A Comparison Of Gender Construction Between The Pentateuch And Nei Ze In The Book Of Rites

As we all know,the Book of Rites and the Old Testament are classic works of the world’s two enduring civilizations —— Chinese civilization and Western Jewish civilization.The Book of Rites is an important and representative Confucian classic,which contains a systematic description of the various traditional ceremonial norms in ancient China,and its gender culture embodied in the text has had a noticeable impact on Chinese history.The Old Testament is not only a religious classic,but also an important historical and literary work.Much of its text concerns about Western traditional gender culture which has a great influence on later generations’ attitude towards gender.Nei Ze is the twelfth article in the Book of Rites and the Pentateuch is the first five volumes of the Old Testament.The thesis attempts to investigate the text of the Pentateuch and Nei Ze from the perspective of gender,and through the analysis and comparison of the cultural background,ideological foundation and specific norms of gender construction in the two classic texts,for one thing,we can figure out the relation between the two sexes is not determined by biological sex,but by the sociocultural factors.The two classic texts produced against different cultural background certainly have different characteristics in terms of their specific understanding and approaches in constructing the relation between male and female,but they also have something in common in the case of the pattern and purposes of gender construction;for another,we can also get a deeper understanding of the gender culture of China and the West,further make people realize that cultural traditions have a great influence on the gender concept and behavior of the people at that time and even later generations,and it can also promote dialogues between Chinese and Western culture.