Ep 33: The Bible and Disability with Isaac Soon

00:00People don't realize that they have this kind of normal template of an able body that well

00:07that's what every human should be and there's a kind of cultural inertia to push bodies in that

00:12direction through prosthetics, through medication, through scriptural texts. I mean access to religious

00:17buildings for example right you know. Everyone's welcome to this church but you know if you are a

00:22wheelchair user you can use the ramp around the back.

00:24Hey everybody I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beecher. And you're listening to the Data Overdogma

00:33podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we

00:38combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things Dan? Oh man I'm stoked. Today's a

00:46cool a cool conversation. I'm looking forward to it. I think I think we got some good stuff coming.

00:51So I think this is going to be of great interest to folks. Yeah absolutely. And a way of thinking

00:56about the Bible that I don't think most of our listeners are going to be used to. So I'm excited

01:03about that. Yeah hopefully this will provide some new tools to people who are out there looking for

01:07new lenses to put on the Bible. And so we have a guest today. Let me introduce our guest. This is

01:14Isaac T. Soon. He is a professor of New Testament at Crandell University in New Brunswick. How are

01:21things going in New Brunswick today Isaac? Yeah very good. A couple of flurries but we're doing

01:26all right. Oh okay. Yeah it was. Are there times when there aren't flurries? It feels like.

01:31Only for three months in the summer. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well I had to scrape ice off my windshield

01:38this morning when I took my daughter to high school. Which was yeah we've broken that barrier for the

01:44year. So I don't like it. I said about that. Yeah I am not okay. But Isaac recently published with

01:52Oxford University Press a book entitled A Disabled Apostle in Pyramid and Disability in the Letters

01:58of Paul. And we're very excited to be talking about that book today. But I wanted to before we

02:04get into the book itself this is a field of study that a lot of folks are not going to be familiar

02:09with. Would you be willing to kind of walk us through disability studies a little bit help people

02:15kind of draw a bead on what we're trying to do here? Sure absolutely. Thanks for this and thanks

02:20for the opportunity to join guys here. Disability studies is a wider field. It's about 40 or 50 years

02:27old. Of course with the introduction of the ADA and more access to higher education for people

02:35with disabilities. There were more and more scholars who had disabilities or experienced

02:40disability theorizing and trying to understand disability and its dynamics of course in concert

02:48with you know public accessibility and civil rights. So there's been a lot of study disability

02:55studies connected in the humanities and cultural studies sociology for a long time. For the study

03:02of the Bible it's a little bit younger. Probably about 20 or 30 years since some of the earliest

03:08landmark works. There's one kind of a theological book but an essential book for a lot of early

03:14Bible scholars is Nancy Island's The Disabled God. This is a 1995. And then we start having a

03:22number of new works in biblical studies in conversation with disability theory, disability studies,

03:28more widely in humanities in the 2000s. So there's edited volumes by Hector Avalos,

03:34Jeremy Skipper, Candida Moss, a lot of great works. So there's been quite a few prominent scholars

03:42working in disability and New Testament, especially Old Testament and Hebrew Bible. Lots more there.

03:47Starting to merge in a little bit in early Christianity. But there haven't been too many book

03:53length monographs. To date there's only been as far as I know three. One is in 2018 by one of my

04:00colleagues Louise Gosbell. She has a great book on disability studies and in conversation with the

04:05Gospels. And then there's a great book by Rebecca Solfog from Re-negotiating the Disabled Body by

04:15S. Bill Press also in 2018 actually. And then my recent book on Paul as a Disabled Apostle.

04:22So there's been a lot of scholars who've been working in the field. And but I think there's

04:26kind of critical momentum picking up and engaging with disability studies and disability scholars

04:31and philosophers and theorists to try and help us gain some language and understanding

04:36ancient texts. Yeah, talk to us a little bit about how because as I read the Bible,

04:45I think as most people read the Bible, you don't get a lot of, I mean, there's not a lot of focus on

04:51description or, you know, and of course the ancient world had a different relationship

04:57with what we now call disability than we have now. So how do you approach a book that doesn't

05:05explicitly mention disability really from that viewpoint? What's the methodology? How do you

05:12approach that? Yeah, so this is a really, really key question here. In the past scholars have

05:17kind of approached it from our own biomedical kind of categories, right? Like, you know,

05:23visual impairment or what we would call blindness or people with hearing impairments,

05:30things like that. So disabilities we recognize today, as scholars have started to think about

05:35disability more as kind of a relatively relative socially. So disability depends on a particular

05:43culture's bodily ideal. And there's no single bodily ideal that goes across, you know,

05:50it's not transcultural, it's not timeless, even today, right? You know, if you're in North America,

05:55South America, if you're in, you know, Oceania or in Asia, there are different types of bodily

06:00ideals. And depending on those bodily ideals, then there can be different types of disability.

06:05So a lot of scholars in the past, method wise, have approached disability in the New Testament

06:11from kind of medical tax, taxonomy, medical categories, you know, blindness or visual impairment,

06:17things like that, where my study departs is that I try and look at conditions or

06:23physical, I guess, embodiments that differ from Paul's or the environment of Paul's own

06:32bodily ideals, and then trace what I would think are disabilities in that particular time

06:39to understand them better. So that's why in my book, I look at three kind of unconventional

06:44disabilities at the time. One is circumcision. Another is demonization or the idea that someone

06:49has some kind of evil spirit or pressed by some kind of unseen spiritual force. And then another

06:55is a short stature, which may or may not relate to medical, modern dwarfism or different conditions

07:01like that. Yeah, so that looking understanding disability as relative to a particular culture,

07:08that it depends on the particular bodily ideals of that culture, help us to interrogate this kind

07:14of phenomena in the past. Before we dive into Paul, do talk a little bit about that relationship

07:21of a body to the ideals of the culture, because I don't think that a lot of people think of disability

07:27in that way. I think a lot of people think of disability as it's just obvious that your body

07:32doesn't work right, or that somebody's body is just disabled in the way that the rest of us are

07:39able to do this, and that body isn't able to do this, and they don't think that it's a cultural

07:44construct. So talk about how that could be and give us a background for that.

