War, Women and God's Promises the Old Testament | Trinity Talks Podcast

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode

of Trinity Talks. My name is Kyla. My name is

Britton. And we are here to talk about the Old

Testament, which is... a section of the Bible

that a lot of Christians have questions about,

maybe don't always know what to do with it or

how to read it well, which is why I am so excited

to have a professor of Old Testament with us

today. So Dr. Marion Taylor is professor of Old

Testament at Wycliffe College and also focuses

her research on uncovering forgotten women interpreters

of the Bible. So thank you for joining us, Marion.

You're welcome. I'm glad to be here. Yeah. So

maybe we'll start by just getting to know your

particular interest a little bit more. Like what

made you want to study the Old Testament and

like make a career of that? Well, I had never

planned to do that. So my first year of university

at the University of Toronto, I took a course

in Old Testament. I was a young Christian. I

wanted to know more about the Bible. I wanted

to know the stories of the Old Testament as related

to my faith. So I signed up for a course in Near

Eastern Studies on the Old Testament. And as

it happened, the Old Testament professor, he

had a lot of anger toward the church and anger

toward the Bible. And I remember the first day

he said, forget everything you learned in Sunday

school, I'm going to teach you how to read the

Bible. Okay. And what his approach to the Bible,

he was in terms of the spectrum of opinion, he

would be left of left. And so his emphasis was

not on the final shape of the Bible, but on the

prehistory and theories of composition. So that

course raised all kinds of questions for me,

right? And I went to the youth minister at church

and said, I had some questions and he said, why

are you taking that course? That was not helpful

for me because already I had questions and I

had my faith and I had my intellect and I needed

a way to bring them together. And in one of the

papers I wrote in that course on Proverbs, we

had to compare the Egyptian Proverbs and the

Hebrew Proverbs in the Book of Proverbs. There's

a section that's quite parallel. And I said,

well, I didn't know the original languages. I

couldn't really do this very careful comparison.

And he said, why don't you learn them? Sure.

I will. So then I started learning. I learned

Greek and Hebrew. And so I was hooked, right?

So I was never planning to make this a career

choice. I just did it for me. Like I needed to

figure this out. Yeah. And then as I went further,

I had a very bad teacher in Old Testament. He

was an older guy and he had lost. He just said,

read my book. I thought, that's no way to teach

the Bible. I had questions. I wanted the classroom

to be something that was engaging, that answered

my real questions. Over time, I thought, I would

love to be a teacher. That's kind of my journey.

It was a faith journey, an academic journey.

It wed them together. And I had a really good

mentor when I was doing my MDiv. And he really

encouraged me to go on and to go and study at

Yale University, where I was privileged to study

with Brevard Childs, who had would develop this

canonical approach, like reading the Bible, like

this is the church's book, let's read it in its

final form. And that was a very helpful moment

for me in terms of the priority is the final

shape of the text. You know, you can have theories

about the composition, but it's the final text

that the church listens to. And so that was a

groundbreaking experience for me, and then I

came back to Toronto and had been teaching at

Wycliffe. So that's my journey. Yeah, no, that's

great. It's really interesting. I think that

mirrors a lot of people's journeys in some sense

to seminary, is that there's this sense in which

I want to bring my faith and my reason together,

right? And there's not always space to do that

in the local church context. seminary sort of

gives you that space, right? There's also like

that intimidation I think that a lot of Christians

feel when they, especially in the Old Testament,

where they don't, like they see those big challenges

and where the history and the complexity of it

and they just shy away from it. So we'll read

the teachings of Jesus, but we won't touch what

was said before or the history of the body throughout

the Old Testament to the new. Yeah, I'm curious

to, like, there's an importance to it though.

We need to know the full story, like the Bible

in its entirety, as you mentioned before. So

why do you think it's important for Christians

today to have that good understanding of the

Old Testament? Yeah, that's a great question.

