Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep929: The Scandal of Christmas, Part 3: Dr. Lynn Cohick

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

In this third part of our four part series, New Testament scholar Dr. Lynn Cohick walks us through the significance of women in the birth narratives. We talk a lot about Mary, Elizabeth, Jesus’s genealogy (which contains 5 women), how the appearance of women in the genealogy has been misunderstood, and we also discuss the woman at the well in John 4 and how she was not a sexually promiscuous woman. Lynn currently serves as as Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs of Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. Lynn received her bachelor’s degree from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, and her Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. After 18 years as professor of New Testament and Biblical Studies at Wheaton College (serving as department chair and dean toward the end of her time there), Lynn accepted the invitation to join Denver Seminary as their Provost / Dean. She also taught at Messiah College (Grantham, PA), and Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (Nairobi, Kenya) in the 80s and 90s, respectively. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I wanted to let you know about a bunch of events that we have coming up. Of course, we have the Theology in the Raw conference in the spring, March 31st through April 2nd, where we're going to be talking about race, sexuality, gender, hell, politics, all the stuff that we're thinking about these days. All the info is on my website, PrestonSprinkle.com. We also have a faith, sexuality, and gender conference on February 8th through the 9th of 2022 in Sacramento. So if you're in the Sacramento area, you might want to consider attending that, or we will be live streaming this event. We'll live stream both the Sexuality and Gender Conference and also the

Theology in the Rock Conference. The info for the Faith, Sexuality, and Gender Conference is on the website centerforfaith.com forward slash events. And if you go to that link, you will also see loads of webinars that we are releasing this winter and this spring on faith, sexuality, and gender. We're going to be talking about discipling teenagers in a sexualized world. We've got a Q&A webinar for parents with LGBTQ kids, how we should think about reparative therapy. We're actually going to dig into that. How to journey with gender and sexual minorities and so on and so forth. Again, all the info for the webinars and the sexuality and gender conferences at centerforfaith.com forward slash events. My guest today is the one and only Dr. Lynn

Kohik. Lynn is a world-renowned New Testament scholar. She has taught for almost two decades at Wheaton College outside of Chicago. She had a brief stint at Denver Seminary, and then now she is at Northern Seminary in Chicago. She's the author of many, many academic books. She has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania. She is super brilliant, super wise, and we dig deep into the role of women in the Christmas story, and we also talk about various other the role of women in the Christmas story. And we also talk about various other incidences with women in the gospel.

So please welcome back to the show for the second time, the one and only Dr. Lynn Cohen. All right, I'm here with Lynn Kohik. I think this is the second time, Lynn, you've been on the podcast. So thanks for coming back on the show. Oh, you're welcome, Preston. It's delightful to talk with you. And yeah, good to see you. So I talked with Craig Keener, and there we focused kind of on Luke 2 and some of the political stuff going on, kind of an imperial background kind of reading. And then Mike Bird, he took the other Christmas story in the book of Revelation, Revelation 12, which is a little more Stephen King-ish, you know, with the dragon trying to devour this baby being born.

And yeah, so the scandal of Christmas, what's the angle you want to take with us? Yeah, I want to talk about the women in the text, both Matthew and Luke. And I think what impresses me the most and can be kind of scandalous maybe to our ears today is how much agency the women had. They were active. Even in Matthew, although Mary doesn't speak, I think there's a lot of activity or Matthew,

I wouldn't say he presents her as passive in the sense that we often think of passive. So yeah, I would say that there's a lot more going on. Women are doing a lot of things and that's, that's to me, maybe one of the scandals. And I don't know if it was scandalous necessarily back in the ancient world, but we certainly have the impression that women didn't do much back then. Right, right. And I don't, that's the case, at least in

these stories. Yeah. I always took the Matthew story to kind of, it seems like Mary doesn't have a lot of agency. So I'd love to hear maybe how I'm misreading that. Yeah. Well, I'm taking a lot of my cues from a recent book by Ann Clemens called Mothers at the Margins. And she talks about the genealogy, the women in the genealogy of Matthew. And then she suggests, and I just think there's a lot here. She suggests that when Matthew then begins to talk about Joseph and the birth of Jesus, he's continuing his genealogy. He's just doing it in a narrative form. And he's got to answer the question, why Jesus is Joseph's father and not really Joseph's

father? And so he has to trace this miraculous birth. He has to trace this miraculous birth. And so the Matthew, if I'm, Mary has to know she's pregnant. I mean, in it, you know, she, before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Well, like, you got to know that. Just trust me in that. And you're a father. So, you know, with your wife, like there are things that she just will tell you, you know what, I'm now pregnant.

