Theology in the Raw - Female Disciples in the Ministry of Jesus: Dr. Holly Carey

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Dr. Holly Carey is the author of Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2023). Dr. Cary is the Professor of Biblical Studies and Department Chair of Biblical Studies at Point University (West Point, GA). A graduate of Point and of Asbury Theological Seminary, she earned her Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh. She serves as a contributing editor to the Stone-Campbell Journal, is a member of the SBL Mark Seminar and its Passion Narrative steering committee, and lectures and preaches at conferences, workshops, and churches around the country. Dr. Carey is married to Warren, and they have four children. She likes to read, swim, hike, preach, and is a 3rd degree black belt in Taekwondo. In this conversation, we talk about the content of her book Women Who Do. Register for the Exiles in Babylon conference (Minneapolis, April 3-5, 2025) at theologyintheraw.com -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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who are already using Logos. And okay, so they just released a new version and it's more affordable than ever. And here's the thing, you can try it for free for 30 days. And if you go to Logos.com forward slash theology, you can take advantage of an exclusive theology in the raw extended two month free trial. So go try it, try it out. It's risk-free. Go check it out. Logos.com forward slash theology. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw. My guest today is Dr. Holly Carey, who is a professor of biblical studies and department chair of biblical studies

at point university in West point, Georgia. She is a graduate appoint and as very theological seminary also got a PhD from university of Edinburgh. Dr. Kerry is a third degree black belt in Taekwondo. I don't know if I've ever said doctor and third degree black belt in the same sentence, but either way she can kick your butt. She's also a wonderful author of a fantastic book called Women Who Do, Female Disciples and the Gospels, which becomes the backdrop for our conversation. I read this book several months ago, was pretty blown away. It's an incredible book. I was like, man, I wouldn't give anything to have a conversation with Holly to tease out a bit of her work in this fantastic book. So that's what we do in this podcast. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Holly Keery.

Hello, Holly. How are you doing today? I'm great. Good to see you. I've been wanting to have you on the podcast since I finished your book several months ago. I was like, Oh my gosh, I got to have Holly on the podcast. We'll get to the book, but first of all, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself? Where'd you grow up? How'd you get into academia? And so on. Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Gainesville, Florida. I'm a lifelong Florida Gator fan. And we grew up in the good years when Spurrier was head coach when we were winning things. But so yeah, I grew up there. I grew up in a Christian home.

I grew up in a, what might be called a complementarian household in the sense that, there were certain, there were beliefs that there were certain things women could do and not do. Not very strong, but sort of like implied. So in my church community, that was also the case. I didn't see like women preach, see women preach, that sort of thing. And I went to a Christian college.

What was then Atlanta Christian College is now Pointe University, where I have come back to teach, spoiler alert. And while I was there, I went because I thought I might go for a year and then transfer and be a lawyer, which I found is kind of a typical path for biblical scholars. A lot of them start out thinking they're going to be lawyers. I guess it's our argumentative nature. I don't really know. So I thought that's what I was going to do. And then just really loved the place. And then in my sophomore year sat in a life of Jesus class and it wasn't like an audible call from God,

like a voice from on high. But it was very much like, oh, I got to do this. I got to teach Bible. So then the question for me, given my background, was can I do it? And I read about this a little bit in the intro because I thought I wanted to make sure that people knew where I was coming from.

I think that's really important to be very be very open about, you know, your experiences because your experiences shape your reading of scripture. And so my question was, can I do it and not can like, do I have the ability to do it? But like, am I allowed to do this? Is this, is there going to be a place for me as a woman to teach Bible? And luckily I had a mentor who was extremely supportive of me and was like, absolutely, get you in my great classes. He was so excited. And then just went on from there, realized once I wanted to teach in the classroom, in a college classroom, that I needed to get the requisite degrees and that sort of thing to be able to be hired. And so, went to seminary,

an Asbury Theological Seminary and had some great mentors there. That was the first place that I actually had firsthand experience with a female teaching Bible. Was Sandy Richter there then? It was Sandy Richter. Oh, it was Sandy. It was Sandy. Yeah. So, yeah, and there were others too, but she was the first one that I actually had taken a class with. And so that's really impactful because when you see it happening, you know, it moves out of the theoretical into the possible. And so then, yeah, went on to

the University of Edinburgh. I studied under Larry Hurtado, who was a Mark scholar and then I studied under Larry Hurtado, who was a Mark scholar, and then really got his notoriety from his work on how Christians came to worship Jesus was essentially his big interest. Like how did Christians who mostly were Jews, at least at the beginning, could reconcile their worship of only one God, Yahweh, with this worship of Jesus too. So how did that come to be? And it was really, really a profound influence for me there.

So then I came back and started teaching. I teach at Point. At Point we have a Bible minor, so all students minor in Bible, even if they don't major in it, although we have the major as well. So I love that because I get to teach all the students from all different backgrounds with all different interests, or sometimes even not interest. And then it's my challenge to try to get them to be interested. I teach the gospels class in our curriculum and then every spring I teach a women in the Bible class and a lot of conversations and inspiration

and some of the insights from the book, you know, were born out of those experiences as well. So yeah. What did you do your PhD thesis on? Was it on Mark? Yeah, I wrote on the Cry of the Erelection and Mark 1534, Jesus Cry from the Cross, my God, my God, why do you forsake him? So yeah, it's published, the LNTS series, but I had heard growing up that Jesus wasn't saying that he was abandoned by God. He was quoting a Psalm. But that's about the extent of it. And then when I became really interested in that and started pursuing that, there were

scholars who suggested that, but no one did sort of like a full exploration of is that a realistic reading? Like, is that a faithful reading? Or are we just wanting to explain away a really hard passage? It's more of a theological fear, right? I mean, it's not fear, but it's like, well, that would be problematic theologically if he's actually saying this. Yeah, but it's really interesting how pervasive the belief is that, you know, you may have even heard this, like, God couldn't handle sin. It's really a reading of Mark through the lens of Paul's atonement language. So, God couldn't handle being in the presence of sin because he's holy. Jesus took our sins on us. Therefore, God must have separated

himself from Jesus at the cross. That was the other option that I was always taught and is a fairly common one that I hear. That's a lot to read into Mark. Is that what Mark's thinking? Mark is not thinking. In fact, Mark is real light on atonement. Some scholars see some of it, either 52 and 53 there, but he's real light on it. And he emphasized very much throughout, and this kind of dovetails with some of the stuff in the book, that everybody else, including Jesus' best friends, abandoned him, but God does not. So, in that book, I spent time sort of systematically considering all these sorts of angles for what I call a contextual reading of it, which is that Jesus is sort of stepping into the

role of that psalmist. And that psalmist experiences unjust suffering at the hands of enemies, and it's terrible. And he cries out to God because God is the one he relies on, and God answers his prayer in the middle of the psalm. So what is Jesus doing? Oh, wait. Oh, in the middle of the Psalm. So, what is Jesus doing? Oh, in the middle of Psalm 22, he answers. That answer doesn't carry over in Mark, though, does it? So, the answer in Mark, what I argue, is the resurrection. He's not saved from death,

he's saved through his death. In other words, well, really we're saved, but the vindication comes in the resurrection and the God sign posts some things along the way. So yeah. So I initially, yes, I'm a Marking scholar and sort of combine that with a real interest in intertextuality, how the Old Testament and New Testament speak to each other. And then, and so focused on that specific passage for my dissertation, but generally I'm interested in that.

