Ep 60: Silence, Woman!

00:00Friends, if you've been using some of these scriptures as sexist

00:06bludgens, I say unto you, go and sin no more.

00:11I saw what you did there.

00:14I said what you did.

00:15You brought it around on it's a full circle sort of.

00:18Yeah, I had that one in my back pocket right there.

00:21Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you're listening to the

00:29Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:34Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:39How are things, Dan?

00:39Things are going well.

00:41It's it's Ladies Night here on Data Over Dogma because we are going to explore two

00:49Bible stories involving women, which is always an interesting moment.

00:56Neither of them have a name, which is common for the Bible stories, I suppose.

01:02But yeah, but we're going to be doing some interesting we're looking at them in an

01:07interesting way.

01:08This is going to be textual healing.

01:10That's that's that's what we're calling the segment.

01:14So maybe we should just dive on in.

01:16All right, let's do it.

01:20What are we looking at first?

01:23So the first thing we're going to look at is from John and if you go by what several

01:32internet sources that I looked at to say, it starts in John chapter seven verse 53,

01:40which is the very last verse right in the chapter of John 57.

01:45And it's the weirdest place to switch chapters I've ever thought I've ever encountered in my

01:53life, because it starts with then each of them went home, comma, and then we go on to chapter eight.

02:02So it's really just the beginning of John chapter eight.

02:06Yeah, but that's just the weirdest break I've ever seen and might be indicative

02:12of what we're going to be talking about.

02:14Yeah, I don't know.

02:15This is the famous story of the woman taken in adultery caught in adultery.

02:20The pericope, I dole to rye as some people who cannot pronounce Latin very well,

02:28such as myself like to call it.

02:29This is the famous story where they Jesus's opponents bring this woman and throw her on the

02:38ground before him and then he doodles in the dirt of the temple floor.

02:43So it's been brought up before on our show, but this time we're actually going to talk

02:47in a little more detail about what's going on.

02:50And let me see if I can find how many verses are in here.

02:53So it looks like we've got 12 verses.

02:55Should we just go ahead and read through it first just to kind of set the table or?

03:00I mean, I don't know that we need to get all we need to do the whole thing.

03:04Basically, we got Jesus.

03:06He's in the temple.

03:07All the people came to him and sat down and he began to teach them.

03:15So when people argue that when the text says all, it means all.

03:20So this means every last person on earth came to Jesus.

03:25Literally, if you're a Bible literalist, then yes, all of the humans on earth came and

03:31sat at his feet in the temple in Jerusalem.

03:33Let me just make sure that's in the Greek.

03:34Yep.

03:35Okay, good.

03:37Good, good, good, good.

03:39So everybody on earth came.

03:42The scribes and the Pharisees, why did the scribes?

03:45Why were they involved?

03:46Anyway, a bunch of dudes brought a woman who had been caught literally in the act of adultery

03:53in flagrante de licto as they say.

03:58That's disgusting.

04:00And anyway, they apparently grabbed her out of the act, dragged her to Jesus

04:09and demanded that the law of Moses says that they're supposed to stone such a woman.

04:16And apparently trying to catch him out on something, they say, "What do you say?"

04:24It literally says, verse six says, "They said this to test him so that they might have

04:30some charge to bring against him."

04:33What does that mean?

04:36Like, so they're trying to catch him in a theological faux pas

04:41so that they can charge him with a crime or what?

04:45Kinda.

04:45They're trying to catch him in between a rock and a hard place,

04:48force him to answer one of two ways.

04:50Either say yes, she needs to be stoned, stone her, or no, she doesn't need to be stoned.

04:58And if he says yes, then they can go to the Romans and wag their fingers and say,

05:03"See, he wanted to execute this woman, but we don't have authority to execute."

05:07That is unilaterally the prerogative of Rome.

05:13And so they could get Jesus in trouble with Rome.

05:16If he says, "No, don't stone her."

05:19Then Jesus is in trouble with the local authorities

05:23because he's denying the law of Moses, even though...

05:26And he's in trouble with Moses.

05:27Yeah, even though this obviously was not something that was practiced at the time.

05:32But basically, they're trying to force him to choose one of two options,

05:39which they imagine either way will be helpful for them.

05:42And this is something that this is a frequent rhetorical ploy

05:48for the author of John, that they're trying to trick Jesus into either incriminating himself

05:54in regards to the Romans or in regards to the law of Moses.

05:59Yeah, okay.

06:01So this is where Jesus, as you put it, doodles in the ground,

06:06we do not get to know what he wrote in the dirt with his finger.

06:12I have a theory about this, though.

06:14And there are people like, "Oh, they wrote the names of all the people who are standing around,

06:20or he wrote their sins, and they all were individually convicted."

