Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1049: Does the Old Testament Dehumanize Women? Dr. Sandy Richter (Exiles 22 Talk + Q & A)

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Dr. Sandy Richter is currently the The Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont college and the author of many books including one of my favorite books on the Old Testament, The Epic of Eden. Sandy has an MDiv from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD from Harvard University. This podcast episode is a recording of Sandy’s scintillating talk and conversation at least year’s “Exiles in Babylon” conference.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Sandy Richter. Sandy has a PhD from Harvard University, a master's degree from Gordon Conwell Seminary. She is a professor at Westmont University and is one of my favorite biblical scholars. She's been on the show before. This episode is a recording of her talk that she gave at the Exiles in Babylon conference at last year's conference in 2022, followed by a couch conversation where Sandy and I banter around and then some audience Q&A. So I'm excited for you to listen to this. I will say, and those of you who are at the conference know this, she became a fan favorite really quickly at the conference.

She just really blew people's minds. I think the highlight of her talk was when she was asked a question about what does it mean to bear God's image? And her response was absolutely stunning. So please welcome to the show for the second time, the one and only Sandy Richter. Hey, really good to be here. Yeah, grateful for that introduction and grateful for the fact that I've got so many friends in this crowd. This is going to be a great time. All right. So on May 11th, 2018, CBN News went to press announcing that Andy Stanley, the senior pastor of North Point Community Church, had gone on the record stating that the only way for Christianity and our sanitary to move forward was to unhitch itself from the Jewish scriptures. According to Stanley, this is what Peter and Paul were advocating for in Acts chapter 15.

And it's what we need to do now if we're to reach a new generation. Let's be done with this mixing and matching of the old covenants. Let's be done with this mixing and matching of the old covenants. The Jewish part of the story is over, and the Old Testament is no longer the church's, quote, go-to source regarding sexual behavior or any other behavior for that matter, close quote. Now, to give him credit, Stan Lee's sermon series made some excellent points about recognizing that the strictures of the Old Covenant are embedded in the cultural and legal norms of the ancient Near East. But when he roundly declared, quote, your whole house of Old Testament cards can come tumbling down and Christianity still stands. Okay, this career Old Testament prof, little pulled up short, just saying. So why? Why would Andy Stanley want to make such a radical move? Well, one reason is, to quote him again, the many people who find it

virtually impossible to embrace the dynamic, the worldview, and the value system depicted in the story of ancient Israel. He thinks these people are being pushed away from Christianity because of the Old Testament, in particular, the Old Testament's view of women, and even more specifically, the Old Testament's view of women's sexuality. So let me say up front that I fully empathize with how challenging it is to help 21st century readers succeed in that cross-cultural journey that entering the Old Testament requires. I spend my life challenging students to recognize their native ethnocentrism, right?

That all-too-human assumption that my culture, my experience, my worldview, hey, that's what's just and right. And all those other people, well, they're somehow inferior to me. And I spend a lot of my time nudging them toward the idea that, hey, there's a whole world of humanity out there that's been hanging on this planet for about 6,000 years. And believe it or not, they might have some different ideas about how to do life than you do. So I get it, but I beg to differ with Reverend Stanley that moving past the Old Testament is the solution. Rather, I would argue that the next generation needs to be introduced to their people, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they need some help to do the hard work of cross-cultural communication. Thank you. So strap in your seats. We are about

to enter a traditional tribal society comprised of smallholder farmers immersed in a subsistence economy located in the central hill country of the southern Levant, a world where the resources of the clan were corporately owned. Blood vengeance was a thing, and a young woman's fertility, like a young man's strength, was understood as a critical and curated resource of the household. Okay, this one's going to be a little challenging. So let's begin with Israel's traditional tribal culture, enormously different from contemporary life in the urban West. The extended family was literally the access of the community. Here, an individual's

link to the lingual and economic structures of the society was through the family. And because Israel was a patriarchal culture, that link was going to come to the oldest living male of the household. The basic household unit was known as the betav, the father's household. There's your first Hebrew lesson they got to do Greek in the last half hour. I think Hebrew deserves equal play. Yes. All right. So this included the patriarch, his wife, his unwed children, his married sons, their wives, and their children, as many as three generations up to 20 people. None of this business of 2.3 kids in a house in the suburbs. Yeah. The patriarch was responsible for the economic well-being of his family, past, present, and future. He enforced law, and he had legal and