Like, I just know that. And so I don't think Mary is surprised. But the story is, well, I'm sure Mary is surprised in the sense that this is an unusual pregnancy. Once in eternity pregnancy. But the focus is on answering the question, how can Joseph be Jesus's father and not actually be Jesus's father? And so that, as I read that story where it's a continuation of the genealogy, it kind of frees me up then to hear Matthew saying, focus on found pregnant through the Holy Spirit. It's in the narrative, and then it's said to Joseph by the angel in his dream. So to have Mary do a lot of talking may shift the focus of what Matthew is trying to accomplish. shift the focus of what Matthew is trying to accomplish. But yet Matthew is clear that the Holy Spirit is working in Mary's life in an incredibly powerful way.

So that's where I would say it's not really a silence. It's not like he's muting her. He's muting her. He's trying to elevate the work of the Holy Spirit and explain Jesus' unusual father in a genealogical sense. Lynn, I'm curious because this is – can you paint a background for us just briefly? Like how are women viewed – and I guess there's maybe two contexts we can talk about, the Greco-Roman world and then the Jewish world. Because I think that's, if you, I mean, I guess it's more of a question. Like if we just come to the text without some kind of awareness of that world, we're going to read it through kind of modern Western lenses. And we might not see some of the kind of maybe provocative and countercultural presentations of women in the scriptures.

So Greco-Roman in the Jewish world, how were women viewed in those two contexts? And I know that's a big question, but maybe you can give us the footnotes to it or cliff notes. Sure, sure. Well, I think the one thing to realize is that women in the larger Greco-Roman world were active. Both Jewish and Gentile women were active in the marketplace. They might have owned their store or it was a family store that they used. So in these small towns, women, you know, everybody who could work had to work to produce food, to put it on the table. So women were active. They were out in the community.

This idea that they were sequestered in their homes comes from classical Greek, the very wealthy families back in, let's say, Aristotle's time would be, and perhaps some of the very wealthy could afford to not have to go out in public too much and kind of avoid the private jet instead of flying commercial kind of thing. But for the rest of us, Women are out there. So I think that it's important that people understand women are, they're just out there like women are today, shopping and traveling and working and all of that. Within the Jewish context, and it's important for our story, for the Christmas story, context, and it's important for our story, for the Christmas story, Jewish women knew scripture because they were either going to up to the temple where they would hear scripture read,

or they were in their synagogues and they, every week they would hear scripture and they would participate in the activities such as festivals and other things where they knew these stories. And you can tell that when you read Mary's Magnificat, that there's so many scriptural allusions in there. So the Jewish women knew the new scripture. So that would be something else. And the pagan women, the Gentile women, there's no scripture to know. pagan women, the Gentile women, there's no scripture to know. So, yeah, so that, I would say that's an important piece for us. And then I would say that at the time of Jesus, Jewish women could choose to follow particular teachers. We know that there were Jewish women who identified themselves as Pharisees,

maybe even that their husbands were Sadducees, but they followed the Pharisaic tradition. So women made those kinds of choices also. We know that women joined the Essenes, and not just that they joined because their husbands were there, but they themselves participated. In fact, in one case, you know, you have the purity codes in the Old Testament that regulate marital relations relative to a woman's menstrual cycle, cycle. And the woman was responsible in the Essene group to make sure that they didn't break those purity codes. She and her husband break those purity codes. And if he insisted, and so the laws were broken, it was incumbent upon her to let the leader of the community know that this happened. And I think we imagine that, you know, women had no self-expression. But in

that example, these women are equal members in the community and are as responsible for the purity of the community as their husbands are. So I say all of that to kind of drive home a point with Mary. to kind of drive home a point with Mary. For me, one of the things that kind of gets under my skin a little bit each year at this time when people talk about Mary and they talk about her as this poor unwed mother who's probably frightened and is going to be an outcast and all of that stuff. And I want to remind people that she is betrothed. So as Matthew says, she could be, Joseph was thinking he would divorce her, even though they haven't had the wedding day. The betrothal in her community was a very formal demonstration of intention. And so for her to break those vows by becoming pregnant was like breaking wedding vows. And that's why the language of divorce is there. But as long as no one else knows that she's pregnant, Joseph can accept the child, which he ultimately does, right? He accepts the child as his own. And so if Mary believes that

Joseph is going to believe her, or the angel tells him before she has a chance to tell him, then, I mean, she may face the shame, but she also may not at all. I mean, Joseph is supposedly a very nice, righteous man, and so it is very possible that she said yes to that Mary, godly woman that she is, was so excited about the fact that God is on the move and that the Messiah is coming, that she figured God's going to also take care of this with Joseph. And he does. And there's, yeah, because she's, you know, um, betrothed. So the reason I push this scenario so much is that I feel like by emphasizing she could be, you know, she's this poor on unwed mother who is going to face all this shame. None of us will want to raise our daughters to be a Mary. none of us will want to raise our daughters to be a Mary. We're not focusing on the fact that the angel Gabriel came to her and said,

