Ep 2: God's Wife with Francesca Stavrakopoulou

00:00I think that's kind of like one of the common misconceptions is that goddesses were all about

00:06fertility.

00:07They weren't.

00:08They were about warfare as much as they were about nurturing.

00:13Well, Dan, we are very fortunate today to have a renowned guest on the show.

00:22Someone with whom you, Dan, are pretty familiar, why don't you introduce our guest and tell

00:27our friends, listening and viewing who she is and what she's all about.

00:33Of course.

00:34So today, I'm very happy to have my former dissertation supervisor, Francesca Stavacapulu,

00:40professor of Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at Exeter University, former head of the Department

00:47of Theology and Religion, which is still the name on my doctoral dissertation.

00:55Welcome to the show, Francesca, or Professor Stavacapulu, pardon me.

01:00How has your day been?

01:01I hear it's a little hectic over there right now in the academic world.

01:04Yeah.

01:05Hi.

01:06It's really nice to be talking to friendly people.

01:10It's been, things are kind of chaotic in the academic world and we've been having various

01:15strikes and whatnot.

01:16So yeah, but it's very nice to talk to you today.

01:20Yeah, wonderful to have you.

01:22I know that one of your priorities is the welfare, the well being of your students.

01:28And I think I've met one or two of your students in the past, as well as some colleagues of

01:33yours there in Exeter.

01:35I hope everybody is hopeful about the outcome of the discussions there, but it sounds like

01:41there's a lot of work left to do.

01:43Yeah, I absolutely think so.

01:45I think, you know, one of the things about academia, particularly in the UK is that a

01:49lot of government funding has gone towards what we call STEM subjects, you know, so science

01:54and technology and engineering.

01:57And it makes things harder for those of us in the humanities, particularly those of us

02:01who focus on ancient cultures to kind of justify our existence sometimes.

02:06But, you know, as we know, things like the Bible remain hugely relevant culturally.

02:12I mean, whether we believe it or not, the Bible is a cultural icon and it remains this

02:20incredibly important collection of texts to which various people refer.

02:25And they, you know, they also use these texts to beat other people over the head with.

02:30So yeah, it's kind of hard sometimes, you know, when you're trying to explain to your

02:35pain master, just quite how important you work can be.

02:42Yeah.

02:43Yeah.

02:44We have similar concerns here with the corporatization of higher education and ironically, the Bible

02:47is frequently embedded in the very ideological foundations of those movements towards that

02:52corporatization, which seeks to try to invalidate some of the research that you and I and others

02:59are doing.

03:00Yeah.

03:01That's an interesting point, Francesca, you briefly mentioned that, you know, you said

03:05the Bible is important, whether you're a believer or not.

03:09You're not a believer.

03:10Is that right?

03:11Yeah.

03:12Yeah.

03:13I never have been.

03:14And, you know, I never will be.

03:19Does it do you find a pushback in the world of biblical scholarship because of your atheism?

03:26That's a really interesting question because, I mean, I would say that most scholars in

03:32my field are religious in some way or another.

03:36You know, we have a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of Christian colleagues and every kind

03:40of flavor therein, people that are studying these ancient texts and cultures and archeological

03:45sites.

03:46But more of than not, people tend not to, well, I say that.

03:52There's no reason why somebody who has a religious commitment or investment in these texts can't

03:58produce good scholarship, they absolutely can and they absolutely do.

04:02On the other hand, sometimes I think some people have found me unsettling or a bit uncomfortable

04:12with me because I am quite outspoken about my atheism.

04:16But primarily because I'm often on a public stage or, you know, I've been found myself

04:21on this public platform and people are always assume, "Oh, you studied the Bible.

04:24You must be religious."

04:25And when they realize that I'm not, they just can't understand it.

04:28The people think, "Oh, were you religious and you lost your faith through the academic

04:32study of the Bible?"

04:34Which is not the case at all.

04:35I never have been religious, I was just really interested in these texts.

04:39Or other people kind of feel that somehow the Bible doesn't belong to me.

04:44How dare I kind of ask these questions of these texts or interrogate these particular

04:49traditions?

04:50You know, what right have I got?

04:51But we all have a right to these texts, you know, as I said, that the Bible is a cultural

04:56icon whether we like it or not and it shapes and continues to shape so many of our cultural

05:01preferences and assumptions and our sort of ticks and twitches about the world.

05:07And so we absolutely, I think it's our responsibility to engage with these texts, particularly if

05:13you're coming from a personal perspective that may be non-religious or secular.

05:18Yeah, all you have to do is look at the fact that the two hosts of this podcast are both

05:23of European origin with Hebrew names, to Daniels, you know what I mean?

05:28To know how impactful the Bible has been across society.

05:34So it seems it's definitely worthy, I suppose, of study, whether you're a believer or not.

05:41But I do imagine that the concept of theology, because that's a different study than what

05:48you do, right?

05:49Your study is not theological in nature.

05:52No, I mean, it intersects with a lot of theological ideas.

05:57So you know, theology is basically talk about God ultimately.

06:00But within academia, if you're described as a theologian, that generally means that you

06:06are interested in sort of kind of theories about the nature of God and the ways in which

06:15that impacts your understanding of why and how the world is and our relationships with

06:23the divine.

06:24It assumes the reality, if you like, of the divine.

06:27So you know, for a lot of us, you know, scholars of religion, you know, if you call them a

06:32theologian, a lot of us would like to be personal.

06:37It's an insult.

06:39Yeah, to be frank, yeah, I find it kind of insulting.

