Tag Archives: Old Testament

December 16, 2025

Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith, by Claude Mariottini. A Review

By Clarke Morledge

Looking for a thoughtful, challenging book to read over the Christmas holidays? Here’s a suggestion.

Much of what we read in the Old Testament is about the contributions of men to the life of ancient Israel. We typically think of the big names, like Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. But what about the women?

Often the stories of women in the Old Testament are sidelined in favor of male figures. In some stories, women are even cast as villains. However, more recent scholarship suggests women stand out better in at least some of those cases, more so than previously thought.

A Cheating Wife? Or an Abusive Husband? What is the Real Story?

One often neglected story is about the Levite and his concubine of Judges 19:1-30. No matter what way you look at it, the story is tragically shocking, one of the more graphic episodes in the entire Bible.

Typically, a concubine served as a second wife for a man, in this case an Israelite Levite. The more traditional reading suggests that the Levite’s concubine was unfaithful to him, assuming that the concubine became a prostitute. In becoming a prostitute, the concubine had committed adultery, a capital offense. The concubine had fled the house of the Levite, and went back to her parents’ home. But eventually the Levite went out to pursue his concubine and bring her back to his home.

After several nights staying with the concubine’s family, he was able to retrieve his concubine from her parents’ home. On the way home, the Levite and his concubine managed to spend the night with an old man in the town of Gibeah. But during the night, men from the city came to threaten the Levite. The Levite saved himself by giving his concubine over to the men of Gibeah, who in turn sexually violated the Levite’s concubine to near the point of death. When the Levite finally returned home with the lifeless body of his concubine, he cut up her body into twelve pieces, and sent the remains throughout the land of Israel.

It is a pretty awful story. But the traditional reading has some serious problems. The traditional reading hinges on an ambiguous verse, Judges 19:2, at the outset of the story.  The ESV translation reads:

And his concubine was unfaithful to him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there some four months.

The KJV is even more direct, implicating the adultery of the concubine:

And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father’s house to Bethlehemjudah, and was there four whole months.

However, some other translations read differently. Consider the NASB, revised in 2020 (as compared to the earlier 1995 revision, which was more like the KJV):

But his concubine found him repugnant, and she left him and went to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah, and remained there for a period of four months.

Or the NRSVUE:

But his concubine became angry with him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah and was there some four months.

It turns out that the Hebrew word, zana, can be translated in different ways. The traditional reading has the word meaning to be “unfaithful” (as with the ESV) or to “commit adultery.” However, the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew text, has zana to mean to be “angry” with (as with the NRSVUE). The second meaning does not imply any sexual infidelity on the part of the concubine. Instead, it suggests that the woman had some reason to be angry with the Levite, angry enough to leave him and return home to her parents, without any hint of prostitution or other infidelity, as the KJV states.

Dr. Claude F. Mariottini, Professor Emeritus at Northern Baptist Seminary, suggests that translations like the NASB and NRSVUE get it right. The text does not tell us why the concubine found her Levite husband to be “repugnant.” While the reason for the concubine’s “anger” is never stated, it easily implies that her husband was abusive, and that she sought to return to her parents to get away from an abusive man. In an age when spousal abuse is getting a lot of attention, as with the #metoo movement, this should spark our interest more in the 21st century. There are some good reasons to accept this alternative reading.

The following verse may contain some clues, as there is ambiguity in Judges 19:3 as well. The ESV follows the traditional reading:

Then her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back. He had with him his servant and a couple of donkeys. And she brought him into her father’s house. And when the girl’s father saw him, he came with joy to meet him.

You get the impression that the Levite wants to try to persuade his concubine to return back to him. Was the Levite offering his love and forgiveness towards her? Here it is the woman who took her husband, the Levite, into her father’s house. Why did she do this? It is possible that she felt obligated to do so, for if she was unfaithful to her husband, she may have felt it was her responsibility to seek reconciliation. But there is more to the story. The NLT translation reads differently:

…. her husband set out for Bethlehem to speak personally to her and persuade her to come back. He took with him a servant and a pair of donkeys. When he arrived at her father’s house, her father saw him and welcomed him.

In this translation, there is no mention of the woman bringing her Levite husband into her father’s house. Only the father-in-law receives the Levite.  Furthermore, the NLT suggests that the Levite husband was on a mission to try to talk her back into coming home to his house, which is behavior consistent with an abusive husband. Curiously, the concubine and the Levite’s father-in-law tried some stall tactics for several nights which prevented the Levite from leaving with his concubine wife to take her back to his home. Were the concubine and her father hoping that the Levite would eventually just give up and go back home without her?

