Chapter I
Part I.
Comments on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
"In every soul there is bound up some truth and some error, and each gives to the world of thought what no other one possesses."—Cousin.
Revising Committee.
"We took sweet counsel together."—Ps. Iv., 14.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lillie Devereux Blake,
Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford,
Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Clara Bewick Colby,
Rev. Olympia Brown,
Rev. Augusta Chapin,
Frances Ellen Burr,
Ursula N. Gestefeld,
Clara B. Neyman,
Mary Seymour Howell,
Helen H. Gardener,
Josephine K. Henry,
Charlotte Beebe: Wilbour,
Mrs. Robert G. Ingersoll,
Lucinda B. Chandler,
Sarah A. Underwood,
Catharine F. Stebbins,
Ellen Battelle Dietrick,1
Louisa Southworth.
Foreign Members.
Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg, Finland,
Ursula M. Bright, England,
Irma Von Troll-Borostyant, Austria,
Priscilla Bright Mclaren, Scotland,
Isabelle Bogelot, France
1 Deceased.
Preface.
So many letters are daily received asking questions about the Woman's Bible,—as to the extent of the revision, and the standpoint from which it will be conducted—that it seems best, though every detail is not as yet matured, to state the plan, as concisely as possible, upon which those who have been in consultation during the summer, propose to do the work.
I. The object is to revise only those texts and chapters directly referring to women, and those also in which women are made prominent by exclusion. As all such passages combined form but one-tenth of the Scriptures, the undertaking will not be so laborious as, at the first thought, one would imagine. These texts, with the commentaries, can easily be compressed into a duodecimo volume of about four hundred pages.
II. The commentaries will be of a threefold character, the writers in the different branches being selected according to their special aptitude for the work:
1. Two or three Greek and Hebrew scholars will devote themselves to the translation and the meaning of particular words and texts in the original.
2. Others will devote themselves to Biblical history, old manuscripts, to the new version, and to the latest theories as to the occult meaning of certain texts and parables.
3. For the commentaries on the plain English version a committee of some thirty members has been formed. These are women of earnestness and liberal ideas, quick to see the real purport of the Bible as regards their sex. Among them the various books of the Old and New Testament will be distributed for comment.
III. There will be two or more editors to bring the work of the various committees into one consistent whole.
IV. The completed work will be submitted to an advisory committee assembled at some central point, as London, New York, or Chicago, to sit in final judgment on "The Woman's Bible."
As to the manner of doing the practical work:
Those who have been engaged this summer have adopted the following plan, which may be suggestive to new members of the committee. Each person purchased two Bibles, ran through them from Genesis to Revelations, marking all the texts that concerned women. The passages were cut out, and pasted in a blank book, and the commentaries then written underneath.
Those not having time to read all the books can confine their labors to the particular ones they propose to review.
It is thought best to publish the different parts as soon as prepared so that the Committee may have all in print in a compact form before the final revision.
E. C. S.
August 1st, 1895.
Introduction.
From the inauguration of the movement for woman's emancipation the Bible has been used to hold her in the "divinely ordained sphere," prescribed in the Old and New Testaments.
The canon and civil law; church and state; priests and legislators; all political parties and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man, an inferior being, subject to man. Creeds, codes, Scriptures and statutes, are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies and customs of society, church ordinances and discipline all grow out of this idea.
Of the old English common law, responsible for woman's civil and political status, Lord Brougham said, "it is a disgrace to the civilization and Christianity of the Nineteenth Century." Of the canon law, which is responsible for woman's status in the church, Charles Kingsley said, "this will never be a good world for women until the last remnant of the canon law is swept from the face of the earth."
The
