"Asherah receiving a very poor divorce settlement" (Gavin has a nice sense of humour, so I've copied his picture and caption.)

Gavin in his post “Mrs. God” linked to my recent podcasts about Yahweh’s wife, he notes one area for discussion:

I’m a bit worried about the distinction Tim makes between a historically married god and a theological entity who wasn’t, but it’ll be interesting to see where it all leads.

To respond in this podcast I’ll talk about what the Bible is and how we can read it to try to give the distinction some context. Doing this as a podcast is a bit of an experiment, and I may move the discussion over to my blog if it seems the 5 minute talking head is not the best way to carry it on. So this podcast may be a bit of a one off, though hopefully even if it does not further the conversation with Gavin it may be helpful background for other listeners to my current podcasts on was God married and the gender of God.

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The pericope in John 7:53-8:11 is a fascinating test case in the interaction of text criticism and canon. Both the history of canon, and textual criticism seem dull and unexciting. Yet here they combine into a detective story or a theological conundrum that contributes to making the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy conflict with most Christian preachers’ practice! In this post I won’t address the detective story. But I will discuss this passage as a hint that we need a supple and flexible view of Scripture to deal “properly” with this passage.

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Note 2. For the detective story approach see e.g. A. Watson, “Jesus and the Adulteress” in Biblica 80 (1999): 100-108 [_RETURN]