06:24But there is another part of the Bible, and I think I brought it up on the show before,

06:30where we have suspected adultery, where we have the temple, where we have writing,

06:37where we have the dirt of the temple floor.

06:40Oh, I know exactly what this is.

06:41This is numbers.

06:42This is numbers five, the sotah, the ordeal of bitter waters,

06:45where if the man suspects his wife of adultery, he can bring her to the priest,

06:53and the priest writes out a curse and scrapes the ink of the curse off into a pot full of water,

07:03and then takes dirt from the temple floor and chucks that in the pot as well.

07:06She has a lime that she says, and then she's to drink the bitter water,

07:14and then if she's innocent, the text says she will conceive.

07:19And if she is guilty, basically, she is deformed so that she is rendered,

07:28basically infertile, probably would kill her if this thing, what it says actually happens.

07:36This is a womb will distend or something like that, and her genitals will drop.

07:40And we won't get back into our argument about whether that means that she had an abortion or not.

07:45Right, right, right. So what we have here, I would argue, is kind of the themes here

07:53are being brought together where Jesus is basically being represented as the one who has this authority.

07:59Because in the sotah, it is God who declares guilt or innocence, because they don't have evidence,

08:07and so that's what an ordeal is. That's throw the witch in the river.

08:10If she drown, she wasn't a witch. If she lives, we execute her.

08:14Either way, things do not go well for the woman accused of being a witch,

08:18but it's a way of saying God's going to decide how it goes.

08:24And so Jesus writing in the dirt of the temple floor is kind of evoking, in my opinion,

08:31this the idea of writing, of adultery, of guilt, of innocence, of being before Adonai,

08:39before the Lord in the temple. And so I don't think he was writing anything at all.

08:45One, it's not historical. This is a literary creation.

08:49So how dare you? I'm on record saying this for multiple years now.

08:55So there is nothing real behind this literary creation. So there was nothing to be written.

09:04But I think the literary point is to have the writing to make people think of the writing of

09:10the curse that gets scraped into the water and mixed in with the dirt from the temple floor.

09:14So that's my opinion. I don't know that others, I don't know if other scholars have made that

09:20argument before. In fact, I might need to write a paper about that or something,

09:24if no one has made that argument before. But because we don't know, we don't have any more

09:30information about this than just what's on the page. My theory is just as valid as yours,

09:36which is that he was just stalling for time while he tried to figure out what he was going to say.

09:40He's just like, well, he's looking like he was doing something portentous while he, while he

09:48figured out. Sorry. I was just thinking of the scene in Big Lebowski, where he's in the guy's home,

09:56and he takes a phone call and he's doodling something on a, he's writing something on a pad,

10:01Jackie Treehorn. Yeah. And that uses the tries to make a little squeeze of what was.

10:07Yeah. Lebowski jumps up and takes a pencil and does a pencil rubbing of the next page to figure

10:14out what he was writing. And he just, it was a dirty doodle. Anyway, so yes. So Jesus has been

10:20dirty doodling on the ground. Literally dirty. It was literal dirt. And then,

10:27verse seven, when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them,

10:32let anyone among you, see, this is where the KJV has an advantage because it's such a better

10:38wording than this, but I'm just going to do the RSV. Let anyone among you who is without sin

10:46be the first to throw a stone at her. Yeah. So this is the very famous line, which is better

10:52rendered that he who is without sin cast the first stone, much more poetic, much nicer,

10:57less clunky, but and very famous too, right? And they all sort of disperse with a herrump.

11:06Yeah, it says they were being convicted by their own conscience. Well, that's what KJV says.

11:13They went away one by one beginning with the elders. Oh, it doesn't say anything about convicted.

11:17Oh, that must be, I bet that's part of the Texas Receptus that is not in the critical text.

11:22That's first done. And we're going to get to what's in what's in what text soon. Anyway,

11:29you know, then Jesus says, hey, you know, the woman, he's left there alone with the woman.

11:37And he says, has anyone has no one condemned you, meaning didn't did anyone throw a rock at you?

11:45And she says no. And he says, neither do I condemn you, go your way. And again,

11:53do a bad wording. And from now on, do not sin again, or go and sin no more,

11:59which is a much better wording. And RSV, sometimes you can use the better wording if you want to,

12:06even if it or the nicer sounding wording. Yeah, that is a that is pretty clunky wording. Yeah.

12:12So anyway, that's the story. I think most most people have heard that one.

12:20Most people like that's pretty that's one of the most famous stories from the Bible. Yeah.

12:24Yeah, absolutely. But in your NRSVUE, it comes after the quotation mark.

12:31Two brackets, two closing brackets, closing brackets, brackets, which open up way back at

12:38John 753. Correct. Yeah. And there's there's a note there that probably says something along the

12:46lines of most ancient authorities, lack or omit or something like that, verse 753 all the way through

12:54811. And I don't know why they needed to double bracket it. Were they really were they worried that

13:00a single bracket just was insufficient to contain all of this stuff? I guess so.

