Darrell:

Thanks for the reasoned response, but sorry, I'm not buying (Incidentally, I grew up in a church where Dallas Theological was the ultimate source of truth).

The idea that the Bible describes behavior of the patriarchs but doesn't condone it is weak, weak, weak. It only makes sense if you completely ignore the intent of the authors and abandon all rational thought. This is what they did, it was OK to them and God because they lived, as I said, in a time when women were property. It just wouldn't have occured to anyone at that time to think otherwise. And it is interesting for people who say the Bible should be taken literally to then pick and choose which of the behaviors of its heros are acceptable.

The leverite marriage is not a dispensationalist issue, Jesus was asked about it as it would occur in "heaven" and didn't condemn it, he took the proposition seriously. Besides, the whole dispensationalist thing itself is not Biblical, it is a modern attempt to try and reconcile the huge gaps between the theology in the Hebrew bible and new testament that only make senses if one takes one's logical hat off.

And to say that the Bible gave women more rights than other cultures is more than weak, it is a non-answer. Why didn't God set people straight back then? He spoke directly to people in those days, why didn't he tell Moses that women had equal rights under the law? By that logic, fundamentalsists should be happy with abortion laws in the US because they are better than those in Sweden.

There is only one way to look at this and make any sense of it. People who wrote the bible weren't inspired, they were just primitive people reflecting primitive beliefs. Truth is, you don't believe the Bible literally, nobody does. If they did, they would (rightly) be considered insane today. Trying to live our lives based on the odd prejudices of people who thought the earth was flat is simply ridiculous.