And then, yeah, and then the book itself was born out of looking at discipleship and Mark, just that was sort of the topic to look at in a seminar I was going to be a part of. And then as I was reading through and going, okay, let me just try to with fresh eyes read what's going on with discipleship and Mark started to realize, ah, well, Mark has always been notorious for being hard on the disciple, the apostle 12. He's like the harshest of all of the gospel writers. But what I hadn't noticed before until doing that was that is often juxtaposed with women who Jesus lauds or that are presented in ways that are exemplars for the reader, that there's a contrast

going on there and what's that all about. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, let's get into the book. And I've been knee deep in research on women in the Gospels for several months now. So, knee deep in research on women in the gospels for several months now. So I'm large. I mean, your book is one of the first ones I read. Then I chased down your footnotes because it's a recent book, which is nice. So there's a lot of updated research and that led me into all of this whole world of all the different debates about marks for women and John and Luke and Matthew might be the least interesting. Although the genealogy is interesting. And there's a few other things. He has a lot of women in parables and stuff,

but Mark was the one that just blew me away because he's got these four stories in particular where women are so strategically woven into his narrative in such strategic places in every way, the hemorrhaging women, syrophenation, Mary, right, the anointing in 14. Well, no, before that, I'm missing one. Oh, the widow, the widow.

The widow after that, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Tell us about Mark's view of women. Maybe give us a quick overview. Maybe what are some of the debates? Because I know some people see Mark as not treating women, or not really caring too much about women. It seems like that's a minority view, but.

Well, I think part of the thing that people often bump up against when we're talking about women, and particularly discipleship in the Gospels, is, well, there weren't any women in the 12. And the 12, right, we get a list right with names and they are centered in so many ways and they seem to have more clear access to Jesus in some ways. And of course they go on to be really important or some of them, not all of them, go on to be really important leaders of the church, right? So I think part of what, part of the issue is that it's sometimes easy to overlook these other characters in the story because they're not getting, like there's no group of women that get like a name, you know, a group name or, you know,

that sort of thing. They're individual in so many ways. And then, you know, one of the other things that scholars have talked about is it's, it's not even totally clear in Mark, Luke makes it clear, but Mark doesn't, that the women are sort of like always with Jesus in the way that the 12 are, until you get to the cross, till you get to crucifixion. And then Mark drops a line that says like, women are watching from a distance and they've been with him this whole time.

Right. So, and I think there's some strategic things that are going on there with Mark. Part of what's going on, I don't think is that the gospel writers are trying to write anybody out. In fact, I don't think, is that the gospel writers are trying to write anybody out. In fact, I think they are writing them in the sense that they're highlighting women who were actively involved in Jesus' ministry, but culturally would not have been

considered to be on the same level as men, which is why I have the first chapter that I do in the book, apart from the intro about what life was like for a woman in that time. Because I think sometimes we either don't know or we don't bring our knowledge of those things to bear on our understanding of the text. So for instance, the fact you said Matthew is meh, but his genealogy is really amazing. If you can get past all the names. For our purposes, the fact that he includes, that he weaves together four other women in the genealogy,

and then if you count Mary five, that's so unusual. Like women just don't get imagined in genealogies. And so to understand that what they have is actually pretty radical and pretty counter-cultural. And then to see what they're doing with these stories then just adds that extra layer. I mean, that's the thing that really piqued my interest and generally serves what I think is an even more important role for the book, which is to say, why are we not considering these stories? Why are we not hearing these stories? Why are we not considering these stories when we are talking about what it

means to follow Jesus, not just then, but now? That's good. I love the distinction. You kind of mentioned it in passing, and maybe it'd be good to spell out for our audience that there's kind of almost two different ways to read the Gospels. One would be to see these four writers as windows into the historical life and teachings of Jesus. And this is where some people might prefer to do like a, what's it called? The one where you just like harmonization, you know, let's just pick Luke and Matthew and fit it all together.

So we have one composite picture of the life and Jesus. And then we enter into these scenes as we're looking at around 70, 27, 30 AD, Jesus's interaction with these women. That's one way to read the Gospels. Another way is to say, okay, but these writers are writing in the mid to late first century. They have their own context and they're presenting a narrative that's extremely intentional, very creative, very literary and by the way they're telling the story on a narrative level, that says something about even,

Mark, not just Jesus through Mark, but Mark's view of Jesus in these events. And these are incompatible, but these are kind of different emphases. And you to bore that narrative, like let's see how these stories are retold and packaged together and how they play off each other, the literary features of each individual gospel.

I know this is second nature to you, and you know, this is familiar, but for I think some people in the audience might not kind of see those two was in all different ways right yeah I wasn't always it's just I've been deep in it for a little while but I mean I remember very vividly in my graduate program one of my mentors saying something like you as a critique of one of my right pieces of writing saying you need to let Mark Luke I don't know who was I was already writing saying, you need to let Mark, Luke, I don't know who it was.

I was already not. Mark B. Mark, yeah. You need to let him have a voice. Why does he not have a voice? Like don't read Mark through Matthew. Don't read Mark through Luke, Primair. Let Mark have his voice. Then they can all have a conversation together, right?

They'll have it. But you know, if we sit around with a group of people and we want to have a genuine group conversation, you can't be speaking for other people. They have to speak. Then we can sort of help to sort of understand how these things are all working together. And so that's what I tried to do is, yes, on the one hand, I think that what the book is presenting, what I'm trying to do is present a general picture of what women were like

as followers of Jesus as we see it through the gospels, the gospel capital G. But then also to do that, to then pay attention to, well, how's Mark doing this? What makes him unique? Matthew is a reader of Mark. He's doing some different things. How's Luke very unique? And of course, John's, you know, the oddball. So, like, he's super unique. And they all have a right to have their voice. If God wanted one voice, then he could have done that. Pete He would have given up one voice. He would have given us a harmonization of all four. Jennifer Right. But he didn't, that was not what was

going to serve, right? That's not what we have. Do you find value? I don't know if you did much redaction criticism. Do you find value in that? For instance, Mark, most people say, wrote the first gospel. I've got a few Matthew and priority followers, so they're going to be like, take this. Let's just go with the consensus.

