Ep 116: Ethnicity and the Bible

00:00I don't know if you know this. No interpretation is required with the Bible. Oh, man. I've heard

00:06it. I've heard it said, I've heard it said many times that it just says what it says and you don't

00:11interpret it. Not what McClellan tends to say, but he's not here. So I can say, you can say, it's my show.

00:19Hey, everybody. You're listening to the data over Dogma podcast where we increase

00:30public access to the academic study of the Bible and combat the spread of misinformation

00:35about the same. I'm Dan Beecher and there is no Dan McClellan today scunt done done in his stead.

00:44We've brought in someone possibly better. It's Aaron Higashi. You've been on the show a

00:48bunch of times. Hi, Aaron. How are you doing today? I'm so happy to be here. Not better than Dan,

00:53but ready to combat misinformation. Nonetheless, you are. And what and what a combat veteran you

01:00are. You've been here a few times. And you are so just so that the folks at home know, Dr. Higashi,

01:09you are a you're currently operating as a nerd in residence at the Bible for normal people. Is that

01:17right? That's correct. I make content for them. I've written a couple commentaries for them.

01:22I have meetings with them zoom meetings, the most serious kinds of meetings with them.

01:26The scariest of all the meetings. Right. Yeah. But and the least amount of pants of all of the

01:31meetings. That's true. Especially in Phoenix where it's 110 degrees. Good. It is it is hot here,

01:39but I can't imagine what it's like in Phoenix. I'm very glad not to be there. Though I would

01:48love to hang out with you. But you are also the author. We had you on before, but to talk about

01:55your book first and second Samuel for normal people. That's right. Which you did for the Bible

02:02for normal people. And you've got another another volume for them coming out about first and second

02:07chronicles. That's right. Hopefully by the end of the summer, first and second chronicles for

02:11normal people. That's exciting. For a second chronicle, some of the most boring books in the

02:16Bible. But I try to make them fun and interesting and maybe even relevant to your life somehow

02:23through the magic of scholarly interpretation. Amazing. Amazing. No, no, no. I don't know if

02:28you know this. No interpretation is required with the Bible. Oh man. I've heard it said many times

02:35that it just says what it says and you don't interpret it. But the common wisdom of the YouTube

02:41comments section. Yes, exactly. Not not what McClelland tends to say, but I he's not here. So I can

02:48say what you can say. It's my show. All right. Well, I've asked you to come here. Dan is is off,

02:59you know, gallivanting, signing books or whatever. But you you have graciously agreed to be our

03:05resident scholar for this week. And one of the what we decided we would talk about, I'm excited.

03:11We've got we've got a couple of different topics. The first one, we're going to talk about what is

03:17that? And the what is that is going to be ethnicity as it pertains to the Hebrew Bible. And I we

03:26I think we're going to stumble on some interesting stuff in that discussion. And then in the latter

03:33half of the show, we're going to do I haven't even come up with a what we're going to call the

03:40segment. But we're going to do a second segment about is practicing safe texts. Yeah. So yeah,

03:49that that's going to be fun. Stay tuned for that. You know, maybe it's going to be more

03:56pride month stuff. So, you know, you can never have too much. You well, again, comment sections

04:03would disagree. But that's okay. We're good for engagement. We're going to have a good time.

04:10And that's right. I hope the haters stick around for the end of the show and then just get furious

04:16with us the more. But better. But let's let's get to a what is that? Yeah, ethnicity in the Hebrew.

04:26So if I had to make a list of the top three things that biblical scholars know about the Bible,

04:33or at least thinking about the Bible, okay, that lay folks don't necessarily know about the Bible.

04:39I don't know what number one would be, but like number two or number three, which is going to be

04:44our topic for today, would be that the Israelites are Canaanites, that the Israelites,

04:51they have their minds blowing all over the country, exploding, people call scholars by and large,

04:58especially in the past 20 or 30 years have come to a very common consensus that the Israelites

05:04are merged within the land of Canaan, that Israelite ethnicity is a subset of Canaanite ethnicity.

05:12So if you that's nuts, because I have read several passages in the Bible, where the Israelites are

05:19not pleased about the Canaanites. Yes, the huge chunks of the Bible are written specifically for

05:28the purpose of showing their displeasure for the Canaanites. Yeah. So no, you wouldn't get this

05:33impression. And this is why there's such a big difference between what scholars think about this

05:38and what everyday lay folks Bible readers think about this is because if you just read the Bible,

05:43that's not the impression you get at all. The Bible goes way out of its way to demonstrate

05:50over and over again just how different these two groups of people are.

05:55Right. But this consensus has formed for a reason and it gives us an interesting way to look at

06:03biblical texts because now we can look at biblical texts and we can ask this question,

06:06what does this passage or this story or whatever have to say about Israelite ethnicity?

06:12Yeah, I mean, I guess we don't. So one of the things that we should talk about,

06:17and I saw you and I have been corresponding about this, you sent me some very good notes about it,

06:24and I saw in it, one of the things that we need to talk about is what the word ethnicity means.

06:31Now, you used in your notes the word defined and I think I'm banned from talking about definitions

06:37on this show because I'm a felon as part of this show. But you're not banned from it. So maybe we

06:43should talk briefly about like, what do we mean when we say the word ethnicity? Like, what is an

06:49ethnicity? It's a good question. Maybe I can still make Dan happy by referring to several

06:55definitions. So we don't seem like we're trying to over determine this word or anything. But it is

07:00an important, I mean, if we're going to talk about ethnicity for a long time, we should we

07:03should have some sense of what we're talking about. Yeah. And there are different ways to define

07:08ethnicity. Some that are going to be immediately relevant to this conversation and thinking about

07:14the Bible, one from Frederick Barth. He says here, I got a quote from an ethnic groups are not defined

07:20by the cultural stuff they carry, but by the boundaries they maintain. So the kinds of boundaries

07:27that we def that we draw around our community. That's a critical component of ethnicity.