The incident in Gibeah raises other problems for the traditional view which casts the concubine as an adulterer. When the men of Gibeah threatened the Levite in Judges 19:25 , the ESV says that the Levite “seized” his concubine and sent her out to be sexually abused by the men of Gibeah. If the Levite truly loved his concubine, would he really “seize” her to be handed over to these violent men? The text purposely uses this word to convey a meaning which is certainly not a gentle way to treat a wife.

To make matters worse for the Levite, Judges 19:22, in a manner much like the story of the men in Sodom with Lot, these men of Gibeah declared their intentions to “know” the Levite, a euphemism for having sexual relations. But when the Levite relates his version of the story in Judges 20:5-6, the Levite says that the men were intent on killing him, which was not the case.

The story gets even worse. If the Levite really loved his concubine, and wanted her back, it seems really creepy and unloving for the Levite to chop her dead body up and send her body parts all across Israel. All of these pieces of evidence suggests that the standard portrayal of the concubine as a wayward woman hides the real story, namely that she was an innocent victim of a Levite husband who abused her, and in the process, she ultimately lost her life.  What a tragic story!!

Mariottini’s interpretation of this difficult passage is compelling. It demonstrates that the Bible is quite aware of the problem of “toxic masculinity,” whereby men can abuse their power and destroy the women in their lives. The story of the Levite and his concubine serves as both a warning and a rebuke against such morally perverse behavior.

Claude Mariottini’s newest book, Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith: A Survey of the Heroines of the Old Testament, is collection of stories about many of the amazing women of the Old Testament, offering insights that will be helpful to many men and women today.

 

Women of Faith in Ancient Israel

Claude Mariottini has written a vitally helpful book: Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith: A Survey of the Heroines of the Old Testament, to highlight the often forgotten contributions of women in the story of the Old Testament, with a single chapter focused on the story of the Levite and his concubine. Thankfully, Professor Mariottini’s book has more positive stories to offer to highlight the valuable contributions made by women to the story of ancient Israel. Professor Mariottini has for years written a blog which focuses on the best of Old Testament scholarship, making the story of the Old Testament more accessible to lay persons and scholars alike. While a good deal of the material found in the book can be discovered on his blog, his new 250 page book brings the wealth of that material to one place in one text.

As Mariottini says, the influence of women in the Old Testament is often obscured by how our sources came to us, filtered through male perspectives and priorities. Make no doubt about it, ancient Israel was a patriarchal society, where women were subordinated at home, with limited autonomy, and even treated as property. Nevertheless, as the Old Testament narrative unfolds we read how women were given a greater voice and were at times vindicated in the face of injustice, which can serve as an inspiration to women today.

Mariottini does not sugar-coat the story. The men typically take center stage in Israel’s narrative.

But then certain women come at critical points in the Old Testament, to make a difference. There are fairly well-known women, like Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Deborah; a prophetess and a judge; and Rahab, who hid and rescued the Hebrew spies at Jericho.  Then there are lesser known women, like Sheerah, who was a builder of cities (1 Chronicles 7:22-24). Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram of Judah, protected the young Joash, the Davidic heir to become king, from being killed (2 Kings 11:20). Huldah, a prophetess, was consulted by King Josiah, who had rediscovered a book of the law found in the Temple, bringing it to Huldah to verify that the book was indeed authentic (2 Kings 22:15-20).

Professor Mariottini follows standard insights into the Old Testament held among nearly all evangelical scholars today, insights which are not always well understood by the average church-going Christian. He acknowledges the concept of Yahweh’s “Divine Council,” whereby the uncreated and supreme Yahweh presides over a fellowship of other created divine beings, often described as “gods” or “sons of god” in the Old Testament, a concept in the academic world popularized most recently by the late Dr. Michael Heiser (Mariottini, p. 25). Mariottini acknowledges that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was written in stages, such that a text like Deuteronomy acts as an inspired revision to earlier material. Identifying Moses as the originator of the Pentatuech tradition need not rule out the activity of divinely inspired editors in later centuries,  or even just Moses himself later in his life, working to keep the Mosaic law tradition up to date, in light of new challenges to the people of Israel over time.

Mariottini offers several examples, by showing how Deuteronomy provides more protections for women as compared to earlier texts in the Pentateuch. In the days of King Josiah, in the seventh century before Christ, Deuteronomy was cited to prescribe these protections.

In Exodus 20:17, the tenth commandment reads:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

However, in Deuteronomy 5:21, the same commandment reads:

“And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Even though the Exodus version does not relegate the position of the wife to that of a slave, it nevertheless is ambiguous enough to indicate that the wife belongs to the husband, as though the wife is the possession of her husband (Mariottini, p. 39).