13:07Maybe it doesn't stand out if it's a bracket. They might use brackets for like

13:13interjections and things like that in other parts of the text. You're right. Yes,

13:17there is a footnote that says the most ancient authorities lack blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

13:22And talk, talk about that. Yeah. What we're after here, when we say most ancient authorities,

13:28we mean every single authority before the 4th century CE. Now that's wow. And then and then many

13:34that come after the 4th century CE. But additionally, once it does start showing up in manuscripts,

13:41it's not in this spot in John. One of the early manuscripts that has it actually has the story in

13:48Luke. And then the other ones that have it in John have it in different spots in the gospel

13:54before it ultimately kind of settles in the location where we find it now. And there's a there's a book

14:01called by Bruce Metzger called the textual, textual commentary of the Greek New Testament

14:07from 1971. And I highly recommend this book for anybody who has an interest in textual criticism

14:12of the New Testament. It basically goes through and where there are significant manuscript variants,

14:18you'll find anywhere from a sentence to a few paragraphs explaining what's going on there.

14:24And so they're they're actually two pages and then a few extra lines of two other pages

14:31discussing this variant. And it starts off the evidence for the non-johenene origin of the

14:38pericopy of the adulterous is overwhelming. And then lists one, two, three, four,

14:46like 20 manuscripts that do not have this. And and we're not talking about I mean, this is

14:55New Testament, which means that it seems to me that these manuscripts are likely these older

15:01manuscripts are likely definitive, meaning they they come from much closer to the time that that this

15:08was that this text was produced. Yeah, now there is older doesn't necessarily mean more original

15:17because you can have things fall out, you can have things added in almost anywhere along the way.

15:22But when this happens, there are there are two reasons it can happen. It can be intentional

15:27or it can be unintentional. And when it's unintentional, we usually can tell. We usually have evidence

15:34that that this has happened. For instance, there's there are cases where the scribe is reading,

15:41they move over to their other text, where they write, and then they come back to the manuscript.

15:48And usually you'll when you end, you make note of the word either the word that just ended,

15:53or the word that starts that you haven't copied, and you come and you look for that,

15:58right, either end of word or beginning of the word to see where you're going to come back to.

16:02And if you have words in close connection to each other that either end the same way or begin the

16:08same way, sometimes the scribal eye will go to the wrong word. And you can either repeat words,

16:14or you can skip words. Hommio televton is where the word ends in the same way,

16:22and Hommio arcton is where the next word begins the same way, and that can account for haplography,

16:28which is where you where words are omitted, or lithography, which is where words are repeated.

16:34You really have nothing like that that could possibly account for how this could be omitted.

16:39And so there's no real way to account for how this could have been left out of all of these

16:48very early manuscripts. And so from a text critical point of view, we're about as sure as we can be

16:56that this is something that somebody added later to a manuscript that did not originally have it.

17:01This is one of those funny moments where

17:04where this is a beloved moment in the scripture. You know what I mean?

17:11This is powerful story. I love this story in the scripture. So like,

17:16it's hard to let go of this. But so, you know, it's so funny that like someone has,

17:24we now see someone adding something that's really cool. Like what I don't know what their motivation

17:31was for adding it. I'm guessing we don't even have any guesses as to who added it or what the

17:36motivation was or any of that sort of thing. No, we don't. There's there aren't any clues as to

17:42who could have been responsible for this. I think just the somebody at some point came up with a

17:47story though. There are probably numerous stories similar to this in the sense of little one-off

17:53short stories about Jesus that were in circulation orally and probably even in text around the first

18:02second, third centuries that, you know, we never found out about and we'll never find out about.

18:08And this is probably just one of those stories that happened to work its way

18:13into one of the gospel texts. And because of how powerful it is thought to be

18:21or that it is, it is just stuck around. And you know, even the NRSVUE, which we know this is not

18:28was not written by the author of John is still leaving it in there. I mean, they have the double

18:33brackets, but can't cut this out without, you know, breaking some hearts. Yeah. A lot of people

18:40would be upset about that. However, there are there. Not everything is about this story is all rainbows

18:52and butterflies. There's a wonderful book by called Good Book by Jill Hicks Keaton,

18:57which we need to have her on the show. I talked to her about being on the show. And her book,

19:04Good Book is about how particularly white evangelicals try to save the Bible to save themselves.