07:33A second one here from Anthony Smith, an ethnic group is a named human population

07:38with myths of common ancestry and shared memories. So we think about on the inside of this definition

07:46are myths of ancestry and shared memories, true or not. And then on the outside of these really

07:53rigid boundaries that help separate the people who have those myths of common ancestry from

07:59everybody else. And then a third element that I want to bring in comes from a sociologist Roger

08:06Brudebaker who says, we should think of ethnicity not as a thing, but as a process. So let's put

08:12those three things together. Ethnicity is a share. Yeah, you're gonna have to help me with all of

08:17this. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna make a sandwich here. We have myths of common ancestry.

08:23For ourselves, we have boundaries drawn around those myths. And then we're working this all out

08:29together in a process. Those are the three key elements that we're then going to bring to biblical

08:36texts. And we're going to ask of these biblical texts, how do they contribute to these myths of

08:41common ancestry? How do they help us draw boundaries around this community? And how can we see this

08:48process change over time? Yeah, it's I mean, I think if nothing else, those three definitions

08:56point out the how sort of slippery this concept actually is like, and ethnicity is not really a

09:06thing. Just sort of like, you know, you when you hear a sociologist and social scientists talking

09:12about race, and they basically say, there isn't race. That's not the right races are just a sort

09:21of sociological or or sometimes even ideological construct. You know, we're not we're what we're

09:30not talking about is anything that could be tested with DNA, or that could be like, there's no,

09:37there's no the hard and fast scientific lines that we can draw that mean anything in the conversation

09:45about ethnicity. Is that is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely the domain of the

09:50social sciences rather than the hard sciences. So we're not testing any of this in labs or anything

09:56like that. But it does it is nevertheless something that emerges from everyday life, right? As soon

10:02as people groups live, whatever they need, whatever kind of work they need to do to survive,

10:08whatever kind of art and culture and food they produce, you're well on your way to an ethnicity.

10:14And then this really comes to a head when that group encounters another group, and they start to

10:20understand the differences, we live our lives this way, you over there live your lives that way.

10:26And that's when that that boundary element starts to come in. And then you can really start talking

10:32about these two distinct ethnicities. But I do have to say it's ethnicity, I think, and perhaps

10:40this is because of my experiences as a mixed race person. But I think ethnicity is more real

10:45than race. Okay. I think ethnicity is more organic than race. Ethnicity just emerges from

10:52interactions between different people groups. But race was really invented for a specific reason

11:00to classify people, to really facilitate imperialism and colonialism and to facilitate racism, you

11:10know, racism is a is the is the is the Tanashi Coates has a great quote that racism is the is

11:18the the parent of race, not the other way around it's racism proceed. There's first a desire to be

11:25racist. And that's what gave rise to the concept of race. I think that that's a valid that's a

11:30valid distinction to make that that that racism was was a motivated, I guess, race was a motivated

11:39idea. And and ethnicity is sort of arises out of sort of a cultural experience. Yes.

11:47Right. Okay. I think that's a great description. All right. Well, let's talk then about Israel

11:54and Canaan and sort of what we're talking about when we say those words. I know it's funny because

12:00you gave me two scriptures that are very interesting. Can we talk about Genesis 10

12:08where we're talking about sort of the the lineages of Noah's sons, right? Is that what that is? Yeah.

12:20And then and then we'll jump to Ezekiel 16. So talk briefly about sort of what Genesis 10 says

12:26and why it why we think it might say that. Yeah. So I mean, this is part of the reason why just

12:32casual Bible readers are going to assume that the Israelites and the Canaanites are very distinct

12:37people groups. And that's because in part of the reason, there are a lot of reasons, but part of

12:41the reason is because in Genesis chapter 10, we have this the table of nations. And this is where

12:46we have these big lists of all these eponymous ancestors that is ancestors who are named after

12:53the people group that will descend from them. So we have on this list, people named like Egypt

13:01and Canaan and stuff like that who are named after the eventual their eventual descendants.

13:06But we have all these ancestors on this. And one of the things that's really interesting about

13:10the table of nations is that Canaan, the ancestor of the Canaanites is grouped alongside

13:17Egyptians and grouped alongside several Mesopotamian groups. So one, that's weird because Egypt and

13:26Canaan and Mesopotamia are not anywhere near each other. Right. It does. It does seem like the

13:31the Israelites are surrounding themselves. Yeah, it is kind of strange how they've, but I mean,

13:37this reflects sort of their, it's an argument almost that the Israelites are, you know, these

13:42people groups who have spent a lot of time dominating them, who have spent a lot of time in conflict

13:48with them, they're all related. But then Genesis 10 locates the Israelites in an entirely different

13:55family, right, descended from an entirely different one of Noah's sons. So all those groups are similar

14:02the Egyptians, Canaanites, Mesopotamia, they're all related, but the Israelites are different.

14:08They're set apart. They're not like the Egyptians. They're not like the Canaanites. They're not like

14:13the Mesopotamians. And so that's part of the reason why it's just a casual Bible reader. You're

14:18going to make the assumption. Well, they're their own group. They have nothing to do with these other

14:22groups. Does it feel at all to you like, and this is me speculating, obviously, but it one wonders

14:29if they chose these groups and grouped them together, Canaanites, Egyptians, Mesopotamians,

14:37whatever, they just picked all the bad guys in their stories and just said they all came from the

14:44same from the same lineage. That suspicion, I think rings true. I mean, there is no other

14:52reason. I mean, they have they have no language in common. They don't have any geography in common.

14:57They're not really, they're not overlapping in power at any given time and that they're competing

15:04against one another. So they have no real, they have no genetic relationship. So there's nothing

15:11that's actually ties them together, except that from Israelite perspective, they are frequently

15:17antagonists. They're joking. That is, yeah, that is the common thread for these, through these

15:24different groups. But no, I mean, in real life, you know, there, I mean, one is a northeastern African

15:29country and one's, you know, way over here and one's, you know, yeah. So no. All right, I like it.