here's God's plan for you. And her question back is very different, actually, than Zachariah's. If you look at his response to the angel Gabriel about the news of he and Elizabeth having a child with Mary, it's more of a technical question, right? She said, uh, sort of like, you know, I, I took eighth grade health and I kind of know how pregnancy happens and I'm, you know, you know, so a little bit more here, you know, but she, but she's saying, she's already thinking God's going to do this. So tell me how it's going to happen. And I want her faithfulness, I want her belief to be accented. And I feel like when we jump immediately to the poor unwed mother,

shameful, all that, we lose an opportunity to see Mary as a role model for us of trusting that God cares for his own. So anyway, I think that's an important piece of the story. Sorry, I have to ask this question. It's been in my mind. It's a little off the topic, but maybe you can give a quick response. There's that verse, because you said the women are out and about, they're in the marketplace, they're going to synagogue, they're listening. They have a lot more chutzpah maybe than some people realize. And the little I know about the other earlier Greek period, Aristotle day, it wasn't the case. And they kind of keep them locked up in the home. And like, it was not that at all. So this is more of a, the Greco, the Roman kind of period where, and even first century Judaism where women had more

agency. What is the meaning of that verse in Titus 2, where Paul instructs older women to teach younger women to be, is it busy at home, to be homebodies, to stay at home? Because that, I know that's off the topic of the Christmas story, but that's always, I've always wondered, are we reading that command through modern lands? Is there something in the word that doesn't say what we think it says there? Well, I, I, um, how I would answer that is by saying that in the Greco-Roman world, so the Hellenistic time period, not classical Greek, you know, with Aristotle, Plato, and all that, but in the Hellenistic period and the Roman period, there was an importance placed on the matron of the home, the woman who built up the home.

And some of that language is used in the pastorals. I don't have the Greek specifically in front of me right now of the passage that you talked about, in front of me right now of the passage that you talked about, but the, but overall this, there is this sense in which the woman is, I'll say in charge of the running of the household. Think maybe of like the woman in Proverbs 31, where she's got businesses, she's making, you know, she's making the clothes or seeing that the clothes are made. She's got businesses. She's making the clothes or seeing that the clothes are made. She just manages. It's like she's managing this fairly complex household where most things were, well, lots of things were made by the family that they used in their, they didn't purchase everything kind of like how we

in an industrialized society go out and purchase things. Many things were done in the home, but not everything. They would go out and buy baked bread instead of baking it themselves. But more things happened in the home. And if you think of, let's say, like Lydia in Acts 16, she likely had at least maybe retainers or relatives that lived with her. She had a household, and maybe she even was a slave owner or freed slaves that were within her home, and she had a business, Purple Dye. So that's kind of what I'm thinking that is in the backdrop there of these pastoral epistles. epistles. In these cities, you would have women that, I mean, not all women had means, right? Not all families had means, but some did. And in those cases, you were managing things. So that, I think, is probably what the focus is. Not in the sense of private and public. There's a lot of, and this is taking us further from the Christmas story.

I think it's exciting, new thinking about this public-private split that was so common in understanding the New Testament period, you know, even 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But newer research, I think, on that language is showing that the way we think of public and private just doesn't map onto their world. So that I think also allows us to reimagine how women could be both modest and speak in public, you know, and we used to say, well, that's not possible. But it is just because of the way they divide up their space and how they think about public and private. The Greek word, I just looked it up, is oikourgos. So the blend of oikos and aragon. It's a hotbox.

It's only used here in Titus. So a worker, something with work and home. So it's kind of a little bit, a little ambiguous exactly what Paul's saying there. It's almost, you do have to kind of draw on the kind of cultural context, right? To even understand what it is. It's just one word, you know.

But I know, I was raised in a very conservative context. I remember when my wife, before we had kids, when my wife went and got a job, some people were like, well, you're letting your wife work. I said, first of all, there's so many problems with the way that question's worded, but I'm like, we live in an 800 square foot apartment with no kids. What do you want her to do all day? Well, she needs to be working. Paul says she needs to be a worker at home. So this verse, I've always been kind of like, I just don't know if that's what's – I think we might have a modern understanding of what Paul is trying to say there. But that's helpful.

