Biblical Marriage with Jennifer Bird

Dan McClellan You see this in Paul's sexuality as well. Yep. Paul is very much, in my opinion, he's suggesting, one, that passion is for the dirty Gentiles. Yes. Because sex is supposed to be holy and with honor, not with the passion of desire.

Dan Beecher So you need to be playing none of this Luther Vandross in the bedroom- That's right. That's right ... playing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and that's it.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan 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?

Dan Beecher Good, man.

Dan McClellan This is going to be a fun one.

Jennifer Bird I am looking forward to it.

Dan Beecher I always say that, but this time it's actually true. Tell us about our guest. We've got a wonderful guest today.

Dan McClellan 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- Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah. I think the audiobook- So scary ... comes with, the audiobook comes with dun, dun, dun, 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- Yeah ... 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.

Dan Beecher Jennifer Bird, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Jennifer Bird Thank you for having me. This is such a treat. Wonderful. Yeah.

Dan McClellan 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 in the public don't really have. But it is- I don't know.

Dan Beecher It kind of seems unnecessary because we all know one man, one woman, we're done. Right. Right. I don't know what, why do we need to have a- Why is there a whole book on this? ... a whole book about it?

Dan McClellan It seems- I thought it was one man, one vote. But, oh. Oh, that's different.

Dan Beecher That's- That's a different thing, Dan. Yeah. Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think it is a timely book. 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. That's right. Right. And anyone familiar with our social media content knows that we're loath to suggest the Bible really says anything. 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." But it's like, look, do you want every single video to be like, "As we create meaning with the Bible, we produce it?" Yeah. Like, it's a shorthand.

Dan Beecher But- Dan, you don't even let us define words, for crying out loud. Yeah.

Jennifer Bird That's not even- Nothing means anything ever at all. I like it. I like it. Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think a lot of scholars are like, "I've got no problem with this." Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and as we were talking- Thank you ... 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 you kind of start off talking about this. What word is not really in the Bible?

Jennifer Bird Well, I'm not sure which one you're referring to. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Dan McClellan There are a couple of them, don't there?

Jennifer Bird I think you're talking about husband and wife. I think- Yeah ... that's what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And that is true in the Greek as well. That was kind of stunning to me when I started making sure. 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. 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. Wow. Like, how different would everything be if we removed husband and wife from the entire- Yeah ... Christian Bible, right? Yeah. "Oh, but that's too raw, Dr. Bird." "My woman, my man." I'm like, "Yeah- Yeah ... that's my point." Yeah. Yeah.

Dan McClellan When you go through 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 you have in Hosea where Adonai says, "You will no longer call me baali, but you will call me ishi." And it's like, baali, my master, is about as close- Mm-hmm ... as you get to husband. And God is like, "No, just call me my man," because we're getting away from the Baal worship. My man. But yeah.

Dan Beecher My main man. Totally.

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

Jennifer Bird That one was the big one for me personally, and then- Yeah ... and then I saw 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. So they're, like you said, a reference to Baal or some form of he will dominate over her Mm-hmm ... kind of a verb, right? Yeah. And the issue I hear people kind of push back on, which I always appreciate, is when it says to take, a man goes and takes a woman, and now she's his. Well, we say that in wedding ceremonies today. Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? I'm like, "Yeah, but it's not the same." 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 and- Yeah ... mutually supportive way. No. It's the same thing. It's the same verb that's used when God commands Abraham to take his son and go sacrifice him. It's the same take. It's just take.

Dan McClellan And that's what we see with the rape of Dinah. It says he took her, lakach- Right. Lakach ... and lay with her. Right. And then other times it's chaZach, to seize or to grasp, or other times it's tafas, also to seize or to grasp. And that's always about, or that's in reference to sexual assault, but there's a- Right ... very thin distinction between the two. Right.

Jennifer Bird There's also a verb, the yashav, but it's kind of forcing a person to live with you, right? Mm-hmm. Again, we could talk about whether there's consent there if you want, but it's still just living together. It's not the same kind of loving f- the framework that we have for the concept of marriage today is being laid on top of these verbs that I do not think reflect what we mean by those things. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And 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 an agent did to an object. Yes. There was a- Yes ... hierarchy of domination. Yes. And the man was at the pinnacle of that hierarchy. And so the person underneath them on that hierarchy was the sexual object on which- That's right ... they acted. And the- Yes ... will, the agency of the object was just immaterial. It did not matter. Precisely.