15:35I like it. The etiology for why for all the people I don't like for all the people I hate.

15:41Yeah. That's okay. So, so what? What is an Israelite? Like,

15:48maybe help me understand like, because here's here's another trick. And maybe you can help me

15:53understand this too. There are words that I encounter a lot, because I don't know if you know this,

15:59I do a whole podcast about the Bible. And I don't know much about it, to be perfectly honest.

16:05And I get confused by words like Israelite, Hebrew, you know, Judah height. And they all seem to be

16:16referring to us. Like there's an us group in the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. And I, I'm sort of, I keep

16:24struggling to figure out what is meant by like, what these groups are, are they distinct? Are they

16:30the same? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, and your confusion is totally reasonable, because even

16:36different biblical texts will use them in different ways. So even if you just looked at the Bible

16:41and said, Bible, tell me what these terms mean, you're going to run into trouble sometimes,

16:45because sometimes they do mean different things. So I mean, anything that's related to Judah is

16:51primarily going to be a geographic description of people who live around the region of Judah.

16:58But that region is produced by a kingdom occupying this space in southern Canaan.

17:04So there is a kingdom there. It becomes synonymous with the region. Later, it's a Persian province.

17:12Even later still, it becomes a province under Greek rule and then Roman rule.

17:17And each time the boundaries change a little bit. And so there's a lot of flexibility there.

17:23But Israelite is first defined biblically. I mean, if you're reading the Bible left to right

17:29in sort of the order that represents itself. Or right to left if you're in Hebrew. But either way,

17:33sure. Yes. Yeah. Our defined as the sons of Israel and Israel is who Jacob is renamed to.

17:42So ostensibly, these are all people who have, they're part of the same family,

17:48who were originally in Canaan, who went down into Egypt and then in the famous Exodus story,

17:55came back out again 400 years later to resettle in the land of Canaan. So the Israelites are the

18:00people who had that experience, the experience of going down into Egypt and then coming back out

18:06again. They are related to one of these 12, 13, 14 tribes, depending on exactly how you count them.

18:12They're one of those people. Okay.

18:19And that, that grouping that you just used does seem to mesh very well with the idea,

18:27with the sort of the definitions that we talked about of ethnicity, which is to say,

18:33we've got this common ancestry myth idea. They are, they are a group. They are, they are, you know,

18:42sort of self-contained. They have their boundaries. So, I mean, I guess that makes sense, right?

18:49Yeah. The difficulty is that, I mean, the Exodus is a huge part of that myth of common ancestry,

18:57that going down into Egypt and coming back out again. Except, of course, the Exodus never happened.

19:02Right. That is a bit of a sticky wicked, isn't it?

19:06So, the, the, the, the, the Exodus as it's described in the Bible did not happen. We have good

19:13archaeological evidence that it did not happen. There are probably, I mean, the Bible describes

19:19more than 2 million people coming up out of Egypt to resettle into Canaan. Those are impossible

19:25numbers. Yeah. It doesn't look like that number of people or even a tenth that number of people

19:31ever migrated from Egypt to Canaan at any of the times that the Bible says that is supposed to

19:37have happened and the Bible contradicts itself on when that was. So, I mean, that's an additional

19:41problem. So, then the question is like, well, if this story didn't happen, then what is Israelite

19:49ethnicity? If that's the defining feature, if that's a big part of what's separating Israelites

19:54from the surrounding people, what happened instead? And this, this is where that scholarly consensus

19:59comes in. That did not happen. Instead, Israelites emerged more gradually coming into their

20:07awareness of themselves as Israelites over the course of several centuries, starting around 1200

20:13or so at the end of the 13th century BC, and then taking really several centuries beyond that

20:19to establish themselves as self-conscious Israelites who are different from the Canaanites that that

20:27they grew out of. So, yeah, I mean, they so coming out of the Canaanite ethnicity, but then, but then,

20:41you know, eventually becoming sort of sworn enemies or whatever, of that, of the group from

20:47which they emerged, do we have a sense of how that would have happened or what that would have looked

20:54like? Or is it, I mean, I'm guessing there's, you know, what we have is, as you say, a sort of

21:02a fictionalized story about, you know, being in bondage in Egypt. But yes, I mean, that's the big

21:09part of it. Remember, again, this is a process and for the ancient Israelites, a big part of that

21:16process was the text they produced. So, when we look at the earliest stories in the Hebrew Bible,

21:23they go a long way towards helping define who the Israelites are. I'm sure Dan has mentioned

21:28before, but the earliest parts in the Hebrew Bible, scholars generally consider to be Exodus 15,

21:34the song of the sea, which is a version of the Exodus story escaping from Pharaoh,

21:39God defeating Pharaoh with waters that have been supernaturally manipulated, and then coming up

21:46into or around the region of Canaan, passing by all these other people, right? The text goes out

21:52of its way. Exodus 15 goes out of its way to mention these other groups are in the land

21:58who the Israelites are not. They are not the Edomites that they pass by, they are not the Philistines,

22:04they pass by, they are not the Moabites, they're not Canaanites, they're somebody else, and they've

22:08been brought into this land by God to serve God. So, this is sort of the story that

22:19myth of common ancestry that the rest of the Bible is based on. Now, it's not true,

22:24archeologically, we know that this did not happen, at least in a way that involved a lot of people,

22:29but it's still a powerful story, and it's such a powerful story that people can then

22:36build an identity off of. Is the idea of

22:45I remember the concept of the Promised Land, and that was sort of Canaan, right? So,

22:55it seems like at some point that mythos must have come from something, right? This idea that

23:03we weren't from here, but we took it over. It seems unlikely to me that that came from

23:14nothing, that they just made that up out of whole cloth. Do we have any other sources that can shed

23:20light on whether they actually did come from somewhere else, or go somewhere else and come back

23:27to that land, or do we have anything on that? Or is it just, part of where it might come from is,