I think you can't really understand the New Testament

and Jesus, the significance of Jesus' life and

death and resurrection without knowing the Old

Testament because In the Old Testament, that's

where you get not only frequent, like in the

New Testament, the Old Testament is frequently

quoted, right? But also these stories about atonement

and sacrifice, the idea of the Lamb of God. I

mean, so you're teaching Sunday school to teenagers

and say, yeah, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes

away the sins of the world of anything. the Lamb

of God. What is that, right? So you need to read,

like, I wouldn't say go and read Leviticus, that

exciting book of Leviticus, but the first seven

chapters talk about sacrifice and atonement,

right, and the idea of, you know, putting your

hands on an animal that is sacrificed and the

transference of sin to something else or the

idea like they had the concept of the scapegoat

in the book of Leviticus right that on the day

of atonement one goat was sacrificed another

was sent into the wilderness and that one that

was sent into the wilderness sacrificial symbolically

is like the carrying away of sin so if you have

these pictures in your mind then it helps you

understand the significance of Jesus' death,

because he was the Lamb of God. He does take

away our sin. And so all these stories about

sacrifice are helpful to understand the sacrifice

of Jesus. But then there are other things like

in the book of Isaiah, in chapters 52 and 53,

you have this beautiful picture of a suffering

servant. and the early church picked up on that

and they read those chapters and said this is

Jesus. So Jesus as Israel experienced suffering

and exile and they had the prophets talked about

a future servant that would suffer and we see

that fulfilled in Jesus. So when you see Jesus

suffering and you know the idea of the prediction

of the suffering servant it just gives it's like

instead of watching the television in black and

white, it's in full color. It's like, oh, I get

this, right? And then the early church also,

and even certainly within Judaism, you saw types,

like a person, place, or thing in the Old Testament

anticipates another person, place, or thing,

and we call it typology. When so when you read

the stories in the Old Testament like the story

of Joseph and his brothers, right? You know Joseph

was the young bratty kid You know who had dreams

and told his brothers about them and they thought

who is this? You know bratty brother. Yeah his

life story took like he sold by his brothers

to Egypt and he he's betrayed by his brothers

and he suffers but then he is exalted this to

the second in command in Egypt and actually saves

people from famine and so when people read the

story of Joseph they say Jesus was also betrayed

suffered and exalted and brought salvation in

a different way sure but Joseph becomes a type

so all these stories in the Old Testament when

they can be read, not all of them, but some of

them are, anticipate things we see in the New

Testament. I mean, there are some striking stories,

like in the wilderness, in Numbers, we read about

the bronze serpent that was lifted up and it

healed those bitten by serpents. And that has

all, in art, they often. put the bronze serpent

up on the stick and Jesus on the cross, because

Jesus was lifted up to bring eternal life, right?

So typology is another way of old and new linking

together. In the past, people went overboard

with that. Yeah, it's hyper typers, right? They

type in every color, number, you know, or an

allegory. So I'm really careful about overdoing

that. Sure. But if you can see the stories pointing

ahead, that's another way of saying, actually,

the Old Testament is really important. For me,

the Old Testament is so real. It's earthy, it's

bloody, it's family tension and dynamics. And

it's like, wow, this is the grit of real life.

And so the stories of the Old Testament remind

us that, you know, it's not all about goody -goody

two -shoes. Life is real and people suffer. And

that's why, you know, the book of Psalms, when

the Gideons used to produce the little Bibles,

it would be the New Testament and the Psalms,

right? That's significant because you don't need

to know Old Testament history to read the Psalms.

I mean, thousands of years old, right? The human

experience has not changed. We suffer, we question,

where are you God? Or why is this bad thing happening

to me? And the laments of the psalmist are so

powerful, they speak today. So last year I taught

a course on the Psalms and it was a transforming

experience. experience for me because I for the

first time I asked students to listen to the

whole book of Psalms twice. Once in whatever

language in your mother tongue or in the voice

listening to her Bible which is a woman reading

it and and then in you know you could have a

a deep male voice reading it or somebody with

an accent. And that experience of reading the

Psalms for five hours actually transformed the

lives of my students. One woman who had childhood

leukemia and suffered greatly as a child and

was in a Christian family, I mean, she survived

the experience, but she was never allowed to

acknowledge the pain of it all, right? And the

pain of a later double mastectomy and things

like that. The faith as she had experienced it

didn't allow her to lament or complain or get

mad at God. When she said she started hearing

a woman read the Psalms, and when she heard a

woman's voice, Speaking the laments my god my

god. Where are you? Why have you forsaken me?

She said it wasn't her voice That was me and

for the first time in her life. She was not like

probably in her 40s. She said I Could speak to

God I could tell God what was really going on

in my life and it changed my life Yeah, so the

Old Testament is God's Word beak and God's Word

keeps speaking to us So that's not to say that

it doesn't have its challenges. And there are

lots of them. There are lots of them. But there's

also a very, like, you don't need all that background

to read the songs. Right. I mean, you come to

the ones like, you know, smash those babies heads

against the rock. Right. Yeah. But you know,

but when you read it in light of these were babble,

they were israelites in the exile whose children

had been hurt who like who were slaves and you

think yeah i could see wanting experiencing that

feeling sure the souls are never allowed to say

okay i am gonna smash your baby right yeah right

it's like god you deal with the enemy right it's

all their vengeance is not allowed on the person

but you have to ask god to God, you deal with

this problem. It's too big for me. Sure. Yeah.