Jennifer Bird That's why we keep seeing that he goes into her, and he does this thing to her. And all of the language. It's an interesting piece, too, because the idea that now that's in the biblical texts related to these relationships is that now they are joined together, and she belongs to you for good. And we perhaps see some sort of trying to tend to this relationship in a kind way, but it's still founded on this idea. This basic idea that a man is taking a woman, marking her as his territory by the act of sex. I remember the first time I used that language at the church that I grew up in. So I went back as a scholar 30 years later, 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, "You sound like you're referring to a dog peeing on a tree." And I said, "That's exactly what I meant. That's what I want you to take from that." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And the passive... Well, the active-passive thing, too, about sex in general in the ancient world. We still see it in the time of the 1st century. It's not like Jesus and the folks then are thinking about it differently necessarily. It's a really important piece of the picture to me, the way sex is talked about, 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.

Dan Beecher Look, this is all about you. We don't want to interrupt you.

Jennifer Bird No, it's good. But- No, yeah.

Dan Beecher You're all we got. Awesome.

Jennifer Bird Well, okay.

Dan Beecher It occurs to me, it's funny because I've heard people when they talk about the Ten Commandments- Mm ... and it seems like there's this huge omission of they've got all of these main things, but there's no sense of thou shalt not rape in that. Yeah. Which seems to a modern person like there's a big omission, but was there even a concept of that? It sounds like what we're talking about here is the total objectification, at least of women, in that time period. Yeah.

Jennifer Bird I don't know if there's an actual verb, Dan. The other Dan, Mack, you probably know if there's a verb that is typically translated. I think I tried to look into it once- So- ... and it's hard to follow.

Dan McClellan For rape specifically, but- So the closest I think you get is ana, which is to violate. Mm. But that has to do with the woman's basically viability as a commodity. Right. And because it is very transactional, and the legislation that has to do with sexual assault treats it as a property crime. It is not the agency- Right ... the autonomy of the victim. It is the fact that this basically spoils her as goods- Right ... 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.

Jennifer Bird The issue of, yes, have you spoiled the goods? Yeah. And one of the things I try to talk about when I, is around this concept of virginity, this human construct of labeling a female body specifically as one thing and, at one point that has actually changed. 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. That's the piece that the Bible talks about this state that can be lost or changed or whatever. And that is fully human construct as an element of controlling women's bodies. And the more you look into this, or at least the more I think about it over the years and look into the physiology behind it. Like this concept that a woman needs to show proof of the evidence of her virginity on her the night that she is taken and the man sleeps with her. Well, what's the evidence? We all know, or we know. The evidence is that she bled. Okay, let's talk about that. The evidence of a woman's, air quotes, "virginity" is the fact that her hymen just wasn't prepared. That's it. This is a violation. This is 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 people that talk about, oh, that the virgin mountainside with nobody's skied on it yet, and I want to be the first to ski on it. That's what we're talking about, but with a woman's body. And in the book, I decided to get really raw about it all just to kind of make the point. We're talking about a particular part of a woman's body, whether or not a man has interacted with it. We're talking about her vagina, but the reason we care is both men's egos, in terms of wouldn't want to be with... Gosh, it's really hard to talk about some of this sometimes. Like, "Oh, somebody else has had sex with her. 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. This is about men's penises over and over again, biblically speaking. It drives me crazy. I have this little clip. I created a video series first, and then I wrote the book. And I had to put it in there.

Dan McClellan You've been releasing those clips little by little, have you? I have.

Jennifer Bird Yeah, a little bit. The videos themselves are 15 to 18 minutes long, and I've been releasing clips from them. Yeah. 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? Yeah. There's nothing wrong with your penises. They look funny. They are a little bit odd looking.

Dan McClellan I'm not going to lie.

Jennifer Bird But don't demonize them. Yeah. But that's what you're doing in this weird backend thing, and it's all about territory. It's who's... And it's like, come on, people, let it go. Yeah. Let it go. Let's see what's going on and just let that go.

