This is a guest post by Idealist at Large, a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who loves the scriptures, and especially enjoys reading Isaiah, Moses, 2 Nephi, Moroni, and Paul’s letters. Her blog is Peaceable Treasures www.peaceabletreasures.blog, where she writes about Gospel topics and life matters. She lives in Queensland, Australia, and is currently working on a project to help parents counteract the radical theories their kids are learning at school.
It often gets said that women are largely ignored or forgotten in the scriptures; that it’s all about men, because they’re all written by men. This seems to be mainly the result of applying feminism to the scriptures, more than properly understanding them – their purpose and context in history.
Most histories that we have were written by men, for a variety of reasons, including that what ‘we’ know is largely from European and British culture, that men most often held overt positions of power, and at certain periods of time, were more likely to receive an education that included writing. They were also the ones who generally held administrative positions in literate civilisations, so they would either be directing or making official records. Moreover, we might consider that the writing of scriptures was a priesthood responsibility – revelation meant for a nation or church group was given to priests and prophets, and recording it was commanded. The scribe might have been male or female – I don’t know enough to say, but I think we often assume. Even if they were usually male, it doesn’t affect the meaning or applicability of what was recorded.