So I don't know. The Old Testament for me, I

love. It's not just a book of rules, right? Yeah.

It's relevant. It's not too hard to understand.

And I think today we have more resources at our

fingertips to help us read the Bible than any

other generation. I mean, Most of us are literate

for one thing, right? And most Christians throughout

history only heard the Bible, allowed to read

the church, right? But we can read it. And we

have things like the Bible Project, right? Which

is free. You just Google Bible Project. You want

to read about the book. Joshua gives you an overview,

talks about issues. So... It's more accessible

now than ever before. For sure. That's what I

would say. Just thinking about all that you shared

and just the complexity of it. I feel like one

of the reasons why we're so hesitant or we kind

of toss the Old Testament away is because we're,

as Christians and as human beings, we're scared

to reflect on our own humanness, our own frailty

or... the possibility that we could cause harm,

some of the messiness within the Old Testament

that folks don't want to get into. It's still

very alive in the New Testament, but we tend

to find very convenient ways to kind of brush

that off. But there is this humanity in the Old

Testament. Like we see people fail. We see people

do things that today we'd find questionable.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But that's a part of our

humanity. It's a part of the global story. We

can't run away from it, especially in light of

the things that we see in today's world. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it gives us this

lens in which we can view all of that and say,

God is still sovereign. God is still doing something.

through all of the broken messiness, right? Right.

And so we can't like discount ourselves. Yeah.

Oh, and there are things in the Old Testament

that are highly problematic and disconcerting,

right? How women are portrayed, right? In the

Old Testament is deeply disturbing. Not all of

the women or all of the passages, but there are

some passages, like stories about the abuse of

women that are what Phyllis Tribble called texts

of terror, right? But if we wrestle with those

texts, it's very helpful actually, because it's

like we have those stories today, right? And

this is not how women should be treated, right?

And, you know, I just, we were studying the story

of David, the life of David, right? So his rise

to power to be king was he was a good guy, right?

He had time and opportunities to kill Saul, but

he didn't. But then, you know, his demise, he

saw Bathsheba bathing and said, I want that woman

to find out who she is. Right. And then she's

married. Oh, doesn't matter. I want her anyway.

Like, and so he he I would arguably you know,

there's different opinions on it, like he essentially

raped a married woman, she became pregnant, and

then he murdered the husband, right? Then you

read the demise of David. David asked for forgiveness,

and God granted him forgiveness, but the damage

was done. And you read the lives of David's children.

and they repeated this kind of behavior and murder

and murder brother like the the brokenness of

the family after that it's like okay i mean sin

has its consequences and the the text never uh

you know so we see the the how how bad his decisions

were right and and the narrator presents it as

you know There's David sitting on, you know,

when in the fall of the year, when kings go out

to war, why isn't David out there with his buddies,

right? Leading, leading. But he's, it's like,

I'm king, I can do anything. So we see this repeated

in history, right? Leaders who take advantage

of, I'm in power, I can do and have it, and then

abuse comes. And so those gritty, gritty stories

are really important. to embrace and talk about

and say, this is not acceptable, right? This

cannot happen again, but it happens over and

over again. For sure. But at least as a church

community, we can say, no, this is sin, this

is wrong. Right, yeah, it's reminding me. So

I mean, we see justice and mercy of God, such

character in the Old Testament. It's like when

you read You know, for me, when I was a, well,

I'm still a mother, but when my kids were little

and I was reading in Isaiah, like, God is like

a mother who cannot forget her nursing child.

And I thought, yeah, when I was nursing my children,

like, if you forget your kid, you have engorged

breasts, right? So it's like, could I forget

my child? No, but some mothers do. Right? But

God is like a nurse. God will not forget. God

loves beyond human love. And the attachment of

a mother child is so strong. It just says, God

loves you more than this. Right? So there are

so how I mean, you get Jesus love in the New

Testament, but the bigger picture, the full picture

of God's character is revealed in the Old Testament

through all these stories that give us a picture

of who we are as humans and the sinfulness and

the darkness of our souls, kind of, and then

the kind of openness and love and liberation

we find in Christ, right? For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, we sort of touched around this, but

I think a lot of Christians... just have no idea

how to approach the Old Testament and how to

sort of read through it. So like, are there some

common challenges that you think, you know, your

students or Christians face and maybe some tips

for overcoming that? Sure. I mean, people usually

get bogged down in certain books of the Bible.