Oh, absolutely. And it presupposes a socioeconomic status that it just cannot be carried. There's always been women working. just cannot be carried. There's always been women working. I just watched Scrooge, you know, the Christmas Carol, which I love that story. You know, well, you've always had char women, you know, you've always had women that come in and work. I mean, not if you also have wealthier women that didn't do that kind of work. But we have to be careful when we translate Scripture and are imagining a house that we don't just impose our 21st century American socioeconomic cover onto that. Let's go back to the Christian story then. So Mary, do we have the age? I mean,

we always say she's a young teenager and Joseph might've been a bit older. Do you have any thoughts on the age of the two? How much do we know or don't know? Yeah, I think she's probably a mid teenager. I think that probably makes sense. I think the Romans knew that pregnancy in a young, younger woman, even if she's able to get pregnant, probably isn't going to be healthy for her, that it is better for a woman to be a little bit older. But, I mean, still in her teens is what I would think. So I don't know, 15, 16, something like that, 17 maybe. With Joseph, so much depends on whether you think he and Mary had a family together after Jesus or whether the brothers and sisters that are referred to as part of Jesus' family are actually what we would call stepbrothers and sisters from a marriage that Joseph had previously. That other scenario to me that Jesus had stepbrothers and sisters is certainly very plausible at this time.

is certainly very plausible at this time. There were so many marriages that ended in the death of a spouse for just so many reasons that today we don't even factor for us, but certainly could be the case, including dying in childbirth and shortly after that from complications with childbirth. So it may be that he had a couple of children with, with another wife and then she passed away. And so Mary is his second wife. And that, that just was not ever considered a problem. Although they did have a virtue back in this time where you married once and then didn't remarry after the death of your, especially a wife with her husband,

to kind of honor his memory. And so that idea of just being married once certainly continues in the early church. And that may be, frankly, when Paul says the leader, the deacon, the elder or overseer should be the husband of one wife. Some argue that maybe what that means is that if your wife passes on, just stay single. That would certainly, from a cultural standpoint, that could be a legitimate interpretation of that. I think also, yeah. Wouldn't we say, so if he did have other kids before Mary, we don't see anything about him packing up his family, going to Bethlehem or going down to Egypt or anything. I mean, it's argument from silence, right? I mean, it doesn't

say one way or another, but you do, it seems like you get the impression that there's no other kids around, around the birth narratives. I don't know. Yep. So whether those children just remained up in Nazareth with relatives while he and his new wife traveled to Bethlehem, maybe that's a possibility. The fact that he exits the story fairly quickly. Maybe that's a possibility. The fact that he exits the story fairly quickly, we don't hear about him as Jesus enters into his teens, that some argue he just passed away of old age. I'll put that kind of in scare quotes. People did live.

If you live, I mean, you could live even in your 70s, but it was rare. Right, right. You have that hemorrhaging woman who lived – it depends on the translation. She lived, what is it, 84 years as a widow? Or there's some rendering that she could almost be 105, I think, or something, which seems – Oh, is that in – No, it's Anna, Anna, Anna in the, uh, yeah. Anna in the, um, in the temple who was married for a little bit and then lived as a widow. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I mean,

84, 103, either of those are possible, but I mean, 103 is really stretching it, but you could live that long. And the fact that she stayed mainly in one spot and didn't face the challenges of childbirth, it's very possible that she lived eight decades. So going back to the Christmas story, so you have Matthew 1 and 2 and then Luke 1 and 2. Are women portrayed the same similarly or differently in these two accounts? It seems like, at least in Luke 1, I mean, obviously Mary is very front and center and speaks a lot. And the other men, Magnificat. Luke's? You know, yes.

Yeah. And I've also been very interested. Luke's you know yeah and go ahead I've also been very interested in Elizabeth I've wondered about

just what her her level of faith to my mind is remarkable. Um, she, she, she becomes pregnant and, and I don't know why she does that, but she, she's so, um,

when, I mean, she's the first person who testifies to Jesus Christ, right? Her baby, John leaps in her womb, but she is also somehow ready for receiving Mary. You know, when Mary, after she encounters Gabriel, she then goes to visit Elizabeth. And, I mean, we all know, we kind of know the story. Elizabeth greets Mary or hears her greeting and John leaps in her womb, but Elizabeth blesses her. Blessed is the child you'll bear. You are the mother of my Lord. It just, she's another woman that I don't think we focus enough on who has for years and years and years and years prayed that she would have a child. And then the Lord provides that child for her.

And yet where her main focus is, is not to say to Mary, look at me, look at what God did for me, but to say, you're the mother of my Lord. I mean, it just, I feel like both Mary and Elizabeth have grasped what God is doing in, in at least some way that, that I don't think people emphasize enough. And if we realize that these women were theologically astute, and we recognize that women in the New Testament could be theologically astute, I think it would help us to better understand and better appreciate the testimony of female disciples. We can all be Elizabeth, right? We can all, men and women, can pray that they would be like Elizabeth who recognizes what the Spirit of God is doing and being self-aware enough to then verbalize that.

I've never noticed that. I mean, yeah, she's got so much to celebrate and she can be so excited about her own kid, but she's just so solely fixed on the birth of Jesus in the midst of her own kind of like miracle baby. Wow. I've always been so impressed with the level of scripture that just saturates Mary's Magnificat. So for those who don't know, the Magnificat is the name given to Mary's song she sings, if you want to call it a song.