There's always a few. Mark wrote the first gospel. Matthew and Luke are using Mark and also another source. There's, you know, some people call it Q. Some people don't like to even refer to that. But so if you imagine you read a passage in Mark and then you read the same passage in Matthew, those differences that Matthew has

is kind of what redaction credit, he's redacting the text from Mark. One I came across recently that's interesting is, Mark ends the book, the shorter end in Mark, in Mark 16, 8, ends on a sour note. And it could almost be a jab at the women. I don't think it is. Richard Bauckham actually spent a lot of time convincing me that it's not a jab at the women, not personally,

but through one of his books. But it, you know, and the women were told to go tell the apostles about Jesus and they went away afraid and didn't say anything. V.M. It's like, wait, what? But you have, Matthew, it like expands on that. It's similar. But then he says, you know, then they saw Jesus and Jesus reaffirmed this call. And then they did go and tell the apostles, you know, it's, so it's almost like, oh, Matthew was kind of troubled, maybe by the potential of what Mark, you know, the possible implications Mark has given. And he kind of fills it out a little bit. So that would be a good example of like, okay, so that gives us a little window into Matthew's intention

and narrative there when we compare it to his main source Mark. Is that a good summary? I haven't been in this for a long time, so I'm reaching back. I think it's a good summary, yeah, for sure. I think there's value in redaction criticism. I think that there is an assumption that is often made

in redaction criticism. And that is that when a gospel writer or a later writer changes something, right? So to use your example, if Mark was first and ended with the women ran away afraid and didn't tell anybody. And then Matthew reads that and he has a much more robust, I mean, he's got Jesus appearing, right? There's no actual, at the shorter ending of Mark, there's no resurrection appearances.

There's the announcement that he is resurrected. So there's no doubt that Jesus has, but he doesn't show up to anybody in the shorter ending. So, what can often happen in redaction criticism, which is where I would push back a little, is to read or to assume that when Matthew then includes these resurrection appearances, when he's not ending with the women we're afraid and didn't tell anybody, that he's somehow finding Mark to be flawed. Redaction criticism, often the emphasis can be on the criticism part. There's a correction to be made. And actually, interestingly enough, had sort of like an epilogue or an appendix at the end of the book that I wrote on the Psalm 22 in Mark's Gospel, the cry of dereliction that I was talking about. And in that chapter, I look

at Matthew and Luke not as those who are thinking Mark did something wrong or needs further explanation or fell short in some way, but rather as readers of Mark, which is sort of the different approach, right? So it's saying they are also readers of Mark. And I think what you said about sort of paying attention to how something is received, I mean, once you write something, once you say something on a podcast, it has a life of its own. We can no longer control it once it's released from us, right? And we recognize that. So what is

Matthew doing? What is Luke doing that is in relationship to what Mark's doing but may not necessarily have some sort of like criticism or thinking that Mark has fallen short in some way. In fact, I think with your example of the ending of Mark, perhaps what Matthew and Luke and John are doing are doing exactly what Mark wanted his audience to do, which is to fill in the gaps. He left them pretty abrupt. And what is our response as humans, as storytellers,

as storied people, is we want to fill in the gaps. We want to resolve tension. Some scholars believe that Mark dropped it there so that I would go, well, I heard the story. So if I heard the story, then that means that someone told. They had to tell, right? So then what am I supposed to do? Kind of sort of the same Old Testament scholars sort of approach Jonah in the same way. Jonah doesn't wrap up. Right? Intentionally so, because the question is who are your Ninevites? Who are the people that you can do lip service that you want God's Word to come to them, but reality

you want them to zap them. I think that that's where redaction criticism is very important in the comparative. If it trends into because this person was flawed or because they messed up here, because Mark didn't understand, or because, you know, these sorts of things. I think that Mark in particular is more sophisticated of a writer and a storyteller than people often give him credit for. Green Chef is the number one meal kit for clean eating. They deliver pre-portioned and prepped quality foods with limited processed ingredients. That last part's really important for me. I mean, I've been trying to eat healthy and I've been cutting down on processed food,

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50% off your first box. That's greenchef.com forward slash TRTR-free. If I could summarize, your main thesis is women are often portrayed as exemplifying the kind of discipleship that Jesus demands. And your main contribution is that this is done in contrast, like deliberate contrast to the failure of men, especially the 12. Would that be an elevator summary of your... Yeah, and I would say mostly the 12. I mean, you know, there are moments where, so for instance, like the Samaritan woman versus Nicodemus and John, three and four. But generally speaking, it is often the 12 that are falling short because the standards are high.

They have the most, Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. They have the most access to Jesus, not just personally, but there are many, many times He gives them extra teaching and explanation when everybody else has gone away. And throughout the gospels that He does this. And for them to sort of repeatedly not get it. And then for people who have less access to Jesus, less information, people who have less access to Jesus, less information, less air time with Him, who are making good use of their time with Jesus by demonstrating their faith, pleading for others, sacrifice, all these sort of traits that Jesus has already taught are marks of good discipleship. It cannot be accidental.

Yeah. No, yeah. These writers, presumably Jesus taught a heck of a lot more than what we've got, healed a lot more people than we, you know, we have a lot of summary statements. But if you count them, we don't have all that many stories of healing, right? We have all these things that Jesus did, but when the gospel writers went to write their stories, they had to pick and choose. Writing is always selective.

They had to choose what they were going to include in their stories. So why would they then include these juxtapositions? That was what was so intriguing to me. And if I were to sort of summarize maybe the one not consistent pushback, but I've had it a couple different times of people in different ways of the book. It would be, why do we have to create a competition?

Why does it have to be the women succeed and the men fail? And I would say that, number one, I'm not creating it. It's there. But you know. You just observe me what's going on. OK. And I would say that maybe you sometimes you do have to over emphasize something or like bring it to the surface in a way that's maybe louder than you might want sometimes because it's been so neglected for so long. So it's sort of like trying to balance

things out. Right. But then also that failure in the gospel, like everybody fails. The only person who doesn't fail is Jesus, right? So no one's perfect. So failure is also meant to teach us how to be disciples. So in that sense, the 12 aren't. They're failing, but their failure isn't failure in a way. Because if the intention is to present them as, well, what does it mean to be a disciple? I tell my students all the time, like if I didn't see Peter fail,

if he was just perfection, right, the entire time, I feel pretty rotten about my own following of Jesus, because I am not perfect. I do not get it right all the time. But when I see myself in his failures, that's really valuable. So, one of the things that I think is so important that I highlight in the book is that the women

who are faithful disciples or are demonstrating the qualities of discipleship, so maybe they're just, they pop into Jesus' life for a second and then they're out, and we don't know if they follow him from then on out. But they're modeling these sort of traits or characteristics that a through line is that they're doing something. And that often what is happening is the 12 in particular are often frozen. They don't know what to do.

