Hexegesis and Sexist Jesus?

It's the most spookiest time of the year, so we're debuting a brand-new segment: Hexegesis! Did King James really slip "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" into Exodus because he hated witches, or does the trouble go all the way back to the Hebrew—and why does a Bible that bans divination keep showing its heroes doing it (as long as they're authorized, aiming at the right God, and conveniently male)? Then we're Taking Issue with one of Jesus' roughest moments, when he compares a Syrophoenician woman to a dog, and ask why she has to beg for crumbs while a Samaritan woman at a well gets offered living water. Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:04Speaker 03

  Again, as long as you're doing it for God and you're authorized to do it, it seems like-

• 1:12Speaker 04

  And you've got a penis.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Yes, right. That's very important.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:23Speaker 04

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And things are getting spooky, I understand.

• 1:37Speaker 04

  It is. It's the most spookiest time of the year. Yeah, it's spooky times. And so we decided to dive headfirst into the spookiness. So our first thing of the day is going to be a new category that we've never used before. It's going to be a hexegesis.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, get used to hearing that one.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know that we'll ever use it again, but maybe we will. But we're going to be talking about witches. And that is fun spooky times. You know, this whole episode is kind of about the mistreatment of women on some level, so.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Mostly about that, but.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we'll just lean hard into that because our next segment, our second segment, is going to be a taking issue where we're going to be talking about Jesus and his treatment of non-Israelite women. It's a compare and contrast. It's fascinating. And I had not really exposed myself to these stories. And so we'll have a lot to go over. That's a really, it's a really interesting conversation.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 04

  But first, let's put on your pointy hats and let's dive into hexegesis.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  So witches, Dan.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  They're spooky. We're all terrified of them.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  They're absolutely kooky and all the other things.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Mysterious and oaky.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. And what I hear all the time on social media, tell me if you've ever heard this. Somebody says that King James changed the Bible because of how much he hated witches.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I have heard, I mean, here's the thing. I come from a theater background. So I have heard a lot of sort of relating King James to witches, in part because we know that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth right when James ascended the throne. And it said that it was to appeal to King James, who was Scottish.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  And it heavily features witches. So I know, so like, I can see that there has been a James and witch thing.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  So, but, but talk to me about witchcraft, the Bible, and King James.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  So King James famously was quite anti-witch. And anti-women in certain ways, inside and outside the bedroom.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, there's one way that we're all specifically thinking of.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  But there's a claim that he added a verse to the book of Exodus.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  The claim is that Exodus 22:18 is added by King James, which reads, and oh, I don't even have the King James Version up, but the King James Version says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  And so I've seen this claim many times on social media, and it's just entirely false. It's entirely made up because the verse actually doesn't change at all from the source text. Because the King James Version is a very conservative revision of a translation that already existed, specifically the Bishop's Bible.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  And you can go back to the Bishop's Bible. You can go back to the Geneva Bible. You can go back to the Great Bible. You can go back to the Matthews Bible. You can go all the way back to Tyndall, who did translate Exodus into English. And it all says, more or less, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." So that is in keeping with the longstanding tradition of misogyny that we have in Bible translation. That still goes on down to this very day. But it is-

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Indeed. But so, okay. First question for me is, did they get it wrong?

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Not really, because we do have this in the Hebrew. It's actually Exodus 22, verse 17 in the Hebrew, because chapter 22 of Exodus is off by a verse between the Hebrew and the English. But the Hebrew there is "maha shifa lo tchaye." Which means a female sorceress. "You shall not," and then this is the PL of "chaya," to live. So it would be factative. It would be put in a state of living or allowed to live or make live or something like that. So it is basically saying the witch has got to die. But, yeah, so the translation into English is really not a problem.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  But it is specifically female. Like, so the misogyny is not, doesn't belong to Wycliffe. It goes back all the way to the Hebrew.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Yes, the deeply patriarchal and misogynistic authors of the covenant code, all the way back in probably the 8th or 7th centuries BCE. So it is a feminine noun, "maha shifa." Ends with a comets hei, which is the normal feminine ending for a noun. But I, and I think there's something interesting going on in the Greek translation, the ancient Greek translation of this passage, because the Septuagint actually alters it. And the Greek, it says "pharmacus u peripisite." And that actually changes the noun

• 7:52Speaker 03

  from a feminine singular to a masculine plural, which is kind of peculiar, because it's-

• 8:00Speaker 04

  So that, so it says something like, "Thou shalt not suffer all the, those male sorcerers to live."

• 8:10Speaker 03

  The wizards, the Harry Potters of the world, if you will. Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Dumbledore.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, the wizards. "You shall not suffer them to live," or "peripisite," which comes from "peripio," to preserve, keep safe, keep alive. So you're being told not to keep them safe. And, and this is interesting. Does the word "pharmacus," which the masculine singular is "pharmakos," does that sound like anything?