06:43But that's not to say that equally, you know, theologians are doing incredibly important

06:48work as well.

06:49You know, particularly when it comes to setting certain doctrinal positions, say within Christianity,

06:55within their kind of cultural historical context, that's really important, you know, things

06:59like, you know, notions of the Trinity emerged within a very particular cultural dynamic and

07:06time and we can understand why those particular theories came about.

07:11Because of the cultural context in which they were being debated.

07:14But yeah, like I am definitely not a theologian, but I do engage with theological ideas because

07:19those are ideas that are so often retrojected back into these ancient texts or retrojected

07:25back onto archaeological artifacts.

07:28And so I quite often find myself sort of trying to argue that we need to disentangle these

07:34later confessional interpretations of this material from their likely original historical

07:40contexts and framings, if you like.

07:44I know I am frequently called a theologian as well.

07:47And part of it is because that degree that I got says theology and religion.

07:51Yeah.

07:52And I have to remind people, that's just the name of the department.

07:54Yeah.

07:55You're in the and religion part, not theology part.

07:59Exactly.

08:00That's a really good example, it's a hangover from, particularly within European academia,

08:05the ways in which the only time you really got to study these texts, these biblical texts

08:10was, you know, if you were doing theology and you were doing theology because you were

08:15probably a priest.

08:16And so, you know, it's kind of reflects that much older heritage and legacy of what the

08:22kind of scholarly inquiry into the Bible was all about.

08:25It was primarily performed by religious people, whether they were rabbis or priests or whatever.

08:30And they were usually men obviously.

08:32Yeah.

08:33Obviously.

08:34Well, and that's an interesting point too.

08:35Sorry, Dan, I don't mean to cut you off, but I do want you Francesca to talk a little

08:39bit about the, how, what it's like being a woman in biblical scholarship, because it

08:46seems like that too is probably unusual.

08:50And it's not as a very, very, at very least could be treated differently.

08:57Yeah.

08:58Have you found that that's the case?

09:01Have you seen the internet?

09:04Yeah, of course I have.

09:07I mean, it's something that has been uttered in various ways, has followed me around my

09:15career ever since I did my doctorate.

09:18And I think it's not just because I'm a woman, you know, there are lots of women in academia

09:22now.

09:23Like in every other aspect of academia, women are still like people of color, like people

09:29of a certain sort of socio economic class, there are all sorts of ways in which people

09:33are other and marginalized within our disciplines and within academic structures themselves.

09:39So for example, the gender pay gap is still, you know, live and kicking.

09:44When you look at academic pay structures, women effectively stop being paid for doing

09:49the same job as men in early November in any given year.

09:52I mean, that's the kind of way it works out.

09:55So, yeah, being a woman is still different, you're still treated differently, I think,

10:01in some ways.

10:03But being a woman in biblical studies, yeah, absolutely, that is hard.

10:09And I think it's harder than being an atheist in biblical studies, personally, I've found

10:13it to be harder.

10:15I mean, I've spoken and written about this in the past, but I think women are judged far

10:23more in terms of what they look like and how they present themselves than men are.

10:28And rather than people paying attention to a woman's scholarship and her teaching and

10:33her publications, people automatically quite often, and they're normally men, not always,

10:39but normally men, that they tend to judge these scholars in terms of how they look or

10:46how they dress.

10:48And that pisses me off because it's an interesting one.

10:53Well, yeah.

10:54But it's been the case ever since.

10:56I think there's a sense in which, you know, a colleague of mine commented on something

11:00the other day, you know, and she pointed out, yeah, and it was a relation to somebody being

11:07unpleasant about me publicly, and she said, you know, you never hear it said about a male

11:12scholar.

11:13Oh, he only got that job because, you know, he wears my suits or he only got that job

11:16because he's good looking.

11:18You never hear that ever about male scholars, but you often hear it about women.

11:26So yeah, it's not easy.

11:30I think that's fair.

11:31I think that's fair.

11:32Speaking of your scholarship and judging you on your scholarship, however, I think we

11:36should dive into a few of the things that you've that you've worked on that you've written

11:40about.

11:41Dan, you've studied up.

11:44You know the stuff.

11:45You know me.

11:46Yeah, I know you.

11:49And I wanted to use the discussion of gender and contemporary academia as a springboard into

11:58you've done a lot of research on sex and gender in the ancient world, as well as in ancient

12:03concepts of the divine.

12:06And I'm particularly interested in a lot of that research.

12:10Can you tell us what is unique, interesting about the divine profiles of the goddesses

12:17in ancient Southwest Asia and even in ancient Israel?

12:22Wow.

12:23If the question is what's unique about their divine profiles, that's a really difficult

12:28question because it's very hard to see what's unique about say ancient Israelite or Judah

12:35height constructs of goddesses or whatever, because you know these goddesses were worshipped

12:40all over ancient Southwest Asia and quite often they're performing particular sorts

12:44of roles in common with other goddesses in neighboring societies and cultures.

12:50But one of the most important.

12:51Can I just stop you right here?

12:52I do want to point out it's obvious.

12:54I think everyone knows that obviously no Israelites were ever worshipped any goddesses.

13:01Like obviously there's no female gods in sort of biblical history that couldn't.

13:09Yeah, we know that much, right?

13:11Yeah, you mean no Israelites apart from all the ones at the biblical writers are telling

13:15off the worshiping goddesses and apart from the goddess who've named alongside you are

13:22way in inscriptions, but yeah, yeah, I mean yeah goddesses were absolutely part and parcel

13:27of ancient Yahweh religion.

