Silence, Woman!

Dan Beecher Friends, if you've been using some of these scriptures as sexist bludgeons, I say unto you, "Go and sin no more."

Dan McClellan I saw what you did there.

Dan Beecher Thank you.

Dan McClellan I saw what you did.

Dan Beecher You brought it around on the- It's a full circle sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That was- I had that one in my back pocket right there.

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

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

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

Dan Beecher Things are going well. It's ladies' night here on Data Over Dogma, because we are going to explore two Bible stories involving women, which is always an interesting moment. Neither of them have a name, which is common- Yeah ... for Bible stories, I suppose.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah. But we're going to be doing some interesting-- We're looking at them in an interesting way. This is going to be textual healing.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher That's what we're calling the segment, so maybe we should just dive on in.

Dan McClellan All right, let's do it. What are we looking at first?

Dan Beecher So the first thing we're going to look at is from John, and if you go by what several internet sources that I looked at say- Mm-hmm ... it starts in John chapter 7, verse 53, which is the very last verse- Right ... in the chapter of John 57. And it's the weirdest place to switch chapters I've ever thought I've ever encountered in my life.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher Because it starts with, "Then each of them went home," comma, and then we go on to chapter eight.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So it's really just the beginning of John chapter eight.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But that's just the weirdest break I've ever seen, and might be indicative of what we're going to be talking about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan So this is the famous story of the woman taken in adultery, caught in adultery, the pericope adulterae, as some people who cannot pronounce Latin very well, such as myself, like to call it. This is the famous story where Jesus' opponents bring this woman and throw her on the ground before him, and then he doodles in the dirt of the temple floor. So it's been brought up before on our show, but this time we're actually going to talk in a little more detail- Yeah ... about what's going on. And let me see if I can find how many verses are in here. So it looks like we've got 12 verses. Should we just go ahead and read through it first just to set the table or?

Dan Beecher I don't know that we need to do the whole thing.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Basically, we got Jesus, he's in the temple.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher "All the people came to him and sat down and he began to teach them."

Dan McClellan So when people argue that when the text says all, it means all. So this means every last person on earth came to him- Yes ... came to Jesus.

Dan Beecher Literally, if you're a Bible literalist, then yes, all of the humans on earth- ... came and sat at his feet in the temple in Jerusalem.

Dan McClellan Let me just make sure that's in the Greek.

Dan Beecher Yep.

Dan McClellan Paschos.

Dan Beecher Okay, good.

Dan McClellan Good.

Dan Beecher So everybody on earth came. The scribes and the Pharisees... Why did the scribes, why were they involved? Anyway, a bunch of dudes brought a woman, who had been caught literally in the act of adultery.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher In flagrante delicto, as they say.

Dan McClellan That disgusting.

Dan Beecher And, anyway, they apparently grabbed her out of the act- Mm-hmm ... dragged her to Jesus- Mm-hmm ... and demanded that the law of Moses says that they're supposed to stone such a woman.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And apparently trying to catch him out on something, they say, "What do you say?"

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher It literally says, verse six says, "They said this to test him so that they might have some charge to bring against him."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher What does that mean? So they're trying to catch him in a theological faux pas so that they can charge him with a crime or what?

Dan McClellan Kinda. They're trying to catch him in between a rock and a hard place. Force him to answer one of two ways. Either say, "Yes, she needs to be stoned. Stone her," or, "No, she doesn't need to be stoned." And if he says yes, then they can go to the Romans and wag their fingers and say, "See? He wanted to execute this woman, but we don't have authority to execute." That is unilaterally the prerogative of Rome.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And so they could get Jesus in trouble with Rome.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan If he says, "No, don't stone her," then Jesus is in trouble with the local authorities because he's denying the law of Moses even though- Yeah, then he's in trouble with Moses.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Even though this obviously was not something that was practiced at the time.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But basically, they're trying to force him to choose one of two options which they imagine either way will be helpful for them. And this is something that, this is a frequent rhetorical ploy for the author of John, that they're trying to trick Jesus into either incriminating himself in regards to the Romans or in regards to the law of Moses.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher So- This is where Jesus, as you put it, doodles in the ground.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher We do not get to know what he wrote in the dirt with his finger.

Dan McClellan I have a theory about this, though.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And there are people like, "Ooh, they wrote the names of all the people who were standing around," or, "He wrote their sins, and they all were individually convicted." But there is another part of the Bible, and I think I brought it up on the show before, where we have suspected adultery, where we have the temple, where we have writing, where we have the dirt of the temple floor.