moral responsibility to step up if any one of his kinsmen wound up marginalized due to death, poverty, or war. And vastly different from our bureaucratic society in which the state creates economic opportunity, enforces law, and cares for the marginalized, it was this kinship network that kept the society of Israel running. So this society is best understood by three descriptive categories. If you've been my student before, you have seen these words before. Patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal. Patriarchal has to do with the authority of the oldest living male. Patrilineal has to do with inheritance and keeping the resources of the clan inside the clan through tribal alliance and inheritance. Patrilocal has to do with the extended family living in the shared space of the family compound in life

and staying together in the shared space of the family tomb in death. Yeah. Now, in this world, a woman's linked to the economy, and the legal system was through the men in her life. She would be born her father's daughter, become her husband's wife, and if she was lucky, eventually her son's mother. For women in this world, marriage and motherhood were not a sentimentality. They were a career track. And although the laws embedded in this system, the double portion for the firstborn son, the inalienable land law,

the leveret law, the law jubilee, are very odd to us. The system generally worked. Tribal resources were preserved for the next generation. Young widows were safely maintained within their father-in-law's household, and we all lived to try again another day. This was a world where life was hard, survival was uncertain, and family was absolutely everything. This is also the real space and time from which the women's laws of the Old Testament came into being. So our task today is to take a look at a few of these women laws in their context and ask the question, does the God of the Old Testament dehumanize women? So our first case study will be

Deuteronomy's sexual misconduct laws. The larger pericope is Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 29, typically set apart as laws about marital and sexual misconduct. Here we find six cases, each illustrating appropriate responses to sexual misconduct. They're presented as exemplars with the assumption that the audience is aware of analogous and intermediary cases. So the first and the second cases are a new husband accusing his bride of premarital promiscuity. The third case is one of consensual sex with a married woman. Fourth, consensual sex with an engaged virgin. Fifth, the rape of an engaged virgin. And sixth, the seduction or possible rape of an unengaged virgin. As you can see on this slide, yes, verses 13 through 24 deal with crimes involving a married woman.

And verses 23 through 30 involves crimes with an unmarried woman. So the first thing you need to know is about marriage in the ancient world. you need to know is about marriage in the ancient world. So marriage was indeed the backbone of Israel's societal system. At its core, marriage was understood as an alliance between two families, and its most important purpose was to provide legitimate heirs to the household, a little bit different than our world. So the expectation of virginity on the part of the bride and her ongoing sexual fidelity as a wife were universal values in Israel's world, largely because of the patrilineal nature of the society. Offspring must be legitimate heirs of the Be'adav because they were going to be inheriting the

resources of the Be'adav. So any sexual conduct with or contact with a married or engaged woman and a man other than her husband or fiance constituted adultery. And in Israel, adultery was a capital crime. All right, verses 13 through 24 offer us A, the accused bride, first innocent and damages due, the accused bride guilty and executed by her community, and C, a man and a woman caught in consensual adultery, both executed by the community. The second section offers parallel scenarios. You like the chiasm going on there? I know all you seminary geeks are loving that. All right. Parallel scenarios regarding the unmarried woman. C1 is our first focus. So here we go. If a man, and by the way, this is how the law code of Hammurabi starts

off every clause as well. Shuma awilum, if a man. All right, if a man happens to meet a virgin who's pledged to be married in the city and he lies with her, then you shall bring the two of them to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death. The girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he ashamed, dishonored, lowered the social status of his neighbor's wife. You must purge this evil from among you. So as with current rape law in the United States, our writer is attempting to clarify whether or not this unlawful sexual activity was, quote, carried out forcibly or under threat of injury or against a person's will. That's Merriam-Webster's on rape. And know that the intent here is not simply city versus countryside, but any location in which a young woman would have no hope of help. The question is one of consent

and force. In some, verses 23 and 24 assume that this was a consensual encounter, that the man found the woman and he lay with her. He did not force her. So what is the crime here? The crime is that two families have already agreed that this young woman will be wed. The fiance has already paid the mohar, the bride gift. The date has been set. Another man in the community is waiting to make this woman his wife. So both the man and the woman have defrauded and dishonored their own families and that of a neighbor. And they have also dishonored the God of Israel, and they will pay with their lives. We'll circle back to this.

