade of reflection on the role of women in the Church and the historic priesthood. During that time, I was in conversation with three former women priests who were seeking clarity also. One entered the Roman Catholic Church and the others entered the Orthodox Church of America. I explored both traditions, but I am thoroughly Anglican and have been for forty-three years.

I have written on the question of women priests, exploring it through Biblical studies, Church history, and cultural anthropology. As with many Anglicans, I believe that the Episcopal Church erred in 1976 when it departed from the all-male priesthood. On a single day the General Convention of the Episcopal Church overthrew catholic orders, rejected the teaching of the Fathers, and denied the authority of Holy Scripture.

Historically, the priesthood of the Church was restricted to a few chosen men, tested and carefully formed for the priestly office. In his treatise “On the Priesthood,” St. John Chrysostom wrote, "When one is required to preside over the Church, and be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also.”

Not a single woman served in the office of priest until 1944, at which time Florence Li Tim-Oi was ordained by Ronald Hall, Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong, in response to the crisis among Anglicans in Communist China. She later stepped down from serving as a priest.

The first woman “canonically” ordained to the priesthood in the United States was a lesbian who served as Integrity's first co-president. Other lesbians had been among the Philadelphia Eleven. In the United States, the ordination of women and homosexuals was so intertwined from the beginning that it is difficult to treat these as separate questions. Both have been framed as "equal rights" issues, revealing a profound misunderstanding of the priesthood. The priesthood is not a right, and it is not a reward to be bestowed upon those who will advance a body’s agenda.

In this paper I address ten reasonable objections to women in the priesthood:

1. The Church is not a democratic body.
2. Women’s ordination is linked to homosexual activism.
3. Women’s ordination is rooted in Feminist thought.
4. Women priests perpetuate confusion about gender.
5. Women priests represent rejection of the authority Scripture and Tradition
6. Women priests cause confusion about the Eucharist.
7. Women priests represent a denial of the Fathers’ teaching.
8. Ordination of women to the priesthood undermines women’s ministries.
9. The feminization of the clergy discourages men’s participation in the church.
10. A female at the altar blurs the biblical distinction between life and death.

1. The Church is not a democracy

In 1994, Pope John Paul II spoke ex cathedra on female ordination, observing that the male priesthood had been "preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and clearly taught by the Magisterium in recent documents." He stated that the Church has "no authority to confer priestly ordination on women."

Synods may vote to conform “the constant and universal Tradition of the church” to the world’s shifting values. That invariably results in the loss of spiritual heritage and places the body outside the catholic Faith, which is where the Episcopal Church is today.

No jurisdiction has authority to set aside the all-male priesthood. The Body of Christ does not concede to the unilateral action of the Episcopal Church. The Church is not a democratic body in which dogma, doctrine, and the received tradition are changed or set aside by a vote.


2. Women’s ordination is linked to homosexual activism

Historically, a clear link exists between the push for women priests and homosexual activism. In 1974, the same year that Louie Crew founded the homosexual activist organization Integrity eleven women, including known lesbians, were ordained in Philadelphia.

In September 1975, more lesbians were ordained in Washington D.C. Here is the account in Louie Crew's words: "More 'irregular' ordinations of women took place… after our convention. In Washington at the time, on a missionary journey to our new chapters in the east, Jim Wickliff and I yielded to the counsel of friends who advised that our visibility at the ordination might put in jeopardy lesbians among all early ordinands."

In 1976 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church affirmed homosexual behavior when it passed the “we are children of God” resolution.

In 1977, Bishop Paul Moore (NY) ordained Ellen Marie Barrett, who had served as Integrity's first co-president.

Breaking catholic orders was necessary to opening the priesthood to partnered gay and lesbian persons.


3. Women’s ordination is rooted in Feminist thought.

Ideological Feminism is not about equal pay for equal work. It is not an ideology of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and equality. It is a Marxist ideology that reframes the economic antagonism between classes as a struggle between men and women. As in Marxism, radical feminism seeks to shift control of institutions and society to women. As such, ideological Feminism must oppose biblical headship as an expression of the sovereignty of God Father and God Son.

Feminist arguments are usually baseless and often irrational. Susan Cornwall argues that women can be priests because Jesus was a woman. By this ridiculous assertion she hopes to confront "discrimination against women" which she believes "is based on the tradition of Jesus having chosen only male apostles."

In 2015, Canon Emma Percy of the Church of England said, “In the last two or three years we’ve seen a real resurgence and interest in feminism, and younger people are much more interested in how gender categories shouldn’t be about stereotypes. We need to have a language about God that shows God can be expressed in lots of diverse terms.”

Percy wants to speak of God Father and God Mother. Attacking a straw man argument, she said, “Using both male and female language would get rid of the notion that God is some kind of old man in the sky.”


4. Women priests perpetuate confusion about gender.

Why draw the line at male and female language for God? On this slippery slope we may slide into casting God as transgendered or, like a crossdresser, being one gender but appearing as another. In a New York Times Opinion piece (Aug. 2016), Rabbi Mark Sameth makes a case for gender fluidity by citing examples in the Bible of male and female pronouns being exchanged or reversed. However, Sameth never claims that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is transgender.

Jacques Derrida and others have noted that gender reversals in literature point to mystery. Derrida noted that in narratives when a gender reversal takes place, the other becomes the dominant voice. Normally, the dominant voice is that of the Male Principle/Presence, but when the reversal takes place, the Female Principle/Presence is in action. There are many examples of this in the Old Testament which explains why the Hebrew pronouns are sometimes ambiguous.

Genesis 3:15, the earliest Messianic reference in the Bible, is the most striking example of the mystery of gender reversal. The Hebrew says, “He will crush you a head and you will crush us a heel.” The subject of the verb is the third person, masculine, singular (he) and the imperfect tense of the verb indicates action yet to be completed. The suffix ך identifies the object of the verb as second person, masculine, singular (you). This would be translated as "he will crush you” and the message is directed to the serpent.

In the Vulgate, St. Jerome gives “ipsa” as the nominative feminine singular of ipse though ipsa is sometimes the nominative neuter plural. Jerome’s rendering of Genesis 3:15 reads: Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. God says to the serpent, “I will put enmities between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. She will crush your head, and you will lie in wait for her heel.”

In his Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram the Jesuit priest Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637) recognized the significance of gender reversal in the Hebrew Bible. He resolved the problem of the verb in the masculine (yashuph, conteret), citing the interplay of gender in Hebrew: the masculine being used in place of the feminine and vice-versa when there is some mystery, anomaly, or singularity. Lapide wrote, “frequent exchange of gender in Hebrew: the masculine being used in place of the feminine and vice-versa, especially when there is present some cause or mystery.”


5. Women priests represent rejection of the authority of Scripture and Tradition

The fact that the gender exchange involves only male and female indicates that the biblical view of humanity is binary, not transgender, not homosexual, and not a spectrum.

Though the interplay of male and female language in Scripture hints at the mystery of the Godhead, it does not pertain to God. In Christianity, God has self-revealed as Father of the Son, Jesus Christ. As Fr. Thomas Hopko recognized, "In his actions in and toward the world of his creation, the one God and Father reveals himself primarily and essentially in a 'masculine' way.” (Women and the Priesthood, p 240.)