Yet the Deuteronomy version rearranges the original Exodus version, splitting the command not-to-covet into two separate commands, first that of not coveting a neighbor’s wife, and the second, that of not to covet (or desire) anything which is a possession of the husband, like a house, a field, a servant, a domestic animal, or any other possession. This gives greater clarity and explicit force to suggest that a wife is not to be treated in this same way as a man’s piece of property  (Mariottini, p. 42-43). Deuteronomy gives more explicit recognition of women having their own voice in the life of the Israelite community.

A similar pattern is observed when considering the Pentateuch’s code regarding the release of a Hebrew slave. In Exodus 21:2-6, a male Hebrew slave was to be released after six years of labor. But if that male slave enters the slave relationship as a single man, and the master gives him a wife, that woman will remain with the master even after the male slave is allowed to go free. However, in the Deuteronomy 15:12-18 version of the same rule, the woman is allowed to go free with the freed Hebrew slave, and remain the wife of that Hebrew slave (Mariottini, p. 44-47).

Perhaps the most important contribution Mariottini makes is in his highlighting of the Book of Deuteronomy, as giving us a clearer expression of addressing injustice against women in ancient Israel.

Some Critique of Mariottini

Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith is a great book, but a few criticisms are in order. There is at least one minor error whereby the NRSV’s translation of 1 Chronicles 25:5-6 is said to read: “God gave Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. All these men were under the supervision of their father for the music of the temple of the LORD.” Actually, this translation is what the NIV 2011 has for this passage. The NSRV actually substitutes the phrase “all these men” with “they were all,” a more gender accurate translation of the verse, acknowledging the inclusion of both Heman’s sons and daughters in helping to lead the worship music in the temple (Mariottini, p. 56-57).

A more serious problem arises when Mariottini expands his treatment on this passage later in the book. Here he corrects the earlier misquote of the NSRV translation of the passage, which suggests that both men and women participated in leading worship music in the temple (Mariottini, p. 83).

Mariottini describes this as the “egalitarian” reading, thus indicating that “although sin created a distortion of [this] mutuality [resulting from men and women being created equal], the gospel of Jesus Christ has abolished this distortion and that now both men and women are equally called to serve God” (Mariottini, p. 84) He contrasts that with the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) and NIV 1984 (despite the fact that the NIV 2011 keeps the same translation regarding gender), which reads “all these men.” This latter reading Mariottini says is exemplar for the “complementarian” position, that “God has set apart men to hold political and religious leadership in Israel.” This explains why the CSB and NIV suggest that the daughters of Heman were “not part of the music ministry of the temple” (Mariottini, p. 83).

However, this analysis is misleading as the complementarian position is not as monolithic as Mariottini assumes. While some complementarian churches do restrict women from leading music in a worship service, not all complementarians hold to such a broad restriction.

These other complementarians allow women to serve in such leadership roles, though these same churches nevertheless still hold that the office of elder specifically be held only by qualified men, according to what is found in 1 Timothy 2 & 3, and Titus 1. Other leadership functions in the church, like that of deacon, worship leader, etc. are open to both men and women. This reality is reflected in the fact that the ESV translation echoes in similarity the NRSV reading: “God had given Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. They were all under the direction of their father in the music in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres for the service of the house of God.”  In other words, men and women participate in the leading of worship music.

The ESV (English Standard Version) is rarely described as an “egalitarian” Bible translation, and is instead popularly known as the most influential complementarian-leaning Bible translation today in the English speaking world. Nevertheless, Mariottini is right to conclude, along with the ESV and NRSV, that women were allowed to participate in the music ministry of the temple, and that should anticipate later Christian worship practice.

The question of whether or not women can serve as elders, much less other leadership positions in the church, is a contentious issue today in evangelical churches. As a moderate complementarian myself, the idea of having only qualified males to serve as elders is not a slight against women, as women clearly can exercise leadership in other ways in Christian ministry. Rather, the gender “restriction” regarding elders is more about encouraging men to act as spiritual leaders in the church, modeling what should be done in the home. Even in our supposedly morally-advanced 21st century culture in the West, typically men much more than women tend to abdicate in taking spiritual leadership in their families, relegating such a task to their wives, who are often already overburdened with other responsibilities. When husbands and fathers take more responsibility in a positive, supportive way to spiritually lead in the home, everyone in the family is enabled to benefit.  (As a side note, I spent about four years writing on the complementarian/egalitarian controversy which is dividing evangelical churches today. You can read my research referenced here. Just this past year, yet another church in my town of Williamsburg, Virginia divided over this same issue. In my estimation, there are extremes on both sides of this issue which has tragically led to such church divisions).

It is curious how Mariottini cites some scholarship which challenges the traditional translation of Genesis 3:16 (Mariottini, p. 33).  The ESV has controversially rendered this verse as:  “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”  In fairness, the ESV also includes a footnote which suggests an alternative translation: “Your desire shall be to (or toward, or even against) your husband, and he shall rule over you.” But Mariottini cites Allen H. Godbey’s translation: “Thy longing shall be toward thy husband; and he shall be likewise toward thee.”  Godbey’s translation is completely new to me, and I am not familiar with other scholars commenting on Godbey’s view.