13:31And so, you know, we know we have inscriptions from the 8th century BC, Hebrew inscriptions

13:37that refer to Yahweh and Ashera together and most scholars are now agreed that this seems

13:42to index particular religious assumptions that Yahweh and Ashera were kind of like a

13:51divine pair.

13:53And Ashera played a role in mediating in particular divine blessings from Yahweh onto certain

14:00individuals and back again.

14:02So she was kind of like, you know, she wasn't like the first lady.

14:05I don't, you know, I don't want to give that impression.

14:06She wasn't like the first lady of the divine kind of White House.

14:09She was an important goddess in her own right.

14:11And we know that from other examples, other ancient texts, older texts that talk about

14:16the same goddess, so text from Ugarit, say a late Bronze Age city state on the coast

14:23of what is now, the Mediterranean coast of what is now Syria.

14:26And there she's known as Attiratu or Athera, and she is the wife of the High God, Ale.

14:33And she has a really important role in a lot of these mythological texts.

14:36I mean, she really is a power broker between Ale and different deities like Baal and Anat.

14:42But she also seems to have played an important role for certain sort of high status elite

14:46worshipers as well.

14:47We get some great stories in these myths about high status women sort of almost kind

14:53of mimicking this goddess in certain sorts of ways.

14:57So yeah, this, this was an important goddess and she seems to have been a really ancient

15:00goddess.

15:01We find her under various names worshipped all over ancient South Earth Asia, particularly

15:05the Levant area.

15:07So yeah, goddesses were important, but the main, I think the main kind of assumption

15:14that people offer make about these goddesses, which I think is completely wrong-headed,

15:17is the idea that somehow these were fertility goddesses, you know, they were all concerned

15:22about childbirth and sort of sexual kind of allure and attraction and fecundity and agricultural

15:30fertility, that wasn't the case in most of these texts that we have, including biblical

15:35texts, fertility is very much, it's very frequently cast as a masculine male attribute

15:42of the divine as opposed to a female.

15:45So quite often you get female deities who are responsible for kind of shaping new life

15:50in the womb or kind of overlooking, not always, but overlooking sort of breastfeeding and

15:55lactation and sort of childcare and nurturing and those sorts of roles are then expanded

16:00to adult worshipers, if you like.

16:02But more often not, it's the kind of, it's the male or masculine deities that are particularly

16:07associated with conception, even opening and enclosing wombs, both animal and human.

16:13And with kind of, you know, with being this fertile deity who are particularly responsible

16:18often for sexual allure as well.

16:20So I think that's kind of like one of the common misconceptions is that goddesses were

16:25all about fertility, they weren't, they were about warfare as much as they were about nurturing.

16:32And the symbol of the bull is something that is associated with male deities that frequently

16:36has to do with ferocity, but just as frequently, if not more so, with fecundity, with this

16:42idea of being fertile.

16:45So we have kind of intersecting, but different roles that some of the male and female deities

16:50are playing.

16:51And it seems to me that there are indications in the Hebrew Bible that the God of Israel

16:58has appropriated some of those roles, some of the imagery that is used in referencing

17:04the God of Israel seems like it would fit more comfortably within an ancient goddess

17:10role.

17:11Yeah, absolutely.

17:12Yeah, absolutely.

17:13So in some of the prophetic texts, you know, we find texts like in Hosea and Isaiah where

17:18God is kind of kind of describing himself, you're always describing himself as a midwife.

17:26You know, this is a God who kind of helps to birth, if you like, even the Chaos Monster

17:30in the Book of Job and kind of wraps him in Swaddling Bands, which is a really fabulous

17:35text towards the end of the Book of Job.

17:36But in some of the prophetic books, as I said, Hosea and Isaiah and Jeremiah, this is a God

17:42who acts as a midwife, you know, he takes the kind of newborn Israel from the womb and

17:48places the child on this kind of anonymous mother's breast and he oversees the kind of

17:53breastfeeding.

17:54He's a midwife and so he takes a lot of these roles that probably were originally particularly

17:59associated with divine, feminine, divine beings.

18:05And it's a part of that kind of gradual appropriation of these other deities' roles as what was

18:12originally a pantheon, an ancient Israelite and Judahite pantheon is gradually reduced

18:17and reduced and reduced so that Yahweh is prioritized over and above all these other divine beings

18:23within the broader Heavenly Households and to the point where he eventually kind of either

18:28takes on all of these portfolios, if you like, of care for himself.

18:32And you know, some of these other divine beings are either kind of excised from the Heavenly

18:37Household or they're kind of relegated and they become what's later known as angels or

18:42divine messengers.

18:43So it's a really interesting shift, but it's not necessarily representative of reality.

18:51I mean, we know that there seems to have been a shift within Jerusalem and perhaps in Babylon

18:57as well among Yahweh worshipping communities there in the 6th to the 5th century towards

19:01this kind of prioritization of Yahweh, but you know, equine we know that in the 5th century

19:07BCE on the island of Elphantini in the Nile in Egypt there was a Yahweh temple was being

19:14refurbished and this Yahweh was being worshipped alongside, you know, at least one other goddess.

19:20So, you know, it's not the Hebrew Bible and the information that we can kind of glean

19:25from it isn't necessarily representative of a broader trend within Yahweh worship.

19:31It's quite particular.

19:32Yeah.

19:33And we have, I think, the name of the deity there.

19:36There's a compound name on it, Yahweh, who is the goddess there.

19:41And now there's another compound name that some people associate with the divine feminine

19:45and that's El Shaddai, based on the argument that Shaddai comes from the word for breasts.

