Biblical Marriage

You see this in Paul’s sexuality as well. Paul is very much, in my opinion, he’s suggesting one that passion is for the dirty, dirty Gentiles.

Because sex is supposed to be holy and with honor, not with the passion of desire.

So you need to be playing none of this Luther Vandross in the bedroom, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and that’s it.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Good man.

We. This is going to be a fun one. I am looking forward to it. I always say that, but this time it’s actually true. Tell us about our guest. We’ve got a wonderful guest today.

Today we’re talking about a friend of mine. I’ve been involved in a little group of scholars that include Dr. Jennifer Bird, who is a public scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity and just released a phenomenal book entitled Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? And, yeah, I think the audiobook comes with. The audiobook comes with. The audiobook comes with. And every now and then a boing and some other sound effects that Dr. Bird recorded herself. But we’re here to talk about this book and to talk a little bit about what the public needs to know about marriage in the Bible and how it is quite a bit different from the way we tend to think about it and the way people tend to argue about it.

Yeah. Jennifer Bird, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. This is such a treat.

Wonderful. Well, it’s a treat for us. We’re very happy to have you here. This is a very timely book. I think this is something that. It is information. It’s filled with information that a lot of people, a lot of people in public don’t really have.

But I don’t know, it kind of seems unnecessary because we all know one man, one woman, we’re done.

I don’t know what.

Why is. Why do we need to have a whole book on this, a whole book about it?

One man, one vote. But. Oh, oh, that’s different.

That’s a different thing, Dan.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think it is a timely book. The. The debates are getting ever more heated about this kind of stuff, and a lot of it retreats back to, well, the Bible says X. And anyone familiar with our social media content knows that, uh, we’re loath to suggest the Bible really says anything. That’s. I get called out as a hypocrite for saying the Bible doesn’t say anything. We create meaning with the text. And then in another video, I’ll be like, the Bible says this. It’s like, look, you want every single video to be like, what? As we create meaning with the Bible, we produce it. Like, it’s a shorthand, Dan.

You don’t even let us define words, for crying out loud. Nothing means anything ever at all.

So I like it. I like it.

I think a lot of scholars are like, I’ve got no problem with this.

Exactly. Exactly.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. And as we were talking a little bit before we started recording, you have a lot of little supplementary. A lot of little sidebars and notes, and some of them more humorous than others. But there’s a lot of great information in here about marriage in the Bible. And I think one of the interesting things, particularly when we talk about the Hebrew Bible, but also to some degree in the New Testament, is what word is not anywhere in the Bible related to the concept of marriage? And. And you kind of start off talking about this. What word is not really in the Bible?

Well, I’m not sure which one you’re referring to.

Yeah. Okay. There are a couple of.

Talking about husband and wife. I think that’s what you’re talking about.

Those two words are not. There isn’t a Hebrew word to say differentiate between a woman before she’s taken by a man and after. There isn’t a Hebrew word to denote a difference between a man before he takes a woman and now that he has one in his possession. Right. The way we do. And. And that is true in. In the Greek as well. That was kind of stunning to me when I started making sure. You know, it’s like I get kind of what happens in the Hebrew. But it’s also true in the Newer Testament that it’s still aner. And gune. It’s still. We don’t have a different word to say. I’m talking to a person as a wife. I’m talking to a person as a husband. It’s not in there. Like, how different would everything be if we removed husband and wife from the entire Christian Bible? Right. Oh, but that’s too raw, Dr. Bird. You know, my woman, my man. I’m like, yeah, that’s my point.

Yeah, that’s. When you go through and. And translate this stuff, it’s like, yeah, there’s this woman, and now it’s his woman. And, oh, my woman did this, and my man. And, and, you know, you have in Hosea where Adonai says, you will no longer call me Baali, but you will call me Ishi. It’s like, that’s, you know, Baali, my master is about as close as you get to husband. And, and God is like, no, just call me my man. Because we’re getting away from the my.

Man, but my main man.

But when we translate husband and wife, it’s totally artificial. We are overlaying our cultural expectations on the text. And that. And that includes also the word that is frequently translated to marry. You mentioned it before. What is that verb?

That one was the big one for me personally. And then. And then I saw the, the woman, wife thing in Genesis 2:24 . But. Right. The verb I don’t have percentages, but the verb that is the most common verb used in the Hebrew Bible that is translated as marry is to take. And there are three or four other verbs that I address in chapter five that are also kind of lesser used, but they also are, I think, even more objectifying of women. Right? So they’re, you know, like you said, a reference to baal or, you know, some form of he will dominate over her kind of a verb. Right? So, yeah. And the issue I hear people kind of push back on, which I always appreciate, is when it says to take, right? A man goes and takes a woman, and now he. She’s his, you know. Well, we say that in wedding ceremonies today. Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? Like, yeah, but it’s not the same, right? We’re not talking about a mutuality, and we aren’t talking about this kind of.

Do you take into your embrace and share your lives together in a loving, enduring, you know, mutually supportive way? No, it’s. It’s the same thing. It’s the same verb that’s used. Used when God commands Abraham to take his son and go sacrifice him. It’s the same take, right? It’s just take.

And that’s. And that’s what we see with, with the, the rape of Dinah. It says he took her and. And lay with her. And then other times it’s. It’s hazaq to. To seize or to grasp. Or other times it’s taphas, also to seize or. Or to grasp. And that’s always about. Or that’s. That’s in reference to sexual assault. But there’s a. There’s a very thin distinction between the two.

Right? Right. There’s also a verb, yashav, but it’s, you know, kind of forcing a person to live with you. Right. Again, we could talk about whether there’s consent there if you want, but it’s still just living together. It’s not this the same kind of loving. The framework that we have for the concept of marriage today is being laid on top of these verbs that I do not think. Right. Reflect what we mean by those things. So.