Dan Beecher And the problematic nature of that conception of virginity and of sort of the defilement of a woman's body persists to this day. Precisely. In churches across... I know that in my neighborhood and the girls in my church were raised with this idea that- Totally ... nobody wants a chewed piece of gum. Nobody wants- Right ... an apple that's already had bites taken out of it or whatever horrific metaphor they come up with. Mm-hmm. The boys were given none of these lectures. Nothing. That's right. None of them. So I don't know. Why wasn't I gum? Why don't- Exactly ... I get to be gum? Exactly. I don't understand it. Right. Exactly. It's a huge double standard that persists. Right. 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, there's a website called thegospelcoalition.org. It sounds very official.

Dan McClellan Well, Gospel Coalition is a well-known organization. Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Dan Beecher And they have an article called "A Biblical View of Marriage." Oh, boy. And I wanted to run by you the first- Oh, please do.

Jennifer Bird Let's do this ...

Dan Beecher they have a definition and then a summary and stuff. Okay. But I'm just going to read you this definition, and you tell me all the ways that they are absolutely correct.

Jennifer Bird I probably need to take notes. Okay.

Dan Beecher Which I'm certain that it's going to be. "The biblical view of marriage," it says here, "is of a God-given-" Oh, God. "... voluntary, sexual, and public social union of one man and one woman from different families for the purpose of serving God."

Jennifer Bird So- Did they say anything about procreation in there? I didn't catch it.

Dan Beecher No, it didn't actually get to that. It just said the purpose was serving God and that, yeah. Yeah. So, I figure you might have some things to say about that.

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

Dan McClellan And, Yeah, the joining of those two things together, sexual, public, social is like- Yes.

Jennifer Bird I got creeped out. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit concerned. Yeah. Well, that's actually, the first four chapters of this book are about addressing basically where they get those ideas. When people use that definition that you just read for us, Dan, 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 of- Or one passage and three quotations of that passage. Exactly. Thank you. So it's a total of seven biblical verses, and one of them is quoted twice. So we could maybe delete two of those verses and say five, right? Yeah. So just for your watchers, listeners, Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." Genesis 2:24, I will quote the way I think it should read, which is, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his woman, and the two become one flesh." Matthew 19:4-6, which, I always kind of end up re-quoting that incorrectly, but it's the debate with the Pharisees about which reason is Jesus okay with for divorce. And he says, "Have you not read that it says..." And he quotes Genesis 1:27, "In male, female, he created them." And then he quotes Genesis 2:24. And then, "So what man 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 as new is different, which is what I get into in that chapter. And then Ephesians 5:31-32, 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. So that's it. That's what people mean. And so they usually are looking at that to say, "God ordained," air quotes, "marriage to be between one man and one woman," and that it needs to be procreative, which is where people get hung up on certain types of marriages today. And that no divorcing. Divorcing is a sin according to Matthew 19:4 or 6 or whatever.

Dan McClellan And then this- 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 get to divorce men, and they want to outlaw it.

Jennifer Bird And I don't know where that's coming from. Not odd at all, actually. Yeah. 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? Yeah. Right. They're about to outlaw mifepristone, which is the drug that's used for terminating an unplanned pregnancy. Like outlawing it. Yeah. I can't even process. My head will explode with anger. So I'm not surprised. So anyway. So that's usually what people mean, right? Right. And so they make this definition such as what you read.

Dan Beecher But surely there's no counterarguments to be made from the Bible that those aren't the only way that the Bible sees marriage.

Jennifer Bird 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? Right. Well, that's not true. We have the main patriarch 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 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. What if you heard about neighbors of yours who were doing this? Or what if you thought about more recent countries or something establishing themselves this way, and this is how the head of the country did things. How would you think about them? 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?

Dan McClellan It sounds very "Handmaid's Tale"- Oh, for sure ... to have a patriarch who impregnates the- All the- ... the women. Yeah.

Jennifer Bird All the women, right? Yeah. Right. So we have that angle. This is bollocks. One man, one woman. Come on, people. But also... Go ahead.

Dan McClellan 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 the two of them pair bonding. Right. And it is happening while polygamy is normative. Totally. And so 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.

Jennifer Bird It's not, and I think actually I enjoy talking about Genesis 1:28 a great deal because Genesis 1:22, if we're going to read it that way, let's just read it as what it's saying. 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. Yeah. Is that a command to marry?

