The Most Important Book That You Will Ever Read
The most important book that you will ever read for the understanding of history, laws, and the world around in the Western culture is the Bible. The influence of the Bible is long reaching and goes into every part of your life and the culture around you and most people don’t even realize it. Because I am in the US, I will just briefly chat about the Bible’s effect on US culture, history, and laws that effect us here. The reason that I am headed this way is because it is important to a lot of things that I want to talk about and it keeps coming up as the basis of the things that I want to chat about.
I am reading Sense and Sensibilities by Jane Austin which was what I had planned to chat about historically. But the Bible is the reason behind a lot of the book, i.e. family money going from father to son, women thrown out of the family for sexually conduct outside of marriage, etc. But none of these things make sense unless you look at the reasons for women to be so hard pressed in this society. Men are also a bit pressed but they can be forgive or people look the other way as money is a great equalizer of who makes the rules but even more importantly, men just can’t help themselves and society has to allow them their indiscretions.
December 25, 1986, I was so excited. I got a Sony Walkman. It was the greatest Christmas that I had ever had except for the Christmas that I got my first big girl bike. Because we have to be fair, the freedom to go places was even more exciting. But to keep me from listening to sinful music, I was only allow to use it an hour for every hour that I listened to the Bible tapes that my father had. Before it was to read the Bible but I only got through a few books before my father would forget to make me read again. But with the tapes, he had me.
We were poor so I never got a tape from any band but I did have a few mixed tapes that friends had done for me. But going through the Bible tapes made me a lot more educated in the world around me. I loved watching old movies and reading. But a lot of the refences didn’t make sense as they went over my head. After reading the Bible, they made a lot more sense.
Movies like Jezebel, a 1938 movie with Betty Davis, took on new meaning. After being forced to listen to the Bible several times, watching and rewatching movies gave me more clarity about the meanings behind them. The undertones of the Bible were clear in the early movies. It is way the bad girl always had to die and bad boys had to be saved from bad girls and rehabilitated or some times die but generally, they were allowed back after a time.
The laws in America are also based on the Bible. Most women have forgotten that we didn’t have the right to vote until 1920. This is based on the Bible as she was made out of Adams Rib and therefore, second to him. Plus later in the Bible, there is passages that makes the man the head of the household. Or that we could not have a credit card without a man being the main signer on the account, 1974.
In just over 100 years, women have become equals to men. Not. Women are still second to men regardless of the laws as society still holds us to higher standards and pay us less for the same work. But this all goes back to the Bible.
This goes through out our society and system of laws. For example, a lot of women are leaving bad marriages and choosing to have weekends with their children and leave them with the father in the home that they are use too. This is actually looked down on in society. The reason that they are doing so are many but usually it is in the best interest of the child, i.e. due to financial reasons that the ex can afford to keep the house but they would not be able too.
If you choose to leave your child with the father, then you get issues with those around you. The question is not what was in the best interest of the child but what did you do that allow him to get custody? Or what kind of women are you that you would leave your child? Or what kind of women are you that they courts would take your child from you?
This goes back to the Bible as a man was giving guardianship and ownership of a women when he married them and any children that they might have in the marriage. Until 1860, in the US, if a couple divorced then men got the rights to the children and women did not even get visitation rights to their children unless the man allowed it. They did not even get any of the assets of the couple, i.e. home or money, as the law was that they got nothing all property went to the man. A few exceptions but those were only for the rich who did a prenuptial agreement which laid out the financial responsibilities, i.e. the money was coming from the women’s family.
Due to the fact that if you divorced your husband, you might never see your children again, women stayed in bad marriages, looked the other way, put up with being beaten, etc. These laws stem mainly from the Bible which mainly show women as good or bad. Women should have known that they were marrying bad men. But even then, they should be able to get those men to become better men.
I had this argument with a classmate in collage in the middle of class over women on welfare that should have stayed with their husband’s. I was in my 20s and he was in his 40s. He tried to explain to me that women should only marry men that were good and that it was their own fault if they married badly. My argument was simple. So, a women at age 20 marries a man who is good with a good job and good reputation. Ten years, he gets into an accident and he becomes hooked on pain killers and becomes abusive. How was she to know that this would happen 10 year in the future? He had no come back.
But this is the society that I grow up in during the 1970s. Things have changed but the underlying attitude had not. If a man cheats on a women, women are pressured to make the marriage or relationship work as it was just a slip. But if a women cheats on a man, she is generally thrown under a bus and he is not told to try and make it work by most people. Although, one of the ten commandments is ‘You shall not commit adultery’, this is forgiven for men but not women.
Why are men forgiven? Because they can’t help themselves is the logic. But the fact is, men control the money and you don’t want to stop doing business with a man just because he sleeps around. Women, on the other hand, generally don’t control the money plus you can always fall back on the Bible to show the sinful ways of a women which throw us out of the Garden of Eden.
This is the logic that women, i.e. Eve, ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge after being tempted by a serpent. God punishment was to banish them from the Garden of Eden with mortally and the ability to experience sickness, pain, and physical death. The apple is used in a lot of movies, tv shows, books, and other entertainment. For example, Desperate Housewives opening credits have apples all over it. Even if you don’t realize it, your brain knows what it means. It comes directly from the Bible and the story of Adam and Eve.