The passage now turns to a non-consensual encounter, and that is verses 25 through 27. So looking at the passage, but if in the field the man finds the girl who was engaged, a woman for whom the bride gift, the mohar has been paid, and the man seizes her. Okay, new verb. This is chazak, the same vocabulary used in the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel and the Levi's concubine in, Levi's concubine in Judges 19.

And the man lies with her. Then the man who lay with her shall die, he alone. To the girl you shall do nothing. She has not committed a capital crime. This case is like that of a man who attacks his neighbor and murders him. When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her. Okay, within his cultural framework, this biblical author is communicating what contemporary law makers would name consent, and she did not. Rather than naming her guilty until proven innocent, as our culture would, this law declares the young woman innocent until proven guilty. And please note that she is apparently expected to report a far cry for most rape cases in our world.

The young man is guilty, and again, he will pay for his capital crime. and again he will pay for his capital crime. I want you to notice the extent to which this lawmaker goes to protect this young woman. He alone shall die. To the girl you shall do nothing. She has not committed a capital crime. As opposed to the people standing in the crowd saying, well if she hadn't been out there that late at night, if she had worn a different outfit, if she had a better reputation, yeah, go ahead. Yes. So the author in 1200 BC is defending the character of an innocent girl. And on top of that, this lawmaker recognizes rape as a violent crime, not just an overflow of passion. This is like when a man attacks his neighbor and murders him. Yeah. All right. These two laws don't cover every potential scenario, but they do operate together to establish parameters within which wise counsel might prevail. Get that out of my mouth. Okay, the final scenario

is A1, a case that qualifies perhaps as one of our texts of terror. All right, if a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and lays a hold of her, this is not Chazak, it is Tafas, and he lies with her and they are discovered. That man who lay with her shall pay the girl's father 50 shekels of silver and she shall become his wife. He whom he has dishonored lowered her status. He can never divorce. Hmm. What exactly does lay a hold of mean? Well, I am embarrassed to say that the NIV seems to think that it means rape, and I'm embarrassed because I'm actually on the NIV committee. So here we are. So as you see on the slide, if a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and lies with her and they are discovered.

And the law continues. Yowza. What kind of God penalizes a rape with a monetary fine, paid to a girl's father, and then expects her to marry her rapist? I got to say that would be a kind of God I would not want to serve. But I can say with confidence that this translation is wrong. And I'm going to have to make a really good argument this summer because this text is wrong. That would be when the committee meets. Okay. One reason is because of the parallelism. Again, geek out with me on the chiasm here. Yeah? Damages do. Somebody's not guilty. But the second reason, and I would say the more important reason,

is we have a parallel law in one of the other law codes of ancient Israel, and that would be the book of the covenant, Exodus chapter 22. And if a man, patah, a virgin, who is not pledged to be married and he lies with her, he must pay the bride gift and she shall become his wife. You can see the parallel, yes? Two different law codes, a reiteration of the same law. The NIV translates this occurrence as seduce, as it should, to persuade by offering a tempting allurement, says the dictionaries. The same verb as when Delilah talked Samson into cutting his hair. Now, this girl surely could have been manipulated. She could have been underage, at least what we consider an inappropriate age, but she has not been assaulted. So this law is designed not to punish a man who is guilty of a capital crime, but to protect a young woman from the economic and legal fallout that this walkaway Joe has introduced into her young and naive life.

Country music, you gotta love it. All right. So our fellow was hoping for an uncomplicated affair, and instead our seducer is going to be required to offer a handsome mohar, bride gift, for a girl who may no longer have been able to attract one. And in addition, he's going to have to fulfill all the standard responsibilities of marriage. And know that in all of this, if the guy is a jerk, the dad retains the right of refusal. And according to Jewish law, halakha, the girl shares that right as well. In sum, Israelite law recognizes that the woman's

social status has been violated, but not necessarily her body. So how does this law compare with others from the ancient Near East? Well, we can be very sure that Israel's expectations regarding virginity, the bride gift, the sanctity of engagement in marriage. These are normative in Israel's world. And really awkward for our society, sexual access to any woman was the fiduciary responsibility of first her father and then her husband. But as the Middle Assyrian law codes colorfully demonstrate in surrounding societies, the penalties for rape and seduction were focused not on maintaining the purity of the community or defending the young woman. They were focused on avenging the diminished honor of the husband or the father. Take a look at Middle Assyrian law code number 55. If a man forcibly seizes and

