| 11-17 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Excerpt from Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Rosalyn Yalow and Simone de Beauvoir.
Virgin Birth
"The
New Testament's presentation of the Virgin Birth should not be understood
as expressing hostility to sex and marriage, although it has been misunderstood
in this sense. The Old Testament did not promise a biological Virgin Birth,
nor did the New Testament wish to describe such a birth as a historical
event.
"Matthew I and Luke I use the Virgin Birth as
a metaphor, like other metaphors in the New Testament. As for the
prophet Isaiah (8th century B.C.) he never speaks of a Virgin Birth at
all. The supposed promise of the Virgin Birth by the prophet does not correspond
to the Hebrew text. In Isaiah 7:14 it says:
'Behold, a young woman (alma) shall conceive
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.'
"The
appearance of the word "virgin" in Matthew 1:@3 comes from the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible (third century B.C.), which
translates the word 'alma' as "parthenos" (virgin). The Hebrew
word CAN mean virgin, but need not do so any more than every young woman
MUST have preserved her virginity."
-- From Uta Ranke-Heinemann's Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Women,
Sexuality and the Catholic Church, New York, Doubleday, 1990, ISBN
0-385-26527-1, discusses the oppression of women in Western Society, particularly
by the male-dominated religions. It is also available as a paperback. Ranke-Heinemann
remains a Catholic calling for change.
She holds a Ph.D. in Catholic theology and qualified
as a university lecturer at the University of Essen, West Germany, in 1969,
the first woman to do so. She became a full professor of Catholic theology
in 1970 but lost her academic chair in New Testament and Ancient
Church History for interpreting Mary's Virgin Birth theologically and not
biologically (see above). In 1987 she held the chair for the History of
Religion at the University of Essen.
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11-17 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
Died 11-17-0680, Saint Hilda,
her abbey was one of the great religious centers of NE England. Patron
saint of business and professional women.
Event 11-17-1558, Elizabeth
I, ascended the throne of England
and immediately settled the religious wars by siding with the protestant
moderates. The daughter of beheaded Ann Boleyn, she had a brutal childhood
that included prison and the always threat of death as her father, syphilis-infected
Henry VIII, became more and more irrational as he went through wife after
wife trying to get a healthy male heir.
B. 11-17-1815, Eliza Wood Burhans Farnham,
opposed women's political rights because she thought it would lessen
women's actual influence; became superintendent of women at Sing Sing prison
and made a number of humanitarian changes. Her Woman and Her Era
espouses the natural superiority of women over men and claimed the modern
social structure was based on the unconscious recognition by men that women
were not to work or live on a equal basis, but to occupy a higher level
to oversee the morality of life.
B. 11-17-1870, Winifred Holt established the
Ticket Bureau for the Blind, worked closely
with others in the Lighthouse (for the blind) movement, and established
them in the U.S. and France.
B. 11-17-1878, Grace Abbot, worked with immigrants
at Jane Addams' Hull House, and was innovative director of U.S. Children's
Bureau 1921- 34.
B. 11-17-1881, Mary Harriman Rumsey, born into
wealth, organized in 1901 what became the Junior League movement.
She was active in consumer affairs throughout her life.
Event 11-17-1975, the Supreme Court invalidates
a Utah law that claims a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy
should be presumed unable to work and therefor not eligible for unemployment
benefits.
Event 11-17-1976, Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes
the first woman to receive the Albert Lasker prize for her research.
She would later be awarded the Nobel Prize. She earned a Ph.D. in nuclear
physics and in a partnership with Solomon Berson over a 20-year period
developed a method of precise measurement of substances in the blood (radioimmunoassay)
that earned them the Nobel and Lasker awards.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
YALOW, ROSALYN:
"I
believe it would be a great loss to the community as well as to women if
talented women did not have children. They should have at least as many,
if not more, children than less talented women. [I am] concerned with the
need for universities, industry and particularly government to take the
initiative in providing for expert high-quality day-care for children."
-- Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate
and mother. At her acceptance speech for the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine
in Stockholm, Yalow said, "We still live
in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women,
believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home;
that a woman should not aspire to achieve more than her male counterparts
and particularly not more than her husband... The world cannot afford the
loss of the talents of half its people if we are to solve the many problems
which beset us."
De BEAUVOIR, SIMONE:
"What
woman essentially lacks today for doing great things is forgetfulness of
herself; but to forget oneself it is first of all necessary to be firmly
assured that now and for the future one has found oneself."
-- Simone de Beauvoir.
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