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, like pharmacy or, yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, pharmacy. "Pharmaquia" is a Greek word that later on gets adopted into Latin and then into English as a reference to someone who works with drugs and things like that.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Potions and powders.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Potions and powders and unctions and-

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Unctions, yes.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Ointments and various libations and all that kind of stuff. But in the ancient world, that could, that just referred generically to anybody who kind of mixed things together, whether it was for harm or for good. But here, obviously, the context is suggestive of understanding this as someone who's doing it for harm. Although, who knows? I mean, women were probably helping each other with their, you know, periods or something in the medieval period and were being accused of being witches. So, yeah. So I think the lines were probably blurred.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Or they were paying attention to what made people feel better when they ate and drank it and then-

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, or they learned to read or something.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  How dare they?

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, so we do have a change from feminine singular to masculine plural. And then a lot of people, you know, people are already on their conspiracy kick when they're, when they're thinking about King James inserting this, being like, "I got a great idea. You know how I hate witches? Let's just make up a verse that says we got to kill witches." But then people look at "pharmacus" and "pharmaquia," and they see it in the book of Revelation as well. The word occurs there as well. And obviously, the more conspiratorial minded folks are just having a field day with what this means when it comes to vaccinating your children or yourself or things like that.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  "Thou shalt not suffer a pharmacist to live."

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, particularly if they're working on MTDNA stuff, you know, because then, you know, you gotta, you gotta, yeah, they're obviously working for the devil. If they're trying to save lives.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Well, that's, so this is an interesting thing that I bumped up against. Since you brought up the devil, I wanted to-

• 11:04Speaker 03

  As I am wont to do.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  As is your wont.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  And you won't. But I, so as I was poking around on this, it became very clear to me that the European tradition of witchcraft, which goes back, which predates Wycliffe. You know what I mean? It goes, it goes back a long ways. It, it generally speaking is sort of, sort of combines being in league with Satan.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Being in league with the devil, a pact with the devil. You've got covens that, you know, you know, I saw a goody proctor with the devil, sort of thing.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  But that made me realize that like, we've talked about the devil and

• 11:55Speaker 04

  that's the devil as, as we, as a modern thinker, or even a medieval thinker thinks of this personage of the devil, wasn't really present when Exodus was written.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Oh, no, not remotely.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  So, so the concept of a witch that, that, you know, that, that King James was worried about is entirely different than what the authors of Exodus was, were, was talking about.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. The idea of Satan is, is pri- well, the idea of Satan as we understand it is primarily an invention of, of Christianity. Now, Christianity is getting it from Greco-Roman period Judaism, which is developing it from the interaction of earlier Jewish texts and Greco-Roman traditions and specifically Greek ideas about di'mons and, and things like that. But yeah, there's no, there's no Satan that is, you know, taking over possessing these people who are, who are being referred to as, well, what we would translate witches. And the, and the word in the masculine plural form of the word, so in Exodus 2217, it's macha shifah, you have the macha shifim

• 13:07Speaker 03

  in Exodus, the, the magicians.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Pharaoh's magicians, that's macha shifim in Hebrew. That's the masculine plural form of that word. And so-

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Okay, so, so those magicians, Pharaoh's magicians are the same thing as thou shalt not suffer a female version of this to live.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, which, which is kind of peculiar because it's almost like, look, we're okay with the male versions. We just, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of blazing saddles, but we don't want the Irish.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  We don't, we don't want the women folk, which is, you know, again, deeply patriarchal society. But you've got a, you've got a handful of, of references to the macha shif in the Hebrew Bible. And they get translated a variety of different ways. Sorcerers is how it's translated in Malachi 3. Deuteronomy 1810 has a, has a few different things to refer to. And none of these are in any way being represented as, you know, the puppets of Satan.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  This is not, oh gosh, what is the name of that Mystery Science Theater 3000?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  The hand, no, it's not, it's not hand of Satan. It's not touch of Satan. Ah, I forget what, what it is, but it's about a witch. It's one of the funniest MST, oh my gosh, MST 3K videos. But anyway, Deuteronomy 1810, no one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire. So that would be the child sacrifices, or who practices divination. And that would be, and here, we're going to talk in a future episode about magic in the New Testament with a specialist on magic and early Christianity, which is going to be a fascinating discussion. But, but I think it's hilarious that you have other parts of the Hebrew Bible that are like,

• 15:08Speaker 03

  here's how you do divination. And then you have this part that's like, by the way, don't do divination.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, yeah, I was going to say, like, part of what has baffled me as I've sort of looked into this is how many of the things are like, don't ever do this. And then later, somebody's doing it and it's totally cool. So I don't, like, I mean, and we've talked about, you know, the, the, the Ewok of Endor and, and how she-

• 15:38Speaker 03

  The necromancer.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  That's what it was. Yes. The, the necromancer slash frequently called the witch of Endor, like-

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Which, which is wrong.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Which is wrong.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  She's not a pharmacist, so everybody calm down. But she, she does her thing, but like, she's upset because she's being made to do it, and it's illegal. But no one's upset that it's like immoral or against God or something, and she's successful at it.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Or that it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. The, the, throughout the text, the presupposition is that this is real and it does work. And it's not necessarily that, oh, you're tapping into demonic influences. It's just that God said not to do this.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  And it, and it's, and because you are, you are making use of divine agency beyond our deity, but it's not because, you know, they're evil. It's just because God is a jealous God and we're only supposed to be, we're subscribed to his channel. We're only allowed to watch his programming. And so, yeah, divination is really just saying there's a, the act itself is okay as long as the person is authorized and the, the ultimate target of the divination is the God of Israel. If the person, the person is not authorized, sorry, if the person is not authorized

• 17:06Speaker 03

  and the target is some other divine agency beyond the God of Israel, then not only is it a no-no, it's punishable by death, which really just shows how, how much of a petty and jealous deity the God of Israel was.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  You'd be like, no, it has to be me!