19:13In other words, they try to make everything about the Bible sound good. And she goes in and tries to

19:19show that there are lots of ways that a lot of these stories actually are not as good as we would

19:23like them to be. And there is a lengthy discussion about this pericopy because it is still pretty

19:29misogynist. The way the story is told. Yeah, that's true. For instance, man brought in for

19:35taking the truth. Yeah, the man is, you know, he's on nothing wrong with what he's doing. Now,

19:42there's an argument to make that technically it might there might not be anything wrong if

19:49I don't think the story says, but if he were the married one, then there wouldn't really be an

19:56issue here. No, it would have to be her who was who was married, in which case, yeah, it would be

20:00a problem. But yeah, the law says that he should be stoned as well. So right there. They're focusing

20:09only on her. And maybe he was just fast. They could only get hurt. They got them in the act.

20:21Fleet of what you mean. Yes, yeah, that's okay. And he got away. He's quick. Yeah, yeah, he managed.

20:28I mean, could have been in all the ways you could have been quick in every way. But yes,

20:32it was going to say because it was in the act.

20:35Yes, there's a naked guy running around Jerusalem that they don't talk about in this story. But yeah.

20:44But if we assume that either the author had more details in mind or that the way the story was

20:52circulated, there were more details that accreted to it, she's not exonerated. Jesus is not saying,

21:00hey, you're fine. He says, hey, I'm basically, this is about me. This is about tricking me into

21:12a criminalizing myself to one group or another. You're a pawn in a story about me. Your life

21:19hangs in the balance as a pawn in a story about me. And there are other ways that Jill talks about

21:26how it's still a story deeply rooted in misogyny and patriarchy. Yes. And in a culture that treats

21:35the lives and the agency of women as superfluous, as expendable, as supplements and window dressing

21:45to a world that is by foreign about men. So yeah, it is while it is a powerful story about forgiveness,

21:56it is still ultimately a deeply successful one.

21:59Save some of the condemnation of misogyny for the second story we're going to have on the show.

22:06You know, I did want to go back to the idea that the NRSV did decide to leave this in.

22:18And the reason that I want to talk about that is because we've talked about other verses that

22:25they have chosen to exclude on these grounds, on the grounds that this was very likely not

22:32original to the text. And therefore we're going to exclude them. And we have evidence.

22:38And I remember you talking about, you know, the seeing, the thing in the margins. So we had a

22:46reason to know that it was ascribe, interpolating something into the text. Yeah. Is that the reason

22:56why those are excluded? And we don't have that much that degree of evidence and why that's why

23:01they're leaving this in? Or do you think they're leaving it in just because it's beloved?

23:04I think they're leaving it in probably for two reasons. One is how long it is. It's not a single

23:10verse. It's I think it's 12 verses. And so that's a huge chunk. But yes, the other reason would be

23:17how beloved it is because you've got the lines you draw between what you leave in and take out can

23:24get pretty thin. And if you have the option of saying that we can always mark it off as something

23:30then, you know, that's an easier decision to make. That makes the decision a lot easier because

23:37you're giving up a lot to totally omit this story. And there's a degree to which Bible translations

23:42are also trying to represent the tradition in addition to just the text itself. Like the the

23:50NRSV is the property of a like colloquium of churches. And so even when they were doing all

23:58the updates that just got published last year with the updated edition, everything had to be

24:03signed off on by the representatives from this colloquium of churches. And so there are still

24:09Bible believers behind this who are pulling strings. And so I'm sure that's a part of it as

24:16well. And we talked about the ending of Mark, how that is also almost certainly a late edition. But

24:23you're not going to find many Bible translations willing to just say, hey, we're just going to omit

24:28all of this because it is something that has been influential within Christianity and the Bible

24:34for literally 2000 years. Right. I do think that the I mean, in terms of omission versus

24:41versus leaving it in, it seems obvious to me and you can you can sort of

24:48back me up or check me on this. It seems obvious to me that throughout

24:55the Bible, especially going back to the Hebrew Bible, there was there was clearly a tradition

25:03of leaving in of bringing in stories that they felt were worthy. And you know, even if like,

25:11even if it wasn't true or like, you know, if it was an uplifting or a good story or it illustrated

25:18something, there's a tradition of leaving that in or putting that in. And so it feels like to

25:24some extent, even if this wasn't original to the author of John, it's in keeping with the idea with

25:33the ideas of, of, you know, good things belong in scripture. Yeah. And this is, and this is that

25:40or something. Yeah, I think there's, I, you know, I've said it before, I get asked all the time,

25:46what's the best translation? And my answer is usually somewhere along the lines of whatever

25:51translation does the job for you does whatever you're engaging the Bible to do. And and yeah, a part

26:00of the purpose of of scriptures is to inspire. And you know, things like the parable of the good

26:07Samaritan, completely fictional, fictional. That's not a word. It's that I think I couldn't decide

26:14between fiction and fictional and just went with neither. One of the most powerful stories in all

26:22of the New Testament. And so this is as well. And so it, it serves a purpose and which I think,

26:29yeah, it gives a lot of people reason to hold on to it.