19:51And in Genesis 49, we've got this idea of El Shaddai associated with the blessings of

19:58the womb and the blessings of breasts.

20:00Where do you land on the origins of the Shaddai title?

20:06Yeah.

20:07I mean, it's always really hard trying to kind of grasp anything meaningful from possible

20:11etymologies, I think, and kind of trying to dissect the word that way.

20:17Yes.

20:18So, one theory is that the word comes from a root meaning breasts, equally that maps onto

20:24roots that could mean mountains.

20:26And so, you know, scholars have produced some interesting, interesting, imaginative work

20:31on the shapes of mountains that look like breasts, but I'm more persuaded, Yahweh.

20:37And when we have a mountain range, there's the Tetons is a mountain range that is based

20:43on the same.

20:44So, it wouldn't be unheard of.

20:45It's not unheard of, and it makes a lot of sense, because quite often, you know, the

20:48kind of the earthy realm is often personified as this kind of primeval feminine, you know,

20:55and kind of the idea that the earth is this kind of birthing female body.

21:00It makes sense.

21:01In case of that title, El Shaddai, I'm more inclined to go with the other kind of interpretation

21:09of that name.

21:10I think it probably means something like Ale of the wilderness or the steppe region.

21:14Yeah.

21:15That seems to be more kind of evidence for that usage of the term.

21:18But even so, you're absolutely right.

21:20In Genesis 49, we have got this kind of series of divine blessings where you have an appeal

21:26to El Shaddai, you have an appeal to either my ancestral God or, you know, my divine ancestor.

21:34You have an appeal to the divine rock, which needs to have been a really important, very

21:39early title of probably a masculine deity.

21:43And you also have an appeal to this kind of divine being, you know, for blessings on breast

21:48and wound, which some people argue that word pair is a, you know, our titles or epithets

21:53for got a goddess and Marcus Smith argues that this is a title of Ashera.

21:59So yeah, we have traces of, we have traces of these goddesses in our text, which is exciting.

22:07And I think you, I know the one of the very first TikTok videos that I ever made that

22:12got over a million views was responding to somebody who was expressing frustration with

22:20a headline from an article that was in an interview with you over a decade ago about

22:24God's wife being edited out of the Bible.

22:27And so these are some of the potential vestigial references to the divine feminine and other

22:35scholars argue, maybe Deuteronomy 33, two, where it says a fiery law in many translations

22:40now, but it could be very easily reconstructed to say that Adonai came forth with Ashera

22:46at his right hand.

22:48Yeah, which is a translation that I really like, I think it's got an awful lot to be

22:54said for it.

22:55I mean, it's interesting that people do get upset sometimes about the idea that God could

23:00have once had a wife.

23:02And I think, you know, that says a lot more about our own cultural anxieties about the

23:06nature of the divine and divine sexuality, divine sort of gender than it does anything

23:13else.

23:14I mean, there's a big debate going on at the moment in the mainstream press here because

23:17the Church of England has said that it's going to consider having a debate about whether

23:21it should change God's pronouns in prayers and various other things.

23:26So God will become they rather than he will become parent rather than father.

23:31And people are getting really worked up about this, but I mean, you know, people, these ancient

23:36texts that we have in the Bible, you know, they are always being overturned, reinterpreted,

23:42overwritten in ancient context as well as in the contemporary context.

23:47And so, I mean, I don't have a problem with it, particularly, but, but yeah, I mean, very

23:51much, you know, this is a God who is very much gendered in masculine terms within the

23:56Hebrew Bible.

23:57And I think we need to recognize that.

23:59Yeah.

24:00And I know that something that I'm fond of saying is that everybody is negotiating with

24:04the text in one way or another.

24:06And this is just another example of ways that we try to make the text more meaningful

24:11or more useful to us weather.

24:13And we've got folks who are out there who are upset about the idea of God having a wife,

24:17but will vehemently insist that God is male, which means something.

24:25And so, yeah, there, but there are other ways that we can upset people in the audience

24:32as well.

24:33You wrote your dissertation under the supervision of the inimitable John Barton at Oxford.

24:40And this had a lot to do with the question of human sacrifice, child sacrifice in the

24:48Hebrew Bible.

24:49It seems like there's quite a bit of discussion going on these days around that question of

24:52child sacrifice.

24:53There seems to be a shift in the scholarship, including the meaning of the word moloch and

24:59whether this is a reference to a deity who received child sacrifice or if this is just

25:04a generic noun that refers to a specific type of sacrifice.

25:08Can you tell us where you see the scholarship heading, where you land on some of those

25:13discussions?

25:14Yeah, it's really interesting because I mean, I don't want to kind of give away too much

25:18about my age because I feel about 100 today, but yeah, I mean, when I wrote when I wrote

25:23my dissertation, I mean, it was back in the early 2000s and child sacrifice had it was

25:30starting, you know, it had become a more more sort of provocative topic in scholarship, you

25:36know, sort of in the mid 80s, and then no one had really talked about it since then, but

25:41in the mid 80s, these two important works were published one by a scholar called John

25:45Day and the other by a scholar called George Heide, and they are both arguing that the

25:50term moloch in the Hebrew Bible absolutely refers to is the name of a deity and they

25:56both claimed independently.

25:59And I think incorrectly that this god moloch could be found in some of these texts from

26:04this place I mentioned before from Ugarit, their arguments, in my opinion, and as I argued

26:09in my thesis, don't stack up at all.