The Church’s relationship to God is expressed in the language it uses in prayer and the language it uses in speaking about God. That is exactly why we preserve the biblical language for God Father and God Son. The language is not negotiable. “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.” (1 John 2:23) This is the kerygma, as John makes clear: “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:14-15)

The language of God Father and God Son is as essential to the Gospel as the dogmas of Jesus' two natures and the Trinity.

Those who applaud women priests acknowledge that women at the altar change the way we think about God. The Rev. Serene Jones, the first woman president of Union Theological Seminary, said exactly that: “When the people who are representing God, making God present, have female bodies, that inevitably changes the way you think about how God is.”

This revisionist language represents a rejection of the Bible’s authority. Setting aside the language of the Bible is preliminary to replacing holy men at the altar. Females and persons who identify as “other” claim presidency at the Eucharist. They change the traditional prayers according to their whims and dismiss the formularies of the catholic Faith. They invent narratives to work around Scripture and Tradition since they have dismissed the received Faith as sexist, patriarchal, and outdated.


6. Women priests cause confusion about the Eucharist.

When Anglicans contemplate reception of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist, it is appropriate to see before them a masculine form. Likewise, in contemplation of the Annunciation and Incarnation we properly have before us an image/icon of Mary, not a masculine form. The narrative of gender equality at the altar changes the sign of His sacrifice, resurrection, and promise of immortality to the baptized. It reframes the Eucharist to avoid the reality of Jesus, the Male God. The product is sadly inferior as it resembles pagan commemorative feasts.


7. Women priests represent a denial of the Fathers’ teaching.

The invented narrative also represents a denial of the authority of the Church Fathers who urge diligence in maintaining the received Tradition. Ignatius of Antioch adjures, "Be diligent, therefore, to use one eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup, for union with his blood; one altar, even as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons who are my fellow-servants, to the end that whatever ye do, ye may do it according unto God. (Philadelphians 4.1)

Women priests are evidence of the Western church’s love of innovation. Speaking against this tendency, St. Basil the Great wrote, “The dogmas of the Fathers are held in contempt, the Apostolic traditions are disdained, the churches are subject to the novelties of innovators” (Letter 90, To the Most Holy Brethren and Bishops Found in the West). The Great Schism of 1054, and the lesser fractures that produced a plethora of denominations, come from pride and innovation.

The Church Fathers have a clear consensus on the question of women and the priesthood. St. Epiphanius, in "Against Heresies" (79.304), wrote: "If women were ordained to be priests for God or to do anything canonical in the church, it should rather have been given to Mary. . . She was not even entrusted with baptizing. Although there is an order of deaconesses in the church, yet they are not appointed to function as priests, or for any administration of this kind, but so that provision may be made for the propriety of the female sex [at nude baptisms]. Whence comes the recent myth? Whence comes the pride of women or rather, the woman's insanity?"

In his treatise “On the Priesthood” (3.9) St. John Chrysostom wrote: "Divine law has excluded women from the sanctuary, but they try to thrust themselves into it."

St. Augustine, "On Heresies" (27) refers to the heretical Pepuzians mentioned by St. Epiphanius. "They give such principality to women that they even honor them with priesthood."


8. The Ordination of women to the priesthood undermines women’s ministries.

The Episcopal Church’s top-down corporate model of leadership has not encouraged lay women in local ministries. Instead, the Episcopal Church proudly elevates women to the episcopacy. In 2019, seven women were elected as diocesan or suffragan bishops. Women with leadership gifts are needed to organize and lead vital ministries in the parishes, in prisons, and to oversee outreach to the poor, elderly, and sick. They are not needed as priests and bishops, roles that isolate them from other women and from grass root ministries. The priesthood by its very nature is isolating. Women priests often feel doubly isolated from parishioners and from a church leadership that regards them as a social justice issue.


9. The feminization of the clergy discourages men’s participation in the church.

In his 1999 book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, Leon Podles looked at attendance trends in Roman Catholic and Protestant churches and noted that the more liberal Protestant churches saw a decrease in male attendance from 47% to 40-35% between 1952 and 1986.

The trend is evident in the Church of England. In 1994, thirty-two women were ordained as priests in the Church of England. A February 2014 report in The Guardian states that between 2002 and 2012, the number of female full-time clergy increased by 41%. During the same period, the number of full-time male clergy dropped from 7,920 to 6,017.

The 2018 report reveals that the number of female clergy in the Church of England continues to rise with more women than men preparing for ordained ministry for the second year running.

From 2017 to 2018, the proportion of senior posts such as dean or bishop occupied by women rose from 23% to 25%. The figures do not include the six new female bishops in 2018, bringing the total number of female bishops in the Church of England to 24.

The 1992 decision to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England has been followed by the stated objective of having a 50%-50% census. To accomplish this means pushing women forward and denying some men.

Perhaps of greater importance is the number of fathers who regularly attend worship. Studies have shown that fathers are the greatest influence on whether their children also attend church. Writing on the importance of fathers in church, Robbie Low said, “To minister to a fatherless society, these churches, in their unwisdom, have produced their own single-parent family parish model in the woman priest.”


10. A female at the altar blurs the biblical distinction between life and death.

Speaking from the perspective of Biblical Anthropology, the priesthood of the Church stands in continuity with the Hebrew priesthood that was known to Abraham and his ancestors. As the author of Hebrews attests, Jesus is the perfect embodiment of that ancient priestly office (Hebrews 7:17). The priest's office is unique, deeply rooted in archaic religion, and stands as an ensign of the hope for immortality.

Anthropological research indicates that the priesthood originated among people who observed the binary distinction of male and female blood work. The priesthood is about blood sacrifice and blood covering. Consider the context of blood work in traditional societies. Men do the blood work that involves taking life: combat, hunting, and animal sacrifice. Women do the blood work that involves giving life: the monthly blood flow, and blood from the birth process.

Women were never priests because women were not permitted in the place of blood work that involves death. Likewise, men were not allowed in the birthing hut. The gender roles reflect the distinction between life and death, a distinction that God warns the covenant people not to blur. “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live…” (Deuteronomy 30: 15-20). A woman at the altar represents confusion about the binary nature of blood work in the biblical context.

The blood work of Jesus, the Son of God, is unique. His work on the Cross is both condemnation to those who are perishing and life to those who are being saved (Romans 1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:18-21). The faithful priest is a man whose life is a testimony to the reality of the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

Related reading: Why Women Were Never Priests; The Church's Consensus on Women Priests; Binary is a Bad Word These Days; Anglicans Divided; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; More Thoughts on the Priesthood

The Church's Consensus on Women and the Priesthood

The Church is not a democracy in which sacred tradition, doctrine, and discipline can be changed by consensus. The Church already has a consensus...the Apostolic Consensus. When it comes to the question of women priests, the consensus is clear. The matter was resolved early in the Church.

Consider what these Churchmen have said about women and the priesthood.

St. Irenaeus, "Against Heresies" (1.31.2) wrote, "After this he gave women mixed chalices and told them to give thanks in his presence. Then he took another chalice much larger than that on which the deceived woman gave thanks, and, pouring from the smaller... to the much later. . the larger chalice was filled from the smaller chalice and overflowed."

Tertullian, in "The Prescription of Heretics" (41), says: "How wanton are the women of these heretics! they dare to teach, . to dispute, to carry out exorcisms, to undertake cures, it may be even to baptize."

