The Sydney Anglicans are suggesting women might want to promise to -submit- to their husbands. I argue that they are not being biblical enough, and don’t go half far enough! I begin with Martyn Lloyd-Jones fine introduction to reading Ephesians 5 and suggest where half-hearted, partial readings go wrong. I’ll follow this up with a [&hellip...
This post is not itself directly about the Bible, though it is thoroughly “biblical” as I’ll be happy to demonstrate if you ask targeted questions 😉 In the podcast I’ll take a pagan suggestion from the Sidney Anglicans, and a scathing critique of the churches (from Stanley Hauerwas) (( Via Bacho as the original Hauerwas [&hellip...
Huffington Post article claiming the pais was the centurion’s sex partner produced a little flurry of posts and comment on the biblical blogs. Gavin at Otagosh in Jesus and the Centurion’s boy wrote: “I’m not sure the story actually has much value in terms of current debates on homosexuality.” Is that right? ...
In part one I drew attention to the problem that this verse seems to contradict what Paul himself approves and to some funny things going on in and around the verse. Here I’ll focus on my reason for mentioning this, how we should respond when a Bible passage seems to contradict what the [&hellip...
Gender is not (only) a Feminist issue! I ended my double post Proverbs as a gendered text and Proverbs as a gendered text: Proverbs 31:10ff. with the question of where reading such (strongly) male texts left women readers. Sadly it has had little response, (though thank you Judy 🙂 So I’ll end this podcast with [&hellip...
The poem in Prov 31:10ff. has been read in various ways, by men and by women, as an oppressive and as a liberating text. I will suggest two clues to making sense of the poem. The first is to read it in the context of the book of Proverbs (and not as an isolated poem), and [&hellip...
While it is quite clear that Proverbs is a gendered text, the way it speaks of women is interesting. For a text coming from an ancient patriarchal society human women who serve as aspirational models are a surprise. No doubt any real Feminist would instantly switch into “pedestal” mode, but I think it’s worth pausing [&hellip...
In this podcast I’ll briefly argue that since the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) regularly pictures Yahweh as intimately associated with both forming in the womb and birthing, and particularly since “his” role is often as midwife “he” cannot be thought of as a male god. Rather “he” is God and as later (though very early [&hellip...
Francesca Stavrakopoulou closed her article “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE” saying: I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like had the goddess remained. Let’s explore the evidence and try to answer her speculation. This evidence comes mainly from surrounding peoples, though the Bible has some [&hellip...
Video version here. I know I promised two sequels to yesterday’s podcast. But I think I need first to explore the theme of the gender of God (Yahweh) in the Old Testament, and the evidence for Yahweh’s wife, a bit more first. Bear with me and we will get to “Why do you read? Part [&hellip...