• 17:25Speaker 04

  An authorized person would be like a priest or a prophet.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Of God.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Someone who has been authorized, set apart to do this.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Anointed.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Yes, anointed, if you will.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Your various dowsings, your various whatevers.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Yes, various and sundry anointings and washings.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Settings apart, yes. Yeah. So like you mentioned the Deuteronomy 18 thing.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Divination, soothsaying, augury, sorcery, castings.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Augury is such a great term. We don't use-

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Well, yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  You, you know what, you know what august means, right?

• 18:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  You know, this august body?

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Oh, august.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  And Augustus, yes. It means, it means sanctioned or authorized by augury.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Which is the divination based on the, if I recall, the flight paths of birds.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Of birds, right.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  There, there, there are so many cool different kinds of divination. My favorite is extispacy.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Are you familiar with extispacy?

• 18:32Speaker 04

  No, you've exposed me to a new word.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Yes, this is one you've got to try the next time you're in a high school science class, which, which will be frequently, obviously.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Happens to me all the time.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Yes. This is where you cut the liver out of a sheep. And then you study its color, its contours and its shape. And then you can divine the future based on that. Extispacy, ladies and gentlemen.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Extispacy.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Yes, is a very, a very common one. So-

• 19:03Speaker 04

  It sounds messy. I don't like it.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Yes, we, we prefer to say this august body rather than this extispicious body.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Extispicious, yeah, exactly.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. We are-

• 19:24Speaker 04

  I've heard the construction.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, you've heard the construction too. We're, we're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're, we're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget. And it was so satisfying to actually make a plan. And then

• 20:07Speaker 03

  even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and were able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

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• 22:37Speaker 04

  I like, I like also the Deuteronomy goes on to say casting spells, which is interesting. And consulting ghosts or spirits, something about that.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and, and that is, I'm, I'm looking for the, the exact word we have. Kosaim, kasamim. Uh, well, that's, that's divination.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it does feel like this is, uh, that like, there's some crossover to these.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. These are most, these are like synonyms, basically.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's, it's a little repetitious.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because you do have, I don't see it in this verse, but you do have the ove is like the ghost or what we, we call the familiar spirit. If you are reading from the King James version, and a lot of people think familiar spirit, and they think, ah, it's a spirit that I recognize. I know you. Weren't you at my, weren't you at my sleepover that one time?

• 23:30Speaker 04

  This is, this is vampire familiars.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Kinda. It is familial.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  So it's, it's really like ancestors.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Sure.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  So, oh, um, Harvey, I don't know if at FanX, the guy who played Guillermo.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Was there as well. Sorry, we were talking about this in, uh, in our.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  If you become a patron of our, of, of the show, you can go and, and listen to our patrons only.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Yes. Our, our FanX successes and failures, or at least successes on Dan's part and failures on my part. But, um, but the, uh, yeah, you have this, uh, ove is the, the familiar spirit who is consulted for things because the dead are deities. And that's what happens with the necromancer of Aindor. Saul shows up and says, give me Samuel. And, and then the, the necromancer freaks out and says, you know, I see Elohim rising up from the underworld or from the earth. And Saul says, what does he look like? And says, it's this old dude in a robe. This is, this is Samuel.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  So, and, and precisely so that Saul can be informed about what's going to happen in the future. So divination, uh, which is outlawed, but the story is really trying to show, look, the God of Israel is in control of all of this. Even if you pull up the ghost of Samuel, Samuel is doing God's bidding. So, uh, it all works, but it's not sanctioned. It's not authorized. So, but, but I don't see that in Deuteronomy 1810. By the way, if anybody's interested, there's a phenomenal book, I think I've talked about it before on the show by our good friend Esther Hamori called Women's Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  That if you really want to get into something that would have earned Esther a, a trip to the gallows, uh, had she written this book in the medieval period, uh, like that, that's a phenomenal book. I highly recommend that. There's a whole chapter on the necromancer of Aindor.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  We're just dumb for not having her on for this episode.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  We've, we've, yeah, we, we've talked with, uh, with her about it. We gotta, we gotta revisit that discussion. But, um, yeah. And then there's a chapter on Hulda. Do you remember Hulda?