In his work "On Veiling Virgins" (9.1), Tertullian wrote: "It is not permissible for a woman to speak in church, nor may she teach, baptize, offer, or claim for herself any function proper to a man, and least of all the office of priest."

Firmilian, in Epistle 75.1-5 to Cyprian, tells of a woman who went into an ecstasy (shamanism?) and came out a prophetess. "That woman who first through marvels or deceptions of the demons did many things to deceive the faithful, among other things... she dared to do this, namely that by an impressive invocation she feigned she was sanctifying bread, and offering a sacrifice to the Lord."

Origen, in his commentary on 1 Cor 14:34 tells of the four daughters of Philip; who prophesied, yet they did not speak in the Churches. "We do not find that in the Acts of the Apostles... . For it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church."

St. Epiphanius states plainly: “Never has a woman been a priest or held the sacerdotal office.” (Panarion, 79.3)

In "Against Heresies" (79.304) St. Epiphanius wrote:

"If women were ordained to be priests for God or to do anything canonical in the church, it should rather have been given to Mary... . She was not even entrusted with baptizing... Although there is an order of deaconesses in the church, yet they are not appointed to function as priests, or for any administration of this kind, but so that provision may be made for the propriety of the female sex [at nude baptisms]. Whence comes the recent myth? Whence comes the pride of women or rather, the woman's insanity?"

In 49. 2-3 St. Epiphanius tells of the Cataphrygians, a heretical sect related to the Montanists. He wrote:

The Cataphrygians pretended that a woman named Quintillia or Priscilla had seen Christ visiting her in a dream at Pepuza, and sharing her bed. He took the appearance of a woman and was dressed in white."Among them women are bishops and priests and they say nothing makes a difference' For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female... '' [Gal. 3:28]

St. John Chrysostom, in his treatise "On the Priesthood" (2.2) points out that Jesus said, "Feed my sheep" only to Peter. "Many of the subjects could easily do the things I have mentioned, not only men, but also women. But when there is question of the headship of the church... let the entire female sex retire."

In the same treatise (3.9) St. John Chrysostom wrote: "Divine law has excluded women from the sanctuary, but they try to thrust themselves into it."

St. Augustine, "On Heresies" (27) speaks of the Pepuzians mentioned by St. Epiphanius. "They give such principality to women that they even honor them with priesthood."

ACNA Bishop William C. Wantland, an authority on canon law, said, "I do not know if a woman can be a priest but I know that only a priest (or bishop) may offer the Eucharist." He concludes, "It would therefore be a great spiritual danger to allow a celebrant of doubtful validity to function..." He also wrote, "We Anglicans believe that the Eucharist, like Baptism, is a Sacrament 'generally necessary for salvation'... We also believe that only a Priest (or Bishop as High Priest) may offer the Eucharistic sacrifice... If (for the sake of argument) a woman cannot, in God's will, be a priest, then she cannot validly offer the Eucharistic sacrifice, nor am I then fed on the Body and Blood of Christ if I partake of her offering. My soul, no longer sacramentally nourished, is in mortal danger." (W. C. Wantland, The Catholic Faith, the Episcopal Church and the Ordination of Women, Diocese of Eau Claire, 1977, pp. 20-21)

Evelyn Underhill said that the chief reason for opposing the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion was her belief that "so complete a break with Catholic tradition cannot be made save by the consent of a united Christendom." 

What has happened instead is a dangerous innovation initiated by the Episcopal Church which set aside catholicity when it broke with received tradition of at least 2000 years. Dr. Gerald McDermott, a widely published Anglican theologian, contends that Christian women's distinctive ministries ontologically cannot include the priesthood.

The late Thomas J. Talley, Professor Emeritus of Liturgics at The General Theological Seminary in New York, wrote, "The question is not whether a bishop can ordain a woman, finally, but whether the church will call a woman." (Reforming Tradition, p. 6)

In his address to the 1978 Lambeth Conference (July 31), Canon John Macquarrie pointed out that many in the Anglican Communion “conscientiously believe that a woman cannot validly consecrate the Eucharist.” He added, “And who can prove beyond doubt that such persons are mistaken?”

The late Dr. J. I. Packer wrote, “Jesus is the second man, the last Adam, our great high priest and sacrifice, our prophet, priest, and king (not prophetess, priestess, and queen), and he is all this precisely in his maleness. To minimize the maleness shows a degree of failure to grasp the space-time reality and redemptive significance of the incarnation.” (J. I. Packer, “Introduction,” in Man, Woman and Priesthood, ed. James Tolhurst (Gracewing, 1989), p. 13. This reflects the binary worldview of the Scriptures. In dualism, the entities in a binary set are equal, but in the biblical worldview one entity in the binary set is observed to be superior in some way to the other. Thus, in the male-female set, males are seen to be larger and stronger than females, and it is the stronger that stoops to save, not the weaker.

Anglicans claim that their priests belong to the one universal Church and that the Eucharist is offered not only for those immediately present, but also for the whole Church. This cannot be true where the priest is a woman since she is not recognized as a priest by the universal Church. “Since the Church is universal,” writes Dr. C. B. Moss (1888-1964), “she requires a ministry which is universally recognized.”

The 1973 "Ministry and Ordination" statement by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC I) states that “every individual act of ordination is therefore an expression of the continuing Apostolicity and Catholicity of the whole Church.” That cannot be true where women are concerned because women are not heirs of the Apostles and they are not universally recognized as priests.

Related reading: Ten Objections to Women Priests; Why Women Were Never Priests; Blood and Gender Distinctions; Men at the Altar, Woman at the Empty Tomb; The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective; God as Male Priest; C. S. Lewis on Women Priests

Anglicans Divided

Alice C. Linsley

I am writing this from the strength of my conviction that women's ordination to the sacred order of priests is a dangerous innovation, and as a woman who served as a priest in ECUSA from 1988 until the Sunday on which Gene Robinson was consecrated.

Some will view this article as an attempt to influence the 2017 decision of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). However, this is a question on which I have been speaking and writing for over 10 years, and I have no illusion that what is said here will change the minds of those who also hold their positions with firm conviction.

Some say that the opposing positions on women's ordination are predicated on equally valid arguments. That is problematic because the Church does not change sacred Tradition based on the validity of arguments. It has no authority to do so.

Given that Anglicans are comfortable with theological ambiguity and some bishops are pleased to act unilaterally, with little regard for uniformity, it may be impossible to achieve consensus on the question of women priests. As far as the Anglican Church of North America is concerned, the question has been under study for a good while. Out of concern for the growth and unity of that fledgling body, it was not addressed early.

"At the inception of the Anglican Church in North America, the lead Bishops unanimously agreed to work together for the good of the Kingdom. As part of this consensus, it was understood that there were differing understandings regarding the ordination of women to Holy Orders, but there existed a mutual love and respect for one another and a desire to move forward for the good of the Church. This commitment was deeply embedded in the Constitution and Canons overwhelmingly adopted by the Inaugural Assembly (2009). [From "Frequently Asked Questions" at the ACNA website.]

While the Anglican tent has room for "both integrities" the issue remains contentious, and some clergy may leave ACNA should the ordination of women become an approved practice. For these clergy the ordination of women is deemed a first order issue.