Some of the chapters in Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith tend to be repetitive at certain points. This is because a number of the stories highlighted by Mariottini tend to overlap, which indicates that the book is more of a reference book, where the chapters can be read in any order, whereby the reader can select what stories might interest them, while coming back to other stories later. This is probably fine for most readers, who want to read a short chapter that interests them, and then read some other short chapter elsewhere in the book. But for someone who wants to read the book from start to finish, the repetition might be bothersome.

Aside from a handful of problems like these, Claude Mariottini has given us a book which assists Christians to discover how many of the forgotten women of the Old Testament expressed their voices and have made significant contributions to the story of ancient Israel. Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith will be a helpful read for those who tend to think that the Old Testament has a purely negative view of women. May these stories continue to inspire us regarding the faith of these amazing women of the Old Testament.

One more thing: As I have read Claude Mariottini before, I am a bit partial to his work. However, there is another book out now which covers the same theme of women in the Old Testament, along with a brief look at women in the New Testament. Ingrid Faro’s Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation has received some good reviews, too, so that might also be worth checking out.

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February 8, 2025

The Real Indiana Jones: Kenneth Kitchen (1932-2025)

By Clarke Morledge

I just read today that one of the world’s most recognized Egyptologists, Kenneth Kitchen, died Thursday, February 6, 2025, at age 93. Kitchen was an idiosyncratic legend, an archaeologist who studied the Ancient Near East, specializing in ancient Egyptian history, and who upheld the Old Testament as a reliable source for understanding the history of the ancient world.  In my mind, he was the “real Indiana Jones.”

Few today would be dazzled by Kitchen’s study on The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt. But for the Christian interested in  the intersection between the Bible and archaeology, his 2003 erudite defense of the Bible, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, stands squarely in the maximalist tradition, affirming the historicity of the Exodus and the biblical Patriarchs. I read his book almost twenty years ago and was blown away by the breadth and depth of his scholarship.

While many scholars today tend to be skeptical of the story of Moses and the flight of Israel out of Egypt, spending forty years wandering the Sinai desert, Kenneth Kitchen was resolute in marshaling detailed evidence to support the testimony of the Bible. Kitchen was careful not to say that the biblical stories of the Patriarchs could be “proved” by the archaeological record, but he likewise stressed that archaeology has not “disproved” this history as presented in the Bible either.

Kenneth A. Kitchen’s On the Reliability of the Old Testament is a modern classic defending the historicity of the Old Testament. Kitchen begins with the most recent period in Israelite history, working his way backwards towards the earliest Patriarchs, showing that figures like Moses and Abraham line up with what we read in the archaeological record.

 

Born in Scotland, the life-long bachelor Kitchen was a contrarian in several ways, and not afraid of being combative in his research. Not only did he take on minimalist colleagues, such as Ronald Hendel, who concluded that the historical Moses was a fictional product of Israelite imagination at least four or five centuries after the traditionally dated Exodus period, Kitchen was critical of even conservative Old Testament scholars for not reading the text carefully enough.  He rejected the traditional, early date for the Exodus, in the mid 15th century BCE, around the year 1446, while Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, or Thutmose III served as Pharaoh, an interpretation which has been based on a non-metaphorical reading of the years described in 1 Kings 6. Archaeologists like Bryant Wood continue to hold to this traditional view.

Instead, Kitchen favored a late date alternative, about 200 years later in the 13th century BCE, when Rameses II served as Pharaoh. Kitchen argued that the early date has lacked sufficient archaeological support. Instead, the city of Rameses in Egypt was known in the 13th century, corresponding to what has been read from Exodus 1:11, and that archaeological evidence for the destruction of Hazor in the 13th century matched what has been described by Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land in Joshua 11:10-11.

Kitchen also chided Old Testament scholars who insisted that the large numbers associated with texts like the census in Numbers 1-2, following a non-metaphorical interpretation of such numbers, did not match the archaeological data, which has supported a smaller, yet still sizable group of Israelites wandering the Sinai wilderness for some 40 years.

Kitchen’s views even went against the idiosyncratic proposal by atheist and fellow Egyptologist David Rohl, who has argued that a new chronology for Egyptian history should be adopted, which pushes the possible date for the Exodus earlier than what the late date proposes.  David Rohl’s innovative hypothesis has been popularized by Tim Mahoney’s Patterns of Evidence franchise of documentary filmmaking. Kitchen rejected this view as “100% nonsense.”