Sometimes they want to do the wrong thing. But even then, it's more like want to do the wrong thing. And it's not even that they're doing that. They're just sort of like just baffled, you know? And they're not doing these things that Jesus has said is what makes a disciple. Can you give us an example? So people have like a concrete picture. You can pick your favorite one where you have this contrast.

So, well, okay. Well, I already mentioned it. So we'll call that the example of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. So Nicodemus' story, who was a Pharisee, so he was a very high up influential leader in Jewish religion at the time. He approaches Jesus in John 3. He approaches him at night.

Now, this is before John is kind of notorious for these epic like verbal battles between Jesus and the religious authorities. And it's before it really gets heated, okay? But John's audience would know that this is the group that Jesus has the most tension with, right? So the fact that we already know that Nicodemus is a Pharisee is already for a Christian reading or hearing John's story being read is already a strike against him. Okay, Pharisee, these are the guys, like these are the people that that did not receive Jesus, right? So, but he's coming to Jesus on his own initiative.

Jesus isn't going to him. He's coming and seeking him out to ask him questions. On his own initiative, Jesus isn't going to him. He's coming and seeking him out to ask him questions. But he's doing it at night. And John doesn't often give us information we don't need. So why did he tell us he's coming at night? So it comes to Jesus, he asks Jesus some questions. Jesus gives him some answers. Of course, that conversation is born for God's soul of the world, right? So this beautiful sort of testimony about sort of a nugget of what Jesus is about to do. And that's given to Nicodemus. His story ends and we don't know,

like we don't get a response from Nicodemus. So we get Nicodemus' questions. We get a little dialogue where Nicodemus says like, I don't know how you think I can be born again out of my mom. You know, that kind of stuff. Then Jesus gives this grand statement and then nothing. We don't know what happens. So what did Nicodemus think? Like, there's no profession of his faith. There's no like follow-up questions. We just don't get anything. He's just kind of like going.

He does reappear later in the story, a couple of times, and their progression is pretty interesting. But I think what John does then, that was in chapter three, in chapter four, he has this story, this lengthy story of Jesus and his encounter with a Samaritan woman who then has every strike against her you can imagine because she's a woman, she's also a Samaritan, and Samaritans didn't get along with Jews and the feeling was mutual. And then we find out she doesn't even, like she's not even really embraced by her community because of some of her marital history. And she has this encounter with Jesus. And every time Jesus says something, she's given a follow-up. She's prolonging the conversations. She's searching, and she's not being antagonistic.

She's trying to understand from this guy who she has no business talking to, who they don't have very much in common. And what you see is this dial, this really lengthy dialogue where she goes from, why are you talking to me? You're a Jew. You're a man. I'm Samaritan. I'm a woman., why are you talking to me? You're a Jew, you're a man, I'm Samaritan, I'm a woman, you shouldn't be talking to me. To running to tell her community, who again, does not fully embrace her, but running to tell her community that she's probably just met the Messiah and they need to come see him.

Now, so you've got this juxtaposition of this guy who has everything going for him, status, privilege, knowledge, faith. The faith is aligned, right? Because he's a Pharisee, so he's a Jew. And he comes to Jesus and he asks some questions, but mostly he's perplexed. It's not antagonistic, but we don't know what happens. There's no resolution. There's no indication that he's got it.

And then you have this woman who has nothing going for her, who has this lengthy conversation where she is holding her own with Jesus. And then the result is that she goes back and she tells her community and brings her whole community out to meet Jesus. And they ended up believing. Embedded in John four is the 12th,

who had left Jesus at the well to go buy food and come back at the tail end of this woman talking to Jesus and are like, why are you talking to this woman? What's going on here? Right? So the whole time, they are not understanding what's going on while she is gaining all this increased understanding. And the 12 do nothing with what he tells them.

He gives them this big metaphor of the harvest and the laborers. And they don't do anything. They're just concerned his blood sugar is low and he needs to eat something. I think that's part of it too is these stories, I think we can find a lot of humor in them, even though there's a lot of serious too. It's high stakes, but even in high stakes situations,

humans find humor. That's how we survive. And you see that here. It is absurd that these guys are still focused on Jesus' lunch when He's out there saving souls and she's recruiting them and they don't get it. They're focused on literal food while she's sharing spiritual food. Which comes up later in John's books. Comes up later in John 8. That is a very common theme in John's gospel is that there are people

who encounter Jesus who may mean well, who may be impressed by his miracles, signs in John's gospel. But that never moves beyond that. And for John, what is important is, as he says in his purpose statement at the end of the gospel, is that there's faith that comes out of that, like genuine faith. She's modeling that. There's actually some really important stories in John's gospel along the way of these women who have these extended moments with Jesus who are modeling that progression of misunderstanding. It's not, they all start with misunderstanding. They all start with being inadequate, right? That's not the issue. The issue is this growth and

this willingness to learn and to move. I think Martha's in John 11, the resurrection of Lazarus is the biggest one because she ends up giving a confession that is basically the same as Peter's confession in Matthew 16. I always think of Peter's confession as this big thing and it is. In John, Martha is the Peter, right? She at the climactic moment. And John, Martha, is the Peter, right? She at the climactic moment of the gospel, that's the seventh sign, right? The seventh sign, this is the seventh sign, it's a resurrection. And she gives this grand oeos confession that matches his purpose of the gospel so that you will believe that he is the son of God and Messiah.

And immediately on the heels of that, her sister anoints him. So there's like the progression. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's this progression of faith, even like within that family of coming to see Jesus for who he is. And in John's version of Peter's confession, it's the lamest one of all. I think I even say that, and I call it lame, and it's not Peter's fault. But like, Matthew's the robust one from Peter. Mark had a pretty, pretty solid one too. And John, it's, it's not all that impressive. It comes really early on.

And then you get Martha's, which is, is pretty thorough and follows, I talk about in the book, the language, some of the language she uses in her confession, shows back up in John's purpose statement for why he wrote the Gospel to begin with. Right. And it's the only statement on the lips of a person that reflects that purpose statement of the Gospel. So, I mean, these are deliberate, especially, and I appreciate your first chapter where you lay out the kind of cultural context of women in the first century.

It's so important because then when we read this, we see, okay, these, the way these stories are being retold are very intentional. These contrasts, how they highlight that this isn't just, oh, it happened. Like John's like, oh, I didn't realize, you know, he wrote it that way. These are very intentional. What? So what, I do, yeah, the why question is interesting. Is John like a male feminist trying to say women are better than men? Is Mark anti, is he jealous that he was in front of the 12s who went to make him look

bad? Or is it just more historical? Like, well, yeah, it just happened that when Jesus was walking on earth, women emulated discipleship better than men and they're just kind of reporting the history of it. What is he trying to communicate by all of the gospel writers? Because they all do. I think Matthew probably to the least extent, but still the genealogy is there. But this portraying women as demonstrating radical discipleship in contrast to the very people Jesus chose to be as 12 apostles.