Dan McClellan Well, and I think you could also interpret this not as a command. It's just a prefix form of the verb, and I think there's an interesting case to make that this is a blessing because it says, "And he blessed them and said." Mm-hmm. So it's not, "I'm blessing you by telling you what to do."

Dan Beecher I know.

Dan McClellan You could very legitimately translate it, "And he blessed them and said, 'May you-" Uh-huh. "... multiply and fill the earth.'" And so it doesn't have to be a command in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.

Jennifer Bird And let's be very clear, nobody needed to be told.

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

Jennifer Bird Nor did the birds of the air or the fish of the sea, right? Right. Nobody needed, and so the blessing angle I think is really lovely. But also then, again, I think as a way to try to drive things home about how selective we're being if we're just focusing on 128. Who here knows what 129 says? I happen to because I've been studying this, but it's the verse that says we should all be vegan. Mm. And so you want to make an argument for, this is for all time, but that isn't. Well, in chapter six, God makes it okay to eat or whatever. And I'm like, well, then let's talk about other biblical references that challenge the idea of being procreative, which comes straight from Jesus' mouth, by the way. Yeah. So we do have biblical challenges to this be fruitful command, and it's Jesus's. Why are we not taking that more seriously?

Dan McClellan Well, and I think that's a great point there. The text is not univocal. Just between Genesis 1:28 and 2:24, you've got two entirely distinct creation accounts. Right. And so when we impose that presupposition of univocality, we've got to hierarchize the passages. And so you would think that Jesus' would take precedence because everything else, anytime Jesus says anything that's different from the Hebrew Bible, you listen to Jesus, you don't listen to the Hebrew Bible. 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 where Jesus says, "Hey, lop it off if the real ones are doing it-" "... we got to say, well, eh, I think he was exaggerating there, so we're going to ignore him there." Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer Bird Yeah, and you can do this with, and the same with Genesis 2:24, and those two are the foundation for 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 Genesis 2:24 is, I want to reiterate what you were saying, Dan. But also I think it's helpful to look at what does that chapter, that particular creation story trying to do, trying to talk about, right? I think it is more about human desires for relationships and- And 2:24, sorry, I'm just going to- Yes.

Dan Beecher We're not actually laying these out for the people who aren't- Gotcha ... 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." Woman. Right. Woman. It's woman. Thank you. No, that's a good correction because- And that's it, right? ... this dumb NRSV doesn't know what it's talking about.

Dan McClellan And something that 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 not civilized 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."

Jennifer Bird And- You can do it.

Dan McClellan And so there's a sense in which the maturation of humanity in Genesis 2 and 3 is following a similar pattern. Because 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 ideology for maturation, for leaving the home of your father, and for starting an independent pair-bonded household. Mm-hmm. And so it's not saying, "Look, this is how marriage was created." It's saying- Right ..."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." That's right. Yeah.

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

Jennifer Bird I actually 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 kicking the kids out of the nest, or it could also be about comforting mothers or parents at the sadness of losing that." Yeah. Oh. And so all the things.

Dan McClellan It's supposed to be.

Jennifer Bird Yeah, I think all the things are potentially in the mix, but I did like when she said, "Yeah, we're just kicking them out of the nest. Yes." Yeah. Fly. Yes, it's your turn. Yeah. But that's a whole different way of looking at it than to say, God is ordaining this, or the scriptures say that this is only this. It's just 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- Mm-hmm ... declaration from God. These are stories that are coming out of necessity and needs and desires, and 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. But it's true, so how do we get you there, right? Yeah. Right.

Dan McClellan And that brings up, you've mentioned Matthew 19- Mm-hmm ... 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 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 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 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.

Jennifer Bird Well, 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 you, whoever divorces his woman, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery." Mm. And that's kind of driving the nail in the coffin on why divorce is a sin. But that, to me, and to be honest, Dan, I hadn't taken the passion, the element that you just mentioned in terms of the Greco-Roman pieces of all of this. I'm looking at it just through the lens of, let's take seriously what he's saying here, right? When you, to divorce your partner and marry another, you're going to commit adultery. It is so clear if you can just sit with it, right, and just see it, that we're talking about sex. This is only about sex. Mm. This isn't about divorce is a problem because it's hard. It hurts family. It pulls people apart. It's hard for resource-wise. It's hard on the children. 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 going to go cheat on it. That's it. And so to see that Jesus is affirming that can be really hard for some people. It was actually a little startling for me to wrap my head around the fact that, yeah, you know what? There are times when Jesus says stuff that just not okay with me. And that- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan I don't know- Most of them in Matthew. Probably.