• 25:59Speaker 04

  No, wait. Yes. No. Help me out.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Hulda is the prophetess that King Josiah brings the text of the law to after it has been discovered in the temple. And she's the one who basically goes, ooh, you, you've been getting it wrong all this time.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  But she's the Pam Bondi of that administration.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Oh, and there's a, there's another cool story about the mother of Micah and the Taraphim from, uh, the book of Judges. I think Judges 18 is, is where it talks about it, where, where Micah brings home a bunch of silver and gives it to his mom and his mom, uh, or is it the other way around? Uh, somebody spits out a bunch of divine images from, from all this silver, but.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, so we have a lot of examples of various sort of sanctioned, totally fine divination.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Including by women, right? Or, or is it like, I'm just trying to.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Like, like Hulda would be, uh, would seem to be as close as we get, I think, to sanctioned divination, because I was about to draw the, or make the point that when we see inappropriate divination, frequently it's women who are doing it.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Okay. That's true.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  And so I, I think there is another bubbling to the surface of the, the fundamental misogyny of the way they're structuring their, um, their society in this time period where if we want to point at someone who's doing it wrong, find the woman. And, and that's the one who's doing it wrong, which may be why Exodus 2217 is using the feminine singular, because the men, maybe the men who are doing it, we, we presume that they're doing it appropriately or something like that. But if a woman's doing it, uh.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  You know what happened? She was better than they were and they were mad about it. And, uh, and so they just decided, nope, we're, if you do that, we're going to kill you.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, so they, they probably in their time period would have talked about, uh, diviners and then female diviners, uh, rather than diviners and then male diviners.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  You know, like you, like female doctor or female pilot or something like that today. You got your regular pilot and then you got your female pilot.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Who is irregular.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  So maybe that's what's going on with Exodus 22's concern only for the female. Machashef or machashifa.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  So yeah, and then we have the, uh, in the book of Daniel, we also have the king, uh, commands the magicians, the enchanters and the machashfim. And as we know, that includes Gallagher. So.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  That's a bit of it. That was the best one, best one. That, that thing he did with the watermelon. Yeah. And then the.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  I don't know if you, I don't know if you've learned the divination of, uh, watermelon rind, but it is one of the better ways of divining. It's much better than a sheep's stomach or a sheep's liver.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Then you get to, then you get to eat it and you don't have to cook it or anything. What was the, uh, the name of that movie that this is?

• 29:18Speaker 04

  It was just called Daniel, wasn't it?

• 29:19Speaker 03

  It was just called Daniel, wasn't it?

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Book of Daniel. Maybe it was the book of.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Was it from, uh, 2013 or was it a more recent one?

• 29:27Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  We, we watched this ridiculous movie called The Book of Daniel, uh, a while ago for, uh, to go on a podcast to mock it. And, uh, literally Gallagher portrayed one of Nebuchadnezzar's.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Sorcerers.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  If you don't know the name Gallagher, if you're, if you're confused, young person, uh, Gallagher was a goofball comedian, if you can call him that. I guess that's what passed for a comedian back in, uh, the eighties and maybe into the nineties.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, uh, yeah, don't look up his later stuff, cause.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Half of it's his brother anyway.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  It got, it gets a little blue, uh, which is not the correct, uh, description of it. But, uh, he went off the deep end.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  Anywho, I, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, some of the various divination that what like, I'm thinking of the Yerem and Thummim. I'm thinking of like, there were, there are all kinds of oracles, all kinds of ways in which these very, uh, acts are, are sanctioned and stuff. So I, Moses's staff is magical, Aaron's staff is magical.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  What are some other things? I'm trying to think of some other, some other fun, good.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Well, one, one interesting way, and, and this is not so much divination as sympathetic magic. Like if you want to talk about witchcraft, this gets a little closer to that. When Jacob wants to take off and leave Laban and Laban is like, okay, you get all this kind of sheep. I'm going to take that kind of sheep. And he was like, ooh, I'm going to get you. And then he takes the.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Let me just show him some sticks.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. We, we take some sticks and he peels some of the bark off to create these striped and, and sticks. And he puts them in the water so that when, when certain sheep come to drink, they see these sticks and then they give birth to the, the strong, uh, like modeled or, or striped or spotted or whatever sheep. And, and basically the idea is he's using sympathetic magic so that everything that Laban said belonged to him was all the strong and, and good offspring. And then everything that stays with Laban is all the sickly and weak offspring. And then, uh, Jacob goes on to say basically that, that God is the one who inspired him