I think that they're keeping their audiences in mind. And, you know, the early Christian church was made up of men and women, slaves and free, all kinds, you know, Jew and Gentile, like all the sort of disparate groups. The church was made of a mix of all those. And I think that they know that the gospel story, the capital G gospel, is for everyone. And they weren't afraid to be countercultural. They weren't afraid to push back. Now, was Jesus depicted as going around with a sign that

said, votes for women? No. It wasn't that kind of that's that's Not what's going on here, but you kind of like going back to my personal story, you know Wondering can I do something until I see it happening? Even though I know I might be equipped even though I'm not might be capable. There's real value in seeing someone do what you are called to do. And so the gospel stories are not just from male Christians, they're for all, from all walks of life. And I think that's then what's portrayed in the stories. I think the problem is that we as readers of the story have historically elevated some stories and neglected others. And one of my intentions for this book that is,

I think, really important to place it in the conversations is that we can't talk about discipleship. And when I say we, I mean men and women, the church can't talk about discipleship unless we're looking at all the disciples. And I have never once in all my years of growing up in church and hearing about Peter, I've never once said, well, can his path say anything to me about my own? Right? I've never questioned that he could be a model for me as a disciple, whether that's what not to do or what to do or in his case, a combination of both. I've never questioned that because I'm a woman and he's a man.

And so this book is not just for women. It's not a women's Bible study book. This is for all disciples to say, hey, we need to like flesh this out more because the gospel writers actually do. And we just haven't had the ears to hear and eyes to see this stuff. So that's where the corrective sort of comes in.

It's not to say women are superior, men shouldn't be, you know, it's not anything like that. It's to say, these stories need to be invited to the table when we're having conversations about what it means to be a disciple and following Jesus and being leaders and being exemplars, because to be made an example of in the positive sense, like the woman who puts her money in the, you know, the widow puts her money in the treasury.

What's interesting about that as an example is that Mark is very clear that Jesus goes, hey guys, to the 12th. He calls their attention to what she's doing. He wants them to see what she's doing and then he says, and that's how we should be. So it's very, I think, it's not very good stewardship of what we've got here if we're not paying attention to those stories as well and that that be informing our conversations. And I think we've all noticed before that most stories involve men. Most human characters that Jesus encounters throughout the gospels just statistically are men. I think Mark has the highest percentage of, or is it John? I don't know. I forget. Somebody had a list of like, I think Baucham has a list of like the percentage is

whatever. But when you take the percentage of women who occur who are demonstrating faithfulness or radical sacrifice or whatever versus women who are not, it just becomes so lopsided compared to all the men and how many are demonstrating faithfulness. I mean, a lot fewer women occur in Mark than men do, but if you take the few examples of positive responses to Jesus, even with the few examples we have of women, the positive ones outnumber the positive of men I feel what the exact math and I think that means that that is they're using what they've got like they're using the resources They have they are living in a culture They're living in a circumstance where women are considered to be proud, you know

All those things that I talked about in the first chapter, right? They don't have the they don't have rights like we think of rights. No one has rights like we think I'm right They don't have the, they don't have rights like we think of rights. No one has rights like we think of rights in that time. But, you know, they're not considered to be fully human, really. They're more like property. They're, you know, their actions are dictated by the men in their lives. They don't have access to, you have to be of extremely high status in the Roman Empire as a woman in order to be independent

in the way that we, and even then, it's not really in the way that we think. And so they're dealing, like they're, you know, they're writing these stories in real life. These are not airy tales detached from reality. So when they are doing those sorts of things, it's their way of saying, hey, we need to look at these stories, these stories have relevance for Christians too. These women are exemplars as well. And it may not be, you know, they're not putting these women in their stories in order to sort

of like enact social change necessarily. At least that's not their primary purpose. It's one of the big criticism or frustration that people have with Paul and Philemon when he doesn't say slavery is wrong. Right? But what he is doing is he's undermining the concept of slavery. You can't be brothers and you still own him. You can't do that. You can't have both. So what do you need to be? You need to be brothers in Christ. And it took too long for that, you know, to rectify, right? To have that kind of social change we might want, but it was providing the foundations for those things. And I think that, not exactly the same, but I think there's a similarity there

and that sort of subtly. The kind of William Webb, where he looks at those trajectories. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I see that. I see it looks, I'm primarily a Paul person. So I see Paul doing that a lot with the household codes where he's giving a sort of social apologetic a little bit.

Like he's showing, hey, we're not disrupting the system too hard. And then he kind of guts it from the inside out. Like the, well, you like the word undermine. He undermines the hierarchical principles that's driving these Greco-Roman household codes while still keeping the shell, the language of the household code itself. So it's really, really interesting how he navigates gospel realities with social realities as well. Can we go back to, I want to talk just briefly

about the Syrophoenician women or Matthew calls her the Canaanite woman. That's another piece of redaction criticism that's like, ah, that's intentional, right? Like he wants to draw attention to the Canaanite kind of background or whatever. This is a fascinating story. So Mark 7, Matthew 15. Yeah, Tynor, talk to us about it. I got many thoughts, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah. So this is a woman who approaches Jesus. She actually tracks Him down, stalks Him. If you read the story in Mark, it's like he wanted some downtime. He wanted to be away. He goes hides out in a house, and she finds him. And she approaches him because her daughter is demon-possessed. She wants her healed. And he initially rejects her. I mean, that's, he gives a riddle, and the riddle is, we need to feed the children.

We don't need to feed the dogs, you know, and the clear implication I don't think anybody disputes this is that what he means by children is Jews and what he means by dogs is Gentiles And she's one of them. She's a Gentile but that doesn't that doesn't stop her and She presses on she accepts his riddle right or his image And she just pushes back on it and says, yeah, but even dogs get crumbs. Can you give me a crumb, essentially, right,

by doing this for me? In Mark's version of the story, he says it's, the language is, it's by your word that you, that your daughter is healed and go. And then Matthew's version, he says faith. And I think Matthew is just reading what Mark is saying, that your daughter is healed and go. And then Matthew's version, he says faith. And I think Matthew is just reading what Mark is saying, right, that her faith is manifested

through the words that she says. Well, he even said, Matthew even says great faith, which he only says elsewhere of the centurion. Like the only two people have great faith are those two characters. Yeah. So this is a story that makes people uncomfortable because it looks like, number one, there's two factors. Number one, that Jesus would reject a woman based on her

ethnicity. Seems not Jesus-y to us and not right, you know, morally. And then too, that she would just have to say one little retort, and he changes his mind. And people are uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus slash God would change their minds. Although really, we just need to read more scripture on that, because God does change his mind. It's starting maybe with even Abraham. So those are the two things that people are like,

what's going on? The way that I read the text is, I think the more concerning thing is not Jesus changing his mind necessarily, but that he would outright reject someone based on their ethnicity. It seems inconsistent with any of the gospels for him to do that.

