Women in the Bible are victors and victims, women who change the course of historical events, and women who are powerless to affect even their own destinies. Ancient Near Eastern societies have traditionally been described as patriarchal, and the Bible as a patriarchal document written by men from a patriarchal age. Marital laws in the Bible favored men, as did inheritance laws, and women lived under strict laws of sexual behavior with adultery a crime punishable by stoning. A woman in ancient biblical times was always subject to strict purity laws, both ritual and moral. Recent scholarship accepts patriarchy, but argues for heterarchy as well; heterarchy acknowledges that different power structures between people can exist at the same time, and that each power structure has its own hierar