07:49Yeah, no, Dan, this is such an important point. The thing is, what you're pinpointing here is the

07:54idea of the normal, or what Rosemary Garland Thompson calls the normate. So for disability,

08:00theorists and philosophers, one of the things they've really problematized and made complicated

08:04is the fact that normal is just innate to human nature, right? When you say, well, of course,

08:10you know, if someone has a visual impairment, well, of course, they would want to be able to see,

08:16or if they have a hearing impairment, well, of course, they would want to be able to hear.

08:19What sociologists and theorists point out in that is, well, actually, that's just kind of

08:28the social, the cultural stream, which people, the bodily ideal, which people have inherited

08:32from the culture that they live in. We live in a culture, you know, I remember being in a wedding

08:38once talking about my work amongst a bunch of a bunch of other medical doctors. And when I was

08:43started to talk about disability as a social construct, they all started to laugh because for

08:47them in medical school, biomedical sciences, well, you know, you know, there's a very strict kind of

08:54set idea about well function and form. This is how it's supposed to be. But as we've taken a look

08:59at diversity in nature, diversity amongst humans, but then also diverse bodily ideals,

09:05then we start to interrogate, well, actually, wait a minute, does it doesn't mean every single human

09:10has to kind of adhere to this bodily norm that I think that is real? It often is connected to the

09:16idea of human flourishing, right? So, you know, if someone has a disability or is not able bodied

09:20in this way, well, then, you know, are they living their most flourish life? And I think there's a lot

09:25of theorists and scholars who are trying to disconnect that idea that to to live a flourish of flourishing

09:33or a fulfilling human life has to be connected to some kind of bodily norm there. So your question

09:40is really important because people don't realize that they have this kind of normal template of

09:45an able body that well, that's what every human should be. And there's a kind of cultural inertia

09:50to push bodies in that direction through prosthetics, through medication, through procedures,

09:56through scriptural texts, I mean, access to religious buildings, for example, right, you know,

10:01you know, everyone's welcome to this church. But, you know, if you are a wheelchair user,

10:05you can use the ramp around the back, right? So, so all of it, our architecture, our language,

10:11it inculcates this kind of normal ideal body, the body that everyone should have.

10:16But in reality, no one really means. I think you raise an interesting point at the beginning

10:22of this discussion, you mentioned that the rise of disability studies really corresponds with the

10:28injection of a lot more people who are disabled into the academy. If you don't have something

10:35recognized as a disability, you're not really aware of the many different ways the world around

10:41us is constructed to serve the interests of the normal. And so, I, and I think one way that this

10:49might make it feel a little more intuitive to people who maybe aren't getting a grasp of what's

10:55going on here, I get sunburned really, really easily. I have to put sunscreen on all the time.

11:01There are a lot of people in the world who never have to wear sunscreen because they have a lot

11:06more melanin in their skin. My skin could be seen as a disability if the opposite were

11:13normative within society. And I would be the one who was seen to be my body was not normal,

11:20my body was impaired by the fact that I get burned easily by the sun. But as it happens,

11:27that's not how our society is constructed. So, that is not something that is seen as a disability.

11:33Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's relative to a particular time and place. You're absolutely

11:39right that if you know, if that condition generated stigma, you know, if you couldn't,

11:43you could have lost access to things because of their skin condition. If you

11:49were not provided with economic means to medicine or access to, you know, health care,

11:56if you're stigmatized on the Sunday, you know, bust are the people who don't have burnt skin.

12:02You know, so that all that all those kinds of cultural effects start to impact and start to

12:08lead to someone say, well, actually, yeah, maybe that is a problem, which I think is a reason we

12:16need to take folks seriously when they're sharing their own experiences, even if we may not be able

12:20to sympathize, even if we may not have ever seen the world through that lens. And I think that's why

12:26disability studies is something that needs to be taken seriously. This is giving us a lens

12:30that we otherwise would probably just ignore.

12:33And it's funny, you know, one of the things that sort of my brain went to as I was reading your book,

12:38Isaac, is like, you know, I'm just thinking about normal bodies in, you know, in scare quotes versus

12:46just bodies that are different. You know, I know that for the longest time, and I think a lot of

12:52people probably think of short stature dwarfism, whatever, as a disability, but wouldn't think of a

13:01person equally abnormally tall as disabled. You know what I mean? Like only the deviations that

13:09society decides are too different or different in an uncomfortable way or whatever become labeled

13:18in that way. Yeah, it's those extremes, right? I mean, if you if you look at the way, for example,

13:24you know, the exploitation of disabled people in in side shows or carnival things, you know,

13:31you would see those extremes of people who had short stature, but then also people who

13:35had excessive stature, you know, a seven foot tall person, you know. So yeah, it doesn't seem intuitive,

13:42but it's there. So with that in mind, get a dive into Paul a little bit. Let's let's talk about

13:53what we're looking at in the New Testament with this lens. How are you getting to Paul?

13:59And before we do that, I want to point out that this is a little bit of a departure from normal

14:04disability studies engagement with the New Testament. You have a paper in the Journal of

14:07Disability and Religion where you point out the overwhelming majority of scholarship in this field

14:11that's treating the Bible is talking about the gospels, primarily because I imagine because

14:16they have historical narrative. So we're talking about characters rather than these epistles. So

14:24your approach is a little off the beaten path by trying to examine the author rather than the

14:30character within the text. And I love the the discussion of an angel of Satan at the beginning.

14:39What's going on with this angel? Yeah, so Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12, he talks about

14:46this kind of thorn in the flesh, this angel of Satan, which has been given to him, has been put

14:51in his body and he keeps praying to God to take it away and God doesn't take it away. And he kind

14:57of makes peace with it and says, well, and actually incorporates it into his theology,

15:02kind of plays into this paradox of, well, if it's here, it has to be here for our theological reason.