Dan Beecher Oh, I know exactly what this is.

Dan McClellan This is Numbers. This is Numbers 5, the Sotah, the ordeal of bitter waters, where if the man suspects his wife of adultery, he can bring her to the priest, and the priest writes out a curse, and scrapes the ink of the curse off into a pot full of water, and then takes dirt from the temple floor and chucks that in the pot as well. And then she has a line that she says, and then she's to drink the bitter water. And then if she's innocent, the text says she will conceive. And if she is guilty, basically, she is deformed, so that she is rendered basically infertile. Probably would kill her if this thing, what it says actually happens, says the womb will distend or something like that and her genitals will drop.

Dan Beecher And we won't get back into our argument about whether that means that she had an abortion or not.

Dan McClellan Right. So what we have here, I would argue, is kind of the themes here are being brought together where Jesus is basically being represented as the one who has this authority. Because in the Sotah, it is God who declares guilt or innocence.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because they don't have evidence, and so that's what an ordeal is.

Dan Beecher That's- Right ...

Dan McClellan throw the witch in the river. If she drowns, she wasn't a witch. If she lives, we execute her.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Either way, things do not go well for the woman- Yes ... accused of being a witch. But, it's a way of saying God's going to decide- Right ... how it goes. And so Jesus writing in the dirt of the temple floor is kind of evoking, in my opinion, the idea of writing, of adultery, of guilt, of innocence, of being before Adonai, before the Lord in the temple. And so I don't think he was writing anything at all. One, it's not historical. This is a literary creation.

Dan Beecher How dare you.

Dan McClellan I'm on record saying this for multiple years now. So, there is nothing real behind this literary creation. So- Right ... there was nothing to be written. But I think the literary point is to have the writing to make people think of, the writing of the curse that gets scraped into the water and mixed in with the dirt from the temple floor. So that's my opinion. I don't know if other scholars have made that argument before. In fact, I might need to write a paper about that or something if no one has made that argument before.

Dan Beecher But because we don't know, we don't have any more information about this than just what's on the page, my theory is just as valid as yours, which is that he was just stalling for time while he tried to figure out what he was going to say. He's just like, "Well," he was looking like he was doing something portentous while he figured out, "Hmm, okay."

Dan McClellan Sorry, I was just thinking of the scene in "Big Lebowski" where he's in the guy's home, and he takes a phone call, and he's doodling something on a, he's writing something on a pad.

Dan Beecher Jackie Treehorn.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And he goes and tries to make a little squeeze of what was ...

Dan Beecher Yeah, Lebowski jumps up and takes a pencil and does a pencil rubbing of the next page- Yeah ... to figure out what he was writing. And it was a dirty doodle.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, so yes. So Jesus has been dirty doodling on the ground. Literally dirty. It was literal dirt. And then verse seven, "When they kept on questioning him- Mm-hmm ... he straightened up and said to them, 'Let anyone among you...'" Oh, see, this is where the KJV has an advantage because it's such a better wording than this. But I'm just going to do the- ...

Dan McClellan NRSV.

Dan Beecher "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So this is the very famous line, which is better rendered, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Much more poetic, much nicer, less clunky. And very famous, too, right?

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And they all sort of disperse, with a harrumph, one by one.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it says they were being convicted by their own conscience. Well, that's what KJV says. "They went away one by one, beginning with the elders." Oh, it doesn't say anything about convicted. Oh, I bet that's part of the Textus Receptus that is not in the critical text. That's verse nine.

Dan Beecher Dun-dun-dun. And we're going to get to what's in what text soon.

Dan McClellan Anyway- Yes ...

Dan Beecher then Jesus says, he's left there alone with the woman.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And he says, "Has no one condemned you?" Meaning, "Did anyone throw a rock at you?" And she says, "No." And he says, "Then neither do I condemn you. Go your way," and again- ... doing bad wording. "And from now on, do not sin again," or, "Go and sin no more," which is a much better wording, NRSV. Sometimes you can use the better wording if you want to, or the nicer sounding wording.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that is pretty clunky wording.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So anyway, that's the story. I think most people have heard that one. Most people- Yeah.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah ... that's a pretty, that's a famous- One of the most famous stories from the Bible, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah, absolutely.

Dan McClellan But in your NRSVUE- Yeah ... what comes after the quotation mark?

Dan Beecher Two brackets.

Dan McClellan Two closing brackets.

Dan Beecher Closing brackets.

Dan McClellan Correct. Brackets which open up way back at John 7:53.

