were honored instead. Views on gender There has been substantial agreement for over one hundred years, among a wide variety of scholars, that the Hebrew Bible is a predominantly patriarchal document from a patriarchal age. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III says it "limited women's roles and functions to the home, and severely restricted: (1) their rights of inheritance, (2) their choice of relationship, (3) their ability to pursue a religious education or fully participate in a synagogue, and (4) limited their freedom of movement." Recent scholarship is calling some aspects of this into question. This concept [of patriarchy] was formulated by nineteenth-century anthropologists using classical literature, especially legal texts, ... Biblical scholars ...soon took up the term. By the early twentieth century, sociologists (notably Weber) extended the concept of patriarchy to include society-wide male domination. This too entered scholarship on the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel. However, the validity and appropriateness of this concept to designate both families and society have recently been challenged in several disciplines: in classical scholarship, by using sources other than legal texts; in research on the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel, also by using multiple sources; and in the work of third-wave feminists, both social theorists and feminist archaeologists. Taken together, these challenges provide compelling reasons for abandoning the patriarchy model as an adequate or accurate descriptor of ancient Israel. Meyers argues for over patriarchy as the appropriate term to describe ancient Israelite attitudes toward gender. Heterarchy acknowledges that different "power structures can exist simultaneously in any given society, with each structure having its own hierarchical arrangements that may cross-cut each other laterally". Meyers says male dominance was real but fragmentary, with women also having spheres of influence of their own. Women were responsible for "maintenance activities" including economic, social, political and religious life in both the household and the community. The Old Testament lists twenty different professional-type positions that women held in ancient Isarael. Meyers references Tikva Frymer-Kensky as saying that Deuteronomic laws were fair to women except in matters of sexuality. Frymer-Kensky says there is evidence of "gender blindness" in the Hebrew Bible. Unlike other ancient literature, the Hebrew Bible does not explain or justify cultural subordination by portraying women as deserving of less because of their "naturally evil" natures. The Biblical depiction of early Bronze Age culture up through the Axial Age, depicts the "essence" of women, (that is the Bible's