Insight on the News
Woman’s Role—Equal or Complement?
● Do the traditional roles of men and women result merely from differences in the way they are brought up? Most in the feminist movement think so. But Dr. Judith Bardwick, a psychologist and dean at the University of Michigan, admits that she has been forced to rethink some of her long-held feminist views because of recent biological findings. She also observes that “there is no society where males are not dominant. When something is so universal, the probability is—as reluctant as I am to say it—that there is some quality of the organism that leads to this condition.”
Clearly, this “quality of the organism,” noted by Dr. Bardwick, was put in the genetic makeup of women when God created Eve to be “a helper for [the man], as a complement of him.” (Gen. 2:18) For this complementary role, God gave the first woman certain feminine qualities that serve to round out and make for a balanced relationship.
Because of such qualities, Sociologist Alice Rossi, a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), has come to believe that women may ‘always predominate in the caring tasks like teaching and social work and in the life sciences, while men will prevail in those requiring more aggression . . . and in the “dead” sciences like physics.’ Professor Rossi declares: “I don’t think parity [equality] necessarily means identicality.”—New York “Times,” November 30, 1977, p. A1.
Is Hell Hot?
● An article titled “Hell: Still a Burning Issue?” in “U.S. Catholic” magazine observes that in the “Old Testament” hell was called “Sheol and whether you were good or bad didn’t make any difference. Everyone ended up in the same place.” “Sheol” is the Hebrew word for “the grave,” though often rendered “hell” in popular Catholic and Protestant Bible translations. The Catholic “Jerusalem Bible,” however, leaves it untranslated, as does the “New World Translation.”
“U.S. Catholic” goes on to note that later on, “evil ones” were believed to be “sent to Gehenna—the burning dump” outside Jerusalem. “‘I’ve seen it,’ says [clergyman] Martin Marty. ‘The fires we now associate with hell are symbols of Gehenna’ where fires burned constantly to keep the pile of rubbish manageable. . . . It was the name Jesus used when he spoke several times in the Gospels about hell.”—November 1977, pp. 6-10.
Hence, even Catholic authorities are admitting publicly that the word “hell” as found in many translations has origins and meanings different from what many have been led to believe. In fact, the Catholic “Jerusalem Bible’s” note on the “burning lake” of Revelation (Apocalypse) Re 21:8, which apparently corresponds with “gehenna,” states that it represents “eternal death. The fire, like the water of v. 6 Re 21:6, is symbolic.”—See also Revelation 20:14, 15 and note, “Jerusalem Bible.”
Ancient Superstition Continues
● A postcard recently mailed to all subscribers for “The Jewish Observer,” an Orthodox publication, stated: “While we invariably avoid printing G-d’s [God’s] Name [Jehovah or Yahweh] in full—both in editorial texts and in advertisements—through a deeply regrettable printing error, the Name of G-d is spelled out in Hebrew [יהוה] in the ad for the Art Scroll Tehillim on the back cover of the Sept. J.O. [Jewish Observer].”
The card also advised readers to “handle this page with appropriate reverence.” The New York “Times” article notes that this means “the offending page should eventually be buried.”
Thus the superstitious custom of avoiding the use of God’s name continues as it did centuries ago when Jewish Bible copyists substituted the Hebrew words for “Lord” or “God” for יהוה (Jehovah) thousands of times.
By contrast, the Bible itself urges believers to make use of God’s name: “Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek Thy name, O LORD [Hebrew: יהוה]. . . . That they may know that it is Thou alone whose name is the LORD [Hebrew: יהוה], the Most High over all the earth.”—Ps. 83:17, 19, Jewish Publication Society translation (Ps 83:16, 18 most others).