And we know that he heals other people who are not Jewish. So, and have a problem having conversations with them either. Even though his focus, like if you just look at his ministry, I mean, he has way more interactions with Jews than he does Gentiles. But this is really the only place where he's like, no, you're a Gentile. No, I'm not going to do it. Starting with Mark, because I think I'm pretty traditional. I do think Mark probably was written first, although I wouldn't die on that hill. Mark, if you look at the context, in the beginning of chapter seven, Jesus has had this dispute with the religious authorities about what makes someone holy. It's about purity.

And he has this famous statement about, because they're getting on to him about being unclean or letting his disciples be unclean, not ceremonially washing their hands. And Jesus says, you know, something like, it's really what's on the inside that counts and not the outside. Like, it's what comes out of you.

That's the issue. And I think that's actually a clue into what's going on here. For lack of a better term, not to try to make people uncomfortable by me calling the son of God this, but I believe he's playing devil's advocate. Yeah. I believe that he is sort of modeling

what he actually just spoke out against, which was if you don't do these certain ritual things in Judaism, then you're not clean and therefore you're not worthy of standing before God, which is what purity is. And Jesus has just said, no, that's not what is of primary concern. And then he turns around and rejects the very first person he encounters who would not qualify as ritually pure, this woman. And I think what he's doing is he's kind of stepping into that role of saying, this is what it would look like and that's not who I am. But it does, you know, I mean,

it's meant to shock. Mark could have worded it a different way. It would have been clearer. He's not, right? Mark is not against shocking people. What is interesting is how persistent she is, how smart she is, she's clever. She's willing to play the game. She doesn't go, I'm offended, you called me a dog and storm out. Her priority for her daughter and she's going to fight for her. Yeah, she's rewarded because of that.

There's so many awkward elements of that story and so many ways that could be misinterpreted or be uncomfortable that it would be very easy to leave it out and they didn't. So I think that means something for us to learn. I, up until I read your book and your work on this passage, I only focused on the Christological problems. You know, we look at which Christology is the main lens we should use to read the Bible,

in the Gospels in particular. So yeah, that's a good, obviously a good starting point. But I never really looked at it as focusing on, what is this telling us about the woman? You know, like rather than saying, oh, he changed his mind. If he got outmaneuvered, it's like, well, she changed his mind and she outmaneuvered him. And isn't it true that this is the only encounter in all the gospels, at least in Mark,

where a person outmaneuvers Jesus verbally, like he's king of the debate. Oh yeah, he never gets out. Yeah, oh yeah, never. He never gets out. So a woman is the only time that out rhetorically outmaneuvers Jesus. And I know that sounds almost sacrilegious,

but just kind of what's going on. I don't know what else. She shows herself to be able to be on his level. So, and because of that, she's rewarded. Whereas most of, and especially in Mark, like most of the time, if Jesus says something that's hard or difficult or enigmatic, again, the 12 are like, what? What are you talking about? Or they, sometimes they're not even, they don't even have the courage to ask him what he's talking about. They just kind of talk amongst themselves like, what is he talking about? I don't understand. It's not even that they have the courage to ask the question. So, yeah, that's absolutely true.

It's a very common theme in all the gospels for Jesus to be always in control of the conversation and the dialogue and where it's going and to never be surprised. And in like Luke, that's a huge theme, the challenge repost state where they come up to him and they say, hey, we're going to trick you. I mean, they don't say, hey, we're going to trick you now, but that's what's going on, right? Here's the coin, should we pay our taxes? What's he going to say now? Because the Messiah would tell you no. But then also that means that he would be fermenting a rebellion. So what's going on here? And he's always able to outmaneuver them.

Yeah. In this case, she gets what she wants. She goes away with what she wants. It's a fascinating story. I wish people weren't so hung up on some of the jarring problems, him calling her a dog or whatever, but it's just so creative and it's so powerful. And there's a similarity to the hemorrhaging woman too. Although she doesn't do it with her words, it's with her action, right? But there is a sense, not that she's outmaneuvered

him because I don't think he's the obstruction, it's her community and the fact that she's exhausted her resources and that sort of thing. But it's the same thing. And the disciples really don't like that. The 12 really don't like what's going on there. In fact, it's interesting because in that story, when Jesus says, who took my power went out, what's happened? They go, it's a crowd. How could you feel? They kind of questioned Jesus' ability to know when his power is being of his strength. And again, but that's humorous if you think about it. That's absurd to think that you would roll your eyes at Jesus

and be like, oh, Jesus, you overreact. So it's she and Jesus. They really know what's going on. They're really sort of like that moment in the movies where it's like there's a crowd around, but it's just those two people who kind of know what's going on and everything else is kind of muted. That's kind of what's going on there. And she also is lauded for her faith.

Okay, because people are wanting us to go here, so let's just go here. What does all this teach us about women in the ministry of Jesus as portrayed in the four gospels? What does this tell us about women in church leadership? Especially, we have really tackled the 12 male apostles. And I don't know if I said this to you on email, but I'm not egalitarian, but I'm also not complementarian. I'm actually, I will find out. I will be this summer.

I will be one or the other. So I'm in the middle of a lengthy four-year research project. And I'm extremely, this is going to sound so pretentious. I would have to defend it. But I'm extremely exegetically focused. I don't have any social environment. There's nothing in my paycheck or anything that depends on this.

I don't, I don't. I've got friends on both sides. Well, wouldn't lose any real friends. Nothing's at stake here. I just truly want to know what does the Bible say? It doesn't say about this. And I see good arguments on both sides. Like I don't, like honestly, when I read your book

and dug into the women of the Gospels, I was like, I could see, I could see a case, a subtle case, but I don't think the Gospels are focused on that specific question. But there does seem to be, I could see a case being made for the view that the Gospel writers are sort of paving the way are sort of paving the way for later on women to be in church leadership. That's the sense I got after reading how women are portrayed. However, to push back on that, like, okay, so I agree, it seems crystal clear to me, and you help me get here, women are exemplifying the kind of radical discipleship traits that Jesus demands from His followers in contrast to many men, especially the 12 who are failing at that. That's remarkable. But does that mean, can you draw a straight line from that to therefore they're leaders? Because

it's like, well, as I play devil's advocate, I'm like, just because you're a faithful disciple doesn't mean you're a leader. I mean, when we're leading a church, if you're a pastor at church, you want your congregants to all be faithful disciples. But the second they are emulating faithfulness is like, all right, now you're an elder. It's like, well, maybe they're not called to be a leader. Just because you're faithful, just because you're self-sacrificial doesn't mean necessarily you're there for a leader. The Samaritan woman, she went and evangelized the town. It's like, well, I don't know any complimentarian thoughtful people who would say, women can't evangelize, you know?