Genesis is a great read, right? Great stories.

like you can read Genesis and I get through it

pretty well right yeah and Exodus um I mean there

is very important stories in Exodus yeah but

when you get to the legal material people kind

of get what is this yeah yeah you know and um

yeah so so I think I you know you could have

a there are reading plans to go through the whole

Bible but parts that are harder to read than

others. So I would read. Well, what I would recommend,

first of all, is look at the Bible projects,

little video, five minute video on how to read

narrative, how to read plots, how to read characters,

right? And though there are three little videos

on how to read, and they're beautiful and they're

accurate. And if you're reading the stories looking

for the plot, the high point, what the narrator

says, who's described. Like we often don't know

what the people look like. But Absalom is told

he has long hair. Why do we know that? Well,

the hair gets caught in a tree and he dies. So

being attuned to what the narrator is saying

is really helpful in this story. So I would think...

Read with somebody who has some experience. So

read the narrative story line. So you get the

great narrative, right? And you understand the

creation and the fall and the God choosing a

family and the family narrative and then the

Exodus story and then the wilderness wanderings

in numbers. And then you get to the end of Deuteronomy

and. you know, Moses at the end, he's ready to

die, he can't get into, like God is saying, you

can't go into the promised land, but he looks

in hope. So like if you've got a good grasp of

that, the primary, some people call it the primary

history, that you know, that really helps you.

There's a woman who writes a book on reading

the Bible, it talks about the Bible is like your

messy closet, you have all these shoes everywhere,

you need to figure out who Abraham comes before

Isaiah, you know, he kind of helps to get a storyline.

And then to read different narrative, like to

know that the Bible isn't on a magic book, right?

You don't open it up and get find your met. Oh,

God is saying this to me today, right? No wealth

condition of your flocks. Well, I don't have

any sheep. So yeah, and I would read the Psalms,

Proverbs. quite fun to read because they're often

not all of them like chapters one to nine is

kind of a narrative but then they're pithy statements

right so yeah i mean there there are parts that

that are key that i would read first sure and

read along with somebody like read in a group

like have a reading group that you can kind of

ask questions to yeah But you will come to stories

that are like, oh my gosh, like the big one,

the elephant in the room is the killing of the

Canaanites, right? What the heck do we do with

God seeming to say, you know, I'm giving you

this land, you go in and take them out, right?

And in today's, we know a lot about genocide

and taking property that doesn't belong to you.

So how can this be right? I've done a lot of

work on 19th century women interpreters of Joshua.

My colleague, Cristiana DeGroote at Calvin and

I wrote a piece last summer on 19th century women

who wrote on the book of Joshua. That was really

interesting to see how our Anglican foremothers

dealt with the killing of the Canaanites. How

did they deal with it? Well, the interesting

ones are children's stories, right? And they

had their kids, the kids knew all these stories,

but they would portray the Canaanites and their

children as they're all really wicked people,

right? And they needed to be destroyed. And then

they, like, I would never do this with a child

today, but then they would say, you know, hey

Johnny, like you have to be a good boy and not

be wicked or else you're going to be punished.

Some of them dealt with that. It's very hard

to read these very moralizing stories based on

Joshua for children. Other people and the majority,

like some people recognized the darkness of this

and wrestled deeply with the moral issues about

killing and genocide. And others recognized that

you could read the story on a different level

as a type of wrestling through evil, like wrestling

with the enemy. We have enemies, we need to kill

our enemies. One of my favorite children, well,

she wrote for teenagers, Eddie Wissnan. You know

the story in Judges when J .L. kills Sisera.

Sisera is an enemy and he ends up in her tent

and anyway he goes to sleep and then she gets

a tent peg and puts it right through his head

with a hammer. I mean, that's an awful story

in some ways. And often they said, oh, it's not

good for a woman to be a murderer like this and

kill somebody. Yes, as if a man could be a murderer

and that would be fine. Yeah, that would be fine.

How could a woman do that? But teaching teenagers,

she made the story all about we all have enemies

and you need to put the tent peg in your enemy.

and for her it was drinking like you teenage

girls don't the enemy of alcohol right and or

i thought wow alcohol isn't even in the story

right right but that's how many earlier interpreters

dealt with some of these stories they they use

them as a um a platform for talking about who

are our spiritual enemies we need to put our

spiritual enemies to death. So the Canaanites

became sin. So that's how the church often dealt

with it. More recently, and here I'll put a plug

in to Canadians who've written a book called

Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric. War in the Old

Testament. Gordon Oste and William Webb, they're

both in Southern Ontario. Gordon has taught at

Wycliffe. He's a Wycliffe grad and most Old Testament

scholars now read the book of Joshua and Judges

within its ancient context. So read about other

warfare texts and other warfare texts are typically

exaggerate that how many you killed. how you

killed them, how fast you took the land, and

there's a genre issue. So they are, they suggest

that we realize that their ancient readers would

understand just like a fisherman said, I caught

a big one. And every time you tell the story,

you get bigger, right? So that's what there is.