What is it? A poem, song, whatever or exclamation in response to greeting elizabeth so this is luke chapter 1 46 to 55 um i mean it's saturated with scripture is this i mean i know and i know it's it's it's hard like how much is luke involved in the reworking and how much is the original like if we were there 2 000 years ago but um do you have any thoughts on that in particular like the relationship between what mary said,000 years ago. But do you have any thoughts on that in particular, like the relationship between what Mary said 2,000 years ago and Luke's reworking? Is that a – I mean, I know it's kind of a complicated conversation.

Or should we like think like, no, Mary just had so much Scripture in her heart like this, it just came out when she was excited about the news of her baby? Well, I think it is plausible that it's the latter. That's in a way the case that I'm trying to make, that the way that Elizabeth sets this up, blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. There's this blessing, and then Mary says, my soul glorifies the Lord. These are two women who have been touched in an incredibly special way by the Holy Spirit. And I would argue that Elizabeth's pregnancy is almost as miraculous. It's not the same because it does happen through her husband, but her husband's also amazed. And so this is an

amazing miracle that has happened. And then obviously it's a unique miracle that has happened with Mary. Both these women, I mean, just if we just stop and think about for several months now, each of these women have been able to think about the fact that the Holy Spirit touched their lives in ways that are profoundly physical. I don't know if either of them have morning sickness, for example. Scripture doesn't tell us. But I don't know if each time they throw up, they think, praise God, I have a life in me. You know what I'm saying? Their whole body is changing. Physically, they every day know that they're pregnant, and it's a physical reminder of this spiritual reality that has touched them. So if Mary, which we're

led to believe is a religious, religiously attuned person, you know, would have picked up scripture being read each and every synagogue since the time, each and every Sabbath at synagogue from the, you know, time she could, you know, remember. I mean, it just, it's always been that and going up to the Jerusalem and the festivals and hearing scripture read and songs being sung in a in a culture where there's this is a literate culture, but not everyone is literate. So there's a lot of orality to this, a lot of singing, putting scripture to a cadence. to a cadence, I can totally believe that she could produce something like this. Because that's how they're going to remember scripture. That's how they're going to meditate on it.

So I don't think Luke has to do a whole lot. I think to me it's a believable presentation of a disciple. And a teenager. I'm going to say she is 15. And again, it's not like she sat down and spent a couple hours crafting a poem and looking up verses. She doesn't own a – there's no Bibles back then, right? I mean there's the scroll at the synagogue that she hears. She's probably not literate, right? I mean, she probably most likely wouldn't have been literate.

So this is all audible, just absorbing of going to – absorbing when she has to be faithful of even going to synagogue. At 15, she's absorbing this. And it's all just strung together. I mean, she's quoting – I have it in my references here. I mean, a lot from like first Samuel, right? There's a, there's a correlation here between Hannah in first Samuel two and Mary, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? That seems to be very intentional that these two characters seem to be playing off of each other. At least Mary is, is she,

is Mary like an extension of Hannah? Does, or yeah, what's, what's the, how should we understand these two stories? i mean it could be she could be thinking about uh samuel and the story of samuel that eventually leads to king david um and hannah's um part of hannah's story is that she bears the son for God and is dedicated to God. So there may be some connecting points that way. You know, it may reveal to us that Hannah's song, like Miriam's song, were very much a part, I don't know, this speculation of my part, but did the early Jewish communities, at least in some places, use these songs by Hannah and by Miriam to worship? And if so, then, you know, it's, Mary would have heard these. And also what she's saying is, you know, God performing mighty deeds. Yeah, I mean, you would hear that in psalm after psalm after psalm. Those are basic themes that would have been part of her world.

So she wouldn't have needed to read scripture. And it is remarkable that at 15 she knew this. And maybe she's just a wonderfully remarkable woman who is spiritually sensitive. I know I sound like a broken record in saying that. spiritually sensitive. I know I sound like, you know, a broken record in saying that, but so, so often, I think people are surprised at women, both in the Bible and later, who, who want to study theology, or are, you know what I mean, that are intellectually stimulated by the conversations in theology and biblical studies. It just kind of, I think of that with the Samaritan woman and how she gets into a conversation with Jesus about where is the true holy site, which is a live theological question at that time and a practical question at that time. And some interpreters say, well,

she's just trying to divert Jesus's attention. And, and the fact that he answers her question and even more answers it with this idea that God will be worshiped in spirit and in truth, which is an amazing concept. I mean, that's not to us so much now, but back in the ancient world where people were still doing law, they were doing animal sacrifices in sacred spaces. That's just a remarkably advanced theological concept. And he says it to her, assuming, I think, that she would pick up at least some aspect of it. would pick up at least some aspect of it. And people, by saying, oh, well, you know, she's trying to divert Jesus's attention, suggests to me they just can't imagine that a woman would have real deep theological questions and would want to talk with a prophet about them. So, yeah,

so I think Mary's song, and she's a precocious one. She's the precocious one in the grade school Sunday schools, you know? She's the one that asks the questions. Well, then you also have like Mary and Martha, Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, right? Which is a posture of a student of a rabbi, right? Like she's a theology student is kind of the picture there. Since you mentioned the woman at the well, I often hear people refer to her as kind of like an immoral woman. You know, she's just going from man to man to man to man. And now she's shacking up with some guy that she's not married to. But that again, did that happen back then? I mean, it seems like, I don't know, is she a victim of being taken advantage of by several men or is she sexually immoral?