Or Mary Magdalene, the Apostle of the Apostles, she told them about the resurrection. It's like, I don't know, no complimentarians say women can't pass on information about Jesus to other people. Like, I don't, you know, this is me playing my complimentarian card about some of these egalitarian arguments. I do think sometimes can be overplayed.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so far on how I'm processing this. I do have an argument for specifically for women in leadership from Mark that I'd love to share with you. I'm not sure if you hit on it or not, but I want to hear your thoughts so far about how I'm wrestling with it. Am I asking the right questions? Right. Well, there's a lot to so far about how I'm wrestling with it. Am I asking the right questions? Right. Well, there's a lot to consider, right? That's part of it. And obviously, I'm not

going to exhaustively cover everything, but I will say, I think we do need to just sort of like make sure people know that these gospels were written after Paul's letters. That's such a great point. Conologically. Yeah, such a great point. Yeah, such a great point. So I think sometimes we think, well, okay, yeah, Jesus, women were exemplars, whatever, maybe there was some looseness there. But then we've got, you know,

once the church gets established then, and it's actually- Opposite. Flipped, these are coming after. And so that just needs to be thought about in the conversations. I mean, of course, the intention is not to give us sort of handbook for how to do Christian community, right? The focus is Christology, as you said, it's about Jesus.

And then out of that comes these things, right? But I would also argue that neither are the letters or Acts handbooks on how to be the church. We get some good tips, we get some instructions, but these are instructions that are what we call occasional. So they're bound by these specific things that are happening in the community at a specific time. And they're being written for a specific reason. And we should never try to take it out of the context

to say, well, this is just like a generic blanket statement devoid of what's going on in that community. And that's why some people get frustrated with Paul, because they can read him say, women can prophesy, which prophecy in that time is also preaching. It's the word, it's not just predicting future, it's proclamation. And at the same time, first Timothy too, you know, oh, well, she needs to be quiet and learn at home. So those are not contradictions. They're contradictions if these are banner mottos, right? But they're not if they're addressing specific things that are going on in the churches that

they're... We still see that as valuable, right, to have those. We still see this as Holy Scripture and it should have some bearing on our lives. But we have to figure out what that bearing will be with those things in mind. For me, one of the main things about this book, and I actually kind of got to it later. So it was not like an original intention type thing for me. But it's just the realization that when we are talking about women in leadership in the contemporary church, you never hear

us talking about the gospels. They're never invited into a conversation. It's only ever instructional passages and only a few of them. Or the 12, right? Or the 12. Yeah, well, it depends on your denomination, right? So like I grew up in a non-denominational denomination, a movement where, you know, it was very like Bible only.

It was very sort of hesitant to sort of like an apostolic succession type thing, right? But like if you grow up Catholic, then apostolic succession is really important, right? So it kind of depends on your community as to what, how the 12 feature in your understanding. Interesting, okay, yeah. And again, we say the 12 feature in your understanding of leadership. And again, we say the 12, but then in reality, we can't even list half the 12.

We might list... And it's right. The mouth of Judas is a good example of Christian leadership or Christian... Exactly. Exactly. He doesn't just automatically get to be a leader because he's part of the 12. So my concern was that when you have an instructional passage, okay, so like in Ephesians 5 and 6 or 1 Timothy 2 or the 1 Corinthians 11 or 14, which are typically the go-tos for this conversation, instruction

by its very nature has a negative undertone because it's all, at least in these contexts, it's almost always corrective. You're not going to give an instruction about something that's already happening and happening well. You're going to give an instruction based on problems that are going on in the church for the most part. Ephesians might be the one exception as a circular letter, but all of Paul's letters are always adjusting the issue, even Romans. Right, exactly. And the reason these letters survive

is because each community read them and said, that's for us. And then said, and then I also think it might be for someone else, so we're going to copy it and pass it along, or we're going to let them borrow it. And they can copy it and pass it along, right? So even like the hyper personal, like a Philemon, someone had to say that's beneficial for the church. It's

not just Philemon's business, right? But when you have instruction, it's almost always corrective or anticipating that there's going to be a need for something to be solidified and clarified. And so, if those are the only types of texts that are invited into the conversation about who can be a leader in your church community, that's already skewed things. Not to mention the fact that the Gospels are... I mean, that's a lot of the New Testament that we're just not gonna talk about in this conversation, right? And then I think part of that is just because like, obviously it's easy to read an instruction, do not do this, do this, and go, okay,

so then we either do this or we don't do this, right? And when we learn, but as humans, we're actually story people and we don't always realize it, but we learn most and best from stories, not from instructions. And God knew that, because I think most and best from stories, not from instructions. And God knew that because I think I wrote in the intro, three-fifths of the Torah is narrative, but Torah means instruction. Right.

So clearly we can read narratives and be instructed somehow. Yeah. The whole distinction I grew up with is you want doctrine, you go to Paul's letters. If you want stories, you go to the narratives. It's just, I think, extremely modern and not hard to, yeah. Well, in Paul, if you're reading his letters, he's often weaving Jesus' story in there. He's not quoting it very often, which is kind of remarkable because we think the Jesus sayings were pretty early on copied, like written down for people so that they could share them and memorize them and retell them. And so that Paul would have had access to them.

And so with some of the early Christians, he's much more subtle in how he incorporates Jesus' sayings, Jesus' teachings in his letters. But when you bring Jesus' sayings in, you're bringing the story that comes with it. You can't just have the quote. You're having this whole story of who Jesus is. So that's something to keep in mind, too, that even—there's a great book if you ever want to dig into it. Great example of this by A. Catherine Grebe, The Story of Romans. So Romans being one of the most doctrinal, theological of all the letters, right? And she works through her book to talk about

the stories that are underneath all these doctrines. His audience would have heard and understood and recognized, but we have a harder time with that because we just see these fantastic statements that we've used. So my goal with this book is actually really minor. I just want the stories to start to be invited into the conversation. Yeah. Just to be clear to the audience,

this is not a book about women in leadership. I mean, it has that lingering maybe in the background, but this is not an activist book at all. It's a powerful exegete. I'm gonna give some thoughts at the end of the beginning, but it's not, this doesn't seem to be your main goal, you know, to convince people women of leadership. I do have, okay, I have two counter arguments

to my counter, I don't even know where I'm at with my arguments, my back and forth. I feel like a pinball machine with this conversation because- I don't even know what, if I address the thing you said. But here, okay, to summarize again, machine with this conversation because... I don't even know if I addressed anything you said. No, you did. But here, okay, to summarize again, women are emulating discipleship traits way more than men.