Jennifer Bird Yes, actually. There's that.

Dan Beecher Because Matthew's a bit of a Judaizer who's- Oh, yeah ... kind of- Yeah ... escalating things. Yeah.

Dan McClellan He's like, "No, no, your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees." Isn't enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Bird And also the references to enslaved people to make a point about all the things about the kingdom and the coming kingdom. 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 being said and the part of that that I think is really harmful, right? The part of that that purity culture picked up on very well in the last 30 years, and all the shame around ending a monogamous relationship. It's like- ... are you kidding me? But then he goes on, and this is what was truly, rocked my world, I think, when I stumbled across this article talking about the next three verses, when he says, so his disciple, continuing in Matthew 19, starting in verse 10, his disciple 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. Yeah. And Jesus doesn't talk him off that ledge. I think that's hilarious, honestly. Can we put that in writing? Yeah. His disciples say maybe it's better not to marry to begin with.

Dan McClellan And he comes right over the top.

Jennifer Bird And he agrees with it, and then he adds another layer. Yeah. 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, 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 at Promise Keepers conventions, having a Matthew 19 tent for castration. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying?

Dan McClellan You don't need to put a ring on a necklace. Just go... Yeah.

Jennifer Bird And doesn't this just slightly make the whole thing about Genesis 1:28 a little bit challenging? Procreate or cut them off. Which one is it? This is from Jesus. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, and you see this in Paul's sexuality as well. Yep. Paul is very much- Yes ... in my opinion, he's suggesting, one, that passion is for the dirty Gentiles. Yes. Because sex is supposed to be holy and with honor, not with the passion of desire.

Dan Beecher And- So you need to be playing none of this Luther Vandross in the bedroom. That's right. You need to be playing- That's right ... the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and that's it.

Dan McClellan And but Paul, a lot of people have tried to find a concern for procreation in Paul, and it's not there. It's not there. Paul could not care less about procreation because like the author of Matthew, Paul's expecting everything to end. Yeah. To end quickly. Yeah. Right. Which is why Matthew has, "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. Right. 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- Right ... good for keeping down the urges as- Exactly.

Jennifer Bird Put a lid on it ...

Dan McClellan as, right ...

Jennifer Bird not where you get to indulge it.

Dan McClellan And then Matthew, or the author of Matthew has Jesus basically endorsing the same idea. Yeah. "Hey, man, if you really want to be pious, this is the way to go." Yeah.

Jennifer Bird Cut them off.

Dan McClellan And in the book, you talk about how scholars have long interpreted this as, it is 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 celibate life or something like that. But we have examples of early Christians who castrated themselves.

Jennifer Bird It's absolutely taken seriously by people- Yeah ... for the first three centuries. The very first, this was news to me. All these things are so fun to discover when you're not trying to prove anything, but you just start looking into it- Yeah ... and you're like, "Oh my gosh." The very first decree at the Nicaean Council, so the very first ecumenical council, right? Yeah. We all know about the creed that came out of it, but I didn't know. Yeah. I don't think I read this in seminary.

Dan McClellan They said point one, eh. Yes.

Jennifer Bird 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? It was so out of hand, that's kind of a funny little pun, that they had to make a comment about it, like they had to make- Yeah ... a declaration about it. People were taking it seriously. 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. Newsflash, 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.

Dan Beecher Lay it out there, man. We love it. Yeah.

Dan McClellan We'll worry about the advertisers later. Okay. Okay.

Dan Beecher They don't listen to the show. They're fine. Right.