Yeah, and I, I think you raise an interesting point as well about. There’s a directionality, there’s a power differential here. And this goes to the fundamental conceptualization of sex in the ancient world. Sex was not a mutual activity that two consenting agents engaged in together. It was something that active agents did to an object. Yes, it was. There was a hierarchy of domination, and man was at the pinnacle of that hierarchy. And so the person underneath them on that hierarchy was the sexual object on which they acted. And the, the will, the agency of the. The object was just immaterial. It did not matter.

Precisely. Precisely. That’s why we keep, say, you know, we keep seeing that he goes into her and he does this thing to her. Right. And all of the language. It’s an interesting piece too, because that, the idea that now that that’s in the biblical texts related to these relationships is that now they are joined together and you’re. You belong. You know, she belongs to you for good. Right. And we, we perhaps see some sort of trying to tend to this relationship in a kind way, but it’s still founded on this idea, right? This basic idea that a man is taking a woman, marking her as his territory by the act of sex. Right. I, I remember the first time I used that language at the church that I grew up in. So I went back as, you know, as a scholar, 40 years, 30 years later, you know, and I’m looking at these people who taught me Sunday school, and I made this comment about marking his territory, and one of the guys just went red in the face. He said, it sounds like a, like you’re referring to a dog peeing on a tree.

And I said, that’s exactly what I meant. That’s what I would want you to take from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the passive. Well, the active passive thing too, about sex in general in the ancient world. Right. We still see it in the time of the first century. It’s not like Jesus and the folks then are dealing, thinking about it differently necessarily. It’s a really important piece of the picture to me, this, you know, the way sex is talked about and, and therefore who’s at fault and all those other pieces. But, Dan, I think you had a different thing you wanted to say next, so didn’t want to interrupt you there.

No, no, we. Look, this is all about you. We don’t want to interrupt you.

No, no, it’s good.

We didn’t prepare a show, so we’re counting on you for the content.

You’re all we got.

Awesome.

Well, I was. I. You know, it occurs to me, it’s funny because I’ve heard people when they talk about, like, the Ten Commandments, and it seems like there’s this huge omission of, like, you know, they’ve got all these main things, but there’s no sense of, like, thou shalt not rape in that. Which seems like. Which seems to a modern person, like there’s a big omission. But was there even a concept of. Of. Of that in. You know, it sounds like what we’re talking about here is, you know, the objectification. The. The total object objectification, at least of women in. In that time period.

Yeah, yeah. I’m. I don’t know if there’s an actual verb. Dan. The other Dan Mac. You probably know if there’s a verb that is typically translated. I think I tried to look into it once, and it’s hard to follow for rape specifically.

So the. The closest I think you get is anah, which is to violate. But. But that has to do with the woman’s basically viability as a commodity.

Right.

And because it is. It is very transactional. And the. The legislation that has to do with sexual assault treats it as a property crime. It is. It is not the agency, the autonomy of the victim. It is the fact that this basically spoils her as goods either for her father, who stands to benefit from. From her marriage through the bride price, or her husband, who is her owner, more or less.

Right, right. The issue of. Yes. Have you spoiled the goods? And, you know, one. You know, one of the things I try to talk about when I is around this concept of virginity, right? This. This human construct of labeling a female body specifically as one thing. And, you know, at one point, that has actually changed. Right. That’s the way it’s talked about. And there are people who still talk about it that way. I think today, just to be clear, I think today people talk about it two different ways. They talk about I am a virgin, as in, I haven’t done that yet. But then they also talk about losing one’s virginity. And that’s the piece that is very biblical to me. Right. That’s the piece that the Bible talks about this state that can be lost or changed or whatever. And that is a fully human construct as an element of controlling women’s bodies. I mean, there’s, you know, and the more you look into this, or at least the more I think about it over the years and look into the, you know, the physiology behind it, right?

Like this concept that a woman needs to show proof of the evidence of her virginity on the night that she is taken, right. And the man sleeps with her. Right? Well, what’s the evidence? We all know, right? Or the. We know, right? The evidence is that she bled. Like, okay, let’s talk about that, right? The evidence of a woman’s air-quotes virginity is the fact that her hymen just wasn’t perforated. That’s it, right? There’s no, you know, this is a violation. This is a form, a small form of violence being done to a woman’s body. That doesn’t need to happen. But that’s all of these ideas around claiming territory. Being the first on the scene. I did, I thought about like, people that talk about, oh, that the virgin mountainside with no ski, you know, nobody skied on it yet, and I want to be the first to ski on it. Like, that’s what we’re talking about. But with a woman’s body and, and I in the book, I, you know, I decided to get really raw about it all just to kind of make the point, right?

We’re talking about a particular part of a woman’s body, whether or not a man has interacted with it, right. We’re talking about her vagina. But the reason we care is both men’s egos, right? In terms of. Wouldn’t want to be with. Gosh, it’s really hard to talk about sometimes, you know, like, oh, somebody else has had sex with her. I don’t. She’s tainted goods. Do you realize what you’re saying when you say that she’s tainted goods, by the way? You’re just saying that she’s been penetrated by a man’s penis. Like, this is about men’s penises over and over again. Biblically speaking. It drives me crazy. I have this little clip when I was. I created a video series first and then I wrote the book and I had, I had.

You’ve been releasing those clips?

Yeah, a little bit. The videos themselves are like 15 to 18 minutes long. And I’ve been releasing clips from them. Yeah. You know, and it’s like, okay, people, can we just be honest when you say that a woman is defiled because she’s had sex. You’re really talking about a man’s penis is defiling her. Can we just be clear about that?

There’s nothing wrong with your penises. They look funny. They are a little bit, I’m not gonna lie. But don’t demonize them. Yeah, yeah, but that’s what you’re doing in this weird back-end thing. And it’s all about territory. It’s who’s, you know, and it’s like, come on people, let it go, let it go, let it, let’s see what’s going on and just let that go.