23:35and this is kind of a minority opinion amongst biblical scholars, but it is popular amongst those

23:42that I like the most. So, it's not the consensus, but there was a biblical scholar named Norman

23:50Gottwald, who had this idea that it was really lower-class Canaanites. So, they didn't come from

23:59somewhere else, but the idea of Canaan as a Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, that is,

24:04the replete with natural resources just waiting to be used, was the dream of a lower class within

24:11Canaan that was able to essentially revolt against wealthier city-states and then take possession

24:19of the rest of the land of Canaan. And this helps us sort of explain that idea of this idealized

24:25Canaan that these people are coming to inherit. Now, they're not coming from outside, but they're

24:31coming from relative poverty. And this actually does match some of the archaeological data a

24:37little bit, because while we do have an Israel, something called Israel, by the end of the 13th

24:42century, starting in the 13th of starting in the 12th century, we have this just a huge number of

24:51relatively poor, highland villages that get settled in the middle of Canaan, if you have

24:59a map in front of you, from the middle of the Jezreel Valley down to Hebron. So, in the spine

25:08of the territory up in the mountains, more than 100 villages over the next couple hundred years,

25:14couple centuries are settled, but they're poor villages, not a lot of people in each of them,

25:20certainly not the kind of numbers that could talk about with the Exodus. But there is a redistribution

25:26of the population from out from away from wealthier city states, down closer to the coast to these

25:35highland villages. So there is a social transformation that's happening there. And Norman Godwald

25:41really capitalizes on this and says, well, the best explanation for this is that people with this

25:45Israelite identity, who worship this heretofore unknown God Yahweh, which was what doesn't appear

25:53to originally be a Canaanite deity, they developed a new way of life and separated themselves from

26:00the Canaanites. And a lot of it was predicated on this idea that this land of Canaan can be a land

26:06flowing with milk and honey, not just for, you know, a small group of people, but for all of us.

26:11Wow. Okay, that's interesting. I like that. One of the, I guess one of the things that we should

26:18talk about is like other ways that Israelites sort of differentiated themselves from Canaanites or

26:28were different from Canaanites and sort of where those boundaries were drawn, not just physical

26:35boundaries, not just geographic boundaries, but like sort of ethnic boundaries.

26:40Yeah. So, and this is where a lot of the laws in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible

26:47come in, many of these laws seem to have roots in a desire to draw very strict boundaries around

26:55the Israelite community. Okay. So time and time again, in fact, throughout all the major law

27:01codes, we have these, do not do what the Canaanites do. Exodus 23, 24, do not follow in their

27:08practices. Deuteronomy 18, nine, don't even ask about their practices. In Leviticus 18, do not do

27:15as they do. And that's before some of the more famous laws against incest and then against

27:21homoerotic practice that gets quoted a lot by people. But the motivation behind a lot of these

27:28laws is don't do what the Canaanites are doing, be different from them. And what scholars have

27:35kind of reasoned that this is sort of an instance of the lady protesting too much, right? You wouldn't

27:41need to spend so much time and energy saying, don't be like them. If there was a clear distinction

27:48between you and them. Okay. It's in these instances where the slippage between you and them is so

27:54possible, so likely you're so accidentally to step over and suddenly become a Canaanite.

28:01And that's because there's hardly any difference between these two groups of people.

28:05Right. Interesting. So it's funny because I've heard Dan say many times on our show that a lot of

28:12the laws that are laid out in these passages were not for practice. They were there as some sort of

28:21marker point, but they weren't there as a day to day like enforceable law.

28:30And I never really had much sense of why that would even be a thing. But this is a really good

28:37reason that like this, just to create a distinction between us and them, we do this even if we don't

28:46do it. But like, but like on the books at least, this is a difference between us and them.

28:52Right. The on the books is the important part, right? These are primarily priestly groups and

28:56scribal groups. So people in positions of relative power, the makers of culture.

29:03And when it comes to it, the enforcers of culture on occasion. So it is important for them because

29:09they're the ones who are manufacturing. Again, it's a process. It's not a one and done thing.

29:15But over the course of centuries, our manufacturing is a relied identity. And you can do that in a

29:21relatively secluded place. You can create these texts and you could teach these texts to the next

29:26generation of scribes and priests. And then, you know, anytime these upper class people interact

29:31with lower class people in sacrificial practice, for example, they will remind them, you know,

29:36you are doing, you are engaging in the sacrifice in the way that you do, because you are in Israel

29:42light and not a Canaanite. Right. Don't do it. So even without the laws ever necessarily being

29:48enforced, so their existence amongst producers of culture still has an impact on on everyday people.

29:56In fact, there's, I mean, even even some laws that are very difficult to understand at first glance

30:01make a lot more sense when we consider them in this way. So people may be familiar with the law

30:06and do not boil a kid in its mother's milk. Right. Which is sort of a famous example of a weird

30:11sounding law. What exactly is it getting at? It's often interpreted by Jewish communities today.

30:15They go so far as to not have any meat and dairy together at all. Right. In an effort to avoid

30:20having even accidentally boiled a kid in its mother's milk. But there is some reason to think that

30:27this is this was a Canaanite fertility practice of some kind. So this law exists, you know,

30:35don't do what the Canaanites did. They did this thing. You don't do that.

30:40So they they the Canaanites would have, you know, oh, well, we need if we need to get pregnant,

30:45get some of the mother's milk and make, you know, boil a kid it and kid in this case just to be

30:51clear. You could maybe go. Yeah, the bay. Yeah. Not a human being. We're not we're not on the

30:56episode about human sacrifice. I think Dan or yeah, we've done that one. We'll probably do it again.

31:00But yes, as a way of preparing an animal for for ritual consumption. Yeah.