Father Louis Tarsitano wrote, "The priesthood of Christ, and that representative priesthood rooted in Christ's priesthood is changeless. To change it is to change the New Testament itself."[Tarsitano, "Some Scriptural References Applicable to the Question of the Ordination of Women"]

Father Richard L. Jones has written, "The established historicity of the priesthood extends back to Melchizedek, then the Levitical priesthood, then Christ and the Apostles, then the Apostolic Fathers, and on through the succeeding 1900+ years. Not only is women in the priesthood a recent innovation that defies the traditions of the past, it also has no basis in Scripture whatsoever."

The Most Rev. Walter F. Grundorf, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Province of America, expresses that body's fidelity to holy Tradition in this statement:

"The Anglican Province of America, in common with the rest of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, affirms that the Sacrament of Holy Orders of Bishop, Priest and Deacons is the perpetuation of Our Lord Jesus Christ's gift of Apostolic Ministry to his Church and that these Sacred Orders consist exclusively of men in accordance with Christ's will and institution as proven by Holy Scriptures and the universal Tradition of the Holy Catholic Church for two thousand years. We do believe in conformity with the Undivided Catholic Church of the First Millennium that the male character of Holy Orders is unalterably of Divine institution."

The Anglican Province of South America debated the issue of women's ordination for 20 years and feelings ran high. Nevertheless, that Province has agreed to differ. According to Gregory Venables, the Primate of the Anglican Church of South America, "it hasn't caused any division."

Some believe the ability to embrace opposing views is a strength. Michael Warren Davis, writing for the Imaginative Conservative, expressed exactly this view:

"By allowing these rival sentiments to work themselves out, by allowing different provinces and even different parishes to align with this or that camp, the Anglican Communion has grown to be the third largest Church body in the world. To pick the Communion apart now, either from the left or the right, is the only certain means of destroying Anglicanism entirely. Total uniformity is not only impossible--its expectation is un-Anglican."

Concern for the growth and unity of the Anglican Communion does not condone moving the boundary stones set up by our holy ancestors (Proverbs 22:28) that enable us to discern and avoid errant paths. Anglicans who uphold the all-male priesthood are portrayed as having "conservative separatist tendencies, such the Anglican realignment and Continuing Anglican movements."["Ordination of women in the Anglican Communion" Wikipedia] In reality, the separatists are the innovators, and their departure from holy Tradition creates division.

C. S. Lewis observed, "The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters. As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality." [C.S. Lewis, "Priestesses in the Church"]

A woman standing at the altar as a priest represents a departure from the pattern of Scripture. The Bible does not explicitly state "Women shall not be ordained" because it was inconceivable to the Biblical writers that a woman would raise a knife to ritually slay an animal on the altar. This was the work of priests and the heads of households, both roles of men in the Judeo-Christian Tradition.

The priesthood is tied to the altar, and though the Christian priest enacts a bloodless sacrifice, the priesthood is about blood. According to Leviticus 17:11, "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." The blood of Jesus makes atonement, purifies, and sanctifies. He is both Sacerdos and Agnus Dei.

St. Paul refers to the Blood of Jesus no less than twelve times in his writings. Because God makes peace with us through the blood of the cross, he urges us to "Take every care to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together" (Eph. 4:3).

The notion of a woman offering blood sacrifice was unthinkable to the Hebrew people. Such a thing would have been viewed as an affront to the Creator. He created women to bring forth life, not to take it. The blood work of women involves childbirth. The blood work of men involves hunting and warfare. Traditional gender roles speak of the distinction between life and death, a distinction that modernism has blurred. To the modern reader, this sounds bizarre. Today women fight in combat, hunt and abort their unborn.

That men and women have distinct blood work is a given in the context of the Biblical writers. Women were not permitted at the altar and men were not permitted inside birthing chambers. This is an aspect of the Tradition the Church has received. Some view this as legalistic and patriarchal, but instead it is an invitation to contemplate a sacred mystery that is to be preserved by the Church.

A woman standing in persona Christi at the altar sends a distorted and confusing message. Likewise, a man standing in a Nativity scene as the Virgin Mary sends a distorted and confusing message. Jesus Christ is not the author of confusion. That comes from earthly and spiritual forces that oppose Christ and His Gospel.

Through the Church, God preserves right belief and right actions in the service of humanity. The conservation of holy Tradition is the responsibility of bishops and priests who follow the Apostles, upon whom the Church is founded. So-called "traditionalists" have been criticized for doing exactly what must be done to preserve the Gospel and the Church's witness.

Archbishop Shane B. Janzen, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, has stated:

"The Traditional Anglican Communion, as with other Continuing Anglican Churches outside of the Canterbury Communion, holds to the Principles of Faith set out in the Affirmation of Saint Louis, 1977. We hold and believe that the Holy Orders of Bishop, Priest and Deacon are exclusive to men, affirming as we do the ancient tradition of the Church and the authority of Sacred Scripture. Though many in the secular world today see the ordination of women as a matter of human rights and equality between the sexes, it is in fact a matter of divine institution not human determination. No one has the 'right' to be ordained. The calling to the ordained ministry within the Church is from God who, in the person of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, instituted the sacred ministry among men alone -- though He could very well have done otherwise given our Lord's pronouncements and actions which in many cases ran counter to the prevailing understanding and teachings of the then Jewish authorities. The ordained minister is an 'icon of Christ' -- persona Christi or alter Christus -- particularly in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. To set aside the teachings of Christ and the sacred tradition of the Church universal in any unilateral way is contrary to the teachings of Christ, the ancient discipline of the Church, and the means by which doctrines of the Church are determined. The Traditional Anglican Communion continues in the beliefs and discipline of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We seek to conform to the model of Church left to us by our Lord, and as He did not grant authority to His Church to confer the Sacrament of Holy Orders on women, it is beyond our moral and canonical right to do so. We hold that no Church or body of bishops has the authority to alter the teachings of Christ and His Church in matters of faith and morals, including the ordination of women."

Christian leaders are to uphold values consistent with the Gospel and to resist dangerous innovations that threaten the unity of the Body of Christ. They are to preserve the pattern, rather than change the pattern based on vain arguments. As a philosophy teacher, I know that an argument can be valid and yet have no basis in reality. The Tradition of the Church is grounded in reality. It speaks about what is real and true. In an escapist society the Church is a troublesome reminder that God exists and is working in mysterious ways to redeem the world. The emotional fragility that is exhibited by many today is a sign that they are fleeing the reality of God. We escape reality when we fantasize new identities, immerse ourselves in virtual realities, hide behind addictions, and avoid pondering eternal verities.

This is what Lewis meant when he wrote, "With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us." [C.S. Lewis, "Priestesses in the Church"]

On the question of women priests, Archbishop Edmund Akanya of Nigeria has stated: "Our position as a church is that it runs counter to scripture and more so our culture. Even the women themselves are seriously opposed to women's ordination. This position has been held before I became a bishop. In fact, it [women's ordination] is looked at as something that led to the issue of human sexuality today.

Archbishop Akanya is justified in this view since the first woman "regularly" ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) was known to be a lesbian and served as co-president of Integrity.

Louie Crew, the founder of Integrity, worked to influence the decisions of the General Conventions, and the 1976 Convention passed resolutions supporting the "civil rights" of lesbians and gays. (And it came to pass that the salt lost its saltiness and is no longer good for anything.)