26:13But there's a, the reason why a lot of these scholars in particular were keen to defend

26:20the biblical portrayal of a character called moloch is I think because it distances Yahweh

26:26from the suggestion, the implication in these texts that these children were being sacrificed

26:32to him and not a foreign abominable deity that somehow child sacrifice is a kind of a foreign

26:38import, a kind of a corruption of a much pure reform of religion.

26:42Now, whether or not child sacrifice happened is really difficult to assess.

26:47I mean, archaeologically, you know, we have no evidence for the sorts of ritualized burning

26:56of very young babies, children, and young animals that we have from comparative sites

27:03across the Phoenician and Punic worlds.

27:05So that's quite difficult and we don't have direct, you know, clear archaeological evidence.

27:12Now those sites in these Phoenician and Punic areas, so basically this is where the argument

27:19about what really, who is moloch really, this is where it comes from because some of these

27:24sites where you have huge precincts that are clearly set apart from other sorts of mortuary

27:29sites and burial places that seem to be very different and they've got all sorts of things

27:33going on within these particular precincts, but what they do have are the charred remains

27:39of babies and very young animals, interred and little erns and then buried and quite often

27:44you have a stone memorial marker erected over the top of it and sometimes these things have

27:49inscriptions.

27:50Our village is one of our best tested sites, we've got hundreds and hundreds of hundreds

27:54of these burnt baby remains, not a sentence I say every day, but these inscriptions occasionally

28:04refer to seem to suggest that this particular practice is a type of offering, so and the

28:12term mulk, so from the roots MLK, seems to refer, seems to be a technical term for a particular

28:19type of offering, perhaps to, and quite often these babies in Carthage were being kind of

28:25dedicated or offered up in honour of the god Bahamong and his consort Tanit.

28:33So in 1935, a brilliant scholar called Otto Eitzfeld published a thesis in a dissertation

28:40in which he argued that this term mlk in the Carthaginian inscriptions meaning a type of

28:47sacrifice is cognate with the term mlk that we find in Hebrew Bible texts which within

28:54Greek, ancient Greek translations of the texts have tended to be pronounced moloch in the

28:59Masoretic text, it's often pronounced moloch, but I also argue that now it's the same term

29:07and so this is really a type of sacrifice, not the name of a foreign monstrous god to

29:12whom the children are being sacrificed, and if that's the case, well then which deity

29:17is associated with the burning of babies in these biblical texts, it's your way.

29:23Yeah.

29:24So yeah, people kind of get upset about that.

29:27We see even Ezekiel seeming to acknowledge this in chapter 20 saying, "Speaking on behalf

29:32of God saying I gave you commandments that were not good, that decimated you, compelled

29:38you to cross your children over the fire," or something like that, which is one attempt

29:45to account for what's going on in likely Exodus 22, it's verse 29 in the English and verse

29:5228 in the Hebrew where God says, "And the first born of your children you will give

29:58to me and do the same for your oxen and your sheep."

30:02Yeah, and it's really nice, interestingly, look at the language there, that kind of switch

30:05from singular to plural, where it's kind of like, on the eighth day you shall give him

30:11to me.

30:12It's this real sense that this is about the child and the child is to be treated in exactly

30:15the same way as the oxen and the sheep, which is to be sacrificed.

30:20But then we have, that's a regulation concerning the firstborn and the extent to which the

30:26relationship between this mulk practice and the firstborn sacrifice, the extent to which

30:30those are related, is interesting, I think probably the mulk sacrifice, I argued in my

30:36first book that this was a specialisation of the firstborn, a royal specialisation of

30:43the firstborn sacrifice.

30:44But you know, we have a lot of other biblical traditions in which it's no problem at all

30:49to fool your way to command the sacrifice of your children.

30:53I mean Abraham and Isaac is in Genesis 22, is a perfect example, and there, yeah, the

30:58sacrifice that's halted, but Abraham is not blessed for refusing to sacrifice Isaac, he's

31:04blessed for his willingness to do so.

31:08Equally, the story of Jefferson's daughter in Judges 11, where you have a Yarwistic warrior

31:14who basically offers up a vow and says, you know, Yarwe, if you let me win this war,

31:19I will offer up to you the first thing that runs out of the house to greet me.

31:23And lo and behold, it's his beloved daughter, the same term that's used of Isaac, beloved,

31:28the same term that's used of Jesus, who also is in some interpretations sacrificed by his

31:34father.

31:35And, you know, Jeff's daughter comes running out of the house and Jeff offers enough, no

31:40comment at all from Yarwe, that this is a bad thing or that you've misunderstood or,

31:45you know, how could you do this, it's just like, yeah, it happens.

31:49And so, you know, we've got these kinds of very positive kind of portrayals of the efficacy

31:56of child sacrifice that this is something that brings blessing within a Yarwistic context.

32:01So, it's a really interesting topic because it unsettles as well our own cultural preferences,

32:08our own ideas of what a child is.

32:10But obviously, it also, this notion of child sacrifice also underlies very early Christian

32:17interpretations of the execution of Jesus.

32:21He is the beloved son who is killed, John Levinson wrote a fantastic book back in the

32:2690s about the kind of these links between child sacrifice within ancient Jewish tradition

32:33and early Christian traditions.

32:36So there's something very disturbing, though, about the notion of a father, a divine father,

32:43who will willingly sacrifice his child.

32:46What does that say about Aaron?

32:51It makes the Lamb of God metaphor within Christianity more interesting.

32:55I think a lot of people are, enjoy that metaphor and make a lot of use of it without thinking

32:59hard about what that says about Jesus, how Jesus is functioning.

33:05And things are, yeah, some of the Psalms, you know, the Lord is my shepherd.

