IV.
It follows from this noble conception of marriage that woman is placed by Jesus upon a plane of equality with man. She is neither the creature of his fancy, nor is she in a relation of either real or formal subjection. Here, it is true, Jesus was less out of accord with the tendencies of his time. Throughout the Roman empire there was an appreciable advance in the position of women. Except in the case of the Essenes, among the Jews the wife had always held a relatively high position, and among the Romans this was increasingly true through the neglect of the forms of marriage involving in manu relations. But even after this has been said, no person acquainted with Jewish or Roman life of the first century would deny that Jesus gives woman a position essentially different from that accorded her by either philosophy or custom.
While among the Romans the steady emancipation through which woman was passing was winning only the contempt of the professional moralist and the laughter of the writer of comedy; and while in Judea the noble ideal of motherhood was being lowered by the ease by which divorce might be obtained; with Jesus there is neither a recognition of a past subjection of woman, an attempt at her emancipation, nor a lament over the difficulties to be foreseen in the enforcement of his teaching in regard to marriage. He simply treats woman as an equal—equal in the matter of marriage and divorce equal as a companion. More than once is the despicable conceit of some Pharisee or disciple rebuked by his exhibition of unconventional sociability. They might wonder or complain; but none the less he taught and loved. All through the gospel story we find a surprisingly high position accorded women. The life of Jesus was to give something more than protection to women. It made them the companions of men—equally privileged members of the new human brotherhood. It was a virgin who bore the Savior; a woman to whom he, as a child, was subject, and by whom, in all probability, he was trained and educated;[1] to a woman, so far as
- ↑ Luke 2:52.