15:08So maybe, you know, there's strength and kind of weakness and this kind of lines up with his

15:12imitation of Christ, this kind of weird kind of self-flagellation of following the kind of brutalization

15:19of Christ's body in a very close way. But Paul talks about this thorn in the flesh and calls it

15:27an angel of Satan. A lot of scholars and a lot of people in the past have given a multitude of

15:34different diagnoses, it's malaria, it's, you know, facial pain, it's, you know, this or that. But

15:40the phrase angel of Satan is actually kind of really obvious because for ancient readers in the

15:45Greco-Roman world, the Jewish world, they would just understand this as some kind of malevolent

15:49spirit. They don't live in a kind of disenchanted world like we do, where demons are, you know,

15:56a mental illness or some kind of cognitive impairment. For them, these kind of forces are

16:01real. And my book, I'm not arguing about, you know, whether those things are real or not, but

16:06for Paul's readers, they're thinking about this, if they hear this, you know, he's got this angel

16:10of Satan and it's in his flesh, has gone into his body, then in this way, he must be, you know,

16:15afflicted by some kind of malevolent force. And this is something we see in different places in

16:20the Gospels as well. This notion that if somebody is disabled, this is a product of some kind of

16:27either possession by demon or they have done something wrong and in some way they're being

16:32afflicted by some kind of malevolent or benevolent divine force that is either punishing them or

16:40exploiting their sin or something like that. It's such a good thing that nobody talks about

16:45that anymore. Nobody believes that someone being disabled is caused by demons anymore. That would

16:52be terrible. Yeah. Wow. That's still doing that. There is a real sense. I mean, and it carries

17:00forward to today, as you're kind of suggesting, Dan, there's a real sense in the Gospels where

17:05there's a fear, like the body is a house, right? And there's just fear that there's these forces

17:10that are going to kind of penetrate and do harm. And so, yeah, for the ancient mindset of Paul's

17:18hearers, they're hearing this thing. And it's, you know, is this person, it affects his reputation.

17:23Is this person to be trusted? I mean, how does it work that he's, you know, an agent of the Holy

17:27Spirit, but then also is afflicted by some kind of demonic force? And you mentioned, you talk in

17:34the book about this notion of penetration that this, you know, you have the arrows and things like

17:39that of God or these forces that penetrate. And in my own book, I've discussed the idea of God's

17:47spirit penetrates into people to take possession of them, like Saul, and he's the most translations

17:55say this spirit of God will overcome you or something like that. But the verbal root means

18:00force entry into and then you're, you will be given a new heart and you will be a new person.

18:04So they're malevolent, but also, or they're benevolent, but also malevolent forces like

18:09Jesus saying you have to, you have to bind the strong man. Yeah, exactly. He's invaded the house

18:15and down things like that. Yeah, although, you know, with Paul, it is, yeah, I think it's interesting

18:22that in what we're in second Corinthians, is that where we're in? Yeah, where he says,

18:28to keep me from being too elated, it seems to indicate that the Lord is who gave the thorn in the

18:36flesh. Yeah, the messenger, it says a messenger of Satan, but it was given to him by the Lord.

18:42Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so that confuses for a lot of confuses a lot of people today because

18:48there's this idea that God and this kind of Satan or kind of evil forces are pitted against one

18:54another. But I mean, that kind of competition motif, I think, doesn't really come out in full

19:01force till like second century. In ancient Judaism, I mean, it's a theodicy problem if you have demon

19:07demonic forces and satanic forces running around without the consent of the God of Israel. So there's

19:15this idea that even though it's, you know, this demonic force might be an agent of Satan, it's still

19:20under the jurisdiction, still under the sovereignty of this God of Israel, which is why Paul appeals

19:26to the God of Israel to take it away, which complicates our kind of understanding of ancient

19:31cosmology that well, it's not, you know, Satan and his forces and God over here, it's actually

19:36well, God's also stringing along these other forces, just like Dan talks about with Saul getting

19:41filled with the spirit of God. Okay, that's a great point for us to take a break.

19:46And we will come back with more Isaac soon in just a minute. Welcome back, everybody. We're

19:53talking with Isaac soon, author of a disabled apostle. I wanted to ask about something you mentioned

20:00in the previous discussion, you talked about weakness versus strength and weakness is a theme

20:06that keeps popping up in these epistles. And you talk at some length in the book about the contrast

20:13of weakness and strength and how a weakness can be a strength. Could you talk a little bit about

20:19the theme of weakness in in Paul and in your book? Yeah, sure. It's a great question. Weakness

20:25is a is an important topic for Paul. And it's very wide ranging. The Greek word he uses as the Nia

20:32can mean a lot of things. It can mean sickness. It could mean moral failing. It's a very kind of

20:37broad term. And Paul uses it in all these things. He characterizes his own suffering,

20:43his weakness, he characterizes his beatings as weakness, he characterizes his kind of ministry

20:49as kind of this ministry of weakness. This paradox is central for Paul. So in two Corinthians, one

20:56of the things that he's doing is also he's defending his apostleship. People are saying, you know,

20:59this guy writes really angry letters, but when he's with us in person, he has such a weak body.

21:04Why should we listen to him? And Paul, rather than saying, well, actually, I'm really strong,

21:09he actually doubles down on the weakness and says, actually, well, if you want, if you want to see

21:13how much of the fool I can be here, here's how I'm a fool. I've been, you know, I've been given

21:18whipping five times. I've been beaten by rods. I've been shipwrecked. I'm anxiety about the church.

21:22I've been let down in a basket. What the heck's about that? And then I've got this, you know,

21:26demon in my flesh who is weak and who is not weak, you know, but and so he's kind of charting this

21:31course. He's headed in kind of towards, you know, Jesus has this kind of ultimate paradox of

21:37strength and weakness because Jesus dies on a cross. It's a seditious death. And but it's this

21:43kind of powerful event which breaks death and allows the spirit of God to to pour out. I mean,

21:49just Jeremiah 31, right, to entry into into people's bodies, even in Gentile bodies.

21:54So this kind of cataclysmic event in Christ requires this strange paradox where weakness

22:02in disease in broken bodies in the kind of subjugation of human flesh to all manners of human violence

22:09suddenly can become this kind of means of of grace of salvation, whatever you want to call it.

22:15And Paul has no choice but to really double down on this concept of weakness as a strength

22:23because it's for him, it's central to the scandal of the cross. It's central to Jesus's kind of

22:29messianic identity. And Paul following in that in that way, he's kind of appropriating this idea

22:37and and leveraging it to to advance his rhetorical interest rather than try to apologize for it and

22:43try to try to back away from it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he's appropriating idea from Jesus,

22:49for example, but I think he, his idea, his construction of Jesus's ministry as a ministry

22:56of death. You know, that's two Corinthians four. I think he kind of expands on that into his own

23:04life in the same way that, you know, Ignatius of Antioch in the second century, he's, you know,

23:10on a martyrdom to Rome, he's kind of playing up that scenario. Paul also too is trying to,

23:17he's wrestling with his own bodily weakness and he's trying to theologize his way out of it.