The theological ambiguity and biblical illiteracy with which Episcopalians were comfortable served to advance Crew's agenda. He wrote,

"Almost never in our history have we had the luxury of expecting a high degree of conformity in doctrine or liturgical practice. To avoid extinction, frequently individual Anglicans and even groups of us have needed to back off from actions with which we disapprove and allow them still to happen, preferably 'somewhere else.'" [Louie Crew, "Changing the Church", no longer available online.]

This live-and-let-live attitude became enshrined among American Episcopalians and paved the way for Integrity to work its wizardry. Crew wrote, "Episcopal polity, therefore, allows much air in which lesbigays may breathe our living witness."[Louie Crew, "Changing the Church"]

The Church's nature resists worldly corruption and it is able by God's grace to correct what is wrong within itself. Regardless of how one views the priest at altar - in persona Christi, in persona ecclesiae, an icon of Christ, the divinely appointed mediator in the pattern of the Mediator, etc., this is not a matter of secondary importance. No synod or jurisdiction has authority to change the received Tradition concerning Jesus Christ and his blood shed for the salvation of the world. C.S. Lewis is correct that when it comes to the Church's received Tradition, "We cannot shuffle or tamper so much."

Through Jesus Christ the eternal truth signified by the Priesthood comes into focus. He perfects atonement through His own shed blood. The Priesthood is necessarily tied to the blood of Jesus Christ. Where faith in the saving nature of His blood is denied, there can be no true Priesthood. A priest who denies the necessity of repentance and trust in Jesus' blood as the only means of atonement is a false priest.

This article may be freely posted to websites and blogs with full recognition as to its source. The article was originally published at Virtueonline in December 22, 2016 

Related reading: Why Women Were Never Priests, Men at Altar, Women at Empty Tomb; The ACNA and the Priesthood of the Church

Men at Altar, Women at Empty Tomb

Alice C. Linsley

A woman standing as priest at the altar distorts the Gospel and creates confusion. Form and gender matter. However, the issue from an anthropological perspective is about the distinction between the blood work of men and women. Among the people to whom God first delivered the promise of salvation (Gen. 3:15) the two were distinct and never permitted to be confused. The blood work of men pertained to war and hunting. Women did not participate in these. The blood work of women pertained to the monthly cycle and childbirth. During these times women remained apart in a birthing hut or cave which men were not permitted to enter.

With men, we have blood shed resulting in death. With women, we have blood shed resulting in life. The bloodless sacrifice at the altar is about the death of Jesus Christ whose blood, as the Son of God, leads to purification, deliverance from sin and death, and eternal life - all brought to completion at the third day resurrection. 

Women were the first to be at the empty tomb.

Related reading: Why Women Were Never Priests; Blood and Binary Distinctions; On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality; The Church's Consensus on Women and the Priesthood

The Maleness of Jesus

Painting by Nathan Greene

Alice C. Linsley

The maleness of Jesus is part of the Holy Tradition received from Abraham and his Horite Hebrew ancestors. It is not a matter for negotiation. To set aside the historical reality of Jesus as the Son of the Father is to eviscerate the Messianic Tradition and to denigrate the Gospel to simply another religious path.

Holy Tradition, as it is received from Jesus and the Apostles, has two categories: kergyma, and ecclesiastical order and discipline. The first is non-negotiable, and the second tends to accommodate to local conditions. The "priesting" of women touches on the first category. Women's ordination would not have become a divisive issue if Anglicans had held to the received tradition.

The royal priesthood of Jesus Christ is the foundation stone of the Church. Understanding the antecedents of the Church's priesthood is essential if we are to rebuild the foundations of the New Jerusalem. We cannot rebuild unless we know where the walls were and how they were sited and aligned. We cannot restore a firm foundation unless we understand the work of our ancestors in the Faith. Antecedents matter!

The Church is divided, yet there is but one Priesthood - that of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Priest - whose priesthood is given to the Church. The priesthood is a unique gift and it speaks of Jesus Christ, so we must get it right or we send a false Christological message to the world, such as that delivered by Presiding Bishop Curry at the recent Royal Wedding.

Having read a great deal of Feminist literature, I am no longer surprised by the bizarre constructions they present on Jesus, the Church, and the priesthood. Agenda driven "scholarship" is not true scholarship. Attempts to justify women priests by pointing to imagined examples of women who were priests are hollow and without substance. The only women of the ancient world who are called "priests" practiced pagan religions. They do not represent the ruler-priest caste of the ancient Horite Hebrew. They are not heirs of the Messianic Faith.

Feminists attempt to make the Virgin Mary a priest. She was not. Nor was Phoebe, Lydia, Juna, etc. None of these were priests. The Christ-following priests of the early Apostolic period were associated with the Sanhedrin. Two are named in the Bible: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph and Jesus Christ were kin, both descendants of the ruler-priest line of Mathea (Matthew).

St. John Chrysostom wrote in his treatise on the priesthood:

"For the priestly office is indeed discharged on earth, but it ranks among heavenly ordinances; and very naturally so: for neither man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any other created power, but the Paraclete Himself, instituted this vocation, and persuaded men while still abiding in the flesh to represent the ministry of angels. Wherefore the consecrated priest ought to be as pure as if he were standing in the heavens themselves in the midst of those powers."

In "The Veiling of the Virgins" Tertullian speaks of the sacerdotal life as a "male function," and St. John Chrysostom wrote, "When one is required to preside over the Church, and be entrusted with the care of so many souls, the whole female sex must retire before the magnitude of the task, and the majority of men also.” (On the Priesthood)

That seems clear enough. Yet some want to prolong the debate. Some are compromised and cannot easily defend the received tradition. Anglican bishops who are married to priests should recuse themselves from the discussion. None should consider it worthy of Christ to promote anything that causes confusion, engenders strife, or brings division to the Body of Christ.

In his treatise On the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great wrote:

“Every man is a theologian; it does not matter that his soul is covered with more blemishes than can be counted. The result is that these innovators find an abundance of men to join their factions. So ambitious, self-elected men divide the government of the churches among themselves, and reject the authority of the Holy Spirit. The ordinances of the Gospel have been thrown into confusion everywhere for lack of discipline; the jostling for high positions is incredible, as every ambitious man tries to thrust himself into high office. The result of this lust for power is that wild anarchy prevails among the people; the exhortations of those in authority are rendered utterly void and unprofitable, since every man in his arrogant delusion thinks that it is more his business to give orders to others than to obey anyone himself."

Despite what feminists argue concerning women in the Church, there is not a shred of evidence in the Bible that even one woman served as a priest.

Despite what politically correct academics write, the priesthood of the Church is distinct from the priesthood of the pagan world.

Despite what rights activists might say, Jesus was not gay, homophobic, or a misogynist.

He was not illegitimate. The only scandal raised surrounding his miraculous and prophetic birth was raised by His enemies. He was conceived and born exactly according to the expectation of Messiah's appearing. What is written concerning Him in the Bible is entirely consistent with the expectation of the long-awaited Messiah.