And I know Gord will say, like he loves hockey,

and he says, we killed them. Well, they didn't

kill them, right? So if we could understand the

genre, we might understand the book a little

better. And also in terms of numbers, exaggerating

numbers and how many they killed. The other interesting

thing that helps me is that when they knew they

were being, there was like a fight coming. The

women and children would leave the walled town

and go to the hill country, and the people left

would be the soldiers, the fighters. So when

they were under siege, it would be the men trained

to fight, and the women and children weren't

even there. But then they would say, we took

them all. But even within the book of Joshua

and Judges, there are statements that say we

took them all but the next chapter it says and

there was still this one and this one and this

right yeah yeah so if you're a careful reader

of the text you know that there is a theology

driving the tech to say god gave us the land

and it was good and we took it but if you read

They didn't take it all, right? And the enemies

were still there. So again, knowing more about

how to read the stories helps get rid of some

of the ethical issues that are kind of wrestling

there. So there are, you know, we can get the

help of people who read, like in their book,

they give examples of, you know, Egyptian and

Babylonian war texts that are very similar. or

that the one guy says, oh, you know, I traveled

from Jerusalem to Egypt in a day. Well, it couldn't

possibly be a day. There's a long walk. So that

helps deal with that problem of the genocide.

But, I mean, if God gave them the land, it had

to be clear. And it's true that when they made

a deal with the Gibeonites, they didn't leave

the land, right? So they didn't take them all.

Rahab, she was saved, right? And so it's more

complex than some people make it out to be, I

would say. Sure. Yeah. The other thing I was

thinking about, you know, in terms of trouble

reading some parts of the Old Testament. Like

you mentioned, you know, we can't just open it

up like magic and expect, oh, this verse is talking

about me. Right. Right. So this Sunday, Rob is

going to be preaching on Jeremiah 29. And everybody

sort of takes Jeremiah 29 11 and says, this verse

is about me and my life and all of the good plans

that God has for my life. Right. Right. Yeah.

So like, what do you do with like some of those

prophets and promises? How do we put them in

their proper context? Yeah, that's a very good

one. When we had a lot of Christian bookstores

around, there used to be a little box and it

was a box called God's Promises, right? And they

would have verses and half -verses and you open

the box and pick out your verse and that was

God's Promises. It was like horoscope for the

day almost. So you have to be very careful. about

reading a text in its context and not lifting

it out. And my own personal example would be

when I was in university and with Operation Mobilization

in Belgium, I was with a team of 32 young people.

There was a really nice English guy there. We

became friends and he was having his quiet time

in the morning. And he said, God has said we

should be together, Marian. And it was a verse

from Isaiah, ho ye from the north. I was in Canada,

right? So you read the context of the verse,

that was the enemy from the north, right? You've

got to be careful and read something within the

context. So, you know, God has a sense of humor

and can, you know, let people Verses can be used

in that way to encourage you, like God works

through that, but you've got to be really careful

not to misuse scripture. But the promise is,

if it's a teaching like that in Jeremiah, that

we do know that God is with us and has plans

for our life. That's not a one -off. That's not

the only place. we talk about God's sovereignty,

but it also can't be used to underscore a theology,

the prosperity gospel, that if you believe life

is going to be a bed of roses, well it's not.

Bad things happen to very good people all the

time. And that's why we need the book of Psalms.

When bad things happen, and they will. When I

was teaching Jeremiah, I had a psychologist come

and talk about trauma. And I will never forget,

she said, if you live a long enough life, you

will experience trauma. And you'll know what

I'm talking about. Some people have an easier

life than other people. Right? We all wrestle

with real big challenging problems. And that's

why a rich life of faith that is not pie in the

sky. Right? Right? That when I was in Sunday

school, we used to sing every day with Jesus

is better than the day before. That's a very

hopeful song. I love him more and more. I'm thinking,

well, you know, That's probably not the narrative

that we teach a person because then when life

happens, they'll say, where is Jesus? Right?

And Jesus is with us when the day isn't better

than the day before, but worse, right? Right.