Kenneth Kitchen’s work has been echoed with support by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School emeritus professor, archaeologist, and Egyptologist, James K. Hoffmeier, and on YouTube, a younger student who studied under Kitchen, Egyptologist David A. Falk, hosts the channel Ancient Egypt and the Bible. Falk has a recent YouTube stream remembering his mentor, Kenneth A. Kitchen.

What helped to win me over to the late date for the Exodus was the argument regarding the location of the slave city near a residence for the Pharaoh. The ancient city of Thebes, located near modern day Luxor, Egypt, was the primary residence for the Pharaohs during the Late Bronze Age. However, we have evidence that in the 13th century the city of Rameses, thought to have been a residence of a Pharaoh of the same name, was located in the Nile delta area. Rameses was in the northeast region of Egypt not that far from the modern city of Cario, and was built by slaves living in a nearby slave city, Avaris.

The journey from that slave city to Rameses would have been less than a few hours by foot, which makes sense of the many meetings that Moses would have had with Pharaoh mentioned in the Book of Exodus. However, any look at the map shows that a journey from the Nile delta to Thebes took at least 6 days to walk, which makes the late-at-night journeys that Moses took from the slave city to Pharoah’s residence rather ludicrous. Unless the Hebrews had built some nuclear-powered speed boat for Moses to travel quickly up the Nile to visit Pharaoh in Thebes, it is hard to imagine how Moses could have made such a relatively quick visit in the middle of the night to Pharoah.

Advocates for an early date for the Exodus might respond by saying a 15th century Pharoah might have built a residence within close walking distance near the 15th century slave city or encampment, but that we simply do not have evidence for such a residence…. at least not yet. But why appeal to evidence we do not currently possess when we actually have evidence that supports a different date, and that still affirms the testimony of Scripture? In my mind, this is a case of having a bird in the hand is worth two in a bush. It is better to hold onto the evidence you already have than it is holding out for evidence which you may never find. Kitchen was that type of evidentialist who opted for the former.

What I did not know about Kitchen was just how idiosyncratic he really was. As Tyndale House scholar Peter J. Williams puts it:

His abode was a small three-bedroom terraced house, without central heating or any modern appliance. [Kitchen] was very proud that nothing was connected to the internet so there could be no possibility of a virus destroying his work…..

Ken Kitchen basically didn’t have a kitchen: it was a tiny box room. Ken lived all his life without a refrigerator. He had milk delivered fresh, and had no need for the complexities of unnecessary equipment. He lived in the utmost simplicity….

Despite his great learning, Ken Kitchen was a man of a deep and simple faith in Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord. Though he knew a lot, he was also humble and aware of his own fallibility and frailty. He would want us in remembering him to think of the One he served. As I think about Ken’s life, as a bachelor living a life of ascetic discipline and dedication to scholarship, I find myself challenged by his work ethic and his incredible focus, even as I recognise that Ken was one of a kind. We will not see the like of him again.

Actually, in his later years, Kitchen finally was forced to get a refrigerator after he contracted food poisoning. His doctor strongly advised him to a get refrigerator, for his own safety.

Read more of Peter Williams’ obituary remembering the “real Indiana Jones,” Kenneth A. Kitchen.

A young Kenneth A. Kitchen doing field work for his Egyptological studies.

Here are some links to older Veracity articles about the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan and the problem of large numbers, the difference between maximalists and minimalists in relating archaeology to the study of the Bible, the status of the city of Jericho in biblical history,  a review of a Patterns of Evidence film, by Tim Mahoney, and the fringe archaeology of the late Ron Wyatt, who portrayed himself as a kind of evangelical Indiana Jones.

NOTE: The original blog post had a title with his death in “1925,” instead of “2025,” which was obviously a typographical error.

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August 2, 2024

The Incomparable God, by Brent Strawn. Making Sense of Elisha and the She-Bears

By Clarke Morledge

About five years ago, I wrote a Veracity blog post about 2 Kings 2:23-25 , the weird episode of Elisha and the She-Bears. This passage ranks right up there as one of the strangest, if not the most disturbing stories in the Old Testament. To tell the story most bluntly, the prophet Elisha is ridiculed by a bunch of young, little “boys” for the prophet’s “baldness.” Elisha returns the insults by issuing a curse on the boys, and then a pair of she-bears emerge from the woods to maul forty-two of the boys. Pretty weird, right?

I recently ran across a volume of essays, The Incomparable God, by Brent Strawn, an Old Testament scholar at Duke Divinity School, covering various topics related to the Old Testament, including “Revisiting Elisha and the Bears: Can Modern Christians Read — That Is, Pray — the ‘Worst Texts’ of the Old Testament?” The Incomparable God is very helpful, scholarship of the highest caliber, but it is not for the faint of heart, as the reflections in these essays assume some working knowledge of the Hebrew language. While this is clearly in Brent Strawn’s wheelhouse, the average Christian might not be so well equipped to grasp the nuances of Hebrew waw-consecutive grammar.