One of my favorite shows growing up was Cheers and later Frazer. You have to love Sam who is the ultimate bad boy. But I loved Lilith. Lilith is only talked about once in the Bible once. In Isaiah 34:14, The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. She is the screeching owl. But she is a figure in Jewish mythology who was cut out of the Bible when the Bible was officially compiled in the late 4th century.
A council of men, and only men, got together several times to choose which of the Hebrew writings would be included. A lot of books and myths were taken out of the Bible as they were heretical or heresy and against the church. Books like the Book of Mary. Lilith was one of those figures that was disposed of and with good reason for the men of this world to have power over women. In addition, she was demonized.
The Jewish Lilith was the original fallen women and had to be taking out of the Bible. But if you read the Bible, you can see inconsistences with two contradictory version of Creation within the book of Genesis. Lilith was head strong and demanded her equality with Adam. She was made at the same time that Adam was from the dust of the earth. She lived with Adam in the Garden of Eden as his first wife.
Her sin was refusing to lie beneath Adam who insisted that she perform her wifely duties and she be submissive to him. By not submitting, she incurred the wrath of God and fled from the Eden. Adam was rewarded with a rib being taken from him to make a submissive wife, Eve.
Lilith was then made into a succubus, child murderer, and breeder of evil spirits because she defiance the masculine order being forced on her. She was demonized as the ultimate symbol of chaos, seduction, and ungodliness. As a powerful women, she could not be in the Bible. They made sure that all powerful women were written out or marked as shameful, demonic, ungodly, and fallen. This keep women down and still does.
If you choose to read the Bible again, review Genesis for this missing part of the picture. But rewatch and reread your favorite books and see how much of your thoughts are driven by the Bible and the stories that you are watching. What names are being use for the means behind the characters? Lilith in Cheers sets you up but you might not realize that you already know a significant amount about the character before she even says a word. The opening credits to Desperate Housewives opening credits tell you that these are sinful women.
In the laws and courtrooms around the US, women are given a lot more leeway that they don’t understand what they did or they could not possibly have done it. But if they are found guilty of anything, they are given harsher sentences then men. For example, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the axe murders of her father and stepmother in 1892. It was not that she did not do it but rather that society at the time could not believe that she did it.
I can’t find the women name at the moment but when mills were opening up in America and young women were sent to them to find work was when she lived. Usually, their family signed them up and got some, if not all of their pay, this young women about age 15. I believe that she came from a large family who was poor, her father died, and then her older brother, the now head of the family, signed her up as a factory worker as a way to help the family financially. She was courted or raped by one of the upper management or owners of a mill. She became pregnant. The wealth family took the baby when she delivered and she was sent home in shame. Back at home, she was a fallen women and worked at the worst jobs around town with low wages and no one talked to her if they did not have too as she was shunned.
About 18 to 20 years later, her life started to look up. A man showed up in town to do research for a project for the family business, i.e. they wanted to open a new mill or something. He meet her and they fell in love even with an age different of about 15 years. He married her and they were living happily together for about a year. Then his family found out about the marriage and they came to break it up. It was even more of a shock when the family found that he had married his mother. He was taken away and an annulment was granted. By all accounts, he went on to live a happy productive life in upper society.
But his mother was even more ostracized then before. From that day on, she was forced to live in a one room cabin at the edge of town. She had a hen house but it was broken into by foxes so she moved them in to the cabin with her. No one talked to her. But the town did send down a child to give her food, wood, tools, and other castoff items to support her though charity of the town folks. But she was not allowed into town or allowed to talk to anyone. It was her punishment for being a wanton women who had sex before marriage and worst, committed incest with her own son.
The story came from one of these children who was one of the ones that would take thing to her. She was used to deter other young women from falling and was punished until she was found frozen to death over 30 years later. The Bible was the reason that this town and society allowed this to happen. She was held out for her sexually behavior and lack of Godliness. But remember, her son was allowed to live like this never happened. This was before bathrooms were indoor or electric was ran into houses. She only had her own company and that of her animals because she got pregnant while at a job and doubled that because she married her own son and did not know it.
The effect of the Bible on her and the rules in the Bible on women are around us every day. Those rule effect men as well but not along the same lines. I love Edith Warton’s Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. But these show the cage that women fall into and depending on how they react, they get to live or die. But the men around them get very little punishment in return. But the underling situation of the society is from the Bible.
Even if you are not religions, in the Western world, the Bible and the Christian religion is the basis for our entertainment, laws, and culture. I highly recommend a reading of the Bible or a rereading because this little book has so much to do with our past, present, and future events. I will be rereading the Bible as lately, so many of the people that I talk to keep bring it up as a reason that things are happening in today’s world. One of those people who is talking to me are looking at it as the last days and quoting stories but if I remembering correctly, it is not the full story and not talking about the rest of the story.
Note: I did not reread this or edit it. I was in a hurry. Got to love Tax Season!!!