That's where you need the whole Bible. Yeah,

for sure. Yeah. Because Jeremiah, my goodness,

Jeremiah's life was a terrible life. I mean,

his family beat him up. He couldn't marry. God

said, you can't marry. He's like stuck in a well

at one point, I think. They threw him down a

well and they arrested him. And then when everybody

else went to exile, he stayed and then they took

him down to Egypt and he probably was killed

down there. We don't know. So he is God's chosen

prophet, right? The good guy. The good guy had

a really hard life. And his laments, again, help

us. Like his honesty, his rawness, like, God,

you are a deceitful brook. Like in Israel, there

are all these dry riverbeds. And when it rains,

they're lush and flowing. I want water to be

there and you're not there for me. Well, that's

raw. Yeah. So when you know all the stories,

then I think you can live a life of integrity

and walk a Christian life in the good times and

bad and be there for your friends who are walking

through the bad. Because if you say, oh, you

had a miscarriage, right? you know, while the

baby is in a better place. Well, it's not a better,

like that's a terrible thing, right? And you

need to grieve the loss and not to, you know,

not to say we don't believe in heaven or anything

like that, but to experience, to say, like, this

is a huge loss, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think it like well taken. It's like

what you're getting at. It's reminding me of

the term like proof texts where folks will just

pull texts to make a point. And I think that's

like Jeremiah is a great example of that. Like

it's very convenient to pull at, I know the plans

that I have for you and to use that as your mantra

for life. And every single time you go to the

bank, well, bank teller doesn't know the plans

that God has for me is you're gonna pull out

a million dollars. It's so, so convenient. But

at the same time, like people use it for like

really positive things that they want in their

life. They use the proof tax method or pull out

certain passages to make a particular point.

But there's also that what some would define

as like a negative way where there's certain

groups of people are put down. And women in the

scripture has been one of those ways where we

pull at, like certain texts in Leviticus are

very convenient to put women in their place or

in Deuteronomy. And that has had a very negative

impact on the values that we have in our society

and whatnot. So I'm interested because you spent

a lot of time looking at women interpreters and

how they've used the text to do the opposite,

to speak for their rights and a manner of other

things, a manner of other injustices that happen

in our society. Yeah, so I'm interested in how

that's been and what are the common stories or

passages from the Bible that women have used

to draw more on when they're speaking out for

injustice. Right. That's a very big question.

Loaded question. Yeah. So when I studied, we

just studied the great books of the great men,

right? The great preachers, the great scholars.

When we studied the Reformation, we did Luther,

Calvin, Zwingli, and all the men. And I didn't

even know there were women involved in the Reformation.

This past couple of years and now on my sabbatical,

I am working on 16th century women who commented

on Paul. Because Paul, when it comes to women

in the Bible, there are just a cluster. You can

do it on one hand, a very hard text in the New

Testament. that say women should keep silent,

women shouldn't teach, women should be submissive

to their husbands. And if those texts are used

as the lens through which to read all of scripture,

then we come out with a theology that today is

called complementarian theology. And you go back

to, so women have talked a lot through the ages

on how Genesis one to three, right, the creation

story. And here, like I will, like this book,

The Gospel According to Eve, that was written

by Amanda Bankhousen, who was a student at Wycliffe.

And she recovers, starting with the 17th century,

women's interpretations of those texts, because

traditional patriarchy has argued well, not patriarchy,

but men endorsing patriarchy take the creation

story, women are created second from the rib

as women are derivative, they are to be helpers

and in subordinate, God created women intentionally

to be subordinate, right? And women are saying,

no, like that's not how to read this story. And

like, why did the serpent? attempt Eve and not

Adam because she was the smarter one. I mean,

there are ways to turn it all around, right?

But women have pushed back and so have men. There

was a second, so this dominant reading of Genesis

1 to 3 to put women in a subordinate place, challenged

by some early church, very renowned early church

fathers to say no, that didn't. doesn't mean

that. And those people had also in mind the whole

message of scripture and included how Jesus treated

women, right? Texts like Galatians 3 .28, in

Christ there's neither male nor female, Jew nor

Greek, slave or free. We're equal in Christ.

So there are a whole lot of stories that show

women Were not always submissive in the Old Testament

Sarah was not submissive at all Yeah, not at

all. And yet the verse in Peter about Sarah was

submissive. She called her husband Lord That

was in every merit Anglican marriage ceremony,

right? When in submission in the earlier versions

of the prayer book, so When when I started to

find women's writings, I thought my goodness

Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, women and

the men that supported these women were saying,

wait a minute, the message of scripture is not

that women all should never teach or preach,

right? Or witness. And they found all these other

texts. And women often wrote about the women

in the Bible, right? Sarah and... Rebecca and

Miriam and Deborah. Deborah becomes a really

important woman, not only for female queens who

model their queenship after Deborah. She's a

leader. So how can you say women can't lead?