And I say, well, that's brilliant and profound and shocking and jarring. It's not necessarily an argument in and of itself for, therefore, women should be leaders because we want non-leaders to be faithful disciples too. However, where do we find, and we could also say, well, and is Jesus fully entrusting leadership specifically, or is He just talking about what it means to follow Him? We're generally, I think, you know, it's an overlap. We want leaders to be good followers of Jesus. And okay, so that might be one thing to consider. If the Twelve are a model of leadership, how are we doing? I don't think they are in the gospel.

I don't think, I think they're the exact opposite of what he would expect leaders to be. Now, some would go on to become leaders, but if we just take the Twelve and the Gospels and we say, this is a good argument for male leadership, I'm like, well, it's a good argument for bad male leadership, maybe. So therefore, maybe it's not the gospel intention to portray them as leaders. Second point, so the failure of the 12 and many men of the gospels, I think, is interesting. At the very least, we'd want leaders to emulate the kinds of discipleship traits that women are doing at the very minimum. But in Mark's Gospel, okay, the one passage, I'll just throw you a softball. Where's the

one main passage where Jesus does actually address what we would call leadership or authority head on? There's a few, but there's one main one. That He addresses leadership or authority? Yeah. What is the nature of Christian leadership? The nature of Christian authority? Yeah. Like the nature, what is the nature of Christian leadership? The nature of Christian authority, that the Mark 10, 42 to 45, right? Oh, the servant. Yeah, the servant. Yeah, yeah.

So, sorry to put you on the spot. James and John, you know, we want to sit at your right in your lap. We want this power. We want to be leaders. We want to be on top. And he says, well, you know, those who are recognized as rulers and the Gentiles, rulers, leader. I mean, they lord it over them, but it's not be this way with you.

Whoever wants to be great among you shall be your servant, your diakonia. Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, doulos. Even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve, to do leo, what's the di diaconate, the verb for to serve. So you have this, the one place where Jesus does actually address the nature of leadership head on, it's all about service. It is interesting. The only two times humans emulate these virtues in Mark. It are in 1.31 when Peter's mother-in-law is healed

and she diaconettos them. She serves them. We're like, yeah, see, she's been a good housewife. She's serving. And we would get that kind of like, well, that's what women should do. They should serve. But Jesus transforms the nature of serving.

He is the ultimate, like, it's not, this is a domestic response of washing dishes. This is exempl transforms the nature of service. This isn't domestic response of washing dishes. This is exemplifying the way of Jesus that he emulated on the cross. All the other time we see it mentioned is in 1450 or 51, where the women, the Galilean women, served Jesus. So you have this central piece of Jesus's mission, all about leadership. And the bookends of the gospel are two people emulating this primary leadership trait, and they're two women.

And going back, like, is that just, would Mark be like scratching his head like, wow, I didn't even realize that. Oh yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, these two, you know. Or is this intentional? Do you, what are your thoughts? I'm not the first one to point this out,

but I haven't seen too many draw specific attention to, if we're asking the narrow question, women, gospels, church leadership, what are we going on? I don't think I've seen anybody kind of draw attention to this. I've seen people point it out, but am I reading too much into it or? Well, I don't think that you can, well, I guess you can always read too much into something, but structure matters.

How someone tells a story matters. We know this, if you think of your favorite TV shows or movies, that the way that they've chosen to structure the story will impact how you're receiving the story, right? And so to see those sort of structural moments, and Mark does this with other things, like he does the rapid fire, passion, resurrection predictions in eight, nine, and 10, which is really, because that's the transitional period to where Jesus is now headed toward the cross, and he's kind of done with his healings.

He does the son of God at one, 9, 15, right? So we've seen it with other things. And one of the sort of principles of interpretation is that if you've already seen an author do something, then if you see something else that's similar, you may not be seeing things, right? Like it's more likely than not that there's some intentionality there. And so, yes, I absolutely... It's interesting

because that chapter 10, that correction of James and John is the third of a similar type of correction that happens after every passion resurrection prediction, where you have these moments where Jesus says something pretty amazing, and then you have someone who is not getting it, who fails in some way or misunderstands in some way what Jesus is getting at. I think it's also key, too, and you kind of like hinted at that, that what we mean by service is really important because I wanted to make sure that what I was, I just want to be clear that when that, that we're not, you know, Jesus is the prime example of a servant. Like that's what he says, right? And he's not some like docile pushover who just gives in to whoever bullies

them around. And so I want to, I want to make sure that we all understand that when we are lot, that when women are lotted as being servants and serving Jesus, and it looked eight, that they're like serving in the ministry, that that doesn't mean this sort of like menial task only type of thing. But this is the upside down end where that serving becomes the most important thing you could do as a follower of Jesus. A similar sort of scenario that I mentioned in the book is in John, when

Mary anoints Jesus' feet. And then he in turn in the next chapter, washes the feet of His disciples. And that's the only time that the language of apostleship is used. It's when Jesus is washing their feet and says, this is what you need to do as an apostle. Well, she's just done that for Him. And He even referred to Himself there as Lord and Teacher. Like, He's emulating what does it mean to teach is to wash feet. And she just did that.. So he's calling them to do the kinds of things that she's just done. Interesting. Some of these subtle things you just don't notice until you slow down and just really pay attention to the flow of the narrative.

Another thing to consider, and this has nothing to do with the book, but is maybe a future project later, is the role of giftedness, spiritual gifts, and leadership. And there does not seem to be any indication to me that that is ascribed based on gender. And so I would be hesitant to say if someone is gifted to do something, you can't because you're... Because the gifts, like when gifts are mentioned in Corinthians and others, there's never a gender distinction.

Yeah. This is Sandy's main argument. So anyway, there's like lots of things to think about, but I think the first step in inviting all of God's Word into the conversation and not certain selective bits. Yeah, I agree. inviting all of God's Word into the conversation and not certain selective bits. Yeah, I agree. Well, starting with 1 Timothy 3 is probably not a good starting. Well, not that anybody does that, but yeah.

And even then, there's lots of, you know, egalitarians who have good reasons. Read Sandra Glahn for thinking that there's more going on there than on the surface. But Holly, I have to run. It was so great talking to you. Thank you again for your book. It is a woman who do female disciples and the gospels. It is scholarly, but it's easy to follow. So if you like its thoughtfulness and, you know, in depth and you like to dig into the text, you'll love it. But if you're like, oh, but I'm on all the PhD, don't be afraid, it's very easy to follow. So thank you, free workers. I'm glad to hear that, that's what I'm trying to do.

It's not easy to do, not easy to do at all. It's harder than people think. Just keep footnotes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, have a good one, Ali. Good meeting you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore,

usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation. And we talk about everything from relationships to parenting to friendships, to even your view of yourself.

And we don't have answers or solutions, but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I love for you to join me, Haven, the podcast. Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Lehmann joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high-powered CEOs, Hollywood actors, and all high performers in all types of different

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