rapes a virgin who is residing in her father's house, who is not pledged to be married, within the city or in the main thoroughfare or in a granary or during the city festival, oddly specific, the father of the maiden shall take the wife of the rapist and hand her over to be raped. I'm going to read that again. The father of the maiden shall take the wife of the rapist and hand her over to be raped. He shall not return her to her husband, but he shall keep her. The father shall give his daughter who has has been raped, into the protection of the household of her rapist, cognitive dissonance. If he, the perpetrator, has no wife, then the rapist shall give triple the silver as the value of the virgin to her father. The rapist shall marry her. He shall not reject her. Wow. You can see the overlap between the Assyrian and the biblical law codes here, yes?

But revenge rape, as this penalty is called, a practice that is still condoned in many tribal and traditional cultures, has no place in biblical law. In Israel, we do not rehabilitate the honor of defaulted husband or a father by raping an innocent victim. And as we've seen in Israel, a woman is not forced to marry her rapist. Biblical law executes rapists. Still, many find Deuteronomic law patriarchal. It is, and therefore unjust. Is it? Why? Because it limits a woman's sexual agency. Women in Israel's world were not free to choose their own sexual partners. Does that mean biblical law dehumanizes women? How do we navigate this question? Well, the first thing we have to do is recognize the great distance that lies between this ancient configuration of society and our own perception

of individual human rights. In biblical Israel, it was not the individual that constituted a legal entity, but rather the patriarchal household. As a result, an individual's legal status did not derive from some abstract universal notion of personhood, but rather from an individual's particular position within their household. This is standard for traditional societies. As a result, the Bible betrays little, if any, awareness for individual human rights. Rather, the mutual obligations, duties, and claims that characterize kinship are the focus of biblical law. In our world, the definition of human rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 states that the individual is endowed

with power and privilege to act in its self-interest. So our definition of rape assumes that a woman has the right to determine for herself who her sexual partners will be. Rape is when that right is taken from her by force or by intimidation. By contrast, in Israel's world, a woman's fertility, like a young man's strength, Deuteronomy 21, was the curated resource of the Beidhav. Hard to get our brains around. And in Israel's kinship-based society, it was the patriarch who stood responsible and bereft if that resource was despoiled in some fashion. We find this foreign at best, foreign at best, offensive at worst. But our cross-cultural experiment demands that we attend to the legal concepts and principles operating in their society. And here's the news. In Israel,

society. And here's the news. In Israel, no one in the Beit Av was autonomous. Even the patriarch functioned within the corporate legal identity of the extended family. And because the family estate was a continuous possession belonging to both past and future generations, even the patriarch was not free to sell the family land or to recklessly endanger any of his kinsmen. In other words, the fact that women were subject to the will of the household was not unique to her gender. Okay, now let's turn our attention to our second case study, the law of the beautiful POW. When you go out to battle against your enemies and Yahweh your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive and you see among them, the female captives, a woman who is beautiful and to'ar. That means she's got a great figure. That's what it means. And you desire her and would take her for yourself as a wife.

Then you will bring her into the midst of your own household and you and she shall shave her head and trim her nails and remove the clothes of her captivity. She will live in your, let's go back one. Where's the back? I found the back. Okay. She will live in your house and grieve her father and her mother for one month. And after that, you may consummate the marriage and become her husband and she will become your wife. And then if it turns out that you are not pleased with her, then you shall deforce her as she desires, or perhaps send her out as she desires, but you will certainly not sell her for money. You shall not tit-ham-er her. That means you will not treat this woman as merchandise because you have lowered her status. Now, this is a law of both war and marriage, which is why it's placed as a segue between the laws of war back in chapter 20 and the household laws that we've been discussing in 22.