Dan Beecher Correct.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there's a note there that probably says something along the lines of, "Most ancient authorities lack or omit," or something like that. Verse 7:53 all the way through 8:11.

Dan Beecher And- I don't know why they needed to double bracket it. Were they worried that a single bracket just was insufficient to contain all of this stuff?

Dan McClellan I guess so. Maybe it doesn't stand out if it's a bracket. They might use brackets for interjections and things like that in other parts of the text.

Dan Beecher But you're right.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher There is a footnote that says that most ancient authorities lack blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And- So talk about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And what we're after here.

Dan McClellan When we say most ancient authorities, we mean every single authority before the 4th century CE. Now that's- Wow. And then many that come after the 4th century CE. But additionally, once it does start showing up in manuscripts, it's not in this spot in John.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan One of the early manuscripts that has it actually has the story in Luke, and then the other ones that have it in John have it in different spots in the gospel before it ultimately kind of settles in the location where we find it now. And, there's a book by Bruce Metzger called "Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament" from 1971, and I highly recommend this book for anybody who has an interest in textual criticism of the New Testament. It basically goes through, and where there are significant manuscript variants, you'll find anywhere from a sentence to a few paragraphs explaining what's going on there. And so there are actually two pages and then a few extra lines of two other pages discussing this variant, and it starts off, "The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the Pericope of the Adulteress is overwhelming." And then lists one, two, three, four, like 20 manuscripts that do not have this.

Dan Beecher And- And we're not talking about-- This is New Testament, which means that, it seems to me that these older manuscripts are likely definitive, meaning they come from much closer to the time that this was- Yeah ... that this text was produced.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Now, older doesn't necessarily mean more original because you can have things fall out, you can have things added in almost anywhere along the way. But when this happens, there are two reasons it can happen. It can be intentional, or it can be unintentional. And when it's unintentional, we usually can tell. We usually have evidence that this has happened. For instance, there are cases where the scribe is reading, they move over to their other text where they write, and then they come back to the manuscript, and usually when you end, you make note of either the word that just ended or the word that starts that you haven't copied, and you come and you look for that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Either end of word or beginning of the word to see where you're going to come back to. And if you have words in close connection to each other that either end the same way or begin the same way, sometimes the scribal eye will go to the wrong word.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you can either repeat words or you can skip words. Homeoteleuton is where the word ends in the same way, and homeoarcton is where the next word begins the same way, and that can account for haplography, which is where words are omitted, or dittography, which is where words are repeated. You really have nothing like that that could possibly account for how this could be omitted. And so- Right ... there's no real way to account for how this could have been left out of all of these very early manuscripts.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay. And so from a text critical point of view, we're about as sure as we can be that this is something that somebody added later to a manuscript that did not originally have it.

Dan Beecher This is one of those funny moments where this is a beloved moment in the scripture. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan This is a powerful story.

Dan Beecher I love this story in the scripture.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, it's hard to let go of this. But, so it's so funny that we now see someone adding something that's really cool. I don't know what their motivation was for adding it. I'm guessing we don't even have any guesses as to who added it or what the motivation was or any of that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan No, we don't. There aren't any clues as to who could've been responsible for this. I think just somebody at some point came up with a story, though. There are probably numerous stories similar to this in the sense of little one-off short stories about Jesus that were in circulation orally and probably even in text around the first, second, third centuries that we never found out about and will never find out about.

Dan Beecher And this- Right ...

Dan McClellan is probably just one of those stories that happened to work its way- into one of the gospel texts. And because of how powerful it is thought to be, or that it is, it has just stuck around. And even the NRSVUE, which we know was not written by the author of John, is still leaving it in there.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They have the double brackets, but you can't cut this out without Breaking some hearts.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan A lot of people would be upset about that. However, not everything about this story is all rainbows and butterflies. There's a wonderful book called "Good Book" by Jill Hicks Keaton, which we need to have her on the show. I talked- Hmm ... to her about being on the show. And her book, "Good Book," is about how particularly white evangelicals try to save the Bible to save themselves. In other words, they try to make everything about the Bible sound good, and she goes in and tries to show that there are lots of ways that a lot of these stories actually are not as good as we would like them to be. And there is a lengthy discussion about this pericope because it is still pretty misogynist the way this story is told.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's true. For instance- There's no man brought in for taking the adulterer.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The man is, eh. Nothing wrong with what he's doing. Now, there's an argument to make that technically there might not be anything wrong. I don't think the story says, but if he were the married one, then there wouldn't really be an issue here. No, it would have to be her who is married, in which case, yeah, it would be a problem.

Dan Beecher But yeah.