23:21He's trying to rationalize it. Okay. Yeah. Well, and he does. Yeah. So for instance,

23:27in 2 Corinthians 12, he says that he appealed to the Lord about the thorn in his side and the

23:34Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect in weakness. So so yeah,

23:42there's that there's that power weakness. Yeah. Sort of construct. When I was reading about this,

23:49I was put in mind of, you know, Dan and I did an episode a few weeks ago where Jordan Peterson

23:58talked about how, you know, he couldn't stand the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth and

24:05really everybody should be monsters and they should be strong and just have a sword but keep

24:10it sheathed. And I just thought, if weakness, you know, you know, if Paul sort of did, you know,

24:17one of the great progenitors of the Christian movement can talk so powerfully about

24:25weakness being, you know, owning your weakness and weakness being the strength that he needs.

24:31You know, weakness being the thing that that empowers him. Yeah. It feels so

24:38against the whole alpha male Christianity line that we're seeing right now.

24:45Yeah, I think I think you're absolutely right, Dan. I think, you know,

24:48people are pretend to read Paul as kind of, you know, if you read his Galatians letter,

24:52he's an anger dude and he can be quite forceful. But people can mistake that for machismo.

24:59Paul is the opposite. I mean, in many cases, you know, he puts his own gender on the line.

25:06His masculinity in by ancient Greek and Roman terms is threads very closely to the effeminate.

25:13And I'm thinking of my work of my colleague Grace Emmett here. Paul lives a very weak ministry,

25:19weak life. And so it makes sense that for the Corinthians who are kind of this New York of the

25:25ancient world who have philosophers and sofists and orators pass through their city and the great

25:30speakers is Ted talks, right? You know, these are men who are talking about, I don't know what

25:34they're talking about, but they're talking great things. And then you have this person come along,

25:38you know, he's talking about, you know, this Jewish guy who died on a cross and he's not a very good

25:43speaker, but he seems to be, you know, to have a lot to say, why should we trust this person?

25:49I think it's a misunderstanding for people to think of Paul as this kind of man's man. He really,

25:54at least in his letters, the way he self portrays himself is quite the opposite.

25:58So we're not going to have Mark Driscoll pound in the pulpit about second Corinthians too,

26:03anytime soon. Oh, he never knows. He never knows this thing.

26:08Another indication that all of the New Testament is not reducible to a single outlook as well,

26:13but there are different rhetorical goals and different levers that are being pulled to try to

26:19achieve those things. Now, throughout the book, this thorn in the in the side is kind of treated

26:28as a great mystery. Do you have an idea about what you talk about this as something that is

26:37represented as perhaps some kind of demonic possession as an interpretation of a disability?

26:42What are some of the ways that you explore that, that mystery?

26:46Yeah, I mean, I think one of the it is connected to, it's connected to the story of him kind of

26:54having this apocalyptic vision of going up to the third heaven and, you know, he's seen things,

26:58but she's not supposed to talk about. And so I connected to, I don't know if it's a verbal

27:03impairment or something like that, but he's restricted in his speech that if he shares

27:07this kind of divine material, then it kicks off or triggers this thorn in the flesh.

27:12But other than that, I don't try to dive into diagnosing specifically what it is,

27:19particularly because scholars for the last 200 years have thrown all manner of diagnoses to it.

27:26And one of the things with disability studies is there's an avoidance of retrodiagnosis,

27:32the idea that we can use medical, our instruments today to try and diagnose things in the past.

27:39We just don't have that kind of information. And it also kind of reduces Paul's experience

27:46to diagnosis, right? Like what this condition is. If I just figure out what it is, that's it.

27:52But the more significant thing is that this has social ramifications for Paul,

27:57it affects his interpretation of his letters. And there's a whole wider network of stigma

28:06attached to that. So I think that's where I adjusted to in the book.

28:10Yeah, it seems like it's much more important that we know how whatever his disability is,

28:19it's much more important that we know how it affected his relationship with the rest of the

28:23world than what the specific thing is. But it is a physical thing, right? In in in Galatians,

28:30he talks about a physical infirmity. Is that right? So there's something Galatians for.

28:35Yeah, I mean, for two Corinthians, this thorn in the flesh, I do think it is physical,

28:41at least from what we can tell from Paul's letters, he does think that it's physical,

28:45it's in his flesh, it's not metaphorical, it's not kind of made up. But beyond that,

28:49I hesitate to kind of to guess into the past. Now, the next thing you move into

28:55is a discussion of circumcision as a disability. Now, in in a Jewish world, this was the idealized

29:01body. Absolutely. But Paul's not really operating within an exclusively Jewish world. How is this a

29:08disability for the Roman world? Yeah, so great, great question. So you're putting on a touching

29:15a really important point there about the relativity of bodily ideals, right? For Jewish communities,

29:21for ancient Israelites and Hebrews. And you know, for North African people, people, other people in

29:27the Levant, circumcision was an ideal part of their body, part of what they were. In the wider

29:34Greco-Roman world, though, there's a lot of stigma towards anything other than men having their foreskin

29:40intact. foreskin and male genitalia are just all over the place in the ancient world. You know,

29:46anyone who's gone to a museum and seen a Greek statue, you know, you're 12 year old and you start

29:52giggling. Or a gift shop in Athens. Exactly. And from the secret motions, the secret phallus

29:58potions and stuff like that. Was I supposed to stop giggling? Because I keep doing it. I feel like

30:05I maybe didn't pass that stage. But that's the job. That's what they're supposed to be doing,

30:11right? In the ancient world, you have male genitals, you've got phalluses, which are there.

30:16Oftentimes they're used apotropically to avert your eye from envy. They're there to make you laugh.