If you are thinking, “Waw-what?,” then fear not. In this partial book review, I will do my best to put the cookies down on the lower shelf for you.

Nevertheless, when you try to make sense of something as crazy sounding as the Elisha and the She Bears story, it helps to go to the scholars for some assistance. Believe me, when I first focused my attention on this passage, I needed some help. Now with this new publication of Brent Strawn’s essays, it makes for a good opportunity to revisit this text. So please “bear” with me….. uh, pun intended!

A Very Difficult, Morally-Challenging Bible Passage

The difficult passage in question goes like this (from the English Standard Version, 2 Kings 2:23-25):

“23 He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”24 And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. 25 From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.“

Back when I was doing youth ministry several decades ago, a very bright female high school student asked me what I thought about this passage of the Bible. I was supposed to be the “Bible expert” but I was stumped.

I had to be honest with her that I had been a believing Christian for at least ten years and I had no clue as to what this was about. 1 and 2 Kings never caught my interest too much, books where Israelite king after Israelite king kept messing up and rebelling against God. Aside from some great stories about Elijah, like the big showdown in 1 Kings 18:16-45 between Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, 2 Kings just seemed like a rehearsal of names of kings I could hardly pronounce.

I had read the Old Testament back in college for a religion class, but I did not remember reading that particular passage at the time. Perhaps I just skimmed over that part without paying much attention. What I do recall is that I had never heard a sermon preached about Elisha and the She-Bears in any evangelical church that I had been attending that entire ten year period. I read the passage more earnestly now, scratching my head all the way through it, thinking that I might have a good response to give to my high school student friend. But now that it was pointed out to me, I found it jarring. I was dumbfounded. I was stuck.

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July 14, 2023

Lies My Preacher Told Me, by Brent Strawn: A Short(er) Review

By Clarke Morledge

Have you ever been told that if you are reading the Old Testament you are reading someone else’s mail? If that preacher also tells you that instead the New Testament was mail written to you, then this is a lie your preacher has told you.

While much of the Old Testament was written to ancient Israelites, some of Paul’s letters were written to first century Corinthians. Greco-Roman Corinth culture is far away from the 21st century, says Old Testament scholar Brent Strawn. When we read anything in the Bible, yes, we are reading someone else’s mail, written to people in ancient times, but that same correspondence was also written for us today as Christians.

The fact is that the very issues we run into while reading the New Testament are also present when we read the Old Testament. But not only that, the New Testament is constantly recalling the message of the Old Testament. For without a good understanding of the Old Testament, the message of the New Testament becomes hard to grasp. That is a good argument for not ignoring the Old Testament.

Taking a More Honest Look at the Old Testament

Brent Strawn teaches the Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, and in Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament, the author is spinning off from the well-known title by James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. It is a bit of a click-bait title, as Dr. Strawn admits that he has had some wonderful Bible teachers and preachers in his own life. But we as Christians can all use some correction now and then in making changes to bad reading habits of the Bible.

Lies My Preacher Told Me is written in the style of similar short books written by scholars writing for a general public audience, like Dr. Michael Heiser’s 60 Second Scholar series, or the Urban Legends series, pioneered by David A. Croteau, among other scholars in that series. In Dr. Strawn’s short and concise book, he outlines ten mistruths that are in need of correction:

  • Mistruth 1: The Old Testament is “someone else’s mail.”
  • Mistruth 2: The Old Testament is a boring history book.
  • Mistruth 3: The Old Testament has been rendered permanently obsolete.
  • Mistruth 4: The Old Testament God is mean . . . really mean.
  • Mistruth 5: The Old Testament is hyper-violent.
  • Mistruth 6: David wrote the Psalms [and other simplistic historical assertions]
  • Mistruth 7: The Old Testament isn’t spiritually enriching.
  • Mistruth 8: The Old Testament isn’t practically relevant.
  • Mistruth 9: The Old Testament Law is nothing but a burden, impossible to keep.
  • Mistruth 10: What really matters is that “everything is about Jesus.”

Those of you familiar with the Veracity blog will know that I am very much excited about the work of the Cambridge House, a Christian study-center within walking distance of the College of William and Mary. Several students, faculty and friends of Cambridge House were privileged to have Dr. Strawn give a fine lecture telling the story about his book in the spring of 2023. The Cambridge House is committed to contributing a Christian voice into the intellectual conversation at the university where I work, so it is great to have such an accomplished scholar share his wisdom rooted in the Christian faith.