26:32Okay. I, that's great. I think that that is a wonderful discussion. And I think we should turn

26:41from a beloved story to a problematic story, a problematic. And we'll, and we'll get.

26:50So this is, we're going to need some real textual healing on this thing.

26:55When I get that, oh, I can't sing songs. Okay. So we're going to, we're jumping to

27:041 Corinthians, chapter 14. Now you've made, I call, I messaged you about this because you made a

27:13couple, you made some posts about this, because there's a new paper that just came out discussing

27:21this in depth. Yes. So we're looking at 1 Corinthians 14. And there are a couple passages in here

27:29that are infamous, or, or famous, or infamous, not just famous. It's infamous.

27:36Depending on, on your outlook, that have to do with, with women speaking in church.

27:44So I'll, I'll just read the two as they appear in the new revised standard version.

27:49So this is 1 Corinthians 14, verses 34 and 35. They read women should be silent in the churches,

27:56for they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there

28:02is something they want to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a

28:09woman to speak in church. Now this is problematic for a number of reasons. To begin, we just got

28:17done a few chapters earlier with Paul explaining that, hey, when women are prophesying in church,

28:23they just need to have their hair covered. And so it seems odd for the same author,

28:30a few chapters later, just be like, by the way, women, nope, can't say, yeah,

28:36not only are they not allowed to prophesy, they can't talk. Yeah, that seems like a big reversal

28:43to have within the space of a few verses. Yeah. And, and this is an odd thing to appear here,

28:49because we've just got done talking about prophecy, let two or three prophets speak and let the

28:55others weigh what is said. If someone sitting receives a revelation, let the first person be

28:59silent, where you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all be encouraged. And so

29:04this is, we're kind of going back to the discussion in 1 Corinthians 11. And the spirits of prophets

29:11are subject to the prophets for God as a God, not of disorder, but of peace, as in all the churches

29:16of the saints. And then suddenly, by the way, women have to shut up. And then it goes back to,

29:21or did the Word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?

29:26So it seems like it's out of place. Like it's there's a sudden interjection. Wait, I forgot,

29:33I hate women, let me make that clear. And then, and then it returns to what they were talking about

29:39before. Because you're right, that's the seg, the section that's talking about like, you know, if

29:45anyone speaks and it's, it's just sort of talking about keeping, you know, the section in the NRSVUE

29:53is has a section heading out called orderly worship. And it's just sort of how to keep things

30:00from getting a little out of hand, when to, you know, let two or three prophets speak. But it starts

30:07out, what should be done then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together. In the NRSV,

30:13yeah, in the NRSVUE, it says that, however, in the Greek, it's, it's Adelphi, which is

30:21masculine plural, negative. Now, in the Greek, if you were addressing a company of mixed gender,

30:31you would default to the plural of masculine plural, which is common in a number of languages.

30:36So in English, in some cases, like, yeah, I would say mankind and mean all of humankind.

30:46There is a tradition of that that we've largely eschewed, but I mean, it's there in our history.

30:53It's there, yes. And so, yeah, it's, it's not clear if this is speaking just about brethren

31:01or the brethren and the cistern. But we have, we have translations that do that. The new English

31:06translation does the same brothers and sisters, the NRSVUE does the same. But we just got done talking

31:14about women speaking in tongues and everything like that. And verse 14, or verse 27 says,

31:20"If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there only be two or at most three in each intern and let one

31:26interpret." So provided nothing has changed between, I think, verse, or chapter 11 and chapter 14,

31:33this should be including the women. Yeah. And then it's like, yeah, let's just

31:39make sure everybody is, you know, they're, they have their own seat and they're dressed the right

31:45way and then. And also, ladies, shut up. Yeah. And then, and then make sure everybody's got a drink

31:52and we want to make sure that it's, that it's cool enough in the bill. However, there's also,

31:57there are manuscripts where this, this interjection, these two verses don't appear right here. They

32:03appear down after verse 40 at the very end of the chapter. So we have what I like to call textual

32:12instability, which means it's not clear where exactly this was intended to go, which is frequently

32:20a sign that it is a late addition, not every time, but the trend is in that direction. Just

32:26like we talked about with the, the women taking an adultery. Initially, it's popping up in different

32:32places within john and even in different gospels. And so here as well, it's in different parts. And

32:39there's, and you know, we talked about scribes going back and skipping words or repeating words

32:44or things like that, because they're they have what's called a I skips parablepsis is the,

32:50is the $2 word for that. And that's where you go back to the wrong spot. Right. And sometimes

32:57words can be transposed for that reason. None of the words around this text can explain why it would

33:07be in one place versus the other. In other words, there's no good explanation for why a scribe would

33:12accidentally have moved it to the other place. And if it were just accidentally moved by a scribe,

33:18it would be the largest chunk of text ever known to have been transposed in a biblical manuscript.