30:22They're there to put you into, you know, if you intend to harm someone else to change your mind,

30:27to be a distraction. But in the ancient world, the foreskin was important covering particularly,

30:33and where for your listeners, we're going to get physiological here. So covering, you know,

30:38the glands of the penis is a very, very important thing because exposing that glands

30:42suddenly evokes all those apotropaic, a lot of stigma, right? It's either in a sexual context,

30:48it's either in a votive context where, you know, people are offering gifts to the gods for healing.

30:56There's also the context of, you know, gods of fertility, like Priapis, right? Like who have giant

31:03phalluses. Some, you know, in frescoes in Pompeii, I think there's a fresco of Priapis that has,

31:10he has, he has difalia, he has two penises and they're giant and they're, they're exposed.

31:16So the, the, the exposure of the penis is a powerful act. It's often associated with

31:24hypersexuality, sometimes enslavement, but, and in the ancient world, in Greek and Roman society,

31:32one of the few times you would see circumcised penises is on the bodies of people that they

31:38considered barbarians. So we have drawings of, for example, Egyptians, right? Ancient Egyptians

31:45practiced circumcision and that was a part of their ideal body. But we have, we have images of

31:51Hercules fighting, you know, Egyptian priests and the artist has intentionally made their bodies

31:57look like, you know, animals and their, and their clothing is extra short to expose the kind of

32:03barbarian genitalia that they have. The other place, which I discovered in my research,

32:07which is in the book where you see circumcision is also on, uh, centaurs. So these kind of hybrid

32:12human monster, ancient monster beings. So there's this idea that, you know, if you're

32:18circumcised and you're cutting off foreskin or you're altering genitalia in some way,

32:22you're actually, it's a representation of, um, incivility or uncivilized kind of culture.

32:28And so that's where some of the stigma, uh, towards circumcision as a disability arises.

32:34So would it, would it be accurate to say that the idea is that the, the, the exposure of the

32:39glands is reserved for certain compartmentalized, um, domains of society. And outside of that,

32:47it is evoking the wrong things it's considered. And so it's kind of a modest, as hottest approach

32:53comes to the ancient penis. And so that this is othering them people who are exposing this

33:01outside of the domains in which it is appropriate are othered and they are, um, barbaric. They're

33:08doing this wrong. And so in that sense, they're, um, they've got a big problem. Yeah. So it's a

33:14faux pas, right? I mean, and they're really conscious about it. I mean, you've got athletes in,

33:20in Rome or in Greece who intentionally pin or tie up their foreskin so that the glands doesn't

33:25get exposed in the middle of a spectacle. Right. Um, I mean, so there's a painful, I imagine if, if,

33:33if things go sideways and then you have, uh, you have operations as well, what I imagine to be

33:41extremely, uh, painful operations to, um, to hide circumcision as well. Yeah. Exactly. You know,

33:48usually under the term kind of epispasm, which can describe a variety of different procedures.

33:54Um, but in the medical literature, there's a lot of different procedures. You know,

33:59if the foreskin, uh, of a child is too short, you know, these are, these are the applications

34:03or the ways you can stretch it out. Um, you know, but if it's Jewish circumcision, you know, you,

34:08these procedures might not work because, you know, it's too, it's too extensive to do any repairs.

34:13So even in the medical language, they're the kind of the need to have a medical procedure to restore,

34:18quote unquote, uh, you know, genitals to a particular condition. That's signifying of a

34:23disability dynamic happening. So help me understand Paul's relationship to circumcision and what he

34:29says about it. Yeah. Paul's relationship to circumcision is actually really complicated. Um,

34:35uh, because he actually, as I argue in the book, he actually participates in the stereotypeing of

34:42Jewish people and circumcision. One of the weird things that he does in his letters is because he

34:47talked about two ethnic groups, the Jewish people, and then the other group who, who he calls the

34:52nations, but also known as Gentiles or non-Jews. And one of the weirdest things he does in the,

34:57in his letters is he, he names these ethnicities by types of male genitalia. He calls Jewish people

35:04the circumcision and he calls non-Jews, not the uncircumcision. He says the foreskin,

35:10acrophosthea. That's like specific anatomical language. Wow. Um, so you have these letters

35:15being read out in, in the community and this guy yelling about, you know, the circumcision and the

35:20foreskin and people are like, what's going on here? There'd be his ethnic framework is being

35:25categorized by these terms. But by using circumcision and making it synonymous with Jewish believers,

35:32he kind of, he's participating in the reinforcement of, um, of circumcision as stereotypically Jewish.

35:40So he's an identity marker. Exactly. So he, it's an identity marker, but he's participating in this

35:45kind of, uh, uh, uh, uh, stereotyping of Jewish people. And it gets complicated because, and I

35:51know you guys just had Matt Thissen on, uh, talking about, you know, the Gentile problem.

35:55The Gentile problem part of it is that we have some early Christian believers who are not Jewish,

36:01but who feel compelled are being forced to circumcise. And Paul warns about this in Philippians and

36:08is led to the Philippians in chapter three, but he does, he, and he calls people who are forcing

36:13other people to circumcise. He calls them this very offensive term. He calls them the mutilation,

36:20catatome. And that's an intentional play on words with circumcision, which is paratome.

36:27So what, how can this be a difference? If, if these people are going around wanting to

36:30circumcise, uh, Gentiles, what's, what's wrong with that? Well, for Paul, Jewish circumcision is

36:37paratome. It's fine. But if it's a circumcision on a non-Jewish body on Gentiles, it's a mutilation.