Like how should we understand her character in that story? Yeah, I don't think she's sexually immoral. I think that, first of all, women could not divorce their husband. A woman had to have a guardian represent them in court. So while she might say, I'd like to get a divorce, she would need to have a relative or somebody else, but a guardian that would go with her and sign the document for divorce. That's why in the gospels, Jesus might say a man should not divorce his wife and a woman should not separate from her husband because she can't on her own complete a divorce, that legal

process she can't do on her own. So I don't think she divorced five times. I can't imagine, and I don't think she was barren. And so these men, unless there were a lot of very confident men in this American town who thought, a lot of very confident men in this Samaritan town who thought, wait, let me take a chance. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that the issue was that. I think as we see even like in the story of Ruth in ancient times, tragedy could strike a family with a lot of deaths. tragedy could strike a family with a lot of deaths. And so I could imagine this woman having maybe even three husbands die. And to have one, there could be divorce in this, maybe.

It's hard, we don't have a lot of information about how the Samaritans handled their marriage practices compared to the Gentiles broadly and the Jews. So maybe there was a divorce. Maybe she was divorced once. But I can't imagine for immorality because it would be very odd for another man then to divorce a woman who had been accused of adultery. I don't think you'd find that much at all. So assuming that she was always in this village, I think she experienced a lot of tragedy in her life. We have lots of, not lots, but we have examples of people being married three times because, you know, two husbands die early on. I'm thinking it's one of Herod the Great's granddaughters. She was married, you know, mid-teens and he died. She

remarried, he died. And so by the time she's in her early to mid-20s, she's married a third time. So it's very possible for something like that to happen with a Samaritan woman. The reason that – so anyway, I could imagine even five husbands dying is kind of an amazing thing, but it's – yeah, it's an amazing thing, but it could happen in our physical universe. It's the, you're living with a man now that's not your husband, that is the point of contention. And I would argue she could be a second wife. The person she's with now may also have, also be married. be polygamy, which is not recognized by the Romans, but we do seem to have an example of a Jewish polygamous relationship in the second century, early second century. So that could be, and of course, Herod the Great had many wives, but just the average person, we have an example of that. And then and it may be that she's a concubine, which is a technical kind of situation in the Greco-Roman world where the husband couldn't couldn't have a regular sort of marriage for a variety of social reasons. And so in that set up a concubine relationship where

the woman could be, if she had sex with another man, be accused of adultery, but as a concubine, she didn't inherit the same way. Her children wouldn't inherit the same way. So it's possible that, that the Samaritan woman is in this situation. So kind of protected under a man's roof, but not if they had any children, those children wouldn't inherit, you know, because she's in the secondary category of concubine. So I can kind of, I mean, those are two readily available alternatives that are not God's best. Clearly Jesus teaches about what's God's best in marriage, but are not, are not immoral in the eyes of the community. And I have to say that it's in the eyes of the community that for me, I just can't believe that

she is an immoral woman. When Jesus tells her her history, which is a remarkable history, right? Five husbands. You just don't guess that, right? It's clear he's a prophet, and that's what she says. You're a prophet. So then they talk, and he gives her this rich theology. When she goes back to her town, they all believe, and they don't see a changed woman. It's not like the Gerasene demoniac who's now in his right mind, and they all see, wow, something really changed. They believe her. They believe her because of her testimony. And her testimony is he told me everything I ever did. And for women in the ancient world, you can see it on tombstones, who they were married to and what children they had very much identifies them compared to for men, sometimes their occupation will also be listed.

So Jesus identified her, knew her in that way that is a typical way of women being identified then. But she has such a remarkable history, Jesus couldn't just guess that. And that's why she says he's a prophet. So they believe, because of her testimony, and that says to me, they knew her as a moral person, a religious seeker, someone who was very focused on understanding the Bible. Because the Samaritans used the first five books of Moses. They just understood them differently than the Jews. But they at least knew the basic story, right? They would say, oh, we're connected with the ancient Israelites.

We're right, you know? And so she was interested in that. And the townspeople believed her. And then they go out and they want to talk with Jesus more. And they say, you know, now that we've heard him, we really believe, but, you know, even more. And they call Jesus the savior of the world. And they call Jesus the Savior of the world. And that's a title that we rarely see. But it's given to him in part based on her testimony. And I think that their testimony, Savior of the world, I think encapsulates what he was saying to her that in the future, those who worship God will worship him in spirit and in truth.