33:27Yeah, because when we when we look at the the woman taking an adultery,

33:36that's because they're they're trying to find a place to stick it. Once they've stuck it somewhere,

33:40it stays there, but there's no way that or there's not a good case to make for a scribe accidentally

33:48moving it from one place to the other, which is supportive of the conclusion that

33:53it was a late edition. Now, the reason I made these posts, because this paper that just came out

34:00by a scholar named Richard Fellows, and it's entitled the interpolation of first Corinthians 1434

34:08through 35 and the reversal of the name order of Prisca and Akila at first Corinthians 1619.

34:14And this is an open access paper. So maybe we can include a link to the paper in the show notes

34:21so that anyone who wants to go read this paper for themselves can have quick access to it.

34:26Wouldn't it be great if I remembered to do that? I hope I do.

34:28Well, hopefully you'll get some emails. And and Fellows here is not just making a stronger case

34:41that this is an interpolation. Like people have been arguing for a long time that this is an

34:45interpolation. In fact, I've made videos where I've suggested that it's probably the consensus

34:49view. I don't have any robust data to indicate that is just that when I've seen scholarly discussions

34:55of this seems to me that the majority of scholars agree that this is an interpolation or at least

35:02does not originate with Paul. But in addition to these verses, he argues that verse 37 has been

35:11changed as well. Verse 37 right now says, anyone who claims to be a prophet or spiritual must

35:18acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. However, there are

35:25manuscripts, a number of manuscripts that just say that what I am writing to you is of the Lord.

35:30And yeah, NRSV has a footnote on the word command and it says other ancient authorities lack a

35:39command. So what I am writing to you is of the Lord. Interesting. And this would a command of

35:46the Lord would be uncharacteristic of of Pauline writing. And so Fellows makes the case that this

35:55is also a late edition, probably by whoever added these two verses as a way to say women are not

36:03allowed to speak. Not only that, this is a command of the Lord, basically escalating the authority

36:10with which they say that women are not allowed to speak. So it's not just, it's not just ooh,

36:16you know, kind of a touchy feely of the Lord, but no, this is a command of the Lord. Right.

36:22And then we've got this interesting case of 1 Corinthians 1619 where Paul makes a reference to

36:31Prisca, which is a woman's name and Akila, which is a man's name. And these two people are mentioned

36:43a few other times elsewhere in the New Testament. But in every other occurrence,

36:48it is Prisca who was mentioned first and Akila was mentioned afterwards. Here in 1 Corinthians 1619,

36:56Akila is mentioned first and Prisca is mentioned afterwards. So this verse has the man mentioned

37:03first everywhere else. It's the woman who's mentioned first. And there is it a lot of people

37:07understand Prisca to have been mentioned first because she was an authority within the within

37:15the church system, more so than Akila. And so the alteration here, the switching of the two is

37:25again, probably by the same person who put these two verses in there, intended to be a way to

37:30undermine the ecclesiastical authority of women in the passage to demote Prisca. Yeah, to being under

37:41her man. Yeah. Wait, when are we thinking of Prisca and Akila as a couple, or are they just

37:50two different people who are mentioned in the same breath with each other? I'm pretty sure they're

37:55considered a couple. Let me just see if I have any. Yes, Prisca and her husband. Okay.

38:02So yeah, it's a way to say no, no, no, no, the man's in charge here. And so again, probably by the

38:10same person, and this would like this rhetoric that we that we find particularly in 1 Corinthians 14

38:20would resonate with rhetorically find in places like 1 Timothy 2, which is even more explicit.

38:27In fact, let me take a look at 1 Timothy 2 11, let a woman learn in silence with full submission.

38:36I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She is to keep silence.

38:44And why is that? Or Adam was formed first, then Eve, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was

38:50deceived and became a transgressor. So the snake tricked Eve. Therefore, Eve doesn't get an authority.

38:59Right. And neither do any women scholars or in widespread agreement that this passage in 1 Timothy,

39:04along with the rest of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus weren't written by Paul, but were

39:09probably written decades after his death. And so it makes sense that someone coming through later

39:14would be like, hey, man, let's get that massagerie in there and make these texts agree a little better

39:24about how we're in charge and women cannot be, even when it comes to mentioning Akhila before

39:31Pritzka, which is funny because Pritzka is mentioned first in the Epistles of Timothy. Right.

39:45I just think, you know, is there may be people listening to this who don't appreciate,

39:50you know, they can appreciate the that it's interesting that, you know, something was added in.