36:44So when Paul does that, he's again is participating in disabling a particular type of circumcision,

36:50circumcision on the Jewish body, perfectly fine circumcision on a non-Jewish body. Paul treats

36:56as an impairment. Wow. That, that is a fascinating, uh, way of looking at it. Because

37:03I'm, and maybe you can help me. Maybe I should have you just help me draw this line because

37:09that feels like a leap, like thinking of, of that, something that isn't even exposed,

37:15that isn't even obvious unless it is chosen to be, uh, to be exposed. How, how does that then

37:23impair a person? Yeah. So I mean, if you think about impairment only in terms of, you know,

37:31medical pain or, or, or within a particular biomedical framework, it might not fit,

37:36but impairment is often defined as form and function. And because the removal of the foreskin

37:42changes the form of the human body, right? So then it becomes a deviation from the norm,

37:49which is foreskin, but then also functionally when you remove the foreskin, then there's no

37:54opportunity for the glands of the penis to be covered up and therefore hidden away. So therefore

38:00it's always exposed, always a marker of, of, of, um, uncivilizedness or, uh, or hypersexuality,

38:07a constantly exposed like that. So that's how I, that's how I would argue

38:11impairment there with regards to form and function when circumcision happens, at least for

38:17greeks and Romans. That's how they're thinking about it as an impairment. Interesting. Let's take

38:22another break and we'll be right back. Sure. So I wonder if we have any modern analogs to this

38:29idea that circumcision on a Gentile body is, um, is impairment. It strikes me that if this is

38:36being used as an ethnic identity marker, that this is crossing ethnic boundaries in an inappropriate

38:42way, somewhat similar to, uh, the idea of, um, appropriating practices from groups that you're

38:51not a part of. Sure. But in this case, it is maybe not, um, cultural appropriation so much as, uh,

39:01you're doing something that Paul thinks is not necessary and is harming yourself just for the

39:07sake of trying to inappropriately cross this boundary. Is there, is there some, is that analogous

39:12in any way to contemporary issues? Yeah. Well, no, not necessarily just Jewish folks. Um, but is,

39:19is it a, is the idea of cultural appropriation, something that, that, um, it at least resonates

39:25with, with what Paul might be saying. Yeah. Um, uh, hmm. I'm not sure that Paul views it as kind

39:34of a cultural appropriation. I think he thinks that if, I mean, in Galatians five, he talks about,

39:39if people get circumcised, they're going to, they're going to be circumcised or cut off from Christ.

39:44So for him, it's theological, it creates a theological problem, uh, that, you know,

39:49if you're going to be circumcised, then you're going to, you know, it's a whole host of theological

39:53issues. So I don't think he's necessarily worried about Gentiles living like Jewish people. I remember

39:59having a conversation with a colleague, Mark Nanos, uh, you know, he said, you know, I think Paul for,

40:04would, would be happy for Gentiles to live as Jewish people, but not if those things, uh, become

40:11the reason why they think that they have received righteousness from God, right? Like, so this,

40:16this Christ Jesus as a, as a key factor for faith is essential there. And if circumcision

40:22fills in that place or any Sabbath keeping falls in that place, then that becomes a theological

40:27problem for Paul. So I'm not sure if it's cultural appropriation that he's concerned about, but more

40:31concerned about, you know, the kind of theological consequences of taking on something that wasn't

40:36necessarily meant for them. Interesting. Yeah. So we, we've talked about a thorn in the side,

40:43we've talked about circumcision. There's a third wing of your discussion.

40:49Will you introduce us to that? Yeah, sure. So the last part of the book,

40:55I talk about Paul possibly being short stature. So having, uh, a kind of lower than average,

41:02below average, um, uh, height. And, um, listeners might be curious as to where I find this information.

41:13I alluded to it in the, in the first part of, uh, this episode talking about Paul being

41:18lowered in the basket and to Corinthians 11. And, uh, I tell the story one time, you know, I'm

41:23sitting reading, uh, the New Testament, my kids are climbing all over me. I think it's probably

41:28mid COVID, uh, early COVID days. And I'm reading this passage and a, a thought occurs to me, I think,

41:34well, how small do you have to be to be fit into a basket? Right? You know, it's not that, you know,

41:40being lowered from a city wall, that's a pretty serious kind of thing. I'm not into physics. I

41:45couldn't calculate it or anything, but I thought, well, maybe that's strange. I'll look into the

41:49word. And when I study the, the language used in to Corinthians 11, but also repeated in, in Acts 12,

41:55it's a really small basket. And I connected it to an early Christian apocryphal tradition in the

42:02Acts of Paul and Thecla. So that's a, a, a life of Paul, um, from the second century, very, very

42:08popular actually. And it actually has a physical description of Paul, you know, he was mono-browed,

42:13he had alkaline nose, he had, um, he had a bowed legs, and he was short. McRough, that he uses this

42:19Greek term. The term McRough's short is not just kind of, you know, he's a couple inches shy of an

42:26average height. Short is, uh, used almost pathologically. Now this person has a, a below average way

42:36below possibly short stature. And I go through a number of examples of where this term, you know,

42:41someone who is short is used to describe someone with short stature or possibly dwarfism.

42:45So, uh, and, and what, what, what do you draw from the idea of a short stature at Paul? Where,

42:54where do you go with that? Yeah. So it heads into, I mean, of course, I, in one of the chapters,

43:00I look at how short people or a person in the short stature and people with dwarfism are

43:06stigmatized and, um, you know, there's negative, uh, uh, cultural violence towards them, sometimes

43:13literal violence, you know, when they're kind of, um, tokenized and put into the, you know,

43:18into gladiator fights, um, as boxers. What the book tries to do with all of these different

43:24types of disabilities, whether it's the angel of Satan, whether it's circumcision, or whether it's

43:28short stature, is that it's not just, well, we've discovered this fact that's great, but it actually

43:33has implications for how we read Paul's letters. And so what I do in the last chapter with Paul's

43:39short stature is I reread sections of Paul's letters where he uses his short stature, um,

43:46theologically, but also sometimes to describe, you know, kind of his own self harm. So I talk

43:52about, you know, Paul in one Corinthians 15 says, you know, I'm the least of all apostles. I'm

43:58one who's, I'm an ectroma, which is almost like a miscarriage or an abortion. That's a very strong

44:04language. And interpreters have tried to figure out what's going on. Why does he say that in that

44:08particular place? What relevance does it have? And I argue, well, actually, that term is also

44:13synonymous with people with short stature because they're viewed as synonymous with, uh, kind of

44:18premature births. And that explains the shortness of their, of their height, the proportion of their

44:24bodies. And so Paul kind of pokes funded himself there by using a kind of, uh, uh, uh, this, a

44:31stereotype for people with short stature elsewhere. You know, Paul, you know, this is kind of athletic

44:37imagery that Paul uses where he says, you know, I train the body, you know, and I, you know, and I,

44:41and I train myself up and I kind of like pummel myself or like beat myself. And this is often

44:48interpreted and kind of, uh, uh, it's valorized like, well, you know, Paul's like working up his

44:52body is getting ready. But I draw on the idea that short stature people were also known as

44:57pugilists. They were also known as boxers. And so this, this kind of idea that Paul draws on him

45:02being a short stature person who's kind of repeatedly punching himself. And you know, boxing in the

45:07ancient world, sometimes they have like metal or stones strapped into their boxing gloves, right?