And it’s problematic like that. The problematic nature of that conceptual conception of virginity and, and of, you know, sort of the defilement of a woman’s body persists to this day. And you know, in, in churches across, you know, I, I know that in, in my neighborhood and you know, the, the girls in my church were raised with this idea that totally. That, you know, nobody wants a chewed piece of gum. Nobody wants, you know, an apple that’s already had bites taken out of it or whatever horror, horrible, horrific metaphor they come up with. The boys were given none of these lectures. That’s right, none of them. So why, I don’t know why, why wasn’t I gum? Why did, why don’t I get to be gum? I don’t understand it. It’s, it’s exactly, it’s a, it’s a huge double standard that persists. And part of that is because of how people are looking at the Bible or at least how they’ve been told to look at the Bible.

Precisely.

I wanted to bring up with you, I, I found there’s a website called thegospelcoalition.org it sounds very official.

Gospel Coalition is a well known organization.

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and they have an article called A Biblical View of Marriage and I wanted to run by you. The first, the first.

Oh, please do. Let’s do this.

They have a definition and then a summary of stuff. But I’m just going to read you the, this def. And you tell me all the ways that they are absolutely correct, which I’m sure I’m certain that it’s going to be the biblical view of marriage. It says here is of a God given voluntary sexual and public social union of one man and one woman from different families for the purpose of serving God.

So did they say anything about procreation in there? I didn’t catch it.

It didn’t? No, no, no. It didn’t actually. Get to that. It just said the purpose was serving God and that.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, I figure you might have some things to say about that.

You just dropped that so nicely, Dan. I might have a few things to say. I do. I. Like, can we comment on the fact that they said sexual first and then public and like. Wait, what?

Yeah, the joining of those two things together. Sexual, public, social.

I got a little bit concerned. Yeah, well that’s actually, you know, the first four, you know, the first four books of this first four chapters of this book, sorry, are about addressing basically where they get those ideas. Right. When people use that definition that you just read for us, Daniel. Really usually there are four passages and maybe some additional ones, but there are four passages that people are definitely turning to and it’s a total or one.

Passage and three quotations of that passage.

Exactly. Thank you. Right, so it’s a total of seven biblical verses and one of them is quoted, you know, twice. So it’s, you know, we could maybe delete two of those verses and say five. Right. So it’s so, you know, just for your watchers listeners. Genesis 1:28 , Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Genesis 2:24 . I will, I will quote the way I think it should read, which is therefore a man to leave his father, mother and cling to his woman, and the two become one flesh. Matthew 19:4 to 6, which I always kind of end up requoting that incorrectly. But it’s, you know, it’s the debate with the Pharisees about which reason is Jesus okay with for divorce. And, and he says, have you not read that? It says, and you know, and he quotes Genesis 1:27 and male, female, he created them. And then he quotes Genesis 2:24 . Right. And then so what God has joined together, let no one separate. Noteworthy. That is nothing new from Jesus, by the way.

He’s engaging a debate, age old debate, so that’s not even new. What he offers is new is different, which is what I get into in that chapter. And then Ephesians 5:31 and 32, which is again a quoting of Genesis 2:24 . And then this really stunning comment about this is a mystery, but I’m comparing it to Christ and the church and how that laid the foundation for sacramental language much later. But so that’s it, that’s what people mean. And so they usually are looking at that to say God ordained air quotes biblical marriage, but to be between one man and one woman and that it needs to be procreative, which is where people get hung up. Right. On certain types of marriages today. And that no divorcing. Divorcing is a sin. Right. According to Matthew 19:4 or 6 or whatever.

And then oddly enough I’m seeing a lot on social media about getting rid of no-fault divorce. Like the Christian nationalists are really up in arms about the uppity women who who get to divorce men and they want to outlaw it. And it is. I. I don’t know where.

Not odd at all actually. Well, no. When you pair it with all the different things that are the other things that are happening around bodily autonomy for women. Right.

They’re about to outlaw mifepristone, which is the drug that’s used for terminating an unplanned pregnancy. Like outlawing it. Are you. I can’t even process. My head will explode with anger. Like I just. So I’m not surprised. So anyway, so that’s. Yeah. So that’s usually what people mean. Right. And they make this definition such as what you read.

So. But there’s certain. Surely there’s no counter arguments to be made from the Bible that that those aren’t the only way that the Bible sees marriage.

Well, there’s that, right? No, there’s that there are plenty of examples. We don’t have the people of Israel without at least two generations of polygamy. Right. I mean we have. Well, that’s not true. We have the. The main patriarch who forces himself on an enslaved woman in his home. Her children actually become their enemies, I suppose, even though they’re cousins. Which is odd. Right. And so we don’t have the tribes without multiple women right involved, two specifically in the primary wife woman role, and then two who are enslaved in their household. And we just look the other way at this particular example because it was necessary and that was back then. But no, let’s just be honest about that. Right. What if you heard about neighbors of yours who were doing this or what if you thought about more recent, you know, countries or something establishing themselves this way and this is how the, you know, the head of the country did things, you know, how would you think about them? You know, would you think about that differently than you have been taught to think about Jacob doing this kind of a thing and you’ve been taught to excuse it.

Right.

It sounds very Handmaid’s Tale. Or to have a patriarch who impregnates the all the women.

All the women. Right.

So we have that angle, right. There’s no— This is— This is bollocks, right? One man, one woman. Come on, people. But also, you know, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say that the one man, one woman, that’s one— there’s nothing prescriptive going on in Genesis 2:24 at all. It doesn’t describe any kind of ceremony. It doesn’t describe any change in their relationship. It’s just a change in— it’s just the two of them pair-bonding. And it is happening while polygamy is normative.

Totally.

And so it is— the notion that it is prescribing one man and one woman is already— that’s a non-starter. That’s not going on at all in this passage.

