Today’s post is by Tasia Scrutton. Tasia is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds and Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Religion and Theology.
The Book of Daniel recounts the story of Susanna, a married woman who is spied on by two lecherous old men while she is bathing (chapter 13). [1] Realising that they both lust after her, the men conspire to blackmail her to have sex with her. When she refuses, the men have her arrested, claiming that they saw her have sex under a tree with a young man – a ‘crime’ punishable by stoning.
Just as she is about to be put to death, Daniel – the hero of the book – interrupts, arguing that the men should be interrogated to ensure that the sentence is just. Daniel separates the two men, asking each of the men what kind of tree they saw Susanna have sex under. The first claims to have seen Susanna and her lover under a mastic tree, the second under an evergreen oak. Mastic trees are small while oaks are large; the disparity between their accounts makes it clear that they are lying and that Susanna is innocent.
The court case against Susanna involves humiliating her: the old men demand that she remove her veil in court ‘so as to sate themselves with her beauty’, and she has to submit to them both putting their hands on her head when they testify against her (Daniel 13:32 – 34). We do not know whether the story of Susanna was based on a historical episode, but it seems reasonable to think that the background state of affairs that it relates (that a woman would be stoned for alleged adultery; that the burden of proof would be on her in court to prove her innocence; that she may have been subject to humiliation during the trial) reflect the time at which it was written, the second century BCE.[2]
Despite the geographical and historical distance between this narrative and our own contemporary context, there are remarkable similarities between Susanna’s story and an all-too-real, horrifying case today. On Sunday the BBC News recounted the story of Hannah, a young woman in Australia. Hannah discovered a website called ‘The Destruction of Hannah’, which involved hundreds of photographs of her face that had been taken from social media and stitched on to violent, pornographic pictures. The website also involved polls in which hundreds of people had voted on vicious ways they wanted to abuse her. Included on the website were Hannah’s full name, her Instagram handle, the suburb she lived in and, as Hannah later found out, her phone number.[3]
Like Susanna, Hannah had an ally – in Hannah’s case in her partner Kris, with whom she set about trying to find the culprit. Kris found photographs of other women on the website who were the couple’s friends, and the couple realised that the person who posted them and created the website must be someone they knew. Eventually they whittled it down to one person, Andy, a ‘friend’ in common with the different women whose images appeared on the website.
But also like Susanna, much less happily, it turned out that the justice system was biased against Hannah. Hannah recounted her shock when she reported Andy at the police station: “We thought they’d go grab him that afternoon”, but instead she was met with disdain. One police officer asked what she had done to Andy; another suggested that Hannah simply ask him to stop. Little was done by the police to protect Hannah, and her own innocence was even called into question when she reported the crime. In so doing, the police were perpetuating a common myth of rape culture: that the victim of sexual violence must have ‘asked for it’ in some way, whether by dressing in a certain way, or doing something to hurt or anger the perpetrator.
Like Susanna, Hannah’s case also involved humiliation from the legal system that should have been protecting her: one police officer even pointed to a picture of her in a skimpy outfit and said “You look cute in this one”. Because of the lack of adequate police response, Hannah and Kris spent £10,200 in order to hire a digital forensics analyst and a lawyer, and lived for a significant period with cameras all around their house, a knife by each side of their bed, and location tracking on all Hannah’s electronic devices. Kris monitored the pornographic website in case there was any sign of escalation while Hannah reported that “I stopped having windows open because I was scared…. The world for you just gets smaller. You don’t speak to people. You don’t really go out”. Another of Andy’s victims, Jess, told the court at which Andy was eventually sentenced that, “The world feels unfamiliar and dangerous, I am constantly anxious, I have nightmares when I am able to sleep”.[4]
The Book of Daniel was written over two thousand years ago, and it is tempting to assume that the circumstances of women have improved since then. And in many parts of the world, in many respects, they have. Since 1882 women in the UK have been able to buy, sell and own property; since 1928 they have been able to vote on the same terms as men and regardless of social class; since 1991 rape within marriage has been recognised as rape and considered a crime. But in other respects women in every part of the world are still subject to many of the oppressive patriarchal circumstances recounted in the tale of Susanna. They are still subject to sexual violence, harassment and abuse; the burden of proof is often still on them to prove their innocence and/or the perpetrator’s guilt; legal systems are often still biased against them, and humiliate and blame rather than protect them. As Hannah and Jess’ reports highlight, women are still often forced to retreat into small and private spheres, not because the law explicitly dictates it, but because the ongoing threat of sexual violence so often makes it the only comfortable and safe-seeming place to be. Stories like these tell us that getting justice for women is possible. But they also tell us that, until violence against women and the threat of violence against women is no more, women throughout the world still lives in oppressive structures surprisingly similar to those experienced by biblical women like Susanna.
Image: Susanna and the Elders, by Artemisia Gentileschi. While many artists’ depictions of Susanna and the Elder in the Baroque era depicted Susanna for an objectifying gaze aimed at igniting male desire, Gentileschi depicts Susanna empathetically, capturing the sense of Susanna’s distress. Horrifically, Gentileschi was also later forced to carry the burden of proof for a sexual crime of which she was a victim and in which the legal system was biased against her, being tortured in order to ‘verify’ her testimony against the man who raped her. Through her empathetic depiction of Susanna, Gentileschi is an ally to women who are victims of violence, depicting the emotional turmoil to which it gives rise. Artemisia Gentileschi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
[1] The story of Susanna is ‘deuterocanonical’ or ‘apocryphal’: it appears in the Catholic and Orthodox canon of the Bible but not in the Hebrew or Protestant one. You can read the text here: Daniel, CHAPTER 13 | USCCB
[2] See Numbers 5 for an earlier biblical example of women being publicaly displayed and humiliated in a legal context
[3] Woman’s deepfake betrayal by friend: ‘Every moment became porn’ – BBC News Accessed 9th February 2025, 16:35 GMT
[4] Woman’s deepfake betrayal by friend: ‘Every moment became porn’ – BBC News Accessed 9th February 2025, 16:35 GMT