31:06Okay. Yeah, that does. That makes a way more sense than just as a, as a, you know, bizarre food

31:12prohibition. Right. Yeah. So there's and we we also know like don't the the prohibition against

31:20eating pork. Sometimes we're able archeologically to identify Israelite sites versus Canaanites

31:27sites because of the prohibition on pork. So they've created this almost arbitrary

31:32restriction on themselves just for the purpose of differentiating themselves.

31:36Other Canaanites that, you know, that this is that right there is a great reason to stay Canaanite,

31:42frankly. Bacon is that I'm a huge pork fan myself. I like the pigs. So, you know, I suppose,

31:52but you know, Dan talks about costly signaling all the time. I guess that's that's that's what

31:58we're talking about here is like we don't do X because we are not they. Yes, it does. It does

32:04have a very a defensive position, doesn't it? Like a posture of like just like, we're not. Yeah,

32:15it feels, it feels defensive to say to craft your entire legal structure based on not being

32:22somebody else. Yeah. And I mean, and there's there's always tensions here, right? So

32:28so much of it is designed to draw a sharp line between the Israelites and Canaanite. At the same

32:33time, I mean, there are whole sections of these law codes that are drawn from, you know, other

32:37ancient Southwest Asian law codes. I mean, particularly the code of Hammurabi, they'll just copy and

32:42paste laws. Right. So there is this weird, you know, we are going to take some of these from other

32:47cultures whole cloth, but then these other laws are going to be created for the purpose of so

32:52that there are several motivations operating all at once. And that's, that's one of the reasons why

32:57we have multiple interpretive lenses for these texts, because no one lens is going to capture

33:02all of this at the same time. Of course. So and you know, there were some of the laws, you know,

33:07there are the silly like food laws and whatever, but there were also like rules about how,

33:12how Israelites are allowed to interact with Canaanites, including like marriage and that sort of

33:21thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about that about inter ethnic marriage? Yeah, so

33:29again, something that we find in all the legal codes is a prohibition against intermarriage

33:35with Canaanites. Usually also buttressed by commands to commit genocide against the

33:40gang to wipe them all out once you get there. Yeah. Fortunately, the Israelites were never

33:48actually in a position to commit genocide against Canaanites. That's that's not how that actually

33:53went down historically. So hopefully it looks like this didn't happen in actual practice. Nevertheless,

33:59the rhetoric in the texts is very aggressive. Yeah. Kill them completely and be sure you don't

34:06intermarry with them. Right. And that intermarriage is another way of creating a boundary around

34:13your community. And this one's especially difficult. There's always going to be some like leakage

34:18here, right? Because again, in actual life, the line between the Israelite and the Canaanite is so

34:23very thin. And so it's a very difficult sentiment to enforce. And so all throughout these texts,

34:30we have Israelites marrying other people. I mean, famous marriages even between Moses and Zapora,

34:36who's a Midianite or David and Maka, who's from an Aramian city state. So you have all these

34:45marriages that are inter ethnic marriages in actual in the actual narratives of the text. But the

34:52law codes are all very clear, do not intermarry with them, because then you're going to commit

34:57idolatry. If you intermarry with them, you're going to commit idolatry. And idolatry doesn't

35:03really feel like a super relevant concern for us today. But if the primary difference between

35:10Israelites and Canaanites is the worship of Yahweh, then to commit idolatry is to stop being an

35:17Israelite, to commit idolatry is to become a Canaanite again. And so there's a lot more

35:23writing on this than just preferences of religious practice. There's a lot more writing on this,

35:29it would seem to them at least than just who you happen to marry. This is a desperate and as you

35:36kind of indicated, an embattled attempt to preserve an ethnic distinction that is so hard to preserve

35:46exactly because it's so artificial. It gets violent. Like, even though, as you say, there's lots of

35:56examples of the inter ethnic marriage, there's also prohibitions that involve like

36:03death or involve, that have pretty horrific consequences theoretically.

36:11Yeah, theoretically, yeah. So I mean, you see a lot of those in the book of Joshua, for example,

36:16in these conquest stories where you have the wholesale slaughter of populations like Jericho

36:22and I, and it comes up later in first Samuel, when the slaughter of the Amalekites comes up in

36:28numbers with the slaughter of first the Moabites in numbers 25, and then it sort of becomes the

36:35Midianites in numbers 31. So yeah, there are a lot of these. Sorry, are all of these groups,

36:41the Moabites and Midianites blah, blah, blah, are all of them considered Canaanites? Is that

36:46is that an umbrella term or? They could be strictly speaking, the Moabites are a little bit

36:56southeast of Canaan. But I mean, a lot of the thinking about Canaanites still ends up applying

37:03to the Midianites, regardless. So there's again, the boundaries between here are very thin.

37:12I mean, they'll even be places, you know, in the book of Ruth, for example, where Moabites are

37:17incorporated into the line of David. So some of David's ancestors are Moabites. So is that,

37:24you know, we're crossing these boundaries all the time. But I think technically the Moabites and the

37:30Edomites and some of these other groups would, they're outside Canaan proper. Okay. But they get

37:36treated in some of the same ways. Oh, man, we could, we could go on and on about this. But

37:46I did promise that we had another segment. So I help me wrap this up just in a way that like,

37:53what is there? Is there is there any takeaway for today from all of this? Is there because I know,

38:04because we have seen how many people use some of these passages about like no

38:11inter-ethnic marriage or not, you know, all of these things, they could be used in pretty horrific

38:16ways in modern times. What are your thoughts? What's a takeaway that we can sort of, that we can

38:25apply to now?

38:28Ethnicity is a very powerful idea. Some of these texts against

38:32inter-ethnic marriage were quoted by people who supported, you know, bans on interracial marriage

38:39in the 20th century. So there's that element to it. I mean, a takeaway could be that ethnicity is a

38:45very powerful thing and much more complicated than it appears. And there have been some news

38:50articles lately that I think really attest to how complicated ethnicity can be. If you've been

38:56watching the news past couple of months, a number of stories have appeared in which people who are,

39:02you know, voting for Trump and very harsh immigration policies have then had their loved ones,

39:09their spouses or their children arrested by ICE for, you know, some number of weeks.