It’s not. And I think, actually I enjoy talking about Genesis 1:28 a great deal because, you know, Genesis 1:22 , if we’re going to read it that way, let’s just read it as what it’s saying. Right. Okay. Well, God also said in Genesis 1:22 , to the fish of the sea and the birds of the air to be fruitful and multiply. Like, is that a command to marry?

Well, and I think you could, you could also interpret this not as a command. It’s just a prefix form of the verb. And I think there’s a, there’s an interesting case to make that this is a blessing because it says, “and he blessed them and said.” So it’s not “I’m blessing you by telling you what to do.” It’s like you could, you could very legitimately translate it, “And he blessed them and said, ‘May you multiply and fill the earth.’” And so it’s—it doesn’t have to be a command in any, in any way, shape or form whatsoever.

And let’s be very clear, nobody needed to be told.

Yeah, we’ve seen The Blue Lagoon. They didn’t need an instruction book or somebody wagging their finger.

Right.

No. Nor did the birds of the air or the fish of the sea. Right. Nobody needed— and so that’s your—the blessing angle, I think is really lovely. But also, then again, I think as a way to try to drive things home when we are about how selective we’re being. If we’re just focusing on 1:28, who here knows what 1:29 says? I happen to, because I’ve been studying this. But you know, it’s, it’s the verse that says we should all be vegan. And so, you know, you want to make an argument for “this is for all time,” but that isn’t. Well, you know, in chapter six, God makes it okay to eat whatever you like—well then let’s talk about other biblical references that challenge the idea of being, of being procreative, which comes straight from Jesus’s mouth, by the way. So we do have biblical challenges to this “be fruitful” command. And it’s Jesus’s—like, why are we not taking that more seriously?

Well, and I think that’s a, that’s a great point there. The text is not univocal. I mean, just between Genesis 1:28 and 2:24, you’ve got two entirely distinct creation accounts.

Right, right.

And so when we impose that presupposition of univocality, we’ve got to hierarchize the passages. And so you would think that Jesus’s would take precedence because everything else—anytime Jesus says anything that’s, that’s different from the Hebrew Bible, you listen to Jesus, you don’t listen—

Exactly.

Except here it’s like, well, we kind of want it to be the other way. So we’re going to say no, that and, and where Jesus says, hey, lop it off. If your right ones are doing it, we gotta say, well, I think he was exaggerating there, so we’re gonna ignore him there.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And you can do this with, you know, and the same with Genesis 2:24 . And those, those two are the foundation of this general biblical marriage idea. Right. And so I think it’s helpful to reframe those two. The second one of course, is quoted in the other two as well. But you know, Genesis 2:24 . The thing is, I want to reiterate what you were saying, Dan, but also it’s, I think it’s helpful to look at what is that chapter, that particular creation story trying to do, trying to talk about. Right. I think it is more about human, human desires for relationships.

And, and 2:24. Sorry, I’m just. Yes, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not actually laying these out for the people who aren’t following in their Bible at home. So 2:24 is “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh,” his woman. Thank you. No, no, that’s a good correction because this dumb NRSV doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

And, and something that I, I taught a class on biblical creation accounts a little bit ago and one of the things I raised is that there’s some parallels between what’s going on in Genesis 2 and Gilgamesh. And for instance, in Gilgamesh he’s got this friend who is just a wild man. He’s kind of the uncivilized Enkidu. And what does it take? It takes a sex worker to—he has to have sex and then he kind of matures. He’s like, okay, I’ll straighten my tie, I’m a man now. And she is like, okay, now put on some clothes. Okay, now you’re getting there, Enkidu. And so there’s a sense in which the, the maturation of humanity in Genesis 2 and 3 is following a similar pattern because they, they eat and they have their eyes open. But then it is the pair bonding that allows them to kind of take the next step and further mature.

And so the story is really an etiology for maturation, for leaving the home of your father and for starting an independent pair-bonded household. And so it’s not, it’s not saying, look, this is how marriage was created. It’s saying, look, this is how humanity matures. And you become an adult and you go out and you pair bond and you start your own household and you leave your parents alone.

I feel like this is Dan talking to his children right now. Dan is like, I hear that Gen Z, they’re not leaving their households and stuff. My kids better get out of here.

Right. I actually had a, I had students that in my classroom, in my first teaching position that were in their 60s because of the nature of the college. And I had one woman just say, this could be about getting, kicking the kids out of the nest, or it could also be about comforting parents at the sadness of losing that. So all the things, I think all, yeah, I think all the things are potentially in the mix. But I did like when she said, yeah, we’re just kicking him out of the nest. Yes, yeah, yes, it’s your turn. Yeah, but yeah, that’s a whole different way of looking at it than to say God is ordaining this. God is. Or the scriptures say that this is only this. You know, it’s just a different way of looking at it. A different way of looking at it. And I think for a lot of people the first few steps of this whole conversation need to be: what is it you think the Bible is and is not? And you need to work through that pretty well in order to be able to see or even entertain the idea that this is not some sort of prescription, it’s not some sort of declaration from God.

This is, these are stories that are coming out of necessity and needs and desires and you know, all the, all the things. And that’s a very human creation. And that can be very threatening for a lot of people to say that it’s human created and, but it’s true. So how do we get you there? Right, yeah.

And that brings up. You’ve mentioned Matthew 19 a number of times and we’ve talked about. Jesus is citing Genesis 1 and 2 in this question about divorce. But then Jesus makes this statement and I, I wonder if it might not be an opportunity to pivot a little bit into the idea that we see in the New Testament that I, I think comes into Greco-Roman period Judaism and early Christianity from a Greek philosophical worldview that sexual desire is a product of the base flesh and is something that is to be avoided. Because what is the, what is this kind of higher law that Jesus points out in Matthew 19 where that kind of throws the disciples for a loop there? You talk a bit about this as well in the book.

Yeah, yeah.