Or then you have all these New Testament examples

of Mary in the Magnificat. or the women of Samaria.

Women went out and witnessed. And then you have

Aquila and Priscilla. And what's interesting

in Beth Ellison Barr's new book on the pastor's

wife, she talks about the influence of a woman,

Paige Patterson, who is telling ministers wives,

you've got to be the supreme. You've got to be

the submissive support, right? You make the casseroles.

You invite the women over. Play the piano. Do

the Sunday school. That's not in the Bible, but

she took the story of Aquila and Priscilla in

the New Testament and said Priscilla was subordinate

to Aquila. There's no evidence of that. In the

six times they're mentioned in the New Testament,

she comes first. She's the leader of the house

church, not the husband. And even when you talk

about Paul saying, you know, you take his instructions

to the Corinthian church, that was instruction

to a church, a new church where women had never

been educated. They didn't know how to sit still

listening to a sermon. And he says, women keep

silent. That doesn't mean all women in every

culture, in every time should be silent, right?

The early interpreters knew that was true because

they read Romans 16, which has all the women

involved in Paul's ministry. They were not solid.

So a woman is probably the one who carried the

book of Romans from Paul to be read. You know,

so we have so much evidence now from the early

church of women being ordained, women in the

Oran's position as presiding over Eucharist.

Right. So it's because our generation has trashed

history. We don't remember the full history of

women's involvement. And so right now, working

on these 16th century women, these are women.

who grasped the gospel and Luther talked about

the priesthood of all believers, right? If you

are a believer, you parted the priesthood of

all believers and women said, okay then, right?

You know, and so this, you were gonna ask me

about one of my favorite ones. One of my favorite

interpreters is this woman. If you can see her

picture, there she is. standing in front of a

group of monks who are at the university. So

this is the most learned bunch of men in the

16th century at the University of Ingolstadt.

And she writes them a letter and says, You don't

know how to read the Bible properly. It was a

social justice issue that they had arrested a

young guy who was teaching Luther's idea in a

Catholic university, and they threatened his

life. They made him recant. They put him in jail.

And she said, you can't do this. This is not

how you treat a fellow Christian, right? She

daringly wrote them and said I want to have a

debate with you. I don't know Latin, but you

know German will debate in German, right? Okay,

it was a it was daring and she said things like

God used an ass Balaam's ass It can use a woman

to speak right? Yeah, and you know and she cites

all these other women in Scripture and she said

where are the men stepping up to? protest the

injustice. If a man does not speak up, I, as

a woman, need to speak up. And then she cites

the verse, if you do not confess the Father,

I won't confess you before my Father. Like Jesus

said, you must confess your faith. And she said,

I will confess my faith. I cannot keep silent.

So that's what women did in the 16th century.

They confessed their faith. They felt called

as a fissure of men and women to witness. They

were very involved. They preached like Argula's,

another woman, Katarina Zell, when her husband

who was a minister died, she preached at the

graveside. Women preached in the 16th century.

We've forgotten their stories and having their

stories means It empowers us as women today to

say, we have four mothers of faith that we can

stand on their shoulders and be courageous, right?

Speak out against injustice. preach right speak

out against teachings that circumscribe women

to no no you're the minister's wife you need

to do the bulletins you need to have the keys

to the church and do everything right no you

don't right you need to follow god's call for

your life and it may not be as like you might

be a doctor and he might be the minister and

i um yeah i was talking to a student going who's

just gone back to taiwan because wife is a pastor,

but in Taiwan, you can be a single pastor and

be ordained. If you get married, you're fired

because you have to be under the submission of

your husband. So if you're ordained and married,

the guy has to be ordained or you will not be

a pastor. This is crazy, right? This is like,

that is not how it's meant to be. But that's

taking a view of women's roles as you must be

under the submission of a male leader and saying

a woman can't be a lead pastor. But I think that's

wrong. you know, we know the verses that they

used, right? And then they kept using the same

ones over again. And that's not how Jesus treated

women. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going

to say, I remember like in your Old Testament

class when you started talking about some of

these different women interpreters, one of the

things that stood out to me was like, OK, women

interpreted the Bible and then the next generation

of women like forgot or that that was lost, right?

No, that's right. Women have continued to do

the same work over and over and over again. That's

exactly right. They came up with the same arguments

because they read the Bible and they saw all

these examples of strong women. Then they read

Proverbs. Wisdom is a female figure. Right. Yeah.

So is Lady Folly, a female figure. Well, okay.

Good and bad, right? Yeah. But there are wonderful

examples of Godly women, right? And when you

read a woman's reading of a text, like the story

of Hannah, read by a Jewish woman in the 19th

century, when they only had prayer books, and

she said to the Jewish woman, wait a minute,

Hannah prayed out loud, extemporaneous prayer.