39:16And a lot of the comments are about, well, how could you possibly vote against your own interests?

39:21How could you not know that this was going to happen? Ethnicity is much more complicated.

39:26You know, the person who looks, who you depend on, who's inside your boundaries, right? Who you

39:33share, you know, stories with and shared memories with, those people never seem foreign to you.

39:39Right. And so the way that the state in the exercise of its power is going to define ethnicity

39:46is probably going to be different than the way that you define ethnicity. So you think these

39:50people, you think foreigners are people way over there who have very different lives from you.

39:55And you think the people in your household who you love and who you depend on,

39:58they're natives, they're domestic, they are, you know, they're here with you. They're the same

40:04ethnicity, you know. So that ethnicity is much more complicated.

40:10Yeah, you know, I don't want to hit the ice thing too hard, but I have a friend whose family is

40:18Cuban in Florida and thought, and literally like their whole thinking was, you know,

40:27this, they were, they were Trump fans because they thought that they were, that they were immune

40:34from what was going to happen to the Venezuelans and to the, you know, the Mexicans or whatever,

40:39because they were Cubans in a way that I thought, you know, I don't think that Trump and his cohort

40:47are actually making the same distinctions that you're making. Like, you know, you're

40:51brown in the same way that those people are brown. And then I think we're learning that like,

40:56whose drawing aligns makes a big difference in all of this.

41:02Ethnicity is flexible enough that you can have multiple definitions at play at the same time.

41:09Yeah. There's a, I don't know if we have time for this. There's a, there's a, there's an instance

41:13where this happens in the Bible. I'll try and do this as fast as possible. But I have to talk about

41:21because that's what I did my dissertation. Okay. I like it. In, in Ezra chapter 10,

41:26there's this terrible incident in which we're later in history now where the people of, of Judah

41:33after they come back after the captivity have resettled, they've rebuilt Jerusalem,

41:37but all these pea, all these men, these Judean men, Jewish men, have intermarried with foreigners,

41:44um, the peoples of the land. And they see this as a big problem. Ezra thinks this is a threat

41:50to the community. And this guy comes to Ezra, this guy named Shekhanai, he comes to Ezra and

41:54he's like, we need to divorce these foreign women. We need to do it fast. We need to kick them out,

41:58and we need to kick out any children that have been had by these foreign women. And then unfortunately,

42:04very, very sadly, this happens then Ezra forces more than a hundred couples to get divorced. And

42:11that's what the bulk of Ezra chapter 10 is. It's just a big list of people that he's forced to get

42:16divorced. But ironically, Shekhanai's father, a man named Yehil, he is on that list. So Shekhanai

42:25has accidentally advocated for his own deportation from the community. And so if this story is to be

42:33believed, uh, his father, Yehil married a foreign woman. He was found guilty of intermarriage. He

42:39was forced to divorce her and send her away with Shekhanai, who is his son. Right. So this is just

42:46is a biblical example, a biblical parallel of this thing that we see happening today. There are

42:51different definitions of ethnicity in play at the same time. And if you get on the wrong side of

42:57the one that the state defines, the one that's going to have the power to discriminate behind it,

43:03the bad things can happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's it is fascinating to see, uh, I guess that's the danger,

43:13right? Like, because it's an unnebulous idea, because these ideas are are not, uh, there's no

43:21solidity to them whatsoever. Yeah, they can be the idea can be deployed, uh, in, in ways that are,

43:32uh, welcoming and, and, and fun and good and create community and create, uh, a sense of shared

43:44responsibility, or they can be deployed as a way of, uh, excluding and as a way of making sure that,

43:52you know, of, uh, yeah, it can be a bad thing. It can be, it can be used to harm. Uh, and I, I

44:00know that that is, uh, that's the real danger. Okay. Yeah. I, I thank you for that. That was

44:07fascinating. I want to keep talking about it forever. Um, anyway, let's keep going. Uh,

44:12let's move on to, uh, what is that?

44:15And this, what is that? Uh, is it, we're, we're talking a little bit about, we're, we're

44:26going to take as our jumping off point, uh, a book by one of your, uh, uh, teachers. Is that right?

44:34Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, talk to an advisor, talk to us about, about this book and, and sort of what,

44:41where, where, what it's talking about and, and, and what we're, what we're talking about here.

44:47So I wanted to bring a text into this conversation called practicing safer texts by, by my advisor

44:54and professor, uh, Ken Stone. And, uh, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a wonderful book in its own right.

44:59Um, but it's, it's about food, uh, sex, uh, and, and, and also in, in one of the chapters in

45:07particular about ethnicity and how discussions about food practices and sex practices relate

45:13to ethnicity. We've already seen that a little bit in our conversation about, uh,

45:16pentatrical laws and how laws about food and laws about who you can and cannot have sex with

45:22get used by Israelites to help them, you know, maintain this boundary between them and Canaanites.

45:26Uh, but practicing safer texts by professor stone is, uh, mainly in response to people

45:36who would say that while the Bible does talk a lot about food stuff,

45:42when it talks about food stuff, that stuff doesn't really matter anymore.

45:46Right. It'll, it'll tell us what we can and cannot eat. It'll create elaborate laws about food

45:52practices, but that stuff is culturally relative. That was specific to them back then. That doesn't

45:58matter now. We don't need to do that stuff now, but who will also say the Bible talks a lot about

46:04sex stuff as talks about the kinds of sex we can and cannot have about the kinds of relationships

46:08we can and cannot have, but that stuff still matters. Yeah. So you'll find lots and lots of

46:14everyday Bible readers and conservative evangelicals in particular who know full well that the Bible

46:19talks about both these topics, but we'll only keep one. They don't. Yeah. I mean, stuff that

46:24keep the sex stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it uses, I mean, the Bible make no mistake. The Bible uses

46:32like pretty strong language about the food stuff. You know what I mean? Like, like,

46:37strongest of language. We're, yeah, we're talking about it's an abomination to eat shellfish or

46:42whatever. You know what I mean? And then it uses that same word about some sex act.