• 31:51Speaker 03

  to do it, uh, which is part of my, my friend, um, uh, John Anderson has a book called Jacob and the Divine Trickster, which is about a theology of deception and Jacob's cycle. But this is one of the stories that kind of manifests this idea where God's, God's going to play the trickster in order to ensure that their promises to the patriarchs are fulfilled, even if that means using some sympathetic magic to screw over, uh, Laban so that Jacob can get wealthier on his way out the door.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Uh, so, so that's an, that's an interesting one. We got, you got some examples like that. Casting lots is a great one.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Does that you see in the Hebrew Bible? You even see it in the New Testament.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  For those who don't understand what casting lots is, it's, it's, it's like a roll of the dice technically, like basically it's, it's, they have some sort of implements or, you know, some sort of little doodads.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Could be knuckle bones, could be, could be rocks, could be, uh, you know, something that they shaped out of clay.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  And then, and then somehow if it lands X way, then it means one thing. And if it lands Y way, then it means a different thing.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  But that, but that was used quite a bit.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Testing lots.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with it in the, in the stories that, that talk about it. Again, as long as, as you're doing it for God and you're authorized to do it, it, it seems like you can do.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  And you've got a penis.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Yes, right. That's, that's very important. The, the testes are kind of the, the, uh, the powerhouse of the divination cell. So, um, yeah, you've got.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  It's just so, it's just so weird. The, it does seem that like the, the missing link, the obvi, the, the thing that this one does have that this one doesn't is just the gender thing.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Uh, so that, I mean, I don't think that that was helpful for when you get, when you, when you, you know, say something to King James about it. I don't, I, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like this didn't, this did not go well for women throughout centuries.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And even, even down to, uh, you know, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and then Robin Hood, Men in Tights. I mean, the witch kind of gets her way at the end of Robin Hood, Men in Tights with, uh, with Prince John, but, uh, uh, yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  What, what does he, what does he call her in Prince of Thieves? Crone, right?

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Probably, like, look, my knowledge of the nineties stuff is, is not as fresh in my mind as yours is.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  I wanted to watch that movie a couple of weeks ago and my kids were like, ugh.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Come on, dad.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  All right. Well, uh, don't persecute any women who are doing, uh, spooky stuff, especially not now. This, this is, this is the month where we allow it. So everybody be cool with the witchy people, uh, men or women. It, you know, get out there and, uh, and get some moon water going and throw, cast some lots and read the tea leaves. Cause it's fun. Uh, and I, and it's not satanic. That's, that is clear. So, so there you go. All right. Well, uh, let's move on then to our, uh, our next segment, Taking Issue.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  So here we are. Uh, should we start in Matthew with our, uh, our friends?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  I, I think it, why don't we start in Mark?

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Because this, this is going to be the first version of the story that is told. And then, and then Matthew is an elaboration on this story. And then John is, is kind of, uh, going in a different direction, but all three of the stories.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  I only wanted to start in Matthew because I was unaware that there was a Mark version.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  So.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Yes, we have, we have a Mark and, uh, Mark and version of this. And this is the reference to the Syro Phoenician woman. And they actually identify the woman in two different ways, Mark and Matthew. So.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  I'll go ahead and read from Mark seven. This is verses 24 through 30. From there, he set out and went away to the region of Tyre.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  He is Jesus.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  He is Jesus. Yes. He is him. Um, and Tyre is, is up further north. So we're in the land that would have been Phoenicia much earlier. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, yet he could not escape notice. So this is the messianic secret where he keeps telling his disciples, don't let, don't, don't tell anybody about this. But a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile of Syro Phoenician origin. So that means from Syria Phoenicia.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. But she answered him, sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. Then he said to her, for that saying, you may go. The demon has left your daughter. And when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone. So, uh, and.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  In case it's not clear, that is rough.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  It is rough. Yes. And this is something that a lot of people have been debating about for a long time, but I, I think there's a pretty clear answer to this. Cause when he says, throw it to the dogs, he's calling this woman a dog.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  And there are other parts.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  The, the children that he's referencing there are the, are Israel. Is that right?

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Yes. So then the idea is not, and the woman responds, the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. And so people will say, oh, Jesus is talking about like a pet, like a puppy. So it's, that's a, that, that lands a little softer, the blow, doesn't it? If, if it's talking about a cute little puppy instead of calling this woman a dog.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  No.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  It doesn't. It doesn't land any softer to me.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's also not accurate because I, I think most scholars would suggest that what Jesus has in mind is precisely the way that Gentiles are referred to as dogs in a couple of other parts of the New Testament. You are the dogs roaming in the street that are not part of our household. You are not, you are wild dogs. You are the ones who, uh, are outside of our house. And the woman then kind of twists Jesus's metaphor by saying, well, the, the dogs hanging out under the table still eat the, the crumbs. And, and so she's basically trying to play on that metaphor to, uh, to say, but the way you

• 39:02Speaker 03

  frame me can also be understood in this way.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  And so it's a bit of a twisting of Jesus's words, but I think that's what the, the point is, is that Jesus is like, well played, young lady.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Uh, she has, she has taken his word and, and turned him around to make it favorable to her. So I.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  I'll tell you, this, this story shook me a little bit. I am, I'm a little shook because I, I have this image in my mind. You know, I think immediately when I think of Jesus, I think of the guy who told the story of the good Samaritan.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  I think of the guy who says, even though this person is outside of our thing, he's still, you know, he was, he was the good one.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  And you guys should be ashamed of yourselves, sort of thing. And this is, this feels very much the opposite of that.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  This feels like, like you're, like the, like explicitly calling someone a dog because they are in the out group.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  Feels really hard for me to, to reconcile.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there, and there are a couple of different ways to, to approach this. You brought up the, the good Samaritan. The Samaritans are actually a little closer to Judaism than the, than a Syro Phoenician, than a Canaanite, uh, because they were a part of the house of Israel before the exile, according to the tradition. And so there's a, there's a sense in which they're closer relatives, but that proximity also breeds a different kind of contempt. So there's also a sense in which they're, um, hated in a different way, at least according to the way the New Testament authors represent their relationship. But yeah, it does, it does make you wonder what's going on with that. Uh, but that's