45:12So he's actually self harming himself. And this touches back onto this weakness and strength kind

45:18of thing that Paul almost, um, views his ministry as this kind of self-agulation that he's hurting

45:26himself. And so it casts a different light on. Well, actually it's not a kind of valorous or it's not

45:32a valorous image, a valorizing image, but it's actually a dangerous image of an apostle who

45:38is using kind of self harm as a model for this kind of Christian life. So it complicates that.

45:47Well, and he doesn't just talk about self harm. He talks about having the crap beat out of him.

45:51There's the you are you alluded earlier to the to the sort of list of woes that he's encountered

45:59in in second Corinthians 11. Yeah, where he talks about just all of the ways that he has just been

46:07completely pummeled, which, you know, he in no way is he talking about like the way that he as a

46:15champion fought back and valiantly, you know, took the day. Oh, no. Yeah. He's not fighting back. He's

46:21just taking the punches. It sounds like there are a lot of different convergences of concepts of

46:28weakness here. I'm short. I get beat up a lot. I have this, uh, this thorn in my side that I have.

46:36Yeah. So it sounds like he's really doubling down on, on the rhetoric of weakness. But Paul is also

46:44the innovator of what we think of today as as Christianity and responsible, probably for its

46:49most significant spread in its early years. Do you think that this rhetoric was instrumental in that?

46:57Is this was this a big part of the success of Paul? Or do you think that Paul was successful

47:04in spite of this rhetoric? Yeah, this is a really interesting question. I think in some ways,

47:13Paul is influential because he's following this kind of turn the other cheek motif with Jesus,

47:19right? Like the way through to victory, maybe this might be idealized, but the at least the

47:25idealization in early Christian texts is, you know, you don't respond with that kind of violence

47:29back. You don't you accept and weakness and kind of, uh, uh, and then that's your witness to the

47:36community. Um, there does seem to be a shift, of course, when Christianity becomes, um, state

47:44powerful and then you have all the bodies that would normally be administering violence towards

47:51Christians. Now the Christians are in control of that. Right. And so there's a kind of forgetting of,

47:56uh, uh, of that weakness of that, uh, not trying to fight back, not trying to punch back, not trying

48:05to, uh, relay evil for evil. I think it's so fascinating that the book of Revelation is one

48:10of the primary proof texts for that kind of, um, imperialist approach to Christianity that's results

48:16in things like the, uh, the crusades and stuff like that, which is ironic in light of the fact that

48:23you have the, the lamb slain as one of the, um, one of the images that keeps coming up in the book of

48:30Revelation as well. So you kind of have the convergence of, of these two polar opposite ideals,

48:36uh, in Revelation, but it depends on who's doing the deploying, what gets centered and what gets

48:44marginalized. And, and so today we have a lot of, uh, a lot of folks, particularly on social media,

48:51you and I see it on Twitter all the time, who promote that warrior, uh, kind of, uh, Christian

48:57ethos, uh, associated with, with Western, uh, ideals. Um, if you can even label something

49:05Western, what do you think the implications are for, for this kind of research, for this kind of

49:10study to, to how people not just read the, the New Testament today, but deploy the New Testament

49:16today? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, uh, it's a great question. I, I think I, my hope for the

49:22research, I think the, my first hope is that people pay attention to disabled experiences. Um,

49:29that disability is not kind of peripheral, uh, to Paul or to the development of the New Testament,

49:34but that it's, um, central to it. And a very easy way in to think using the New Testament for

49:41ethics, whether you copy and paste it as normative or prescriptive or whether you use it in dialogue

49:45or whether you just think it's an interesting thing to read. Um, so my hope for the book is that

49:51people start to pay attention to disabled experiences and how it's central and formative in the early

49:56years of the Christian in Jesus, in the Jesus movement. It does is a response in many ways,

50:04an alternate response in many ways to the kind of Christian culture we see, um, growing and

50:11flourishing in North America that, uh, wants to, um, hijack or glorify an ideal human body,

50:24which is violent and strong and powerful and dominates and subdues other people. Um, I think

50:33my work, especially, I mean, we've been talking about weakness today. I hope my work would play

50:38into, uh, a kind of alternate portrayal of, well, if you're going to do that, that's fine. I mean,

50:44it's not fine, but don't connect it to the New Testament as though it's inherent in, uh, the

50:50text there, right? Yeah. Uh, Paul is an apostle of weakness and, um, that just doesn't square with

50:58the kind of model he presents, uh, in, in following this Jesus. Um, so if you're going to do that,

51:05don't try and connect it to anything that Paul, uh, thinks is righteous or right or exemplary. Um,

51:12there's, you know, Paul talks about in two Corinthians two, he says, you know, we're in a

51:18triumphal procession, but the triumphal procession is not as victors. They're the slaves, they're

51:24the cactus, captives who have been taken and are being led to Rome to be sacrificed and made

51:29his example. So I think it really is, uh, it is an overturning of this idea that, uh,

51:35this kind of manly man or super strong or there's no weakness in Christianity actually at the heart

51:41of, uh, early Christian mission. Uh, it was weakness. Yeah. And this is something I see in,

51:48in folks who likes to talk about the idea of a Messiah who gets crucified. Nobody would make

51:56that up. So obviously that's historical. So the argument goes, but then the folks who generally,

52:01uh, like to appeal to that evidence are really not willing to walk the same walk, uh, as Jesus,

52:10as Paul, as others in the New Testament who are represented, um, in ways that, uh, adhere closer

52:17to the slain lamb than to, uh, the victorious, uh, Christ riding through the skies in a, uh, in a

52:25blood soaked, uh, robe, uh, with a sword in his hand. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, but it's just

52:32because, I mean, as scholars, we, we tend to, because we pay so much attention to the initial

52:39contexts or of these texts, we'd like to hope that other people are also being consistent with it.