The ministry of priests in the Church is not of human origin or human invention. It is the gift of the Messiah to those men who are called to priestly ministry. This office developed organically from the Horite Hebrew priesthood of Abraham's ancestors. Animal sacrifice, circumcision, ritual purity, and sacred moral codes originated with them. They alone believed that the Creator (Ra/Ani) is Father to His Son (Horus/Enki). That is where the evidence of Scripture, anthropology, linguistics, and genetic studies leads us. Fr. Thomas Hopko is correct in saying, "In his actions in and toward the world of his creation, the one God and Father reveals himself primarily and essentially in a 'masculine' way." (Women and the Priesthood, p 240)

The priestly function was exclusively the work of a select group of men, a caste of royal priests whose devotion to the worship of the Creator involved, by today's standards, extreme asceticism and purity of life. That there were priestesses in the Greco-Roman world is irrelevant to the question of women priests in the Church because this practice has no connection to the priesthood represented by Jesus Messiah and his followers. Failure to make this distinction has led to much confusion and obfuscation.

Related reading: Freeing God From Gender and Tradition; The Priesthood is About the Blood; Why Women Were Never Priests; Why God is Father and Not Mother by Mark Brumley; Anglican Fudge: Women Priests

The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 3)

All rights reserved. If you borrow, please cite this page. This information represents 35 years of research.


Alice C. Linsley

Patriarchy is often held up as an explanation for why no women served as priests among the biblical Hebrew. Why should this matter? It matters because it isn't true. It matters because this is the basis of Dr. William Witt's argument for the ordination of women. He served as a consultant to the ACNA task force that studied the question of women's ordination for five years. Dr. Witt's argument is that women were not priests because of patriarchy and Anglicans should correct that injustice by permitting women to be ordained.

Anglicans who push for women's ordination on the basis of this argument should check the facts. Anthropologically, the social structure of the biblical Hebrew is much more complex than generally presented in feminist literature and gender studies. Examination of the biblical data reveals that the Hebrew social structure is not characterized by these 6 conditions of absolute patriarchy:

1. descent is traced through the paternal line only (Part 2)
2. inheritance rights come through the father's lineage only (Part 3)
3. right to rule is vested with males only (Part 4)
4. patrilocal residence; that is the bride lives with the groom's clan/family (Part 5)
5. governed by a council of all males (Part 6)
6. ultimate authority rests with a male figure such as a patriarch, chief or king.

Anthropologists never have found an absolute patriarchy or an absolute matriarchy. In an absolute matriarchy, the six conditions would be vested with the ruling females (matriarchs).

Today we investigate whether the Hebrew social structure reflects the second condition: patrilineal right of inheritance.

In an absolute patriarchy only men inherit property and the right to rule territories. It is often said that the rights of inheritance of the biblical Hebrew follow primogeniture, but that is not accurate. The inheritance laws among the biblical Hebrew are more complex because the ruler had two first born sons. Provision was made for both sons to receive an inheritance. Additionally, grants were made to the sent-away sons of concubines. Daughters could petition to receive inheritance. By levirate marriage a widow was able to preserve her deceased husband's holdings for his son. In an extremely archaic practice, inheritance rights were attached to whoever had possession of the clan ancestor figurines. Let's now look at each of these situations.

The right of primogeniture for the principal wife's first born son

The rights of primogeniture applied only to the first-born son of the first wife (the half-sister). This son assumed the rule of his father's territory and control of all property. Because of the Hebrew had a double unilineal descent pattern, his wives and their servants were responsible for flocks, herds, tents, and other moveable property. The story of Jacob is interesting in that he was a servant of Laban and as such, he shared responsibility for his wives' flocks and herds (Gen 30). 

If the sister wife does not produce a son to be the patriarch's heir, the man could appoint the first born son of a concubine to be his heir. Sarah being infertile, Abraham appointed Eliezer, the son the concubine Masek.

To better understand the right to rule among the biblical Hebrew, we should should separate the right to rule from the question of inheritance. However, the two are related in the case of the first born son of the first bride, the half-sister wife. Her son ruled in the place of his father and inherited his father's territory. Abraham's proper heir was Isaac, the son of Sarah, Abraham's half-sister.

It is curious that Isaac's first wife is not mentioned in Genesis. The first born son of this wife would have been Isaac's proper heir. Esau is the first born of Isaac's cousin bride and as such, he was not Isaac's proper heir. He was a chief in Edom, but it does not appear that he ruled all of Edom in Isaac's place.

If Isaac followed the pattern of his Horite Hebrew ancestors, he had a wife before he married Rebekah. She would have been his half-sister. Abraham's urgency to fetch Isaac a cousin wife was so that Isaac would have the two wives necessary for Isaac to rule Abraham's territory upon his death.

The Messianic expectation concerning The Bridegroom coming for his bride and taking His eternal throne is foreshadowed in the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priests.

Sent-away sons

Inheritance grants were given to the sons of concubines. Abraham gave grants to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from the territory of his proper heir, Isaac (Gen. 25:6). The heroes of the Bible are men who left their homes and relied on God for provision of their own territories: Cain, Nimrod, Abraham, Moses, David... the Son of God, Jesus Messiah.

The practice of sending away sons drove the expansion of the Horite Hebrew into new territories. Before dying, the sent-way chiefs arranged for the transfer of property to their sons. The right of rule was bestowed on the first born son the principal wife. The principal wife was usually the first wife, the bride of the man's youth, and also a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham.

Women could inherit property

Zelophehad's five daughters were Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. According to Numbers 27 they inherited property after petitioning Moses to render a judgement on this dispute. The dispute is connected to Moses's half-brother Korah who challenged Moses's authority, and pertains to a land holding of Manasseh. In the Book of Chronicles, Zelophehad (Tzelofhad) is listed as a son of Manasseh whose land holdings were in Egypt.

Zelophehad's daughters argued that the name of their deceased father would be lost among his people were they not to inherit. However, Zelophehad's name would be perpetuated through one of his daughters. Were she to marry a patrilineal cousin, she would name her first born son Zelophehad, after her father, according to the cousin-bride's naming prerogative. Sons did not perpetuate the father's name among the biblical Hebrew.

Moses granted the five daughters' petition to inherit their father's holding, and we read this law: "If a man dies without a son, then the inheritance shall pass to his daughter." (Num 27:8)

This account comes from the Deuteronomist, a source dating to the later Neo-Babylonian period (c.700-300 BC). The purpose is to explain the assignment of tribal holdings in the Promised Land. However, as this story comes before the entrance of the Israelites into the Promised Land, where was Zelophehad's holding? The clan of Manasseh had deep roots in Egypt. It is possible that Zelophehad's holding was in Egypt, but this does not serve the Deuteronomist's narrative. He would have us believe that all the Hebrew people left Egypt, never to return there.

According to Shammai Feldman's "Biblical motives and sources" in "Journal of Near Eastern Studies" 22 (1962), this narrative is a fiction created to illustrate laws of inheritance. To express this another way: "This section of the chapter is a good example of a law embedded in a narrative, or a narrative created for the sake of a law." (The Schocken Bible, p. 796)

Many scholars regard the account of Zelophehad's daughters as an example of accretions added to an earlier source. This would explain the contextual incongruities. Though scholars note problems with the story of Zelophehad's daughters, it is almost certain that the daughters of Hebrew rulers had the right to petition to inherit property. Ancient documents from Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Nile Valley attest to the fact that women could inherit property, even when there was a proper male heir (Hebrew Study Bible, p. 338).

Numbers 27 clarifies that daughters could inherit land. If a land owner died without a male heir his land was to go to a ranking daughter (Numbers 27:8). If he died without a son or daughter, the land was to go to his brothers.