• 40:52Speaker 03

  all the, the parable of the, um, the good Samaritan is, uh, is a different part of this, this whole story. And it's, it's not incredibly consistent, but also if we understand this to be reflecting the circumstances in the time period when it was written, then it seems like this is talking about Gentile converts to Christianity, people coming into Christianity from outside. Because this is written around 70 CE. So this is obviously written in a time when Paul's mission was already underway. And so there's.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  We could ask, is this kind of pushing back against Paul a little bit? And being like, sure, we can let in some outsiders, but they have to be, you know, really creative, or they have to be, have to have exceptional faith to be able to overcome that. Or, or is it just saying, yes, even Jesus showed that the door was open a crack already during his ministry. Even Jesus did not entirely cut off non-Jewish folks from the gospel.

• 42:09Speaker 04

  But he did make them supplicate themselves to him entirely and beg for the scraps of the table.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Right. And you make a wonderful point that is also made in a book written by a friend of mine. The book is called Good Book, How White Evangelicals Saved the Bible to Save Themselves by Jill Hicks-Keaton. And, and I keep meaning to invite her onto the show as well, but she's very, staying very busy as well. But, but she uses this story as an example of a kind of tale from the Bible that is deeply misogynist, that a lot of people are trying to rehabilitate, that a lot of people are trying to make sound like it's, it's heartwarming and it actually shows Jesus was an ally all along. And it's not really doing that.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  No, that, that is a stretch for me. I, I, you know, and, and I don't know if it's a little worse in Matthew. It, it, I mean, the, the, the things that Matthew adds to it, first of all, it, she's now a Canaanite woman.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Is that the same thing?

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Um, not really. A Seraphinian woman is, I don't think she would qualify as Canaanite. I think Canaanite, it sounds to me almost like an archaizing thing.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Uh, but, uh, there's, there's going to be a little bit of semantic overlap, but, but the author is different.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  And it's very clearly the same story. So.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  Uh, so there's no, there's no mistaking it.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Um, right.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  And she, you know, what, it adds a little bit of flourish to her language. Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon. Uh, but he did not answer her at all. So in this one, he literally starts by just ignoring her.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  And then the, his disciples came and urged him saying, send her away, for she keeps shouting after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So it's, it's very explicit in that respect. It's, it's, uh, this, this gets more specific about that. But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me. He answered, it is not fair to, uh, is, it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. She said, yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. Then Jesus answered her, woman, great is your faith.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed from that moment. It is, I, yeah, I don't think that that helps our case at all. I think that it might make it a little bit, uh, it might just have a few more icky, uh, details.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause Jesus is kind of like, you sicken me.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Away from me.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he doesn't, I won't even answer her. I won't even.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

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• 47:20Speaker 04

  Uh, now we, I wanted to contrast that with, uh, John four.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Uh, which.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  The whole chapter, I think, is the discussion, almost.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  No, yeah, down to like verse 42 or something like that. Um, so, so the, talk about this story a little bit. Just give us the, we're not going to read the whole thing, but give us the rundown on this.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  So it's, it's the beginning of Jesus's ministry. He's, he's done the wedding in Cana. He's gone to visit Nicodemus to blow his mind. Uh, then we've got, uh, Jesus and John the Baptist, where we have John the Baptist say, he must increase, but I must decrease. Uh, and then, and then Jesus learns that the Pharisees had heard Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John, although it was not Jesus himself, but his disciples who baptized. And he left Judea, started back to Galilee, but he had to go through Samaria. And we have other part, other gospels where it talks about how

• 48:28Speaker 03

  you kind of went around Samaria, so you didn't have to go through it.

• 48:32Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  And there's, there's another gospel where Jesus tells his disciples not to go into Samaria as they're going about preaching and healing and stuff like that. Um, but the gospel of John represents Jesus as just trudging right on through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sichar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her, give me a drink. His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans. And, and something to point out here is that, uh, there was likely a concern with, um, purity. Like if, if the, the Samaritan woman had a vessel that was holding water, many Jewish people probably would have been like, no, thank you. I'll get my own vessel because yours will be unclean or impure. So.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  So that's probably part of what's going on here. And, uh, Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? And, and this might also be what, why she's wondering why he's asking for a drink. You don't have your own bucket for this, meaning you're going to have to drink from my container, meaning you're going to think I'm impure. So Jesus is kind of, um, kind of bucking the trend here a little bit. Um, and pushing back against these purity concerns. Uh, and, and she goes on, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? Who gave us this well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?