33:09That's a horrific image, you mean, because this is about the cultivation and almost the

33:14commodification, if you like, of a living being, in order for it to be destroyed for, you know,

33:21its various products.

33:23Yeah, personhood, parentage, these things, the frameworks were much different anciently

33:28than they are today, but we still feel compelled to retroject our own thinking onto the ancient

33:34world and think they had to have felt the same way about these things anciently than

33:38that we do today.

33:39I'm fascinated by the fact that, I mean, I know Francesca, in your work, you've often

33:47sighted the Bible as an imperfect historical text, as a text that we can't rely on as being

33:57reliable for historical facts, but I love that you're pointing out also that even though

34:07the Bible itself talks plenty about child sacrifice, we don't have the archeological

34:14evidence for it, at least in that context.

34:17I think that's fascinating.

34:18I think it could be wrong about itself in a good way, question mark, maybe they didn't

34:25do the awful thing that the Bible says that they did do, question mark.

34:29Yeah, I mean, and for that's the thing about archeology is that, I mean, you know, so on

34:34the child sacrifice thing, you know, there are things that there are archeological excavations

34:39that have found similar sorts of urns with burnt remains and sort of steeda erected over

34:46them in what is now the modern day, you know, what is today the state of Israel.

34:53So that is interesting.

34:54So, you know, date to the right kind of time.

34:56So it does suggest that this kind of cremation or ritual burning of what wasn't alien to

35:07the biblical writers if you imagine that they're kind of working in Jerusalem, say, in the

35:115th century or whatever.

35:12But archeologically speaking, it's really hard because, you know, we can't dig up Jerusalem

35:16with the Molak text, you know, there's this very much as insistence that this is happening

35:20in the Kithroan Valley in Jerusalem and, you know, these are these valleys where natural,

35:26you know, this is where this was an entryway into the underworld.

35:29That's the way in which these valleys were understood outside Jerusalem.

35:31And so, you know, you do get, you know, we've got loads of burial grounds, very ancient

35:34burial grounds there now, but you can't go digging up Jerusalem.

35:39I mean, equally, you know, you can't go digging up Temple Mount to find the remains of the

35:45first Temple, you know, the Solomon's Temple, I mean, you can't because it's just, I mean,

35:51A, it's a modern thriving city, and B, it's also one of those cities that is hugely contested

35:57in terms of ownership, authority, access, you know, within lots of different communities.

36:04So, politically and socially and culturally, it would just be awful to try and excavate,

36:10obviously.

36:11But that's the thing.

36:12So, psychologically, we only have access to the places we're able to dig legally and

36:18ethically, and I have to say that, you know, quite often a lot of digs in those territories

36:23that we understand as modern day as well, and in the Palestinian occupied territories,

36:28you know, sometimes those digs aren't ethical to a certain degree.

36:32But, you know, we only have access to sites in physical ways and in sort of politically

36:38mandated ways.

36:40So, who knows what's there, and you know, you can't really dig when you know what you're

36:44looking for as well.

36:45So, things like, you know, archaeologists, particularly those of us who work on the Bible,

36:49you know, archaeologists always used to focus on urban centers, like the big cities, you

36:53know, who are these people building these great cities, and they completely overlooked

36:58the majority of the ancient Iron Age population who lived out in the countryside.

37:04And so, it's only been the last kind of 30 years or so that people have actually been

37:08paying attention to the majority of these ancient populations and their material circumstances

37:13and lives by digging in places that, you know, that weren't necessarily these major urban

37:19centers at all.

37:20So, yeah, archaeologically speaking, it's hard, it's not a perfect science archaeology.

37:25Yeah, the accident of preservation has a lot to do with what we can find when we can go

37:32dig because we're looking for something, and I think it's been such a fascinating turn

37:36towards looking at more domestic contexts and trying to reconstruct the materiality of

37:41the everyday life.

37:43Anciently, I think that tells us so much more about lived religion, if we can refer to

37:49religion, anciently than it does just looking at what men were in charge in the ancient

37:55world.

37:56Yeah.

37:57No, you recently published your first trade book for a popular audience, God and Anatomy,

38:02and I have one of the UK versions, which I know you understand has the much better cover.

38:10And your book won the Penn Hessel Tiltment Prize for Best Nonfiction book on a historical

38:18subject.

38:19So, congratulations.

38:20Thank you.

38:21For that.

38:22And I know it was in the running for some other prizes as well.

38:25Can you tell us what questions you were seeking to address when you wrote this book?

38:32That's what drove you to write on God's body and corporate reality and how that influenced

38:40the conceptualization of the divine and how people lived their ideologies, anciently.

38:46Yeah.

38:47I mean, I think the question that I had, I mean, the reason why I went to university

38:54in the first place to study, I mean, I did what was known as a theology degree, Oxford.

38:59And the question that, you know, I was really interested in religion because, you know,

39:03when I was a kid, I was given a picture of book Bible and, you know, and I was looking

39:06at, you know, like this illustration of Abraham just about to sacrifice Isaac.

39:10And I remember thinking, this is a weird thing, you know, like, I remember being very struck

39:14by how strange and frightening that was.

39:17So, even though I wasn't brought up religious at all, I was really interested in ancient

39:22religions.

39:23And then, you know, I'm Greek, I'm half Greek and so my Greek heritage was, was important

39:28to me. And so the myths of gods and goddesses from Greeks, from Greek culture was always

39:32really interesting.

39:33And I couldn't understand why, you know, initially, you know, the God of the Bible and

39:37Jesus in particular was treated as different from the great heroes of ancient Greek myths,

39:42you know, who often had, you know, one parent, you know, they had their divine father and

39:47a human mother.