52:46But, you know, especially over the last three, four or five years, um, it's really become evident

52:51that people are just using the text however they want. Yeah. Uh, and so expecting them to be

52:56consistent with the portrait of Jesus or a portrait of Paul or this kind of anti-imperialist agenda

53:01in revelation. Well, I, I don't expect people to do that because they just cherry pick texts.

53:06Well, they just are not familiar with the, with, with the texts at all. Yeah. Um, they're just being,

53:11they're culturally using them to affirm whatever their own agendas are. And I think that's sad. Um,

53:17and I think Paul would be quite appalled. Yeah. You'd be furious. Yeah. It's a mad guy. No, no,

53:24pun intended. Um, uh, I, and you bring up in, uh, something interesting that you mentioned in the

53:29last few years, I think COVID revealed the ways that a lot of disabilities are marginalized and

53:37silenced because not every disability is worn on the surface of your skin, uh, and not every

53:43disability is something that people are going to want to talk about all the time. But, uh, with

53:47COVID, you saw a grotesque, um, kind of rejection of any care for what other people are going through.

53:57Other people all over the world have their own thorn in their side. That is something that was

54:02suddenly an enormous threat to their, their health and their safety in public. But you had those,

54:10a lot of the folks who are, um, cheering for the Jesus riding the horse with the sword in the air,

54:17who, uh, denigrated and demean folks who are just trying to protect their own lives and, and those

54:24of the people they loved. So, yeah, hopefully a little more awareness of disability, uh, can bring

54:30that, uh, a little more, uh, and a, a willingness to accept that other people are experiencing the

54:37world they say they, um, they are rather than trying to project our own experiences of the world on

54:43everybody else, which is, yeah, yeah. And so, um, any, any, uh, questions that, uh, you were left

54:51with when you finish this volume, things for the future, anything you are exploring right now in,

54:55in research that, yeah, this is a jumping off point. Uh, yeah, I'm always writing. I'm, it kind of ties

55:03into, uh, another book that I'm writing, which is, um, Deaf in the New Testament and specifically on

55:08Paul, and thinking, exploring more of these ideas about Paul's conception of Deaf and, um, you know,

55:15self killing and the idea of, um, suicide, uh, all the happy subjects. Yeah, you, you, you just

55:23dive right into the, the really uplifting stuff, don't you? Well, it's, it's just the neglecting

55:28stuff. The stuff that people don't want to think about, right? You know, I mean, when, when I talk

55:31about, uh, Paul and disability, people say, only who cares? We have his letters. So it's just kind of

55:35this disembodiment, right? Like, well, Paul's just kind of this floating head. Doesn't matter that he

55:39was a human or had some kind of lived experience. That has no effect on it. It's kind of this idea,

55:45you know, well, it's inspired scripture. So it just comes down onto the page, but it's being

55:49mediated. Even, even if you don't think it's being mediated through a person who lives and walks

55:54right. Well, and it seems absurd to think that the work that Paul produced wouldn't have been

56:02deeply influenced by his own personal experience. Oh, yeah. So we wouldn't have his letters

56:07if it weren't for his disabilities. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We wouldn't have

56:12conceptions of weakness. We wouldn't have, I mean, it hugely shapes his ministry. So,

56:17but the less, the less moored it is to its historical contingency, though, the easier it is to leverage

56:24for whatever contemporary, um, exigencies we, we have, if I can disembodied the texts,

56:31then I can use it however I want. I can put it on like Hannibal Lecter and do whatever I want.

56:37I can cannibalize it, right? Excellent. The only thing I'll say to your listeners though,

56:43so even though I've been talking about, um, uh, a short stature and circumcision and, um,

56:49demonic possession in the past as disabilities, I'm not saying, and I want to make it very clear,

56:54I'm not saying that they are or should be disabilities or consider disabilities today.

56:59I'm especially conscious in this time in the, with the rise of a lot of, um, anti-Semitism

57:06with talking about circumcision as a disability, because you talked about analogues before, uh, Dan,

57:12but there are movement, uh, today of intactivists who actually petition against, um, circumcision

57:19of children, even in Jewish communities and Muslim communities. And there's a huge amount of anti-Semitism

57:25that, uh, is connected there. So people might think, well, circumcision is quite common,

57:30generally common, not really a disability. For actually the people in this intactivist movement,

57:34it is a disability. And I think that's extremely problematic when we see some of the same rhetoric,

57:39uh, in the first century towards circumcision, starting to reappear at the end of the 20th century

57:46in the 21st century. And, and so that's something. So I just want to make sure, clear for listeners

57:51that I'm not saying those things should be disability and not be prescriptive here. Uh,

57:55but we're talking about the past, but it can still help us inform us and protect us, I think,

58:00from ideologies that try to revive these conditions as disabilities.

58:06So Isaac, where can people find your book? Uh, how can people find you? Uh, what, uh, more,

58:12more of your stuff talk about, uh, where, where people can get more Isaac soon?

58:17Yeah, sure. You can find me on Twitter, mostly on Twitter, too afraid for TikTok.

58:21Um, it doesn't work for Bible scholars in a way. Dan, Dan does a great job. I just like vicariously

58:30do it through Dan. Also, you know, Canada does a great job also. Um, yeah. So my book right now is

58:37published with OUP. It's exorbitantly expensive right now. Um, so wait for the paper back. Uh,

58:42but the first chapter is free, I think. Um, yeah, you can find me on social media. I do make music,

58:48um, so I do make kind of Christian music, but it's, uh, actually theologically informed Christian

58:55music. So based on my scholarship, so I, under the artist, Young, Y-E-U-N-G, uh, some good feels.

59:00It's not just me singing, you know, uh, dumpy acoustic guitar. It's a nice, nice sense there.

59:06Not that there's anything wrong with acoustic guitar. Oh, no, no, I just said, yeah, I guess.

59:11Yeah. Excellent. Well, Isaac soon, thank you so much for joining us, uh, on the show today.

59:17I think a lot of people are going to really, uh, have enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for having me on.

59:23I know I have. Uh, if you, uh, listener/viewer at home would like to write into us about this or

59:30anything, uh, please feel free to do so. It is contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. Please feel free to

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59:58And, uh, other than that, thanks for, for listening and, uh, we'll talk to you again next week.

60:04Bye, everybody.