Brent Strawn is not just an author of a short pithy book like Lies My Preacher Told Me. He is also a well-respected Bible translator, most significantly the editor of the Old Testament portion of the Common English Bible.

Dr. Strawn has done a great service to the church for exposing and correcting these ten mistruths. Nuggets of truth are sprinkled throughout Lies My Preacher Told Me.

How about this one on page 23?: Whenever I have read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes through a series of “you have heard it said, but now I tell you this...” sayings. For years I thought that all of them, such as “love your neighbor,” were all in our Old Testament. But the second half of that one found in Matthew 5:43, “hate your enemies,” simply is not found in the Old Testament.

Shocker of shockers!! So, where did this “hate your enemies” come from? It actually comes from the Community Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1QS 9.21, to be more precise, which endorses hating those who are wicked. Did the Jewish community at Qumran subscribe to the idea that this Community Rule was also part of Sacred Scripture? This little nugget suggests that the definition of what constituted Jewish “Scripture” among some Jewish groups in Jesus’ day was perhaps slightly broader than what we have in our Old Testament today.

Though hidden in one of the very few footnotes in the book, Dr. Strawn succinctly handles a rather difficult question regarding the nature of the Old Testament canon of Scripture.  Many Christians often assume that the list of books included in our Old Testament today was well settled by the time of Jesus. Not so. It took another century or more after the days of Jesus before the Jewish community finally settled on a definitive list of books to be included in their Hebrew Scriptures, a listing that eventually was picked up and settled upon by the Protestant movement, in the 16th century. However, if this makes someone nervous, it is abundantly clear that the books of our Old Testament today were all composed before the time of Jesus, and enjoyed their authoritative status in Jesus’ day.

In mistruth #9, Dr. Strawn tackles the common misperception that for the Jews the Old Testament Law was impossible to keep, which is why Christianity teaches a message of grace, as opposed to the Jewish message of salvation by works. However, the Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 3:4-6 that prior to being a Christian, as a Pharisee he was “blameless” under the Law.

“Blameless?” How could Paul say that if indeed the Law was impossible to keep? Rather, it is Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, who insists that no one can enter God’s Kingdom without exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.  Jesus himself sets the higher standard, thereby exposing everyone’s need for grace, Jew and Gentile.

In the final mistruth, Dr. Strawn gives a more modest and accurate estimate of what constitutes Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of Jesus. A number of Christian apologists tend to over-inflate claims about how much the Old Testament predicts the coming of Jesus as the Messiah. So while certain Old Testament texts could be read in a way such that we can find somewhere around “300” to even “400” Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled in the New Testament by Jesus, Dr. Strawn estimates that the number should be more modestly put at around thirty-nine. Though not zero, 39 is significantly less than 300 or 400.

But why only about 39? Why not 300 or 400? Well, a lot of the mismatch has to do with how Christians believe a prophecy is being fulfilled in Jesus. It turns out that the interpretation of prophecy is generally more complicated than that depicted by popular thinking.

Having worked previously with a Jewish colleague for a number of years, I have come to realize that while a strong case can still be made for predicting the coming of Jesus from the Old Testament, overzealous attempts to read Jesus almost anywhere into the Old Testament can backfire when conversing with a Jewish person well-informed about their Hebrew Scriptures. A modest defense for the Christian faith is far more effective than making extravagant claims which can be easily shot down by a non-believer better informed than we are.

One Pushback For Lies My Preacher Told Me

Alas, if I had but one pushback against Lies My Preacher Told Me, it would be this: Brent Strawn makes plentiful use of the Common English Bible when quoting from Scripture in his book, page after page, which is both good and not so good.The “not so good” might limit the outreach capability of Dr. Strawn’s book. I hesitate to pick on an esteemed scholar who has poured himself so much into a bible translation. It feels like telling someone that their baby is both cute and ugly at the same time. Yikes. I do not mean to do that so I hope this comes across in the right way.

First, the good: The Common English Bible (CEB) is quite a fine translation in that it offers a very accessible level of reading without becoming too loose, as paraphrases tend to be. Something like Eugene Peterson’s The Message is very readable, but the Common English Bible (CEB) is just as readable as The Message, if not more so, but the CEB stays much closer to the actual Scriptural text. I think of the CEB as the “entry level” version to the more academic New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible. Nerdy Bible geeks like me generally like the NRSV, but busy soccer moms on the go will find the CEB more suitable. I like reading the CEB when desiring to tackle longer portions of the text, and I value its freshness and willingness to break out of a traditional mold.

Read Ezekiel 23:20 if you want a good jolt…. Just do not read it with your small children present….

….Trust me on this one.