And as the law mentions only the girl's mother and father, not her husband, we assume that she was unmarried. So we have a foreign woman who is ushered into the bed of an Israelite family via marriage. The cutting of her hair and nails, well, many understand these as acts of mourning, although several of the early rabbis argued that these mandated actions were intended to diminish her beauty and thereby dissuade her captor. In other words, to discourage a good Jewish boy from falling for a shiksa. That was the idea. All right, that's a Gentile girl. I would argue that these acts served several functions. One is very practical. Cutting her hair, trimming her nails, disposing

of her clothing, also disposed of the ever-present uninvited companions of siege warfare. We're talking about lice and scabies and Symex lectorlarius, that's bedbugs. According to the medical experts, cutting the nails helps to dislodge the densest collection of bacteria on the human body. That scary space underneath our fingernails, an area the experts say is completely impervious to hand washing. Think about that the next time you head to the restroom. Yeah. So our captive is decontaminated from the residue of siege and the one month period of mourning. Well, it is the, an extended period of mourning according to biblical law, but it's also an ancient pregnancy test. If she menstruated during this time, she could have no chance of bringing

someone else's heir into the bait of her new husband. But let's think about those 30 days yet again. It provided a very vulnerable woman with the chance to grieve her losses and adjust to her radical new identity. And so although the victim of war and capture, this woman's past as a member of someone else's family is being recognized and honored. During this time, she is not expected to serve as would a slave or to service as would a concubine, her new husband. This woman is being allowed the opportunity to mourn, the respect due to a full citizen of the community. So after she has mourned and been shorn of her most obvious adornments,

if the Israelite soldier still wants to marry her, he may. But if he does marry her, he can't change his mind later and sell her as a slave. Once he consummates the union, she is wife, not slave, and all the rights thereof are accorded. Now, keep in mind that in the ancient world, there was no Geneva Convention. There were no refugee or prisoner of war camps. Capture meant death or slavery. And in our case, a non-Israelite woman,

a potential slave, has been tapped as wife and is being given the appropriate privileges of a wife. But as we have seen, marriage in the ancient world is very different from marriage in our world. Marriage was not the individual choice of two adults of legal age based on chemistry and compatibility. Marriage was an alliance between two families designed to distribute wealth in a mutually beneficial fashion. Even when chemistry was in the mix, think Prince Shechem and the beautiful Dinah, economic advantage was still the controlling objective. Reread Genesis 34. As a result, the bride and the groom are actually peripheral characters in the marriage rituals of the ancient Near East. The patriarchs negotiated the match. A mohar, a bride gift,

is agreed upon and a marriage is arranged. Once the gift is given, that young woman becomes ma'arasa, engaged, and from that point onward, she's called a wife. Here then is our conundrum. The beautiful POW has no family. She has no patriarch to negotiate the bride gift on her behalf. She has no mother to preserve the blood stained wedding bed garment to guarantee her suitability. She has no male relatives to step in if she is mistreated. And so the burden for negotiation in this law falls upon our Israelite soldier. And as the law declares, yes, he's free to marry, but he is not free to enslave or to abuse. He is not free to dehumanize the other.

The woman is offered a household, legitimate children, and legal rights. And if the husband chooses to terminate the union, his wife is not simply to be emancipated, as some other slave might be. In other words, she's not to be put out on the streets, and she is certainly not to be emancipated as some other slave might be. In other words, she's not to be put out on the streets, and she is certainly not to be sold. She is to be legally and appropriately divorced, shalah. She goes out of his bed of a free woman. So although not an ideal world, in light of what we know about the fate of women captured in warfare in the world of the Bible, we see that biblical law sets boundaries that I would argue dramatically humanize an all-too-common legacy of war. What do I mean

by an all-too-common legacy of war? Well, as United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres offers, militarized systemic rape of civilian populations as a weapon of psychological warfare has become a standard national strategy in many militias across our world. The objective is to so fracture and traumatize the civilian populace that domestic life cannot be maintained, so that the re-emergence of a cohesive society is impossible. There was the Serbian cleansing in the 1990s, the systemic abduction and rape of the Tutsi women by the Hutu in the Rwandan conflict. Did you know that the Hutu-led government actually recruited HIV-positive men for their rape squads?

And then there are the refugee camps designed to protect these women and children, but as Michelle Lent Hirsch offers, these, quote, safe areas for refugees and internally displaced persons intended to provide respite from torture, murder, and rape from Darfur to Bosnia to Pakistan are themselves rife with torture and rape. In Eastern Chad and Kenya, it is understood that rape is a just retaliation for

these women scavenging food in the open fields. And in all of these camps, the opportunity to rape is considered a perk for those who are assigned to keep order. So in light of these past and present atrocities of war, some interpreters actually see in our Deuteronomic law another legalization of wartime rape? I got to say, I don't. Rather, I ask with Christopher Wright, the esteemed Old Testament ethicist, whose interests does this law serve? Whose power is being restricted? And the answer, of course, is that the law is designed to protect the interests of the captive. It limits the power of the victorious soldier, and it acknowledges the identity and the humanity of the woman bereaved.