39:58But the the this, the importance of these verses has echoed through the ages to very to write like,

40:09like one year ago, less almost exactly a year ago, the Southern Baptist Convention kicked out a

40:19whole bunch of congregations because they were allowing women to be pastors based largely on this

40:28verse, these verses. Yeah, like this is something that is still happening today. This is something

40:33that is still highly relevant. Like there was a the one of those churches was the Saddleback

40:40Church, which is a huge church. I believe it's it's in it's in Los Angeles or something, but it's

40:46a but yeah, they they are very big, a mega church kicked out of association with the Southern Baptists

40:55because of these verses, because of the an interpretation of these verses. So it's pretty relevant

41:01to learn that these were likely not part of Paul's idea. Yeah, and this is such a big problem for

41:10a lot of folks today, and particularly Christian nationalists, because it's such an important

41:18part of their worldview and their structure of power. These passages that are either

41:24pseudopographic, entire books that were deceptively written in someone else's name long after their

41:31death, or are interpolated into passages that that don't agree with that worldview. But yeah,

41:38this is this is something that's the embeddedness of the patriarchy and so much Christianity today

41:44is just so so deep, like women weren't even allowed to have their own credit cards in our country

41:52until the 70s. Right. Like the man was in charge of the house and the finances and all

41:59and the finance and everything. And now we have a bunch of of people in state and local and even

42:07in national government who are trying to return to this who are trying to criminalize no fault

42:13divorce. Right. Who are trying to argue for, I'd forget what they call it household voting or

42:19something like that, where every household gets a single vote and the head of the household is

42:25the one who decides that here in Utah, within the last 10 years, I think it was, I think it might

42:32have been 2016. There was a precinct chair up in Davis County for the GOP, who went on to social

42:40media and declared that most of our social ills started once women got out of the kitchen and

42:48started voting. And there were, I think the head of the state GOP like denounced it, but there were

42:57plenty of people coming to this person's defense and saying, no, this is right. And there are

43:02Christian nationalists all over social media right now trying to leverage first Corinthians 14,

43:0934 through 35, as well as first Timothy and other passages in the pastoral epistles to try to

43:16insist that it's God's very will that women be subordinate to men. Oh, who was it? This just

43:23happened like yesterday. A, an NFL teams kicker gave like a commencement speech or something like

43:31that. You saw that? Yeah. Didn't that make your skin crawl? Yeah. I was, I was shocked about it.

43:38I mean, I don't know why I was shocked other than like, you know, this, I don't, and I don't know

43:44what school it was at. I didn't catch what school it was. I didn't catch it. So if it was a Christian

43:49school, if it was a particular like, specifically a conservative Christian school, it would make

43:56more sense. Yeah. It wasn't booed off the stage that I could see. So I, so, you know, it definitely

44:03wasn't, you know, Mount Holyoke or whatever. But I don't know why I chose that one.

44:09So it was at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas.

44:16And, but yeah, he went into a whole piece of chief's kicker. Yeah. He went into a whole

44:23thing about how his wife, he was very proud of all of the women who got their degrees, but

44:28he hopes that they can find their true avocation, which is to be a wife and a mother.

44:34And that, that his wife wasn't happy until she found hers and all this. He went into a whole

44:40bunch of stuff. Yeah. He says, I'm on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have

44:45a wife who leans into her vocation as a wife and a mother. I am beyond blessed with the many

44:51talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because

44:55a girl I met in band class back in high middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife,

45:00and embrace one of the most important titles of all, homemaker. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing wrong

45:07with wanting to be a homemaker. And, you know, that's, that's fine if you can make that work for you.

45:14And, and it's what you enjoy. And you, whether you're a man or a woman, like, like, great,

45:19go have fun. That's fine. But like, that's in this economy, if you can do that more.

45:25Good luck. Get yourself a professional kicker. Yeah. But, but yeah, the idea that

45:32this is a biblical take. Yeah. Which is what he's basing this on. Yeah.

45:38Is, is, I mean, let's not be, let's not be disingenuous here. That book has plenty of misogyny

45:47and plenty of patriarchy and all that sort of thing. Yeah. But they're leaning so heavily on

45:55these verses that we've been talking about. And if these verses can be pretty confidently

46:02demonstrated to be not from Paul, at very least not from that source, you know, we can't be too,

46:12you know, I, you know, just half an hour ago, I was saying that, you know, how we might as well

46:18leave in stuff, even though we know that it wasn't originally there. So I can't be, I can't be too

46:25hypocritical about that. This was clearly, you know, the expression of a, a prominent belief of the

46:32time. Mm hmm. Because it's an expression of a prominent belief of this time. So we can, you know,

46:37what I mean? And like, yeah, we got to be real about that. But if you're leaning that heavily,

46:44if you're making major decisions for entire denominations of, of Christianity. And it might

46:52influence legislation. Yeah. Like if it has controlled women's access to power and resources

