I’m not saying he wasn’t progressive for his time in the context of those stories, but progressive for his time still meant the utter suppression of women within the culture.

Women weren’t allowed to have opinions, conduct trade, or own property, because they were property themselves. eta: and Jesus didn’t explicitly say women should have those rights.

If you believe the bible is the infallible word of god, it shouldn’t be controversial that women are like livestock.

Now, you can rationalise progressive values by saying if Jesus was alive today, he wouldn’t have gone along with all that, but that’s just not what the bible actually says.

Yeah, contradictions are baked in, which is part of why it’s endured this long. But for the misogyny and sexism specifically, there aren’t really any contradictions.

Jesus never said woman are equal or slavery is wrong. You could maybe argue he didn’t condone the genocide of his father by saying lepers deserved compassion or whatever (though that’s also a stretch), but there’s plenty of misogyny and racism in the new testament as well, so he absolutely did not counter any of that.

Anyone trying to argue Jesus (an apocalyptic preacher who was a product of his time) wasn’t misogynistic doesn’t actually know scripture or history. The preacher in the article is absolutely following the gospel, even if that’s an uncomfortable truth.

They do cherry-pick, that’s true. But my point is you don’t have to cherry-pick to wind up at awful levels of misogyny and racism. If you take it at face value, misogyny and racism is the message you should take from it.

They can hand-wave some of it away with the whole ‘Jesus fulfilled the covenant’ nonsense (which is 109% cherry-picking), but throughout the whole thing, both old and new testaments, women are property and some races are meant to be slaves.

This is what fundamentalists – who famously don’t cherry-pick, but believe the literal word – believe. It’s atrocious, but their interpretation is literally correct.

Well, yeah. The bible was written in a place and time where women were property, like livestock, and if you actually believe those teachings (without doing mental gymnastics), that’s what you should believe.

The 10th commandment makes this pretty clear:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Women are included in the list of property you shall not covet, on the same level with your neighbour’s servants and livestock.

Modern christians try to whitewash the religion, but if you take it as it was written, women are akin to livestock.