I would argue that these same limitations, if deployed among the Tutsi women of Rwanda, the Bosniak women of the Balkans, and even the German women fleeing Russian troops in World War II, yeah, that was our team, would have spared countless women the monstrous injuries of militarized rape, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, enslavement, and torture. As Wright states, this law embodies the Old Testament's concern to defend the weak against the strong. So is Andy Stanley right? About a lot of stuff, yeah. But do we jettison the Old Testament as obsolete, misogynist, and irrelevant? Does the God of the Old Testament dehumanize women? Or is the God of the Old Testament actually pushing his people towards something unknown in their world, the full humanity of women? I'm going to go with the latter. Thank you. Hey friends, Preston here. As most of you know, I'm an author with David C. Cook Publishing,

but I'm also an avid reader. And so I wanted to share with you some of my favorite authors and books. These are authors that have inspired me, challenged me, helped me grow in my faith in new and exciting ways. And I know they'll do the same for you. If you want to find out more, go to davidccook.org forward slash theology in the raw. That's davidccook.org forward slash theology in the raw. I can't wait to hear what you think. My first question is, do you have any nail clippers? Because I'm feeling really... I was like... Oh, my word. I'm so with you.

You can correct the NIV when you're sitting on the committee, I guess. So for the rest of us, be careful. This question actually popped up as I was listening. The term patriarchal today is used as like an intrinsically negative thing. Like, oh, that's patriarchal or that's patriarchal. Typically, it's like any place where men are dominating women. Do you find that use of the term patriarchal helpful? Is that capturing what the term actually means in its ancient context?

Or that's a genuine question. Yeah, no, no, a very real and valid question. And it's something that's just popped up because I've been teaching this material for 20 plus years and it's just popped up, both in my kitchen and in my classroom. The 15-year-old with the platform combat boots, you know, who stomps into my kitchen regularly

to shout down with the patriarchy. Okay, I got that going too. But I have to remind my students that this is an anthropological term. So yeah, we've picked up a slang term on top of it, but traditional societies, tribal societies, the whole idea of diversity and inclusion of the other, these cultures still exist and thrive and function and not necessarily by demeaning their women. Yeah. So would you say it's not maybe not the best use of the term or not that people are doing it deliberately or whatever, but I don't know. Well, I think it's in vogue. Not that people are doing it deliberately or whatever, but I don't know. Well, I think it's in vogue.

So it's not a word I would throw around at the mall, but it's one I have to use in my classroom all the time. What do you think? Do you think we should get rid of it? I don't know enough to say anything. I always ask people, define what you mean by patriarchy. And usually it's, yeah, any space where men are dominating women and i know some people that equate every brand of complementarianism as patriarchal men dominating women and that's that i'm like i i don't think that's hopeful um because that's not some might be characterized by that but i've been in spaces where that's definitely not

the flavor of the complementarianism there you know, but yeah. I would like to be able to hang on to it for anthropological uses. That's my vote. You tackled two of, in my mind, the most difficult passages on women in the Old Testament, and wow. That's because this guy made me. I tried to pretend like I didn't know what you were going to talk about. Can you please tackle these passages? Do you find, and you know, understanding the ancient context is just huge

and the actual meaning of words. Do you have, on the flip side, do you know of other, do you know, what are some passages in the Old Testament or just maybe one that stands out where it's the opposite, where it actually like radically humanizes women, especially in its ancient context, where it's not a problem passage toward how do we figure this out? And, you know, but it's actually like, wow, this would have been like, you know, this would have been like the most feminist kind of statement in its own ancient context. What comes to mind?

So I would say there are a whole slew of those in both the Old and New Testament. And because we're not as aware as we should be of their social context, we miss these radical statements. So the first one, obviously, is the creation narrative, where God creates ha'adam, male and female, he creates them and creates woman in his image. So the other creation narratives coming out of the ancient world, as you know, my goodness, we have the Egyptian god Ptah, who, forgive me, masturbates and his semen pops up and becomes human slaves. That was nice.

pops up and becomes human slaves. That was nice. Then there's the slaying of the rebel god Kingu in the Mesopotamian myth and his blood falls on the earth. And once again, the slave race pops up. So just the humanization of humanity is huge. But the fact that in Genesis 1, we have Adam and Eve standing shoulder to shoulder in a text that's all about authority. I will give this kingdom to you to rule, and she's right there. So that one's massive. Are there any other similarities to that in the ancient world that you're aware of? No. Where male and female created in God's image? No, no, nothing even close. And man, if we had all the time in the world, I would love to talk about what that image is. But we don't. So I would say that one is radical.

