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.