46:50And like you say, modern, modern readers are more than happy to down shrimp as they're writing a

47:01comment about how much they hate pride month on the internet. Yeah. So, so, so why should why?

47:09I mean, it seems clear to me why why these are parallel, but do you have a sense of why

47:17why the food stuff was able to be jettisoned, but the sex stuff persists?

47:28There's a lot, there's a lot of layers to it. One is we start to see, well, we start to see some

47:35reinterpretation of both these things in the New Testament. But people notice the reinterpretation

47:41of the food stuff more. Yeah. I mean, there are passages in the New Testament, for example,

47:47which really call into question the necessity or maybe the efficacy of some of these food

47:56prohibition. So in Mark seven, there's a Jesus, there's a famous saying that do you not see that

48:01whatever goes into a person from the outside can't defile them in reference to a conversation about

48:06food, which seems to indicate that you can kind of eat whatever you want. And then, you know,

48:11there's a famous vision in Acts chapter 10, where Peter sees all these foods, all these animals,

48:16and he says, and God says, you know, anything that I make clean is can't be made unclean. Now,

48:25Peter sort of takes this as a, as a, as an encouragement to incorporate Gentiles into the

48:31church. But a lot of people who read this take this as a, Oh, we can eat anything we want. Right.

48:36And then you have the big council in Acts 15, which is all these early Christians sort of deciding

48:42what parts of the mosaic law they ought to keep. And they jettison most of the food laws and only

48:47end up with a handful like don't eat foods, sacrifice to idols, and don't eat blood or animals that

48:54have been strangled, which, you know, takes like a hundred laws down to three. Right. So, so we see

48:59some of this reinterpretation in the New Testament. So people sort of, they stay on that tact,

49:06right? And they, and, and because it would be inconvenient for people to continue to take these

49:12food laws seriously, they just drop them. They take a lead from what they see in the New Testament,

49:17what they perceive to be in the New Testament, and they continue on that tact. They don't notice

49:22the way that the New Testament is reinterpreting some things having to do with sexuality. There's

49:28a very strong preference for chastity and singleness in the New Testament that often goes unnoticed.

49:37The people, and by people, I primarily mean straight folks, spend a lot of time romanticizing

49:44and finding in the New Testament the celebration of heterosexuality.

49:49When in point of fact, there's a lot more celebration of singleness and chastity. Jesus was obviously

49:56single, Paul spends a lot of time exhorting singleness and chastity, preferred that people

50:02would be unmarried their entire lives. Yeah. And only permits marriage as a concession to people

50:10who are weak will, right? Which in any other circumstance, you'd see, well, that's a sin. I

50:15mean, any, any, any other situation in which the person is like, I can't control myself. So I,

50:19you'd be like, well, that's a sinful thing to have. But he, he's willing to grant this concession.

50:23He's like, all right, you can, you can do it. Look, if you're, if you're that hard up, fine.

50:29Exactly. But, but try to be a little bit more, more, uh, will have a little more will power, will you?

50:37Right. So, but, but that would get in the way of people's lives, right? Yeah. The kind of lives

50:41that people would want to live, you know, LGBTQ plus, evangelical Christians will always make fun

50:46of LGBTQ Christians for reinterpreting the Bible to match their lifestyle. But straight

50:52Christians are reinterpreting the Bible to match their lifestyle all the time when they try and

50:56find bits and pieces to celebrate heterosexuality. When there is such a strong, uh, preference for

51:02singleness and chastity in the text. So it, it kind of, it comes down to the, the desires of the

51:10interpreter. Yeah. Right. You, you do see reinterpretation in the New Testament, but they cling to one

51:16while they largely ignore the other. I mean, that's kind of the gag, right? That's kind of the way

51:22this is, this always goes. Every, the, I mean, and it's, it's kind of one of the themes of this show

51:29and of, uh, Bible scholarship in general, which is that the Bible, you know, Dan's book, the Bible

51:36doesn't say anything. You apply your interpretive lens to the Bible and then look at that low and

51:45behold, it supports all the things that you like and doesn't support the things that you think have

51:51our icky or whatever. Uh, and then people on the other side do exactly the same, uh, math and come

51:59up with entirely different answers. Yeah. And it's especially, I mean, we could sort of sit back

52:06and say, you know, you, anybody can interpret the Bible any way that they want, but some of these

52:11interpretations really hurt people. Some of these interpretations kill people. Some of these

52:16interpretations deprive people of quality of life. So as as flexible as the act of interpretation is

52:23the outcomes, the consequences of interpretation, um, we can't be lackadaisical about that. We have

52:31to contest harmful interpretations where we find them. Yeah, I mean, maybe talk a little bit about

52:38that. Uh, I mean, I think prop what you're a lot of what you're talking about, at least in a modern

52:44context is the way people, uh, use the Bible to ostracize the LGBTQ communities specifically right

52:53now. Trans people are being, uh, are, are being really hit hard. And, uh, and they're, they're,

53:00they're dying because of it. It's literally, uh, you know, trans kids are killing themselves.