His, that one piece that you’re referring to is when he says in verse nine, which is not a part of what people tend to quote. Right, right. And I say to whoever divorces his woman, except for unchastity and marries another, commits adultery. And you know, that’s why, you know that’s kind of driving the nail in the coffin on why divorce is a sin. But that to me, you know, and to be honest Dan, I hadn’t taken the passion like the element that you just mentioned in terms of the Greco-Roman pieces of all of this. I’m, I’m looking at it just through the lens of. Let’s take seriously what he’s saying here, right. When you, to, to divorce your, your partner and marry another, you’re going to commit adultery. It is so clear if you can just sit with it, right, just see it, that we’re talking about sex. This is only about sex. This isn’t about divorce is a problem because it, it’s hard. It hurts family, it pulls people apart.

Like it’s hard for resource-wise, it’s hard on the children. It’s hard like, like it’s difficult. It’s not ideal. That’s not the issue. The issue is this man has claimed this woman and now you’re gonna go cheat on it. Like that’s it. And so when I, you know, to, to see that Jesus is affirming that can be really hard for some people. It was actually a little startling for me to, to wrap my head around the fact that. Yeah, yeah, you know what? There are times when Jesus says stuff that just not okay with me and that, you know, like, I don’t know.

Most of them in Matthew, probably, yes. Actually, there’s that. Matthew’s a bit of a Judaizer who’s kind of escalating things. It’s like, no, no, your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees.

Yeah, yeah. And also, like the references to enslaved people to make a point about the, you know, all the things about the kingdom and the coming kingdom. But, but so, so let’s sit with this. Jesus is well trained by his own scriptures, and he’s focusing on what we call marriage. He’s focusing on that relationship through the angle or the lens of just the sex act. And then we’re nailing it down, putting it in canon. We’re teaching people about that. And we’re not reflecting on what’s actually, you know, we’re not reflecting on what’s being said. And the part of that that I think is really harmful. Right? The part of that that, you know, purity culture picked up on in the last 30 years, and the… All the shame around ending a monogamous relationship. It’s like, are you kidding me? You know? But then he goes on, and this is what was truly, I mean, rocked my world, I think, when I stumbled across this article talking about the next two, three verses, when he says—so his disciples, continuing in Matthew 19 , starting in verse 10, verse 10, his disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his woman, it is better not to marry.”

As in, if we can’t divorce if we want to, then maybe we shouldn’t marry to begin with. And Jesus doesn’t talk him off that ledge. I… I think that’s hilarious, honestly. Do you know, like, can we put that in writing? So his disciples say, maybe it’s better not to marry to begin with.

And he comes right over the top.

And he agrees with it. And he— And then he adds another layer, like, and he says, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.” Again, that kind of comment you made, Dan, about it being like, you know, for the special ones. “But there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who’ve been made eunuchs by others. And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” I remember suggesting to, you know, at Promise Keepers conventions, having a Matthew 19 tent for castration, like, yeah, yeah.

You don’t…

You don’t need a ring.

You don’t need to put a ring on a necklace. Just go, yeah, and doesn’t this just…

…slightly make the whole thing about Matthew, about Genesis 1:28 , a little bit challenging? Like procreate or cut them off. Like, which one is it? This is from Jesus.

Well, and you see this in Paul’s sexuality as well. Paul is very much, in my opinion, he’s suggesting one, that passion is for the dirty, dirty Gentiles.

Because sex is supposed to be holy and with honor, not with the passion of desire.

So you need to be playing none of this Luther Vandross in the bedroom, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and that’s it.

And… But Paul, a lot of people have tried to find a concern for procreation in Paul, and it’s not there. Paul could not care less about procreation because, like the author of Matthew, Paul’s expecting everything to… to end, which is why Matthew has, you know, “Woe to the ones who are with child.”

Right.

And so don’t get pregnant. And Paul says, “This is my rule in all my congregations. You stay in whatever conditions you were when God called you.” And so sex is obviously not for procreation here. And so what is it for? I think Paul says if you can’t hack celibacy, go ahead and get married. And the sex should be prophylactic. It should be, you know, good for keeping down the urges.

Exactly. Put a lid on it. Not where you get to indulge it.

And then Matthew, or the author of Matthew, has Jesus basically endorsing the same idea. Hey, man, if you really want to be pious, this is the way to go. And in the book, you talk about how scholars have long interpreted this as… it’s like, well, it doesn’t really make much sense if they’re talking about actual willful castration. It seems like it’s just a vowed, a celibate life or something like that. But we have examples of early Christians who castrated themselves.

It’s. It’s absolutely taken seriously by people for the first three centuries. The very first. This was news to me. You know, all these things is so fun to discover when you’re not trying to prove anything, but you’re just sort of looking into it and you’re like, oh, my gosh, that. The very first decree at the Nicene Council. So the very first ecumenical council. Right.

We all know about the creed that came out of it, but I didn’t know. I don’t think I read this.

Point one.

Yes. And the very first point was, if you have castrated yourself, you cannot be a leader in the church. This is the year 325, people, right? Like, this is not. This is. It was so out of hand. That’s kind of a funny little pun that. That they had to make a comment about, like they had to make a declaration about it. People were taking it seriously. And the. And the other thing is, this isn’t celibacy, right? Just because a man doesn’t have testes doesn’t mean he’s not sexually active, right? News flash, right? What that also tells us, though, is that people tend to think, I hope you’re okay with me just being this blatant about things.

Lay it out there.

We’ll worry about the advertisers later, okay?

They don’t listen to this.

But also. Right, but also, your comfort or discomfort here. But, you know, when people say that because he doesn’t have testes, he’s not having sex, that. That tells us. You’re thinking of sex as one act, right? Penetrating a vagina or an orifice. But. And so that makes me really sad for all these people who have really dull sex lives. You know, like, it’s more than that. And also, sometimes men without testes can still get an erection. All of the different things. And. And then what this article I read by Hester, you know, reminded me of, which was, you know, that in the first century, you know, eunuchs had reputations, right? Earned or not, they had reputations for being sexually active with both men and women. And women over the centuries very much valued having sex with eunuchs because of the, you know, automatic, you know, birth control. So the idea. And then you also look at the way eunuchs are talked about in the writings.