On the downside, the Common English Bible (CEB) is marketed more towards mainline Protestant churches and less towards conservative evangelical, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches. So while a number of evangelical scholars like Brent Strawn contributed to the making of the CEB, the main publishing houses for the Common English Bible are associated with the Disciples of Christ, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the Episcopal Church, the United Church Christ, and the United Methodist Church, which are perhaps the most theologically liberal denominations in America today. As noted in a recent “Ready to Harvest” YouTube video, the Pew Center reports that these mainline Protestant churches sadly are heading towards a speedy decline over the next few decades. Miracles can still happen, but it is unlikely that the CEB will have the widest reach when its primary reading audience gets smaller and smaller every year.

Furthermore, in an effort to make the text more readable there are times when the CEB over-interprets the text in ways that can obscure rather than clarify. For example, the CEB likes to use the terminology of “the Human One” when giving an alternative to the more traditional “the Son of Man,”  the former which seems a little gender-inclusively clunky.

Lastly, while a conservative evangelical translation like the English Standard Version (ESV) has been faulted for favoring more traditional, complementarian readings of the original text, regarding the role of women in the church and in the family, the CEB tends to do just the opposite, leaning towards egalitarian readings of the original text. The CEB may very well be correct, in the final analysis, regarding certain translation decisions, but for critics who say that the ESV tends to be tribalistic, the same could also be said for the CEB, but in another direction.

Towards a Better Way of Reading and Appreciating the Old Testament

But do not let this one pushback dissuade the reader from picking up a copy of Lies My Preacher Told Me. The chapters are short but the content found therein is rich with golden nuggets that can nourish the reader and get them excited about the Old Testament.

The second century heterodox preacher in Rome, Marcion, will forever be associated with the sometimes unfortunate Christian dislike, or even hatred, of the Old Testament. Marcion is known to be the first churchman to draft a list of what he considered to be canonical Scripture for Christians, and yet he conveniently scratched the entire Old Testament off of his list. For Marcion, the Old Testament God was not the God of the New Testament. That made his Bible significantly shorter, but the historically orthodox Christian community believed that Marcion stripped out the riches of the Old Testament, thus emasculating the Bible as a whole. Marcion was rightly condemned for his heresy. Be ye aware, there are Marcions still lurking around in many corners of the church today.

Brent Strawn is committed to encouraging the revived use of the Old Testament among Christians. Lies My Preacher Told Me serves as a pithy, clear, and helpful resource for promoting an increase of interest in the Old Testament, something Marcion would surely have hated.

I suggested to Brent that he should have a portrait of Marcion in his home, and use it as a dart board. Perhaps he will make a meme out of that, and we might find it in his next book. We shall see!

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For the “real” Bible nerds, you might be interested in the following interview with Dr. Brent Strawn. Enjoy.

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December 26, 2021

Christian Urban Legends

By Clarke Morledge

Were the shepherds at the birth of Christ really despised, social outcasts? This popular story makes for a great Christmas sermon message, namely that lowly, poor shepherds, having the social reputation equivalent to prostitutes, were given the honorary privilege of giving testimony to the birth of the Messiah. Though well intended, it turns out that this is largely an urban legend.

“Adoration of the Shepherds,” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622. (credit Wikipedia: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202)

Evangelical Bible scholar, David Croteau, the Dean of Columbia Biblical Seminary, and author of Urban Legends of the New Testament, acknowledges that many other scholars over the years have commented on the supposed despised nature of 1st century Jewish shepherds, citing sources like Aristotle and the Babylonian Talmud, for support. However, Croteau points out that Aristotle was not a Jew, and lived several hundreds of years before Christ, and the Babylonian Talmud was not produced until several centuries after Christ. Furthermore, British Bible scholar Ian Paul notes that the Babylonian Talmud’s denigration of shepherds might have been shaped more by an anti-Christian polemic, rather than the actual historical context. In other words, these are not the best expert witnesses as to how shepherds were viewed by 1st century Jews.

As it turns out, Croteau cites the best evidence that counterbalances this legend directly from the New Testament itself. Luke 2:18 tells us that “all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them,” when speaking of the appearance of angels. But the people were not amazed by the supposed fact that these were “lowly” shepherds. Rather, they were amazed by what the shepherds were talking about, that of the birth announcement of the Messiah.

Instead, the Bible holds the profession of shepherding in high respect. For example, Genesis 13 notes that Abraham had much livestock, herds, and flocks of sheep. Also, Exodus 3:1 tells us that Moses was a shepherd, and that before David was king, 1 Samuel 17 tells us that David himself was a shepherd. Jesus himself speaks of being “the good shepherd [laying] down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

True, shepherds were not wealthy, and belonged to the lower class, and thus represented the poor and humble, but they were hardly the social equivalent to prostitutes. With such an established pedigree, from Abraham to David, to ultimately Jesus, the traditional story of the “despised” Bethlehem shepherds simply does not fit the actual data.

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