Dan McClellan The law says that he should be stoned as well. So- Right ... they're focusing only on her.

Dan Beecher And- Maybe he was just fast. They could only get her. They caught them in the act.

Dan McClellan Fast of foot, you mean?

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's what I'm saying.

Dan McClellan Okay. And he got away is what you're saying.

Dan Beecher He's quick.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I mean, could've been in all the ways. He could've been quick in every way.

Dan McClellan But yes. I was going to say, because it was in the act.

Dan Beecher Yes. There's a naked guy running around Jerusalem that they don't talk about in this story, but- Yeah.

Dan McClellan But if we assume that either the author had more details in mind or that the way the story was circulated, there were more details that accreted to it, she's not exonerated. Jesus is not saying, "Hey, you're fine."

Dan Beecher He says- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan "Hey, basically this is about me."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "This is about tricking me into criminalizing myself to one group or another. You're a pawn in a story about me."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "Your life hangs in the balance as a pawn in a story about me." And there are other ways that Jill talks about how it's still a story deeply rooted in misogyny and patriarchy- Yes ... and in a culture that treats the lives and the agency of women as superfluous, as expendable, as supplements and window dressing to a world that is by, for, and about men.

Dan Beecher So, yeah.

Dan McClellan While it is a powerful story about forgiveness, it is still ultimately a deeply sexist one.

Dan Beecher Well, save some of the condemnation of misogyny for the second story we're going to handle on the show.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher I did want to go back to the idea that the NRSV did decide to leave this in.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And the reason that I want to talk about that is because we've talked about other verses that they have chosen to exclude- Yeah ... on these grounds, on the grounds that this was very likely not original to the text, and therefore, we're going to exclude them. And we have evidence. And I remember you talking about seeing the thing in the margins, so we had a reason to know that it was a scribe- Mm-hmm ... interpolating something into the text.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is that the reason why those are excluded, and we don't have that degree of evidence, and that's why they're leaving this in? Or do you think they're leaving it in just because it's beloved?

Dan McClellan I think they're leaving it in probably for two reasons. One is how long it is. It's not a single verse.

Dan Beecher It, I think, is 12 verses.

Dan McClellan Right. And so that's a huge chunk. But yes, the other reason would be how beloved it is, because the lines you draw between what you leave in and take out can get pretty thin. And if you have the option of saying, "We can always mark it off as something-" Yeah ... then that's an easier decision to make. That makes the decision a lot easier because you're giving up a lot to totally omit this story, and there's a degree to which Bible translations are also trying to represent the tradition in addition to just the text itself. The NRSV is the property of a colloquium of churches.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so even when they were doing all the updates that just got published last year with the updated edition, everything had to be signed off on by the representatives from this colloquium of churches. And so there are still Bible believers behind this who are pulling strings. And so I'm sure that's a part of it as well. And we talked about the ending of Mark, how that is also Almost certainly a late addition, but you're not going to find many Bible translations willing to just say, "Hey, we're just going to omit all of this," because it is something that has been influential within Christianity and the Bible for literally 2,000 years.

Dan Beecher Right. In terms of omission versus leaving it in, it seems obvious to me, and you can sort of back me up or check me on this. It seems obvious to me that throughout the Bible, especially going back to the Hebrew Bible, there was clearly a tradition of bringing in stories that they felt were worthy. And even if it wasn't true or if it was an uplifting or a good story, or it illustrated something, there's a tradition of leaving that in- Mm-hmm ... or putting that in. And so it feels like, to some extent, even if this wasn't original to the author of John, it's in keeping with the ideas of good things belong in scripture.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And this is that, or something.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I've said it before, I get asked all the time, "What's the best translation?" And my answer is usually somewhere along the lines of, "Whatever translation does the job for you, does whatever you're engaging the Bible to do." And yeah, a part of the purpose of scriptures is to inspire and things like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, completely fictial.

Dan Beecher Ficial?

Dan McClellan That's not a word.

Dan Beecher Sure. It's that too.

Dan McClellan Fictional. I think I couldn't decide between fiction and fictional and just went with neither. One of the most powerful stories in all of the New Testament. And so this is as well. And so it serves a purpose, which I think gives a lot of people reason to hold onto it.

Dan Beecher Okay. That's great. I think that that is a wonderful discussion, and I think we should turn from a beloved story- Mm-hmm ... to a but problematic story.

Dan McClellan But problematic.

Dan Beecher Okay. So we're going to need some real textual healing on this thing. When I get that... Oh, I can't sing songs.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher So we're jumping to 1 Corinthians- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan chapter 14.