Again, their language is quite rude and. And denigrating, right? But this monstrous, you know, third. Third version of humanity, right? They’re not fully male, they’re not female. There’s some of both. There’s. This is a third. It’s not ever clearly said a third gender. But we’re talking about human bodies that look like both or neither, and we’re talking about humans who are believed to be sexually active with men and women. Like, even if that isn’t what Jesus is getting at, right? Even if that wasn’t on the mind of the writer of the Gospel of Matthew , yada, yada, yada. That is also being put out there on the table for us to consider because he is affirming these people who were ostracized, who were, you know, like, there’s this piece to it all that is stunning to me that people do not take seriously I remember having it.

Oh, go ahead, Dan.

No, no, I was, I was just gonna say. And, and everybody is negotiating with these texts and so people are bringing their ideologies to the text and no doubt folks who were in that segment of society would have used this as a proof text for affirming their ideas about sexuality and these things and, and sex. And so, and I, I’m not aware of any indication that a bunch of Christians went around going, “How dare you.” These, these people over there are misusing Matthew 19 . And you, you mentioned Hester. I just for the listeners, I just want to mention that’s J. David Hester, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, “Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and Transgressive Sexuality” is the paper that you referenced there.

I think I actually make that article available on my website.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I’m not sure if I should, but I have so.

Well, it’s, it’s out there now.

It’s linked there because it’s so good. And he references really important other scholarship about sexualities and eunuchs in the first century and, and it’s great stuff in terms of other religious traditions and their use of and appreciation of castrated men.

And so you might want to. I was going to ask you at the end of the interview, but tell, tell everybody what your website is right now.

They can go and look for it.

Thank you. Yeah, it’s my full name, so it’s Jennifer with two N’s, Grace G R A C E Bird B I R D dot com.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

That’s a, that’s a good place for people to go apparently and get links to some awesome scholarship.

It’s really important when I reference it in a, like when I reference it in my livestreams or something like that. But you know, things that have been shared publicly I’ll make available there kind.

Of thing and there, and this is something I’m enjoying seeing is that there are scholars who are beginning to use online spaces to supplement their publications. So saying, you know, there are more footnotes or you can go access resources and things like that on the website. So I think that’s wonderful to see.

Thanks.

A question I get an awful lot is we have Paul talking an awful lot about porneia and a lot of people want to know what all does this entail? Does this include premarital sex? Are you able to just kind of talk about kind of when they’re using this word, what does this seem to refer to? Are they drawing lines around it? Or is this generally in reference to things like sex work or to adultery or things like that?

Yeah, the scholars—excuse me—scholars are very much not of a single mind on this. What is it that you find detestable? Right. It might be different from what someone else finds inappropriate. I have not yet seen someone who has been able to say porneia is this, and with any kind of definitive, respectable kind of a way. So yeah. Okay, so, right. Do they, do they mean sex work? Do they mean sex outside of marriage?

For those of us who, who don’t have any ancient Greek, can we just say how has this word been translated in the various translations? Like what are we most likely to see in our English translations when this word comes up?

Sexual immorality?

Fornication.

Fornication. Fornication. That’s the, that’s the big one.

I think that’s the, the most common one. It is.

Yeah. And so what do we mean that by that? Right? What is it? Is it having sex in your car in public? Is it, right? I mean, I’m being serious though, like in a playful way, right? Like.

Well, yeah, even that. For many people this could mean oral sex, right. Or anal sex or extracurricular sex. It could mean anything. That is not what your social identity determines to be.

Sex that I don’t like or sex.

Sex that I find dirty.

Beecher. That is exactly right. And when you see someone like Paul saying it, that just raises some fun questions.

Because man who didn’t like any kind of sex.

Exactly. And he claims to not be having any. So why are we taking any advice on sex from him? Like why?

Yeah, yeah.

And sure, he’s probably drawing from his Hebrew Bible, you know, concepts and ideas and sure. What he’s being exposed to as he travels around, you know, the Roman Empire. I certainly. He’s going to be having, go figure, knee jerk reactions. Right. To some practices that he finds detestable. Yeah, but this is a guy who needed to relax a little bit.

We’re taking sex advice from a guy who clearly gets the icks from all sex.

Exactly. At least it seems that way.

Yeah. And, and this raises a, a concern. A lot of people tend not to think about this when they’re coming up with their rhetoric for defending their identity politics, using the Bible as a proof text. But our understanding of, of morality is, is governed in large part by our own experiences. And, and a, a man who claims to be celibate, whether that’s because he is asexual or because he is a, a widower who has sworn it off or for whatever reason. This is a man who is not having the experiences that most other people are having and yet presumes to dictate to them what is right and wrong based on his own perception of those things. And so I’ve, I’ve got a number of videos on, on my channel that are basically like saying explicitly, Paul’s sexuality has absolutely no relevance. His, his sexual ethic has absolutely no relevance to us today because it’s built on a lot of these very outdated conceptualizations of sex as a base urge, a product of the flesh, which is evil, as opposed to the spirit, which is good.

And in many ways is, is just rationalizing Greco Roman Jewish conceptualizations of morality, which in many ways are phenomenally outdated and even harmful.

Right, exactly. Exactly. You know, and the question of sex before marriage as a, as a sin also comes up a lot. And the, the two verses that people tend to turn to, to justify that belief that it is a sin is Genesis 2 . 24. Because the translation will say, therefore man leaves his father and mother and clings to his. Oh, we’re going to go ahead and get them married now, because we know they’re going to have sex next. Right, but that’s not what the Hebrew is actually doing. Right? And it’s just coming together and then, and then the Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 , which I could turn to if you’d like me to, just to, to read it, but it’s. In 1 Corinthians 7 , which I could turn to if you’d like me to, just to, to read it, but it’s… I think many people are familiar with the concept of what he’s saying. I’ve talked to so many people in the last few months who have been, who were just, you know, deeply shamed by, by these, these ideas. Right. In, in 1 Corinthians 7 . Now, concerning the matters about what you wrote, it’s well for a man not to touch.