• 50:31Speaker 03

  And we're going to see somebody else ask Jesus, are you greater than one of the patriarchs, specifically Abraham? So this is, this is something that people are constantly noticing about Jesus. He seems to think he's a pretty big deal.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Um, Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give, uh, that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water. Uh, Jesus said to her.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  She's, she clearly didn't get that there was a metaphor happening. She's like, okay, I'll drink eternal water.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that sounds.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  I'll think I don't have to ever be thirsty again. We live in a desert. That sounds great.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  It's kind of like this episode of Gravity Falls where they, they get a wish from the time baby. And, uh, and, and the guy's wish. Yeah. And the guy's wish is that, uh, he gets infinite pizza. He has a slice of pizza that as soon as he finishes it, it returns.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  More pizza.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, and everybody goes, that's a good wish. Good wish. Um, so yeah, she's, she's not picking up what he's putting down. Uh, and he says, Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come back. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands. And the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  What does that mean? Uh, he's just, he's just, he's, he is divining things about her personal life that she had not told him.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and also, uh, she is, uh, living with somebody, cohabiting.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Uh, in sin. Uh, so yes.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  Shameful. He's, he's pulling a Benny Hinn here. He's a.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  Calling her out, huh?

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. But magically knowing things about her, her personal life.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, if he, if he takes off his blazer and starts swinging it around to, to knock them over with the spirit. Uh, I don't remember that part of the text. That might be in, in an older manuscript. But, but what's interesting here is in the previous story, the metaphor was what? It was bread. In this story, the metaphor is water. We got water, we got bread. We've got these basic elements of life. Uh, Jesus's confrontations with these, uh, non-Israelite, non-male persons, uh, revolve around these, these fundamental, uh, necessaries.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  But this was, yeah, so this is when Jesus was off of carbs. So he switched.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was just a, a water diet. The lemonade diet, you know, get some, a little bit of maple syrup is, is what you add there. And, uh, she says, the woman said to him, sir, I see that you are a prophet. Uh, which, you know, she seems kind of, uh, kind of casual about that. She's like, huh, so you can tell the future, huh?

• 53:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  That's interesting.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  Which is funny because he hasn't said anything about the future. He just told her her past and present, but that's okay. We'll just, we'll just go.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  I stole your wallet, which contains all of these secrets.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  Is this your card?

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Uh, and then she goes on, our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. That would be Gerizim. That's, that's the big, uh, to do between the, uh, the Samaritans and the Jewish people that one was on one mountain. The other, uh, says that Moses said to worship on this mountain. But you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. Which is probably the author's way of having Jesus,

• 54:33Speaker 03

  prophesy of the destruction of the temple. We're not going to be worshiping in the temple anymore. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. So, so Jesus is kind of saying, we're right and you're wrong.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're, we're back to, uh, I got my own flock. We got the correct, we got the correct, we got the good stuff here.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth for the father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us. Now here's an interesting thing. We don't have any, any indication that the Samaritans expected a Messiah to come.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  Uh, I think there was, I think they, they had Tehab was the name of somebody who was supposed to show up, but they didn't refer to them as a Messiah and the mission of that person was, as far as I know, was different from the mission of the Messiah, according to early Judaism. So I, I think the author of the Gospel of John is kind of misunderstanding, misrepresenting things a little bit here.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  Putting some words into the Samaritan mouth.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Jesus, and Jesus said to her, I am he. The one who is speaking to you.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Which, can I just tell you, when I read that line, in my mind, two things happened. First, the, the, the sort of God slash Jesus voice that I was, that I was raised to think of, which is sort of that bass voice of, I am he.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  The one who is speaking to you. And it's slow and it's like, it has gravitas or whatever. And then my brain decided to read it like, I'm he, the one who's speaking to you. That's me. It's me. I'm the guy. I'm, I'm actually him. I just thought that that was a much funnier way of rendering that line.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Did you, did you watch the, the third season, which was really just one episode of, uh, Angels and Demons? Was that what it's called? No, no, shoot. What was it called?

• 56:51Speaker 03

  The, uh, the, the, um,

• 56:56Speaker 03

  the David, um, oh my gosh.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  David Tennant, the one?

• 56:59Speaker 03

  David Tennant, yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  Good Omens, is that one?

• 57:01Speaker 03

  That's it. Not Angels and Demons. Good Omens. Did you see the third season, which was really just a single, like movie, if I recall?

• 57:09Speaker 04

  I may not have seen that. No.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah. So they, they have a third season and they have Jesus come back.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  But he's precisely that.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  He's just.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  He's a gentle, like, hey.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  Hey, man.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  How are you? And I'm Jesus. And yeah, it's, uh, but he's, he kind of has to, recall what his mission and identity is. And, um, it's a good, I, I thought it was a, I thought it was a good way to tie off that, that, uh, series.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  And, and that is, that is it. Like there's, there's no more after that.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  But it.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  Okay. So Jesus says, I'm the guy. Uh, she's, she's like, hey, we were expecting this guy any minute. And he says, ah, it's me.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Ta-da. And then his disciples come who he sent away to go and get takeout. And, uh, and they're like, uh,

