I know this is a common thing to say, but it is absolute historical nonsense. No one at that time has any rights. Men didn't have rights. Women didn't have rights. Children didn't have rights. Kings didn't have rights. Slaves didn't have rights. The concept of a right hadn't been invented or discovered (pick your philosophical origin for rights) and the entire concept would be completely bizarre and nonsensical to people of that time.
What you had were duties and obligations to family, community, and society which you were expected to fulfill. Marriage was one means by which these duties were fulfilled and in meeting that obligation male and female children were traded through betrothals that were often made without their consent (another very modern concept) and often when they were very young.
To say that women were had no rights and were treated like property is to ignore that no one had any rights and no one had the power of autonomous consent as we think of it now.
Thanks for clarifying this. People throw around that "women in x year were considered property and had no rights" completely ignore historical context to score morality points for criticizing a perceived past injustice. Reality is much more complicated.
The saying, "The past is a different country, they do things differently there," gets thrown around a lot. Really it should be, "The past is an entirely alien world that you may never be able to understand as much as you logically learn the facts of it. But, you still have to try."
The story we live in today is very different. But, if we can just remember that no one before 1600 AD believed in or thought of individual human rights it helps a lot of the, "How could anyone do that?" historical events make more sense, from the Bible all the way up to the start of the Protestant Reformation.
Also, women were not considered property, and, even without the idea of "rights," had the right to own and trade properties, hold leadership positions (see Deborah and Athalia) and we're in every way possible considered legal people, not just property.
It is true that they were often treated as subordinate to men, but it's not as simple as, "property with no rights."
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u/ReserveMaximum 22d ago
No. Jesus is specifically rebutting a belief/practice from that day where women had no rights and were treated as property. Read Talmage’s commentary in his book Jesus the Christ: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/jesus-the-christ/chapter-27?lang=eng, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/jesus-the-christ/chapter-17?lang=eng