39:48So why was this Jesus guy different?

39:50But when I went to university and studied theology, I was reading, it was the first time

39:55I studied the Hebrew Bible, so what Christians called the Old Testament and obviously what

39:58Jewish people called Tanach.

40:01And I just couldn't get over that.

40:02There was this, like, this kind of vivid images of this human shape, very masculine deity,

40:10kind of straining around, trampling people and shouting and sitting on a throne in this

40:14temple.

40:15And I was really interested in this kind of bodily portrayal of the deity.

40:19And yet, when I would ask my lecturers and professors about it, they would always kind

40:22of dismiss it as kind of poetry or metaphor or it's, you know, it's, it's, it's metaphor.

40:29I mean, everything is metaphorical to a certain degree, particularly forgive me, damn, but

40:33particularly when we're talking about an imaginary being, you know, everything is ultimately

40:36kind of metaphorical.

40:38But that was where I kind of really got, like, interested in the, the body of God.

40:44And I wanted to write this book because they are wanting to show people that this isn't

40:48just metaphor that actually in the ancient, in God's kind of original ancient, his natural

40:54cultural habitat, if you like, he was very much understood to, to be a corporeal deity

41:00with a human shaped body and with male and masculine features.

41:04Just like every other God and goddess, you know, was in the ancient world.

41:07It was really normal.

41:08So I wanted kind of to put God back in his ancient cultural habitat in that sense.

41:16And I also wanted people to understand that we navigate or we imagine the otherworldly

41:24and we often imagine the otherworldly in terms of our own bodies.

41:28You know, we, we navigate our way around this world because of our bodies.

41:32I mean, I don't subscribe to this very Cartesian kind of dichotomy between, you know, that

41:36we have that our bodies are simply the vessels or shells in which our mind or our intellect

41:41or our soul or spirit is housed and that's certainly not the way that ancient people understood

41:47what it was to be a person.

41:49And so our bodies, you know, we are our bodies.

41:53And I think how these ancient societies understood interpretive certain aspects of their bodies

42:01very much framed and shaped the ways in which they imagined their gods and their gods bodies.

42:06And so from things like, you know, certain sorts of the heart being a cognitive organ

42:13and intellectual organ, rather than, you know, we tend to think of it as an emotional organ

42:17if we kind of apply any kind of cultural meaning to it.

42:21And the way that the belly was understood to be the seat of certain sorts of emotions,

42:24the nose is the place of anger, the territoriality of the feet, all of these sorts of things

42:30have shaped the way in which gods portrayed in not just the Hebrew Bible, but in New Testament

42:36text as well.

42:37And I kind of want to take the reader on a journey through the early history of God by

42:41kind of stripping the deity and kind of showing what this God's body was understood to be

42:48like.

42:49And yeah, and it was fun to write.

42:53It sounds like I listened to the audio version that you narrated and I can tell when you're

42:58kind of giggling in the back a little bit, but it was so hard not to do accents as well,

43:04not to do voices because I do that in my lecture.

43:09And I think you do kind of strip the deity in a somewhat literal non-metaphoric sense

43:15and in some of the discussions, but you've got a whole section on divine genitals, which

43:20I think is going to strike some people as a little off-putting.

43:26But it's such a fascinating discussion.

43:28And I think one of the things that I've heard come up the most in people talking about this

43:32book is your discussion of Isaiah 6 and Isaiah's throne theophany that he sees in the temple.

43:41You have a different reading of what traditionally we understand to be the hem of a robe or the

43:47skirts.

43:50Could you tell us about this reading and what's in the background of this reading of God filling

43:56the temple?

43:57It's really interesting that that particular part of my book has caused such debate particularly

44:04because I spend a lot more time in the book talking about a very similar image of the

44:09deity in Ezekiel 1, which I think is far more interesting.

44:15And I say far more about that than I do about what's happening in Isaiah 6.

44:19In Isaiah 6 we have the prophet having this encounter, he sees Yahweh and thrones and

44:26the Jews from temple and Yahweh surrounded by seraphim, which are these monstrous, noisy,

44:34flying, burning serpent-like creatures.

44:38And we're told, so the Hebrew goes something like the Lord, he saw Yahweh high and lofty.

44:46And it's normally translated as the hem of his robe filled the temple.

44:50And the term that's used there, there's no word for robe in the Hebrew, it's literally

44:54his lower extremities.

44:56That's what the word literally means.

44:57And it's often used to talk about the edges of garments.

45:00And sure enough iconographically we've got lots of images from across Asia, south west

45:06Asia of gods and kings, wearing very double hemmed long ankle length robes, so that's

45:12completely fine.

45:13But in my book I sort of say there's an illusion going on here as well.

45:17So I'm not, you know, and I use the word illusion very deliberately, because it's quite often

45:22when this term is used, particularly when it's used in prophetic literature in the Hebrew

45:28Bible, it often alludes to the genitals, more usually of female characters.

45:35And these are, sometimes it seems to be like a goddess-like character as we find in Ezekiel

45:4016 and Ezekiel 23, and it's kind of used in a very derogatory way.

45:47It's about when you have a reference to the shul of these female characters, it's because

45:51they're being stripped and generously exposed.

45:54So there's all of this kind of stuff that's clustering around this image.

45:58So it's a very interesting image that his shul, his lower extremities, filled the temple.

46:06And I think within the context of ancient Judahite constructs of the masculinity of God, the

46:12idea of God having genitals that are so big would feel the temple is not weird at all.