Jennifer Bird But also, your comfort or discomfort here, but when people say that because he doesn't have testes, he's not having sex, that tells us you are thinking of sex as one act, right? Mm-hmm. 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. Do you know? It's more than that. And also, sometimes men without testes can still get an erection. All of the different things. And then what this article I read by Hester reminded me of, which was that in the first century, eunuchs had reputations, right? Earned or not, they had reputations for being sexually active with both men and women. Hmm. And women over the centuries very much valued having sex with eunuchs because of the automatic birth control. And then you also look at the way eunuchs are talked about in the writings, again. Their language is quite rude and denigrating, right? But this monstrous third version of humanity, right? They're not fully male. They're not female. They're some of both. This is a third. It's not ever clearly said a third gender, but we're talking- Mm-hmm ... 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. 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- Yeah ... he is affirming these people who were ostracized. There's this piece to it all that is stunning to me that people do not take seriously. I remember having it at... Oh, go ahead, Dan. No.

Dan McClellan I was just going to say, and everybody is negotiating with these texts, and so- Right ... people are bringing- Exactly ... 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- Right ... and sex. Right. And I'm not aware of any indication that a bunch of Christians went around going, "How dare you?" "These people over there are misusing Matthew 19." And you mentioned Hester. Just for the listeners- Yeah ... I just want to mention that's David Hester, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, "Eunuchs and the Postgender Jesus: Matthew 19:12 and Transgressive Sexualities" is the paper that you referenced there.

Jennifer Bird 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 out there now, so. It's linked there. Yeah. It's linked there- There you go. Okay ... because it's so good. And he references really important other scholarship about sexualities and eunuchs in the first century, and it's great stuff in terms of other religious traditions and their use of and appreciation of castrated men, and so.

Dan Beecher You might want to, I was going to ask you at the end of the interview, but tell everybody what your website is right now- Sure ... just so that they can go and look for it. Thank you. Yeah.

Jennifer Bird It's my full name, so it's Jennifer with two Ns, Grace, G-R-A-C-E, Bird, B-I-R-D.com. Okay. Good. Yeah. Thank you.

Dan Beecher That's a good place for people to go, apparently, and get links to- Some ...

Jennifer Bird some awesome- Some scholarship that is really important- Scholarship, yeah ... when I reference it in my live streams or something like that. Yeah. Things that have been shared publicly, I'll make available there kind of thing.

Dan McClellan 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, there are more footnotes, or you can go access resources- Oh, nice ... 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 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.

Jennifer Bird 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. Mm-hmm. 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 mean sex work? Do they mean sex outside of marriage? Yeah.

Dan Beecher For those of us who don't have any ancient Greek, can we just say how has this word been translated in the various translations? What are we most likely to see in our English translations when this word comes up? Sexual immorality. Fornication. Oh. Fornication. Okay. Fornication.

Jennifer Bird That's the big one. Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that's the most common one. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Jennifer Bird And so what do we mean by that, right? What is it? Yeah. Is it having sex in your car in public? Is it... Right? I'm being serious though, in a playful way, right? Well, yeah. Even- What do you mean by that? ...

Dan McClellan for many people, this could mean oral sex. Right. Or anal sex. Right, anal sex. Exactly. Or intercrural sex. It could mean anything that is not what your social identity determines to be- Exactly ... appropriate.

Dan Beecher Sex that I don't like, or sex that- Yes ... sex that I find is dirty. Yes, exactly, Dan.

Jennifer Bird Beecher, that is exactly right. And when you see someone like Paul saying it, that just raises some fun questions because man who claims- He 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. And sure, he's probably drawing from his Hebrew Bible concepts and ideas, and sure, what he's being exposed to as he travels around the Roman Empire, 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, and he- Yeah ... clearly needed to get some action. We're taking sex advice from a guy who clearly gets the icks from all sex. Exactly. At least it seems that way.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this raises 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 morality is governed in large part by our own experiences. Totally. And a man who claims to be celibate, whether that's because he is asexual or because he is a widower who has sworn it off or for whatever reason- Mm-hmm ... this is a man who is not having the experiences that most other people are having, and yet presumes to dictate to them- Precisely ... what is right and wrong based on his own perception of- Precisely ... of those things. And so I've got a number of videos on my channel that are basically saying explicitly, Paul's sexuality has absolutely no relevance. 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 just rationalizing Greco-Roman Jewish conceptualizations of morality. Mm-hmm. Which in many ways are phenomenally outdated and even harmful. Right. Exactly.