This is what, this is what you’re talking about, Dan. Right. People are starting to say, or not starting, but in this community, they’re talking about maybe it’s better for, you know, my husband and I not to have sex. We’re holier. We will be. You know, we’re, we’re. We’re having, we are containing ourselves better. We are mastering our own passions in ways that we didn’t before. And it’s. This is a good thing. Right? And so somebody wants to know if that’s true. And so Paul’s response is, you know, to address all the possible, you know, iterations of how that might play out. Or what it might look like, but you get this. But because of cases of sexual immorality. Again, Beecher, back to your question and your point. Right. What, what exactly does Paul mean by that? Each man should have his own woman and each woman her own man. The. The man should give to his woman her conjugal rights and likewise the woman to her man. And that’s all husband and wife in my English, but. And then, you know, and that’s used in very controlling ways. You belong to me. You know, for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the.

Sorry, the woman, but the man does. Likewise, the man does not have authority over his own body, but the woman does. This is awful, right? If he—I do think he meant something mutually loving and supportive, but it has been used for sure over the centuries. To your mind, you. You belong to me, woman.

Yeah, you. You owe me sex whenever I want.

Whenever I want it. Exactly. And I talked to people who felt, who’ve been just, you know, terribly beaten down by that, that they were supposed to. And I see it all, all the time online right now. It’s kind of frightening. But the part that we’re also talking about here is to the unmarried and to the widows, I say it’s well for them to remain unmarried as I am, but if they are not practicing self control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. So that’s the idea that people take to say, see, sex before marriage is a sin. I do think Paul is saying you should only be having sex in marriage. But he’s also coming from this perspective of the way he’s talking about bodies, passions, desires, and also the whole concept of around, you know, marriages specifically being defined by sex. Right. So that we’re not talking about all the other parts of a relationship when we’re talking about marriage. If you’ve got, you know, those are the two passages that people turn to to say.

See, the Bible says that. But, but people are dramatically overlooking a really important two chapters in Leviticus that lay out all of these different, you know, relationships that a man cannot go have sex with, a woman can’t have sex with. People tend to focus on 18, Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 . Because those are the ones that say, do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman. It’s an abomination. You know, one of them says to put you to death. But, but the rest of those chapters, or at least 15 verses in those chapters are telling hetero men, which women they can’t go have sex with. Not talking about marriage. We’re talking about the fact that men are having sex with people that they don’t. That don’t belong to them. That don’t belong to them. And so we’re just going to put some boundaries on it. Like, can we be clear about this, please?

Well, and I, and I think this raises an interesting point about marriage. In the Hebrew Bible that a lot of people don’t recognize. Adultery did not mean that a man, man could not go have sex with an unmarried woman even if he was already married. He could do that as much as he pleased.

Exactly.

He could not. It was. But he could not do it with someone who was, you know, his, his father’s wife or his sister or. There are a bunch of boundaries that are set. But adultery meant you couldn’t have sex with another man’s wife. It did not mean you could not go have sex with, with a woman who was unmarried. Yeah, exactly. And in fact, there’s, there’s a tradition that goes back to the Hebrew Bible that the act of sex is the act of claiming someone as a wife. And so. Which means a man could not engage inappropriately in premarital sex because the moment of sex is the moment of marriage. And so depending within that, that, that tradition, that string.

Except for when he doesn’t want it to be true. I mean, that’s right. I mean that’s just it.

That is when he does that and then he hates her is what the, the text says.

Right. Or just, you know, he’s still, he’s doing it and he just doesn’t, it doesn’t count. Or it’s just a concubine or it’s just the. Whatever. And there are all these exceptions to that rule. But yes, that is how you know that she belongs to this man is he has had sex with her. Yeah. It’s almost as if you can’t have sex before marriage. Yeah, only in the instances when it matters to us.

For a woman. Obviously for a woman, the rules are entirely different.

Totally.

And so there’s a huge power asymmetry going on regarding sex. And I think in my own research, it seems to me that it’s within Greco-Roman Judaism that you begin to develop a little bit of parity where thanks to Greek philosophy, it’s like, okay, these should probably be more or less the same rules for, for both sides.

And, and yeah, sorry, I, I just one of the things that, that kind of. I’ve been processing this whole time ever since you talked about First Corinthians Jennifer, is I. It blew my mind because I’ve never caught it before. All I’ve ever heard about is the husband has, the man has a, like what is authority over the wife’s body? I didn’t ever catch that. It also says the opposite, that it also says the wife has authority over the, the man’s body. I, I, you don’t hear that one talked about much, do you?

No, you don’t. It’s the one moment of equality in a marriage that’s talked about in the Bible. That’s it right there, that verse.

I, I think I have heard it when usually by men where they’re asserting, hey, I. You need to give it to me whenever I want it. And if there’s objection, they’re like, hey, the text says you can do the same. So, you know, this is, this is reciprocal. There’s nothing wrong with this. I’m not, this is not any kind of unrighteous dominion or anything I’m exercising here.

It does seem like there’s a loophole where if the woman wants to say, I don’t want to have sex with you, she, she can take dominion over his body and just say, no, turn that body around and make it go away from me. It seems, it seems like at some point we’re back to autonomy. If, if you take it all the way to its natural conclusion. But just that, as you point out, Jennifer, just that section of First Corinthians and the rest of it is just the man gets to basically own the woman he wants.