• 58:04Speaker 04

  but this one decidedly differently says, different from Matthew and the Canaanite woman. It says, no one said, what do you want? Or why are you speaking with her? So I think that's interesting because the, the disciples grumbled with the Canaanite woman.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  And we're like, hey, will you get rid of this woman? She's, uh, she's bugging us. But I guess they've learned their lesson by now, uh, that who knows what's going to happen.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it makes you wonder if the author is trying to, it's like, well, there is this story over here. I need, I want to tell a similar story, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna mix it up a little bit.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  So we got, we got a remix of Jesus's confrontation with a non-Israelite woman, but maybe the author of John, doesn't want her to be a Gentile. Maybe the author of John wants her to be a Samaritan because maybe that, people would have considered her even less worthy. Or maybe, maybe they, uh, this is somebody who's closer to Jesus as a Jewish person.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe, uh, maybe the author of John is less comfortable with the idea of further outsiders. Like he's like, okay, we can gather in some of the outsiders, you know, Samaritans are basically us with whatever. We'll just, well, we can, they can come, but, but we're Canaanites, that's a bridge too far.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  And the, uh, and, and Jesus is like, he's getting really annoying here. So the, the woman goes back to her city, leaves her water jar, goes back to the city, and starts saying to the people, come and see the, a man who told me everything I've ever done. He cannot be the Messiah, can he? Uh, they left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, Rabbi, eat something, but he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So he's being kind of Matthew McConaughey on him.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  I've got pocket cheese. Leave me alone. I'm fine.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Well, they're just like, I just, I just want you to stop saying odd stuff.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Uh, so, so the disciples said to one another, surely no one has brought him something to eat. So they're like, I don't get it. What does that mean?

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  He's secretly got jerky in his room.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  We still got that meat lovers in the trunk of the car.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  Jesus, that was from, uh, uh, that was from, oh my gosh, Tommy Boy.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Uh, Jesus said to him, to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Uh, and obviously they were like, that doesn't clarify things, Jesus.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Right. Also, it doesn't technically feed you. You are still hungry.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Do you, do you not say four months more, then comes the harvest? But I tell you, look around you and see how the fields are ripe, or harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life. So that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. Many Samaritan, and, and I think the idea here is, is a message to the people of the generation that are consuming the Gospel of John, you know, several decades down the road. They're, they're not the ones who sowed the seeds of, of Jesus following. They're the ones who are hopefully reaping the benefits.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. You guys have it so easy. In my day, we had to sow the seeds. It was uphill both ways.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we, we carried an onion on a string because that was the, that was the way we did it back then. Um, many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me everything I've ever done. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days. And many more believed of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves. And we know that this is truly the Savior of the world and seen.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  And seen. Uh, very, very moving, very, very touching. But again.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  The good guys win in the end. A bunch of Samaritans convert and become followers of Jesus, which, and there does not seem to be any barrier there. Jesus doesn't say, hold on a minute. We gotta do the, the super secret handshake so that we can, we can cast down the walls that stand between us, uh, like he kind of does with the Syrophoenician woman where he's like, you gotta show me your extra special.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Nor, nor does he say to the, uh, to, to his disciples, hang on, I gotta talk to these dogs for a second.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he doesn't, uh, he's, he doesn't, uh, have that, uh, you ain't ready for this jelly attitude that, uh, that he seems to for the Canaanites and the Syrophoenicians. Cause. The Samaritans either are closer, they're better, or maybe they're further away and they're worse, and he's trying to kind of double down on, on how expansive Jesus' gospel is. But, and there's scholarship on this. In fact, there's an open access book. I wonder if I, I put it somewhere. I don't know where it is, never mind. But SBL Press has a bunch of open access books, and they've got one on, on Jesus and John, and I think historicity,

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  or something like that. But there's a paper in there, talking about the story of the, Jesus visiting the Samaritan woman that compares it to the, the story in Mark, and compares it to some other stories as well. And, and one other thing, I, a book I want to bring up, because it's just, is relevant to the, the segment. We've had on the show my friend, James McGrath. He's, he's come on to talk about John the Baptist.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  But he has written a lot of stuff. And just a couple of years ago, he published a book called What Jesus Learned From Women. And the book is, is basically talking about how the, the New Testament represents Jesus as learning things from women through questioning them and experiences and things like that. So it's, it's a very interesting book, published by Whipf and Stock, if anyone is interested in checking it out.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Okay. I, I don't feel like Jesus learned a lot from the Samaritan woman.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Well, there's a painting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman by the well. That's the cover of the book. So.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  You'll have to read the book to see what Jesus seems to have learned, according to my friend, James McGrath.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  From the Samaritan woman.

• 1:04:44Speaker 04

  Who knows more than I do, that's for sure. So, there you go. All right. Well, I, that is so interesting. And I'm not, I'm not convinced that we solved the Bible's misogyny problems here.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  Not yet.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Or, or the inside, in-group, out-group, uh, bigotries. Uh, I did, it's, I'm still uncomfortable. I'm deeply uncomfortable with a lot of this stuff.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  But fascinated by it. So there you go. That's it for today. Thanks so much for joining us. If you'd like to become a part of keeping this show rolling, we'd love to have you join us over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma, where you can get access to an early and ad-free version of every episode, as well as weekly, uh, bonus content that we do for the people at a certain level. And it's just a lot of fun. And we encourage you to go and check it out. Uh, thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to Sam Holden for being our right-hand man. And thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We sure do appreciate you.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

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