53:06Trans people are killing themselves. Uh, and that's, it's just not okay. That's like, this is,

53:14this is not, uh, an acceptable outcome for an interpretation of a book that could be interpreted

53:23any number of ways. Yeah. So I think often the first step is you, you have to try and force

53:30people to see that there is a certain arbitrariness to their interpretations that they've made choices,

53:39but before they've come to the text and in the act of interpreting the text, they are making

53:45certain choices to privilege certain concerns, to center their own identity. They've, they've put

53:52themselves and their interests into this interpretation in order to get this result. And one of the ways

53:58that you can show people this is by interpreting texts in different ways. Because when you, when

54:03you show them that difference, you can see much more clearly where they've, where they've inserted

54:09themselves. So one of the early examples in practicing safer texts in, in Dr. Stone's book

54:14about this is so, you know, so many Christians take the garden of Eden's story. This is a story

54:20about sexuality. This is a story about the beginning of hetero, of heterosexuality in particular. You

54:26know, the, the, the, the bumper sticker thing is always it's, you know, it's Adam and Eve, not Adam

54:32and Steve, right? This is, this is the creation, not just of, of the first people, but of a normative

54:38sexual institution that we're all obligated to follow. Right. And one of the first things that

54:44Dr. Stone does in this book is show that this text is not about sex, or it could be about so

54:52many other things, it could be about food, any catalogs, all these instances in the ancient world

54:56where people read the story in Genesis two and three, and they saw in this a story about food,

55:02about the dangers of gluttony, the dangers of the lack of self control. After all, that's the

55:07sin that brought down the world as we ate when we shouldn't have spoke, we weren't supposed to eat.

55:11Right. So if, you know, all sin begins with a failure for human beings to tame their stomachs,

55:17if only we could tame our stomachs, then we would be free from all these other sins.

55:22So there have been times and places where people have looked at the same story. And, and, and they

55:27never thought this is the foundation of heterosexuality. They thought this is the foundation of a

55:32prohibition against gluttony. And when you put that up against people's faces, that it sometimes

55:37it's a little bit clearer to them that they've made this text about what they want it to be about.

55:42Right. I mean, I should be clear that like, I think a lot of people

55:49don't actually choose the interpretation of the Bible that they, that they espouse, like they

55:56inherit it or they're, or they're, or they're given it by someone that they put in authority

56:03over them. Oh, so like a pastor or, you know, a priest or whatever. And, and they're just trusting

56:11in that authority for that interpretation. So I don't think that this is always something where

56:17people are thoughtfully choosing a, an interpretation for themselves. Yeah. And I do think that a lot

56:25of people, you know, a lot of the listeners that come to this show, a lot of the people who,

56:30you know, follow you on social media do so because they need, they, they had never experienced any

56:38kind of different interpretive lens other than the one that they were given from birth or the one

56:43that they were, you know, raised up in and, and supplied by, by the community that was surrounding

56:50them. So I think that I think that it's, there's something, I think there's something so beautiful

56:57about what you're talking about. And that is the idea of showing people different interpretive

57:06lenses and saying, how is this any less valid than the one that you did? And if, and if it's just as

57:12valid, then can't we let go of the one, whichever one hurts people and find ways of, of bringing in,

57:21of new interpretive lenses that are helpful, that are, that are, that raise people up rather than,

57:28rather than hurting them. I mean, that's a very good clarification.

57:32You mean, you mentioned the, the, the Adam and Eve story that could just as easily have been a sort

57:37of the, rather than sort of the etiology for heterosexuality, heteronormativity, it could,

57:46like, Eve is trans, right? She starts as, as Adam's side. She is, she's part of a, of, you know,

57:55they're both the same thing. And then, and then they are separated out and become different. It

58:01could be the etiology for transness. And, you know, that, I don't see why that's not just as valid

58:08an interpretation. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, there's several good points that, yeah, I'm,

58:16I'm glad you clarify. It's not, it's not choices, maybe too strong a word in some instances. A lot

58:21of this is happening unconsciously. Right. Yeah. A lot of this is happening unconsciously. So,

58:24you know, part of the power of showing people alternative interpretations is to, is to force it

58:31to be conscious. Right. When you're confronted with the, we could also read it this way. Yeah,

58:36there's sort of this aha moment. Oh, you know, certain choices have gone into their interpretation,

58:41maybe certain choices at some point back have gone into mine, right? So they're sort of forced

58:46to confront the reality of difference. But you're right. I mean, that you could do a trans-friendly

58:53reading of, of Genesis two and three. I mean, one, one of the most famous articles that this

58:58won't mean most, much to most people, one of the most famous articles in feminist biblical

59:02interpretation was by Phyllis Triple 50 years ago now. And she pointed that out, you know, the, the,

59:08the this being, this first human being is gender ambiguous. You know, it's, it's difficult to say

59:17exactly what Adam is to start with in, in, in Genesis two, because the story is much more about

59:23splitting a creature in half. Yeah. Then it is to, I mean, we, we have this cartoonish version of

59:29taking a rib and fashioning, you know, from a very clearly, just from a man, somebody who's very

59:36clearly a man, making somebody who's very clearly a woman. But in the actual text, and in the original

59:41language, it's this very ambiguous being who split in half. And it's only after being split in half

59:47that the gender becomes more clear. So yeah, that could be the transition from one gender to another

59:54from gender ambiguity to gender clarity and back again. Yeah, could could be as much of what this

59:59story is about than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, and, you know, I, none of this is

60:09to say we know what the original authors meant by any of this, because we can't know that. We can't,

60:17you can't get to what the, you know, even in spite of what our current Supreme Court believes,

60:24originalism doesn't work because you can't, you can't get into the minds of the authors.

60:30They're gone. So, so it's just a matter of what we can make it mean to us and how we can make it

60:38useful to ourselves. Yeah. And that's, that's where the title of the book comes from practicing

60:42safer texts. It's obviously a pun on safer sex. But the idea is that there are some interpretations

60:49that are safer than others, some interpretations that won't hurt as much as others. So while we,

60:55while we can't have a final, we can't know for certain what an original author meant,

61:00what we can know for certain is what harmful interpretations are doing. We can, we can know

61:05for certain the lives that are being lost, we can know for certain the relationships that are being

61:10destroyed. We can see those things. And in light of those things, we can practice safer interpretations

61:17of the text. I love that. I love it so much. Thank you so much for bringing this to us.

61:24Thank you for filling in Aaron Higashy. You are amazing. Happy to do so. I just,

61:29I love the way your brain works. I'm very lucky. I get to be surrounded by such smart, cool people.

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