Oh, come on. I'm free for lunch. Do you want to give us a 30 second soundbite on that? I mean, you lured us into this. I don't know if we can do 30 seconds. Do you want me to go there? Sure. Okay. Okay. The people have spoken. The people have spoken. Okay. So the word image is a technical term. The word is selim in Hebrew. It's salamu in Akkadian. And in any other text in the ancient Near East, what a Selim is, is an animated incarnation of the deity. What you and I call idols, that's our derogatory term that we learned from the authors of the Pentateuch, are actually Selim. So what Yahweh is doing in Genesis chapter two is he is mimicking a Babylonian and Egyptian animation ritual by which the pagans, the polytheists animated their idols, made them living gods. And that's what Yahweh is doing as he crafts us from the dirt,

breathes breath into our nostrils, and then installs us in the temple. If I were to pull up Catherine McDowell or Michael Dick, who are the experts on this stuff, you would see the Babylonian ritual follows those same process, where a crafted statue goes from being a statue to being an animate deity. And so what Yahweh is saying to us and to Israel, you don't get to make idols. You don't get to make images of me because I've already made an image of me. And it's you. and it's you. Awesome stuff.

Have you written on that specifically? I don't remember that from Epic of Eden. Was that it? There's a little bit in there, but not a lot. Okay. Yeah. Oh my word.

Okay. Next conference. Yeah. Let's go to, so we don't have a ton of time because there's barbecue. I can smell the barbecue in here and I'm hungry. I have to give another don't have a ton of time because there's barbecue. I can smell the barbecue in here and I'm hungry and you're hungry. I have to give another text about you're one of these radically feminists.

The story of Ruth is amazing. Now we all love the story of Ruth, but can I remind you who she is? She is a Moabitess. Israelites hate Moabitess, Moabites. These are the people that wouldn't let Israel pass on to the promised land. Their patriarchal head is the incestuous child of Lot and his second daughter. Those are the relatives that are relatives, but you don't invite them to Thanksgiving, those kind of people. Okay, so she's a Moabitess. She is a widow. She is an orphan. She is impoverished.

She's in a very small town, completely unwanted. And due to her integrity, my goodness, when that woman walked out on the field, everybody said she's one of those. Due to her integrity, she winds up in the line of David and the line of Christ. These are radical statements, radical statements about women. Can you speak on the difference of complementarian versus egalitarian in ways that both support women's roles and leadership? I'm not, I wish Anonymous could come up here and explain a little bit. So how about this? How about, yeah, an egalitarian church

where all offices in the church are open to men and women, but a complementarian church, only men can be pastors and teachers. I'm curious. I mean, this is kind of part of this question. What is a healthy biblical complementarian view look like? So even if you don't agree with complementarianism, if you're like, what would be a brand of complementarianism

that you would say is actually supporting women, if you would even say that? He didn't warn me. He was going to ask me that question. This audience, they voted on this. Oh, it's them. 65 people want you to answer this question. So the first thing that Preston didn't know about me before he just asked me this question is I actually refuse to use those terms.

Okay. Oh. Why? I refuse to use those terms because I am neither a complementarian nor an egalitarian. I am a daughter of Eve made in the image of God. So I think our ultimate pursuit should definitely start there and start with the recognition of the full citizenship of women in the great story of redemption and of course therefore in the

community of Christ and I know that everyone in this room would agree with that. I think that we've created a bit of a what I would honestly call a false dichotomy. I see the biblical text biblical text supporting the best of both of those views and often bypassing the best of what the Bible might have to say about these things. I'm a 1 Corinthians 12 kind of gal, that the Holy Spirit is the Lord of the church and that he gets to distribute the gifts as he wills. and that he gets to distribute the gifts as he wills. And so I would say to the leaders of our churches that if there is someone in your congregation who is demonstrating the gifting of the Holy Spirit, it is our job to recognize that gift,