And in, in First Thessalonians chapter 4, we also have some discussion about sex, and that’s where we find this interesting passage. It’s been translated a lot of different ways. The NRSV says that for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor. And this is actually talking to men. Each one of you possesses your own vessel with holiness and, and honor, where the vessel here, I think there are a number of scholars who have argued this is a reference to a sexual vessel—that you possess your woman who has been framed here as a, as a sexual vessel. So, so Paul plenty of times asserts that power imbalance, that this is still about a man dominating, possessing, taking a woman.

So the, the passage in, in First Corinthians is not, is not to suggest that Paul is, is an ally or asserts total equality. Like Galatians 3 says, there’s neither man nor woman. But then you go over to other parts of Paul.

Yeah, it’s very clear.

It’s almost like this book doesn’t always agree with itself. That’s almost.

Almost as if it’s definitely that. Yeah, yeah.

I wanted to bring up toward the end of the book, you talk a bit about Augustine and how Augustine thinks of sex as well. There’s a lot of evil associated with sex, and Augustine is one of, if not the most influential Christian of the early centuries of Christianity. Could you briefly talk about the influence that Augustine has had on how Christians think about sexuality?

Sure, I’d be happy to. I have to say that I truly did not want to do this. I did not. As I was working on the first four chapters, I was like, I don’t want to talk about Augustine. I don’t like Augustine. I don’t want to go there because I’d have to do, I’d have to be careful and have to be a good scholar. And I don’t want to do that with his work. And I just don’t want to do it. And so finally I got to chapter four on Ephesians 5:31 and 32, and I was like, I can’t ignore him any longer. So one of his treatises, one of his writings, is called The Good of Marriage, and the good being a noun, not an adjective. Right. The good things that come from marriage. And so he is needing to challenge or counter some people who were saying, who are taking this whole celibacy thing, even celibacy within a marriage. They’re taking it way seriously. And they’re denigrating people who are having sex in marriage, even. And they’re.

They’re saying, you’re not as, you’re not as holy, you’re not as good. And so there are two different groups of people in general that he’s responding to specifically. But the fact that he has to, the fact that what he’s doing is trying to explain to people that marriage is actually okay is actually in itself pretty stunning, I think. Right. And so what is it that he says that justifies being married? Right. The reasons that it is okay to marry or some of the goods of marriage. And so I’m just going to read his four reasons that marriage can be considered a good, or we would say a good thing. But the goods of marriage are—there are four of them. It is a good because of the procreation of children. It is a good because of the natural companionship between the two sexes. And he does mean asexually. He means that you two are good companions because once you see, you know, think of yourselves.

Oh, it’s just, it’s a—it’s, there’s a lot. There’s a lot. Okay. He does mean that it’s good for the companionship. He— Number three is. It is a good. Because it allows the couple to turn their evil lust toward the honorable task of begetting children and then— Right.

It’s nice when you can use evil things for that.

Honorable.

Isn’t it though? Yeah. And then the fourth is the combination of the first three leads to the tempering of the concupiscence of the flesh, which is to say enjoying sexual passion and or pleasure. So it’s, you need to temper that. You’re not supposed to enjoy sexual passions or pleasures. And I’m quoting him here: “For a kind of dignity prevails when, as husband and wife, they unite in the marriage act.” They think of themselves as mother and father. Like really take the romance out of this one, you know, it’s not, it’s not you, baby. It’s. You’re the mother of my children that I’m going to, you know, whatever. So that’s, that’s his— He’s trying to, he’s trying to prove to others that these are good things. Like, this is okay. This is what can make marriage okay. So no wonder the church has this straight, like just procreation can only be in marriage because this is, right, this is how it’s all being justified and explained.

And in that section, I called it a postscript. But I tried to help people who’ve never read Augustine see some of his ideas that undergird these four goods. All, I mean, it was, you know, and I also outline the, the, the kinds of critical lenses, the kinds of things I was looking for as I read through this treatise, The Good of Marriage. Just to see that this—the number of ways that he is presuming, he is assuming, he is pronouncing, right? All of these basic ideas that he’s developed and that he’s gotten from Paul, that he’s gotten from Scriptures, just so people can see how pervasive these, what I think are misinformed engagements with Scripture are. He is asserting as true, right? And then, and then is building on them and it includes his understanding of original sin. But it’s more than that and it’s, it’s— Anyway, so I, I, I truly felt like I needed a shower every time I engaged his work.

I just, it was really quite difficult. I felt abused by it, like mentally abused. Emotionally by what he’s writing because of how many times and ways he would say something that was just, just— “You need therapy, dude.” You know, like that’s what kept going through my mind and it— And, and yet that’s where we get these ideas that are so deeply entrenched for people around— Sex is only for marriage. Procreation, you know, children should only happen in marriage. Right. That’s. That comes from him and it’s awful.

Interesting.

Well, we could go on about this for decades. It’s. It is a, it is a ripe field for us to plow in. I.

That was, that was a tricky metaphor.

You know, that men thought of anyway.

Yeah, exactly. But Jennifer Bird, hopefully we’ll have you on again. Thank you so much for joining us. We do, we do have a, a limited time, so I’m afraid.

Understood. Yeah.

But you are gonna, you, you are gonna join us for the, the patrons only conversation as well that people can, can come and check out. But for now, where can people go to find your work, to find you? Give them your website again and all the other places.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. The easiest way is to go to my website because you can get to all the socials from there. So jennifergracebird.com and it’s Jennifer with two N’s. G-R-A-C-E-B-I-R-D. And yeah, I have, I do a live stream once a week. I do, you know, little videos. Not quite the same, not quite the same caliber as Dan McClellan, but I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

And, and the book is called Marriage in the Bible.

Yes. Marriage in the Bible. What Do the Texts Say?

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a pleasure. Friends at home, if you would like to be able to hear our extra content with Jennifer, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and join up as a patron that also helps make the whole show happen. Or you can reach us, if you want to reach out to us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and other than that, we’ll see you again next week.

Bye, everybody.

Biblical Marriage

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology