pf:

The list of things you complain about in Scripture reflects a very undifferentiated reading of the text that ignores what happens to the topic of marriage and gender between its introduction in Genesis and where we are by the time of the NT. The complaint also ignores the fact I said there is more coming that will interact with many other of the issues at hand. After all, the post was entitled part 1. I had only a limited goal in this first post. It was to suggest that the starting point Meacham raised as a Jude-Christian starting point was flawed, because it ignored the key reasons many people in the Judeo-Christian tradition respond to this issues as they do. But let's look at your specifics (that is part of engaging).

The creation of Adam and Eve in the garden pictures the creation of marriage and a couple to help "be fruitful and multiple." This points to a family element in the role of marriage. The leaving and cleaving and becoming one flesh is for this purpose.  So your claim that the Bible has nothing to do with family and child raising ignores this context for the introduction of marriage and the remark in Genesis 2. This is a text Jesus cites as the ground of marriage when he is asked about divorce.

You are right to note that men in the OT often had other wives and used slaves to be child bearers when their wives were barren. One of the important features of that narrative is that those actions did not turn out well, showing they were a problem.  It is one thing to note when the Bible describes THAT something happened; another thing to say it endorses what took place.

The menstral cycle stipulation is part of the law of Torah, which many Christians take on basis of the progress of revelation within the Bible and in relationship to what Christ did with the Law to no longer apply as it did in the Hebrew community of the past. The same applies to levirate marriage (a brother marrying a widow), which by the way was designed in part to make sure a widow was cared for and remained as family, not simply cast aside to fend on her own.

Finally, one of the things the Bible did with women was to give them more rights than they had in the cultures many of these texts describe. So there are female prophets, women are the first to witness the resurrection and report it, Jesus is explicit about teaching women, and they are gifted with the same access to God that does not make them mere "property". When it comes to issues tied to divorce, Jesus and the early church gave women the same rights and protections men had. What was true for the man was true for the woman in this process. When you say the Bible teaches that women are mere property, you are failing to note texts in it that say otherwise or to pay attention to the time frames between these texts. For example, Heb 13:4 speaks of the sanctity of the marriage and its realtionship, with adlutery and sexual immorality to be avoided. It is important to recognize that the Bible describes ancient cultures in the way they operated without endorsing everything that went on in them.

So here are my answers and there is no twisting or knots that I see, just a reading of the entire Scripture with an eye on what it describes versus what it commands and with an eye on when it does so.

dlb