We need to learn to pray like that, right? And

so she was empowering Jewish women to learn to

pray and not just say, have a prayer book because

these Jewish women were not taught to read Hebrew.

So they didn't have a prayer book, right? So

they were missing out on that whole experience

of learning to pray. So there are in the Bible

has many, even in the Old Testament, you have

counter stories. Like in the book of Ruth, in

the second chapter, Boaz, who's the wealthy landowner,

to whom Ruth, a Moabite outsider, she should

be submissive in a patriarchal culture, but he

serves her. Let me serve you, right? That's a

counter -cultural moment there, right? So there

are confusing stories that Caleb was promised

to the guy who won the war. He was promised,

like he won, Caleb's daughter was given as a

prize of war, which is a terrible thing to be

given away like that. However, she makes a deal

and says, I want land. So I want the springs,

right? And she was given that. So in England,

the 19th century women said, we can't own property.

We can't keep our children if we're divorced

if you can't own anything yet in the Bible women

had more rights than we did they need rights

to property and like we could own land we can

you know, and so the Bible has inspired Oppressed

marginalized groups. Yes push for freedom, including,

you know, the slavery issues and, you know, that

liberation comes through faith in Jesus and we

need to extend that to the principles in the

Old Testament. Care for the poor, the outsider,

you know, the orphan. I mean, those are repeated

over and over again. So, The Bible has undergirded

many great programs of liberation in like the

whole, like Wilberforce and John Newton, like

their work for abolition and all the women who

work for abolition. At the same time, the Bible

has been used very oppressively too. The Bible

says we should treat people this way. So the

Bible can be used to say, It's how you interpret

and you can make it say what you want it to say.

That's why you need to know the Bible, to know

whether what they're saying is good or not. Right?

Right. Yeah, for sure. Did you have any other

favorite women that you wanted to sort of give

a little shout out to? I'm in my office. I have

hundreds of books by me. I think it was such

a surprise to me. that this woman named Julia

Joanna Gresswell wrote a textbook for set for

second year Hebrew students in the 19th century.

It's called a grammatical analysis of the Hebrew

Psalter. I thought they use second year Hebrew

students, all men at Oxford, because women weren't

allowed to go to university. They use textbook

written by a woman. Wow. That was cool. Yeah,

very cool. So for me, it's like finding these

women has really given me hope and confidence.

And I just have this real passion to say like

we need and and it's happening like we have histories

are now being rewritten to include women's voices

because they were there. And just like the old

Norton anthology of English. like they were all

men initially. Now in the 19th century they're

mostly women because women were really good writers,

right, poets, novelists. So yeah, we need to,

the next generation needs to have an account

of Christian history that includes women. Because

if you can't see it, you can't be it, right?

If you think that every minister has to be a

white man, a white man with a big beard or something.

How is the young woman thinking, I feel called

to be a minister, right? You need women out there

in front leading. So others will say, oh, she

looks like me. I can do this, right? It's very

important to have role models. They can be dead,

right? You have a dead mentor, right? I'm all

for dead mentors. They're easy to get a hold

of too. Yeah, read the book. Harriet Beecher

still is one of the women who had a real impact

on me when she was a busy mother and she was

writing her, she was married to a professor,

they didn't have a lot of money. So she talks

about wearing an apron with a big pocket in the

pocket with the manuscript of her book. So if

she had a minute, she had five kids running around.

She'd just pull out the little notepad and write

the next chapter of a serially published book

she was writing, Uncle Tom's Cabin. And then

she was interrupted. The fishmonger came to the

door. Would you like to buy fish for dinner tonight?

And I thought, oh, women have a hard time today

doing work and family, but it's not new. And

she made it work. And the money she earned from

the book, She hired a guy to put a new extension

on the house where she'd have an office, and

she hired a nanny. Women have been struggling.

How do I do it all? We're not the first generation

at all to struggle with the balancing act. There

are some women who came before us who can help

us. That's what I think. That's really good.

Yeah, this has been such a good conversation

to talk about some of those things that I think

a lot of Christians are thinking about and wrestling

with, but don't put out there very often. So

really helpful to talk through the Old Testament

and some of those really hard texts, but then

also how women fit in the church and fit in the

history of interpreting the whole Bible. Yeah,

so thank you so much, Marion, for taking this

time. Oh, you're welcome. This has been really

good. And for those who are listening, thank

you for taking this time to tune in as well.

And I hope that you have found some information

and encouragement through our conversation. And

we'll see you again next week.