Levirate marriage and inheritance rights

Levirate marriage is extremely ancient practice in which the widow of the deceased brother marries one of his brothers. Levirate marriage is practiced by societies with a strong clan and caste structures in which exogamous marriage is forbidden. The practice is found among the cattle-herding Nuer and Dinka of the Nile. It also is found among the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, and in the Punjab-Haryana region of Pakistan, and among peoples of Central Asia such as the Saka and Kushan. It appears that the rulers of these regions were served by Horite Hebrew ruler-priests.

In the Punjab-Haryana region, if the levir (dewar) refused to redeem his brother's widow, she would spit in his presence and remove one of his sandals. Subsequently, the people of the town would refer to him as "the one without a shoe".

This sheds light on the redemption of Ruth and the transfer of her husband's inheritance at the city gate of Bethlehem.

Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel. (Ruth 4:7)

In Genesis 23:10, we read that Abraham settled the purchase of a burial cave at the city gate; (literally, in the presence of "all who came in at the gate of his city.")

Rights of inheritance through levirate marriage could be declined. This sometimes happened if acceptance of the widow as a wife endangered the inheritance or ruler status of the levir's own heir. This appears to be the case with the man who was first in line to redeem Ruth. Judah also refused to fulfill the levirate law when he denied Tamar and later recognized that, "She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah." (Gen. 38:26)

Teraphim

Hurrian/Horite law placed importance on the possession of the teraphim (Heb. תְּרָפִים). This is usually rendered "household gods" in Bibles, but these were ancestor figurines usually kept at the family hearth. One was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in 1986. This was a rare showing of a figurine from the Chalcolithic Period, showing holes around the circumference of the head.

During the Chalcolithic Period, the Horite Hebrew were involved in the mining of copper and the fabrication of copper artifacts in Israel, Southern Europe, Spain, and England. Hathor was the patroness of metal workers. Her name means the "tabernacle of Horus," the son of the God. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University. Timnah is the site of some of world's oldest copper mines. The mines were worked almost continuously until the Roman Period.

The teraphim that Rachel hid in her camel bags were figurines of Terah and his principal wife. Hundreds of these figurines have been found in Israel. Many have been found in David's Zion. There were holes around the top of the heads of the figurines. The hair of Terah and the hair of his wife were woven through these holes. Possession of these ancestor figurines represented a claim to inheritance.

When Jacob proposed a plan to escape from servitude to Laban, his two wives were quick to support him, saying: "Are we still likely to inherit anything form our father's estate? Does he not think of us as outsiders now?" (Gen. 31:14) Laban sons had became jealous of Jacob, saying, "Jacob has taken everything that belonged to our father; it is at our father's expense that he has acquired all this wealth." (Gen. 31:1) Clearly, Jacob's wealth was that of his wives, their servants and their flocks and herds. Other than his initial grant as a sent-away son, Jacob had no inheritance coming from Isaac. Nor from Laban. That is why Rachel stole the ancestor figurines.

In Part 4, we explore the right to rule among the biblical Hebrew, and discover that the pattern does not fit that of an absolute patriarchy.

Related reading: The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 1); The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 2); Abraham's Sons; Evidence of Castes in the Book of Ruth; Why Zipporah Circumcised Her Son; Denying Marriage: A cunning royal strategy

The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 2)

All rights reserved. If you borrow, please cite this page. This information represents 35 years of research.

Alice C. Linsley

Patriarchy is often held up as an explanation for why no women served as priests among the Hebrew. The argument assumes that the social structure of the biblical Hebrew was patriarchal, following the lead of feminism and gender studies. Anthropologically, social structures are much more complex than generally presented in feminist literature. This is evident when we examine the biblical data to see if the Hebrew social structure is characterized minimally by the six conditions listed below.

In the most general sense, patriarchy refers to rule by men. However, this rule takes various forms. A pure patriarchy would have these conditions:

1. descent is traced through the paternal line only
2. inheritance rights come through the father's lineage only (Part 3)
3. right to rule is vested with males only (Part 4)
4. patrilocal residence; that is the bride lives with the groom's clan/family (Part 5)
5. governed by a council of all males (Part 6)
6. ultimate authority rests with a male figure such as a patriarch, chief or king. (Part 7)

Anthropologists never have found an absolute patriarchy or an absolute matriarchy. In an absolute matriarchy, the six conditions would be vested with the ruling females (matriarchs).

Today we will investigate whether the Hebrew social structure reflects the first condition: patrilineal descent.


Descent patterns of the biblical Hebrew

A pure patriarchy would trace descent through the paternal line only. This is not a characteristic of the biblical Hebrew. Instead, they had a pattern of double descent. One expression of this is the twin entrance pillars of Solomon's temple. They are named Boaz and Jachin and the pillars commemorate Solomon's righteous ancestors on his maternal and paternal sides. Boaz was Solomon's great great grandfather on his father's side and Jachin was his great great grandfather on Bathsheba's side.

Jachin (Yachin/Yaqtan/Joktan) is the name of Keturah's father and her first-born son. The cousin bride named her first born son after her father. Keturah is Abraham's cousin. She resided in Beer-Sheba, the well of Sheba (not the well of seven). One of his Jachin's descendants is Bath-Sheba, Solomon's mother.

The biblical Hebrew had a double unilineal descent pattern. This pattern pertains to more than ancestry. The Hebrew descent pattern also reflects the rights and responsibilities of the matriarch and the patriarch.

In a double unilineal descent pattern, both the patrilineage and the matrilineage are recognized and honored, but in different ways. The full names of ruler-priests often included the names of their mothers. Among the Horite Hebrew, ntjr designated God or the divinely appointed king. The Virgin Mary's father was Joachim, Son of Pntjr (Pa-netjer). Pntjr is the name of Joachim’s mother. It is a matronym. Evidence for this as a female name is found in archaeology. A limestone stela (1539-1291 BC) bearing the names of Pekhty-nisu and his wife, Pa-netjer, is on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

In the Hebrew double unilineal descent pattern the inheritance of land, the right to rule, and claim to wells pertained to the patriarch, while responsibility for movable objects such as tents, herds, and flocks pertained to the matriarch. In the ancient Hebrew culture, as in the Bedouin culture today, the family tent was owned by the wife. This is the pattern described in Scripture.

The patriarchs dug wells, defended wells, formed treaties over wells, and restored wells that collapsed or were vandalized. The east-west axis of Abraham's territory likely extended between the waters of Engedi to the wells he dug in Gerar.

Sarah's residence in Hebron was fitting the wife of a wealthy ruler. Hebron was a fortified city in Abraham's time. These stairs and walls are 4500 years old. Archaeologists believe the stairs led to Hebron's gate.

However, Sarah's herdsmen would have lived in tents that they moved, as needed, to new pasturage.  Their pattern appears to be that of transhumance, a type of pastoralism in which flocks are moved cyclically with the changing seasons, moving livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. Vertical transhumance involves movement between higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter. The herders have a permanent home in the valleys, typically in tents or sheep cotes such as the one show below. These had a beehive shape and were considered sacred places. 2 Samuel 7:8 describes the sheep cote as a dwelling place (naveh).

Stone sheep cote in Zanuta,West Bank

Photo: Emil Salman

Transhumance should not be confused with the nomadism of some itinerant populations who go where the work is found, such as the ancient metal workers (Kenites, Beja, etc.). Once Abraham arrives in Canaan his movements are always on a north-south axis, usually between two fixed settlements: one in Hebron and the other in or near Beersheba. The flocks were tended by his wives' servants. Abraham and Issac were responsible for maintaining water sources in Ein Gedi and Gerar (on an east-west axis).