46:19Particularly I think, because I think this is probably what Ezekiel 1 is riffing off,

46:24because in Ezekiel 1, again, a prophet has this image of Yahweh and throwned on a temple.

46:31And this time, you know, and like in Ezekiel 6, the prophet doesn't quite say everything

46:36he sees.

46:37He doesn't say, "Oh, I looked at his face and it looked like this and his arms were like

46:40this."

46:41It's always very...

46:42It's always very...

46:43It's always very...

46:44It's the appearance of the thing.

46:45Yeah.

46:46And what he said, what he says, you know, he very much says this was a human-shaped being

46:49sitting on the throne.

46:51And this deities, upper body is covered by this kind of flashes of fire and flames and

46:57bright light, as is the lower half of his body.

47:00And the one body part that Ezekiel mentions, it's his mottnaiim, and he kind of navigates

47:05his kind of description of this deities body by means of the mottnaiim.

47:09And it's almost as if the mottnaiim are exposed, and this is a term that's normally and politely

47:15rendered loins.

47:16But, you know, more appropriately refers to the front part of the body that is at the

47:22bottom of your waist and at the top of your legs, but it's the genital area.

47:26And yeah, Ezekiel leaves this part exposed, which is really interesting.

47:30So, I think those two texts, I think I suspect Ezekiel 1 is riffing, you know, if Isaiah

47:386 is older, which most scholars would probably argue maybe.

47:43But I think there's some kind of intertextual relationship going on between those two, and

47:47I think that one has informed the other.

47:50And so, what perhaps Ezekiel 6 is alluding to, and what Isaiah 6 is alluding to, I think

47:57Ezekiel 1 is rendering more explicit, but in this incredible way that kind of by revealing

48:03that part of God's body, he's almost concealing more of the body.

48:06It's a really clever, clever text, I really like.

48:10If I'm as it masks at the same time.

48:13Yeah.

48:14Exactly.

48:15So, if I'm understanding correctly, what you're saying is that the TikTok generation did

48:19not invent the concept of big dick energy.

48:22Is that work?

48:24Yeah.

48:25And my goodness.

48:26I mean, yeah.

48:27I mean, I'm certainly not a TikTok generation, but it was definitely around what I was saying.

48:31Well, and even you mentioned the Eucharitic text earlier.

48:34We've got things about Elle's hand growing as large as the sea when he sees some women.

48:43Beautiful young goddesses.

48:44Yeah.

48:45And this is not something that ancient even Jewish writers were particularly uncomfortable

48:52with.

48:53We have discussions in rabbinic literature about God's genitals, including saying Adam

48:57must have been circumcised because Adam was made in the image of God.

49:01Yeah.

49:02So, they're arguing.

49:03It's very much that if Adam's made in the image of God, they worried, you know, was

49:07Adam made circumcised?

49:08Or was he created with a foreskin and they worried about it and then they did finally

49:12decided that absolutely Adam was created with a foreskin, he was made perfectly because

49:18he was made in the image of God and because God is circumcised, then therefore Adam must

49:22have been circumcised too.

49:23So yeah, this idea that somehow God couldn't possibly have a penis is extraordinary.

49:30It's a modern hangup.

49:32It's not all.

49:33It's the kind of a post biblical hangup rather than a rather than ancient one.

49:38Yeah, well, and our Victorian kind of sensitivities are governing how people feel comfortable

49:44talking about that in public and unfortunately, that comes out in a lot of the boundary maintenance

49:50that a lot of people think it's their prerogative to engage in regarding the Bible and who's

49:56allowed to talk about what in the Bible.

49:59So yeah.

50:00All right.

50:01Well, thank you for your time.

50:02I know you've got to get going.

50:03Appreciate you joining us and offering your thoughts on this and congratulations on the

50:10book again.

50:11Can you, I'm sure we have more listeners in the US than in the UK, but they can find

50:17your book wherever quality books are sold, I'm sure any anything else you'd like to share

50:24anything you didn't get to say that you wish I would have asked you.

50:28No, I've really enjoyed having the conversation and it was nice to revisit child sacrifice

50:33so I need to start, I know that sounds weird, I need to start, I've been asked to write

50:39a piece on child sacrifice and for something that's coming out and I need to get it done

50:45later this year.

50:46And so it's been nice to kind of get my brain thinking about it again.

50:49It's been a long time.

50:50I've missed child sacrifice.

50:51What a weird thing to say, but I have.

50:53Who doesn't?

50:54Who doesn't miss it every now and then?

50:56Is there anything that you want?

50:59Where can people go to find more of your work to find you if they're interested?

51:04Oh, gosh, well, I'm all over YouTube in various ways.

51:08I think you can find my BBC documentaries on YouTube in certain places.

51:13I'm on Twitter, so if you want to see what I talk about on Twitter, I'm at @proffranteska.

51:19Yeah, and you can find a lot of my academic publications on my university webpage, so

51:24just Google me.

51:25Just put my name in Google, it's quite an unusual name, it will come up.

51:29Yeah, and you've got some stuff on academia.edu as well, don't you?

51:34Yeah, but I keep forgetting that I have that thing.

51:36Yeah, so it's quite, yeah, there's nothing new on it.

51:40Yeah, if you forget if people want to access some of the scholarship, that's one way to

51:45do it conveniently, so thank you so much for your time.

51:49I appreciate it.

51:50I hope you have a wonderful evening.

51:51I hope things conditions improve for the university there in the UK, and I look forward to visiting

51:59with you again out there next at some point soon.

52:02Definitely.

52:03Thank you so much for having me.

52:04Thank you.