47:00and liberty, as it, as it absolutely unquestionably has for thousands of years,

47:06it's important to get it right. I think it's safe to call that out as being a sort of an

47:14unacceptable use of a spurious part of the book. And I think this reveals something disingenuous

47:25about a lot of people's approach to the Bible. Mm hmm. It's unacceptable. Not because God deems

47:32it unacceptable, but because their worldview is so deeply embedded in their understanding of

47:39themselves, that it is just not acceptable to change it. Even if the message is, Hey,

47:45guess what? You can still consider everything else God's word. You can should be happy that we

47:53have discovered that, Hey, it turns out this isn't actually part of God's word, depending on how

47:59you understand that. You can get rid of these passages now, and you can have live in a free or

48:06more equal society. And it's like, no, I prefer the less equal society. There's nothing. There's

48:13no reason you can't say, okay, guess what? That's superfluous. We don't need it anymore. We're

48:18going to renegotiate our understanding of society based on what we have a better idea of as the

48:25actual genuine Bible. But I think because of inspiration, because of an erancy, because of

48:31univocality, the house of cards of that worldview has to be held up. And none of it can know one

48:41card can be taken away. Right. Which shows that the concern is not for understanding what's true.

48:48The concern is for preserving the house of cards above all else. Yeah. Well, and especially when

48:56the preservation of the house of cards, you know, especially when you're one of the ones living

49:01comfortably in that house of cards and becoming rich because of that house of cards.

49:06Yeah, it you are there are people men who are deeply devoted to maintaining this,

49:18you know, this misogynist patriarchal worldview. Yeah. And so, yeah, they lean on that, those

49:28verses to as their support structure for that. And I think it's easy to say, you know, everybody

49:38on our end of this particular spectrum benefits in one way or another from it. Maybe not directly,

49:44there are plenty of people who are getting the short end of the economic stick these days who

49:49are still agents of this worldview, because the minority that more directly and more openly is

49:56exploiting this is able to convince them that their own identity is so entangled in the success

50:05of of the minority that they they go to bat for and they carry water for them. And this, you know,

50:12this kind of thing happens in all different kinds of ways. A lot of historians will talk about

50:17the Revolutionary War. Now, there were ways that the powerful folks convinced poor whites

50:30to go to to war for the wealthy by ginning up the enemy on the other side and convincing poor whites

50:40that their interests were met or that were best served by carrying water for the interests of

50:47the wealthy. I think there are a lot of different ways that people cognitively get convinced that

50:53their self identity, their self esteem and everything is just entangled with the interests of the

51:03powerful. What's the saying that a lot of poor folks just walk around imagining themselves as

51:09temporarily embarrassed millionaires? Yeah, that was that was a Steinbeck quote.

51:13Yeah, there are no poor people in the in America, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

51:19And I think folks like Trump kind of are the poster child for this, because I think a lot of

51:25them see themselves in his kind of aw shucks. I'm such a moron kind of approach to things,

51:32but he's a billionaire. So that's how things are supposed to work. And so I'm just temporarily

51:40embarrassed. And in similar ways, the man is supposed to be the breadwinner and the pro athlete and

51:48the head of the household and all that the way it's supposed to be. And so you've got to vilify

51:54the women who are like, I'm going to get a degree, I'm going to go start a career, I'm going to be

51:58happy, I'm going to have a cat. And you know, maybe I'm going to patronize she vibe or whatever.

52:03They've got you, man. They do a little bit of art and suddenly you're doing free ads for him.

52:13I love it. As somebody as somebody commented on my post, it's a genius influencer marketing.

52:23It's fine, man. Guilty is charged. Well, friends, if you've been using some of these scriptures as

52:32sexist bludgens, I say unto you, go and sin no more. You see, I saw what you did there. I

52:41saw what you did. You brought it. You brought it around on. It's a full circle sort of there.

52:45I had that one in my back pocket right there. Well crafted. Thank you, sir.

52:51And this is not to exonerate Paul either because Paul was a jerk in other places. That's fine.

53:00And deeply sexist in a lot of ways. But at least in this instance, it probably wasn't Paul who

53:06said these things. It was probably someone coming through later making all kinds of changes

53:10because I don't know he was caught in the friend zone or something like that for too long and

53:16decided he was going to take it out on whoever was, whoever was letting churches meet in her home.

53:22Oh my gosh. In ancient incels, I don't like it. I don't

53:26As somebody somebody said earlier, being caught in a friend zone is only a bad thing if you don't

53:33see women as as valuable friends. Right. Yeah, exactly. I'm delighted to be in many friend zones.

53:41Anyway, well, if you would like early access and add free access to every one of our episodes,

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54:29dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that. And we'll talk to you again next week. Bye everybody.

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