And so she was able to communicate that cosmic aspect of Jesus's message to her. And they believe. And I just don't think, I just can't imagine any town then or now that would have that kind of belief response to someone that they believed was immoral. Yeah, especially in that day and age. If she was a sexually promiscuous person, they wouldn't have trusted her testimony. So that makes total sense with the five husbands that she, just given the cultural dynamics, she most likely was not going around divorcing. Like that's just not possible. So she is a victim. Then the guy she's living with,

even if she is a concubine or a second wife in that culture, right? I mean, she kind of needs to get married to be able to survive. I'm sure people probably thought she was cursed. I mean, if all these husbands keep dying, I'm thinking like Genesis 38, you know, remixed. So there's so much victimhood that saturates her story.

The one option you didn't mention is like, sorry, could she just be shacking up with a guy that the guy she's now living with? Just like neither of them are married. Or was that not really a thing back then? That is certainly, no, I mean, it certainly is possible that she is doing that. One other point, when you mentioned back in Genesis 38, it's a great marriage, so it may be that the man that she's with now is in some way a relative of her previous husband, but he is not honoring her.

Kind of like, you know, before Boaz, there was someone that was that kinsman redeemer and said, well, no, I'm happy to take Ruth's family land, but I really don't want her. You know, and then Boaz accepts her and his family responsibilities in that. But I have no idea if the Samaritans followed that practice at all. But that could also be that she's caught in that kind of web of customs that isn't honoring the relationship in the full sense as Jesus means it. If they are, the other thing that people need to realize today is that the state did not give a marriage certificate. In the ancient world, you just said you're married and you had a wedding. And the documentation around that, if any, was a dowry agreement. That was the thing you could take to court. And so, and you know, to write a dowry

meant you had money. So the woman brought money into the marriage and the husband could use the dowry amount, but the wife may have other money that's hers. So not all of her money gets turned over to the husband. The husband only has the dowry money. And if he divorces her without cause, that is like if she committed adultery, all bets are off. But if he just decides, I don't want you anymore, I want somebody else, he has to give her back all of the dowry. So that's all written up in these dowry documents. So it may be that a couple stays together, doesn't have money for a wedding, but then when their child is born, they create a document. And in that document, it indicates that they had been

together for a while, but I don't know that we would call it cohabitation in the way that we think of it today. It may be just that they are documenting what the society already knew and honored and affirmed, but now they're documenting it because they've had a child and so there might be some money and inheritance involved. To me, I go back to Jesus teaches what marriage is, that the two become one flesh. A man and a woman become one flesh, and that's ideal. And he teaches his disciples that that should be a lifelong partnership. And they're a bit surprised and reluctant to commit themselves to a woman who will eventually grow old. But that's Jesus's ideal. And so I'm always thinking of that when he says, the one you're with now is not your husband. remembering how he defines husband, which is God's best and isn't always expressed in culture in those same high standards.

Wow. Gosh. You must cringe when you go to church up. And, you know, it just the theme of, you know,'re women on the page, they never escape the shame of the sexual sin. And so we lose them as possible role models. And I also think that those women are not being judged for sexual sins. Tamar is trying to have a child to honor her husband, and it's Judah that is wrong. Judah says, you are more righteous than me. In fact, this is a turning point in Judah's life. He had been fleeing his family. He's the guy who sold his brother. This is a turning point for him, and he starts to go back onto the right path, and we see how, she owned an inn. Lots of ungodly things happened there. But Rahab is the one that prophesied that God will conquer the land, not the spies. And I find it interesting. People focus a lot on her immorality. And then they just skim right over the issue that the spies went to her house.

Of course not to engage in any kind of immorality. I think, well, how are you so sure about that? They go to the inn of a prostitute. Well, also in that culture, in a Canaanite culture, we have to ask a deeper question. You know, this whole idea that like women become prostitutes because they're sexually promiscuous or something like this is this is a down and out like what's the backstory to Rahab that would send her down that path I mean again not to excuse just just sexual you shouldn't be a prostitute okay she's having sex with guys that aren't she's not married to but she has to have a lot of victimhood built into that story to get her to that place right i mean that's that's a valid

assumption oh yeah oh oh yeah so many of the slaves in the first century um are i, so many of the slaves were put out as prostitutes. And any slave in the first century was available to their owner and whoever their owner chose to make them available to. And, you know, in every church congregation, you're going to have slaves, right? So, I mean, anyway, that would take as far afield to kind of ponder that sort of stuff. But with Rahab, she is the one that testifies to what God will do. And it's not until the end of the story that the spies, when they return to Joshua proclaim basically what Rahab had said over them. And then, you know, with Ruth, that's a beautiful story. And Ruth uses agency, both Ruth and Naomi, and present the question to Boaz, will you serve as our kinsman redeemer? And he praises Ruth. So this

idea that she's trying to be seductive on a threshing floor, that's not what he sees. That's not what the text says. He doesn't read her actions that way. He sees it as she's giving me information and she's doing it in a way and in a space where if I say no, neither of us are shamed, you know, as opposed to out of the, of the marketplace the next day, you know, Boaz, will you marry me? Ah, it's a bit awkward. So, yeah. Um, and then, um, with Bathsheba, you know, she's doing a menstrual purity rite of cleansing. She's not in a jacuzzi. Water was scarce, as you know, at that time.