The Hebrew pattern of double descent is also evident in the cousin bride's naming prerogative. Patrilineal cousin wives named their first born sons after their fathers. This is reflected throughout the Bible, beginning with Genesis 4 and 5 where we note that Lamech's daughter, Naamah, married Methuselah, her cousin, and named their first born son after her father.

Naamah belonged to the household of Methuselah, but her first born son belonged to the household of her father, after whom the son was named. Lamech the Younger served as a high ranking official in the territory of his maternal grandfather. This pattern is a characteristic of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest caste. It explains why there are two men named Enoch, two named Lamech, two named Nahor, two named Joktan (Yaqtan), two named Esau, and two named Korah.

In the pattern of double unilineal descent there is a symmetrical division of responsibilities between the matriarchs and the patriarchs. The book of Ruth alludes to this. Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to return to their "mother's house" so that they can prepare to remarry and have families (Ruth 1). The mother's house is responsible for wedding preparations and setting up new households. 

Contrast this to the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38). Judah's sons who were married to Tamar die one after the other. He refuses to fulfill the law of levirate marriage by providing Tamar another son to marry. Judah tells Tamar to return to her "father's house" which was to relinquish his responsibility to her father. The father's house negotiated the terms of marriage and if the father did not give the woman to be married, she remained in his house.

In Part 3, we explore the Hebrew pattern of inheritance, one of the most complex areas of investigation. We will discover that the pattern does not fit that of an absolute patriarchy.

Related reading: The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 1); Horite Hebrew Rulers With Two Wives; Descent Patterns; The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's Horite Hebrew People; Glossary of Anthropological Terms; Denying Marriage: A cunning royal strategy

The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew

All rights reserved. If you borrow, please cite this page. This information represents about 35 years of research.


Alice C. Linsley

It is often asserted that the social structure of the biblical Hebrew was patriarchal. Rarely has this assertion been challenged. In this series on The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew, I do not hesitate to challenge the Feminist-Marxist narrative. I show that the six conditions necessary for a society to be patriarchal did not exist among the biblical Hebrew. The imposition of the Feminist-Marxist hermeneutic on the Bible leads to distortion and misinformation.

The feminist interpretation is poorly informed, narrowly focused, and unsubstantiated by anthropological studies. The typical Feminist narrative runs like this: "the Hebrew scriptures presents Israel as a patriarchal society. Legal codes conceive of men as the sole legal actors. Women are regarded as men's possessions on a par with oxen, asses, and servants. Women are sexual abused and valued mainly for their reproduction of offspring. Even the sign of the covenant between God and Israel is an expression is male circumcision."

Clearly, this cherry picking approach to Scripture advances the feminist agenda, but it does not accurately represent the biblical Hebrew whose wives and daughters were women of social influence, prestige, and wealth. Some even served as the heads of their clans.

Before Israel existed, the wives and daughters of the Hebrew rulers listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36 ruled over large royal households, arranged royal weddings, owned property, and assisted in the building of kingdoms.

The Hebrew had a distinctive marriage and ascendancy pattern that has been established through anthropological research using kinship analysis. Though the wives are not always named, their presence is evident in analysis of the social structure of the biblical Hebrew.

As to the claim that circumcision pertained to men only, it should be noted that here is evidence that some females were circumcised. Male and female circumcision is understood only in the context of the binary worldview of the biblical Hebrew. I will not address this topic in this series simply because it is impossible to discuss female circumcision rationally in the present highly-charged political climate.

Hebrew wives were essential to the establishment of a territory. The ruler-priest had two wives living in separate settlements at the northern and southern boundaries of their territories. Without these wives, there was no way to establish his kingdom and maintain his territorial boundaries. To cite an example, Abraham's territory extended between Sarah in Hebron and Keturah in Beersheba. The wives' separate settlements were on a north-south axis.

In the social system of the biblical Hebrew, wives exercised considerable influence over their settlements. Sarah ordered her servant Hagar to leave the settlement and Abraham had to concede. Among the biblical Hebrew all movable property such as tents and flocks belonged to the wife who ruled over her settlement.

Cousin brides named their first-born sons after their fathers. Those sons belonged to the households of their maternal grandfathers. The biblical Hebrew had a double unilineal descent pattern. This pattern pertains to more than ancestry. It reflects the rights and responsibilities of the matriarch and the patriarch. In a double unilineal descent pattern, both the patrilineage and the matrilineage are recognized and honored, but in different ways.

Many mistakenly believe that the Hebrew priesthood began with Aaron. Aaron and the Levites are not the first priests. Their service follows the practice of their Horite Hebrew ancestors.

The Horite Hebrew were a royal caste of priests known from ancient documents and archaeological discoveries going back to at least 3800 BC. Melchizedek was the ruler-priest of Salem (Jerusalem) and his ministry to Abraham (Gen 14) represents a long-standing custom of ritual purification following combat. Analysis of the biblical kinship pattern of the Hebrew ruler-priests suggests that Melchizedek was the maternal uncle of Abraham's second wife, Keturah.

Josephus calls the descendants of Abraham by Keturah "Horites" and quoting another ancient historian, speaks of them as "conquerors of Egypt and founders of the Assyrian Empire."

Moses's entire family were Horite Hebrew priests.They are descendants of Seir, the Horite ruler of Edom (Gen. 36). Aaron and Korah were his brothers. Korah means "shaved one" and refers to a priest. Here is a diagram of Amram's Hebrew clan. Also note that Anah, a female, is listed in the lineage as a chief.

The patriarchal system

Patriarchy is given as an explanation for why there were no female priests among the Hebrew. This is a false picture of the biblical Hebrew and one which should be corrected. Using the anthropological definition of patriarchy, I will expose that falsehood.

The term "patriarchy" is one of the most abused anthropological terms. In feminist and gender studies, patriarchy refers to the universal oppression of females in male-dominated societies. This is not a scientific definition. It is an ideological definition, and one which lacks empirical support.

In the most general sense, patriarchy refers to rule by men. However, this rule takes various forms. A pure patriarchy would have these conditions:

1. descent is traced through the paternal line only (Part 2)

2. inheritance rights come through the father's lineage only (Part 3)

3. right to rule is vested with males only (Part 4)

4. patrilocal residence; that is the bride lives with the groom's clan/family (Part 5)

5. governed by a council of all males (Part 6)

6. ultimate authority rests with a male figure such as a patriarch, a chief or a king (Part 7)

It should be noted that anthropologists never have found an absolute patriarchy. Neither have they found an absolute matriarchy.  In an absolute matriarchy, the six conditions would be vested with the ruling females (matriarchs).

A tera/terah is a priest. The priest carries a staff, sign of his ruler status.

Anthropologically, social structures are much more complex than generally presented in feminist literature. This is evident when we examine the biblical data to see if the Hebrew social structure is characterized by the six conditions listed above.

In Part 2 we investigate whether the Hebrew social structure traces descent through the paternal line only. We will discover patterns that have been ignored by feminists and that challenge common interpretations of even Bible scholars.


Related reading: Horite Hebrew Rulers With Two Wives; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 3); Who Were the Horite Hebrew?; Samuel's Horite Family; Denying Marriage: A cunning royal strategy