The Bible TI251 Fall 2020

Love L. Sechrest talks about Paul’s letters. She discusses how Paul’s letters were used by eighteenth century supporters of slavery. However, looking more into what Paul wrote, you can see he discussed the submission of slaves rather than actual slavery. Many slave owners would only give their slaves the section of the Bible where it was talking about slaves being submissive to their slave owners. It was a “slave Bible” rather than a full Bible. Sechrest brings up one quote from the Bible that shows all people are the same, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, male and female, slave or free, but we are all one-you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

In this class, we discussed what wisdom meant to us. When I think of wisdom, I think of someone with experience. I think of someone who is wise to be smart in all aspects. I believe they should be book’s smart, but they should also be smart in other areas of life. I think to be wise you have to have experienced different parts of life. I would imagine someone older to be wiser than someone younger, however, if a younger person had more life experience, this may not be the case. Another term brought up when looking up the definition of wisdom is having good judgement. I would agree with this as well. If one was to have a problem, then one would want to go to someone who was wise to ask their questions.

Rabbi Benjamin Scolnic talks about “The Prophets and Social Justice”. He talks about how the Biblical prophets’ main message was justice. He brings up that Moses was sent to free the people. God wanted the people to be able to act freely like He did. God frees people through Moses and other prophets. The prophets urge others to help those in need, such as widows, orphans, and oppressed people. The prophets are pushed to “demand respect for every human life”.

Chapter 1 of William G. Dever’s book Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah discusses the idea of history-writing. He talks about distinguishing the difference between historians and antiquarians. He discusses whether the writers and interpreters of the Bible were historians or antiquarians. Dever goes through the different parts of the Bible that had to be interpreted and when they were written. Dever then discusses the idea that archaeologists are “a historian of things”.

Cheryl B. Anderson discusses law and the Bible. She talks about how you really have to look at what the Bible says when talking about biblical laws. She uses the example of adultery. A man is not considered to be participating in adultery if the woman is single. This proves that these laws are not meant for current context, and there is leeway in how they should be interpreted. Anderson also points to there being two versions of the Ten Commandments, and one is written later. This proves that these laws were meant to be amended and interpreted differently as time has passed.

Dexter Callender talks about the flood stories and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The story goes that Noah is told to build a boat and to put all animals and his family on the boat. The flood then destroys everything left on Earth besides those on the boat. The Epic of Gilgamesh has a similar story, but it is a flood hero who does these tasks. This flood hero receives eternal life from the gods after giving them a sacrifice. Noah does not receive eternal life in his story. Another difference is the birds in each story. The flood hero from the Epic of Gilgamesh sends out a bird three times, and Noah also sends out a dove three times. However, in the Mesopotamian story, there are three different birds sent out. All of this information together makes it seem as though these are the same story, but they are told separately with minor differences.

Chapter 2 of Subversive Sequels in the Bible, it discusses the relationship between the Tower of Babel and the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt. The chapter discusses the many similarities in the two stories, for example, both are about building cities, both have the same building materials, and both have fear-inducing orations. The chapter talks about the story of the Tower of Babel and why the people were punished.

Phyliss Trible’s article on Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation discusses how the Hebrew Scriptures and the Women’s movement are related. It is argued that the way the Bible is translated makes it patriarchal. The article gives several examples of how the Bible condemns women. Paul considers women subordinate to men, and I Timothy states that women are responsible for sin in the world. This is an interesting to me because I had not read the Bible much before this class. After reading certain sections of the Bible, I noticed how sexist the Bible was. It is interesting to consider the possibility that this is not so much the Bible that is sexist, but the interpretation that is sexist. The people who would have been responsible for translating this document could have used their own bias to do so, resulting in a patriarchal Bible that we have read today.

It’s fairly obvious that even today, women are underrepresented in the church. In the catholic faith and in canon law, women still cannot hold the role of priests. Not to mention, the overwhelmingly low number of female pastors in the Christian faith. In the bible, there is a lot of arguably sexist statements and verses compared to our advancement of society here in 2020. However, as with everything in the Bible, it is all up to interpretation. I feel as if today, women are definitely slowly making their way up in authoritative roles in the church, as well as gaining the respect of their congregations and priors.

Honestly, this was definitely one of the more upsetting lectures to discuss and listen in on. I knew nothing of the existence of a “slave bible” prior to learning about it in this class, but with the time period, it sadly matches up with the time period of slavery being legal in the US. The proponents of slavery didn’t want their slaves to rebel by reading sections of the Bible that could justify why slavery is wrong and could cause them to rebel. Due to this, only about half of the New Testament remained, while the majority of the Old Testament was omitted.

In addition to the slave bible, slavery itself was debated in relations to the Bible over whether or not slavery is a sin. In the reading attached to the lecture, brothers “O.B. and J.B.” were at odds over slavery was sinful or not. Brother O.B. stated that yes indeed it was sinful because slavery itself goes against the Golden Rule of the Lord. While J.B. stated that nowhere in the Rule does it imply or state that slavery is wrong. Obviously, in modern times, this debate has long passed since the abolition of slavery. However, it’s very interesting to note all of the ties to religion over the issue of slavery,