So we don't want to imagine her just splashing around somewhere. We don't know whether she has clothes on or not as she's performing this right. What we do know at the beginning of that story is that David's not supposed to be there. And we know at the end of the story, when Nathan condemns him, he condemns just David for taking another man's ewe lamb. The man had everything, the rich man had everything, but he took what didn't belong to him. And that's the sin. So if we follow the biblical text, Bathsheba is sinned against, but she is not the one that is trying to entice another man or is actively looking to commit adultery. She is taken by the king and, um, and, and he, um, yeah, he, he commits a crime. So you think she doesn't have as much

agency in that story? I mean, here you have the king who is demanding her basically. It's not like he's, he's not trying to woo her in in a consensual kind of relationship right he's like i i'm the king i'm going to sleep with you is that how we should understand it more like a power rape from somebody of a higher status because she doesn't have a lot i don't think she speaks in the story does she she's just very much like an object of like even the story it makes her out to be something, somebody that was taken by somebody of power. Yes, that's right. And the only things that she indicates to David is I'm pregnant. And so the menstrual pure, the note about menstrual purity rights makes it clear to the reader that this baby will be David's.

But I think it also helps us understand what this bathing is. And, you know, we don't know what kind of bath this looked like. We do know that water was limited. We don't know is she trying to be under some kind of covering, but the angle is such that he can see. I mean, it's just, I know people can get tripped up by he saw her bathing, but we just, the story itself doesn't lay blame there. It lays blame on David. And so that's what we have to take later when she's his wife and when she is

trying to secure the throne for Solomon, we see her as making very deliberate choices to put her son forward. But I don't think we want to read back into the event of when she first was brought to david that somehow she manipulated that scene as well she's not manipulating later she's trying to put her son on the throne which is a pretty normal thing that people did a lot of the stuff that i'm sharing with you now, I want to just let your listeners know, a lot of this is in Anne Clement's book, Mothers on the Margins. It's just such an excellent book. She just really digs into each of these women and says, let's look at them in relation to key themes that we find throughout Matthew's gospel. And I love that because that brings Mary in. You know,

some people say these four women in the genealogy are Gentiles. That's what we want to hold together. And that, of course, makes Mary separate. But Bathsheba could be Jewish and just married to a Hittite. It's not clear with that. The first three are definitely Canaanites. They're pagans. But that may not be, well, it may be part of the theme that Matthew is drawing out because at the end he does ask that the disciples take the word to the ends of the earth. So that is a theme. But there's also a theme of righteousness throughout Matthew, and that's what Judah calls Tamar. You're more righteous than me. So the characteristics like loyalty and faithfulness that you see with Ruth, you know, that's Jesus's call for discipleship. So there's a lot that can be seen in these women as modeling important discipleship characteristics. And we miss all

that if we're just going to focus on, oh, they had a sexual sin, which in a lot of cases I don't think is an accurate reading. But even beyond that, let's not miss their discipleship modeling. Lynn, we're going to have to wrap things up. Can you give us, go back to the Christmas story, just a real quick, like, okay, in light of all this, kind of, especially digging into a lot of the cultural backdrop, the historical backdrop, how should we kind of read the Christmas story, especially as it pertains to, you know, the agency of women that surround it? Yeah, wow. yeah wow um i would like for people to read the christmas story and the female characters

as though these women are teaching us how to be faithful followers of god that's good that's good they're not they're not just on the margins of the story they're i mean the primary kind of like theologians of this, especially in Luke 1, especially. Well, thanks so much, Lynn, for your time. And I could just talk. You're like a walking commentary. I want to call you up when I'm doing my Bible reading in the morning and just like peppery with questions. But thanks so much for giving your time and for giving us such amazing insights. And I know I think a lot of the Christian leaders and pastors listening, hopefully the next time we preach on Matthew 1 or John 4, Luke 2, we'll pay closer attention to the historical context.

So thank you for that. Appreciate it. Thank you, Preston. It's always great to talk with you. And any time that you want to just do New Testament stuff. Oh, man. All right. I'll take you up on that.

Thanks, Lynn. Appreciate it. Great. Thank you.