The bible repeatedly subjugates women, but treating women as chattel was not simply a sign of the times. Other contemporaneous cultures in the region were often less misogynistic. Archaeologist and priest Roland de Vaux wrote, “The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was…inferior to the position a wife occupied in the great countries round about. In Egypt the wife was often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed. In Babylon she could acquire property, take legal action, be a party to contracts.”10 But in Judeo-Christianity, the “degraded status of
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