disciple that gift, and deploy that gift, regardless of what type of body it shows up in. But I would also say, and I've actually said this in public functions before, I would rather be a member of a church where because of their dedication to scripture, they won't allow me on the platform than to be a member of a church that because of their trifling with the text will allow me on the platform. I got a smoke on that one for a while. That's, wow. All right, next question. Okay, this is a little bit related. So if you have anything more to add,

or if you're like, you know, move on, it's up to you. Okay, how do we begin restoring women's roles in the church, moving beyond their rigid, their current rigidity, especially in conservative evangelical spaces? Okay. Well, let me give, let me give a shout out to conservative voices. I've, I have been a member of more than one church where I wasn't allowed on the platform. And most of the time I wound up on the platform somehow or another anyway, which is kind of back to that first Corinthians 12 kind of thing. Um, but I, I was a member of Byfield parish in Byfield, Massachusetts. I I've, I've been a member of St. Pete's Anglican in Lexington, Kentucky, neither of which where I was allowed actually to serve on the platform and certainly

not to touch the sacraments. But the people who I was serving with loved me and my gifting with all their hearts, and they loved God with all their hearts. And I would hate to see the community of Christ. I hate to see it when we fight over this because I don't think that moves our testimony forward. I'm of a generation that if I made women in ministry my issue, it was going to be my only issue. And I have been the only woman in the room for almost my entire career.

I've been asked at general conferences to leave the room. I've had senior pastors give me flowers for Pastoral Appreciation Day while they give my male colleagues bonuses and their paychecks. I've had everyone and their brother tell me what clothes I'm allowed to wear in public. I'm a grown-up. I can figure that out for myself. But my first allegiance is to Jesus. And, oh, you're going to hate me for this one. Women in pastoral leadership is not an essential of the Christian faith. I won't divide over it.

I wonder if you would have been allowed on the stage if you just maybe knew a little more about the Old Testament I think maybe is that maybe yeah I'm gonna get some emails on that one last last question last question um can you speak on the purity culture and it's possible connection to an unbiblical complementarian view taught in scripture. I don't hear them saying complementarianism is intrinsically unbiblical, but there are certain unbiblical maybe manifestations of that brand of the church. So how would you define purity culture? Help me with boundaries on that.

I don't know. purity culture? Help me with boundaries on that. I don't know if I, yeah. It's hard to give one specific definition, but part of it would be, and this wouldn't represent every brand of it, but like there's way more of an emphasis on women being modest. And if they're not, then that's why guys are lusting out of the place, like the responsibilities on women. There's this assumption that if you do all the things right and, you know, like don't go past first base with your girlfriend, then God will bless you with a spouse. And then it's like, so like transactional, it's like, there's a promise given that's never in the Bible. Like the word will get a spouse if we just maintain purity. So it has a kind of a transactional feel to it. Or like, oh, if you just get, wait, wait, wait,

get married and then bam, wait, get married, and then bam, sex is going to be great. And then people realize there's all kinds of complexity here that they weren't told. Or they're told to say no to sex before they're even told what sex is for. You know, so there's, I mean, but those are all kind of overlapping things. But I think the big one in this question is like, where there's such pressure on maybe modest like women being modest and you're the reason why all these guys are stumbling and on porn and all this stuff you know all right so i can definitely speak to that part um i i we we put all the responsibility for these things on women yeah and i honestly i i'm i have daughters i one with the combat boots and the other one who's a freshman in college.

She's doing great. Okay. I get very frustrated when people try to tell my daughters that they're responsible for their sons. It certainly is my task as a mom to raise my daughters with a healthy attitude toward their own body, which includes, hey, it's mine. And since it's mine, I'm going to cover it as it is appropriately because it's mine. I don't know if I'm launching into this well enough. I would absolutely agree with that. I've got three daughters.

Yes. So we're running around. One of the things I'm so appreciating about listening to the speakers, we make sex so weird. And the Christian culture, what is that? I teach at an undergraduate institution where the rules of engagement for courtship are so incredibly confusing that nobody knows how to do anything. Wheaton College, the number one task for office hours was dating advice. Do I look like an expert on dating? But yes, we make it so strange.

And for a young man to walk up to a cafeteria table and ask a girl to coffee is either trying to get her to know her better, asking her out on a preliminary casual date, or proposing. And that's a very big risk to take over a cup of coffee. Oh, man. Can you guys give Sandy a great big round of applause? This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.

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