Where Does Jesus Stand on the Marginalisation of Women in the Levant?
11:25 21/01/2026
The Levant is an area historically torn by political instability, religious extremism, and deep social fractures which includes deep rooted misogyny, but what was Jesus’ stance on this? And can we find peace from his approach?
Nadim Nassar, author of The Middle Eastern Jesus, explores this…
In the story of the bleeding woman, we see how women were marginalized due to their physical condition. Menstruation made women untouchable in society and meant that they were even unable to carry out their duties as wives and mothers. This account, which appears in all the Synoptic Gospels, tells of a woman who had bled continuously for 12 years; the bleeding made it impossible for her to marry and become a mother or even to pray in the temple. Mark inserts this story within the narrative about the daughter of Jairus.
In Mark 5, Jesus is on his way to heal Jairus’s daughter when the bleeding woman touches his cloak and is healed. Jesus treats the woman as a daughter of God and gives her his full attention, so much so that Jairus’s daughter dies before he can get to her. When he arrives at Jairus’s house, he quietly revives the daughter.
This passage provides an explicit contrast between the public acknowledgement of the bleeding woman and the private healing of Jairus’s daughter. In Jesus’ time, it would have been inconceivable for a man to talk at length, in a public place, to a woman who was not part of his family. By stopping to talk to her, Jesus broke all societal norms and conventions because he wanted publicly to restore her position in society as a woman. He calls her ‘daughter’ to acknowledge her as a member of the family of God. Again, we see Jesus breaking social rules by giving his full attention to a woman who was totally rejected by society. Her only fault was that she was physically sick and bleeding.
Jesus saw the cruelty of interpreting the law and Scriptures in a way that was incompatible with the culture of the Trinity, which is the culture of love and forgiveness. Jesus didn’t hesitate to call the woman forward and recognize her as a valuable member of God’s own family. He restored the place of the woman by healing her physically; but he also introduced a culture that is higher than the clergy of his time could comprehend. The culture of the God from whom he came could not allow such a vulnerable woman to be punished in his name. He shed light on areas that were taken for granted just because religion said so. He reinterpreted faith from the perspective of the original culture that he came from, the culture of the Trinity.
Nadim Nassar is a Syrian priest in the Church of England. He lectures widely and is adviser to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Freedom.
From his parish in London he runs the Awareness Foundation, a registered charity, helping to educate children living in war zones in the Middle East: https://awareness-foundation.com/our-team/
This is an adapted excerpt from Chapter 5, Women of Faith, Power and Pain: Jesus and the Feminine Voice in the Levant, of Nadim’s new book out 30th January 2026.
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