Dan Beecher Yes. Now, I messaged you about this because you made some posts about this.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Because there's a new paper that just came out- Yeah ... discussing this in depth.

Dan McClellan Yes. So we're looking at 1 Corinthians 14, and there are a couple passages in here that are infamous or famous, or infamous- That's right ... not just famous. It's infamous. Depending on your outlook. That has to do with women speaking in church.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So I'll just read the two as they appear in the New Revised Standard Version. So this is 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. They read, "Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is something they want to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." Now, this is problematic for a number of reasons. To begin, we just got done a few chapters earlier with Paul explaining that, hey, when women are prophesying in church, they just need to have their hair covered. And so it seems odd for the same author, a few chapters later, to just be like, "By the way, women, nope, can't say a word."

Dan Beecher Yeah. Not only are they not allowed to prophesy, they can't talk.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That seems like a big reversal to have within the space of a few verses.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is an odd thing to appear here because we just got done talking about prophecy. "Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If someone sitting receives a revelation, let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged." And so we're kind of going back to the discussion in 1 Corinthians 11, "And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is a God not of disorder but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints." And then suddenly, "By the way, women have to shut up."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then it goes back to, "Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?" So it seems like it's out of place.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's this sudden interjection, "Wait, I forgot I hate women. Let me make that clear." And then it returns to what they were talking about before.

Dan Beecher Because you're right. The section that's talking about if anyone speaks, it's just sort of talking about keeping... The section in the NRSVUE has a section heading called Orderly Worship.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And it's just sort of how to keep things from getting a little out of hand- Mm-hmm ... let two or three prophets speak. But it starts out, "What should be done then, my brothers and sisters?" When you come together- In the NRSV, yeah.

Dan McClellan In the NRSVUE, it says that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan However, in the Greek, it's which is masculine plural, vocative.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan In the Greek, if you were addressing a company of mixed gender, you would default to the masculine plural.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is common in a number of languages.

Dan Beecher So it's not actually- Including English in some cases.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I'm cool with that.

Dan Beecher You can say mankind and mean all of humankind. There is a tradition of that that we've largely eschewed, but it's there in our history.

Dan McClellan It's there, yes. And so, yeah, it's not clear if this is speaking just about brethren or the brethren and the sistren.

Dan Beecher All right. Fair enough.

Dan McClellan But we have translations that do that. The New English Translation does the same, brothers and sisters. The NRSVUE does the same. But we just got done talking about women speaking in tongues and everything like that. And verse 27 says, "If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there only be two, or at most three, and each in turn, and let one interpret." So provided nothing has changed between, I think, chapter 11 and chapter 14, this should be including the women.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then it's like, yeah, let's just make sure everybody have their own seat, and they're dressed the right way, and then- And also, ladies, shut up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then make sure everybody's got a drink, and we want to make sure that it's cool enough in the building. However, there are manuscripts where this interjection, these two verses, don't appear right here. They appear down after verse 40.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan At the very end of the chapter. So we have what I like to call textual instability.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Which means it's not clear where exactly this was intended to go, which is frequently a sign that it is a late addition. Not every time, but the trend is in that direction. Just like we talked about with the woman taken in adultery. Initially, it's popping up in different places within John and even in different gospels. And so here as well, it's in different parts. And we talked about scribes going back and skipping words or repeating words or things like that because they have what's called eye skips. Parablepsis is the $2 word for that. And that's where you go back to the wrong spot.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And sometimes words can be transposed for that reason. None of the words around this text can explain why it would be in one place versus the other. In other words, there's no good explanation for why a scribe would accidentally have moved it to the other place. And if it were just accidentally moved by a scribe, it would be the largest chunk of text ever known to have been transposed in a biblical manuscript.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because when we look at the woman taken in adultery, that's because they're trying to find a place to stick it. Once they've stuck it somewhere, it stays there. But there's not a good case to make for a scribe accidentally moving it from one place to the other, which is supportive of the conclusion that it was a late addition. Now, the reason I made these posts, because this paper that just came out by a scholar named Richard Fellows, and it's entitled "The Interpolation of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and the Reversal of the Name Order of Prisca and Aquila at 1 Corinthians 16:19." And this is an open access paper, so maybe we can include a link to the paper in the show notes, so that anyone who wants to go read this paper for themselves can have quick access to it.

Dan Beecher Wouldn't it be great if I remembered to do that? I hope I do.

Dan McClellan Well, hopefully you'll get some emails if you don't. And Fellows here is not just making a stronger case that this is an interpolation. People have been arguing for a long time that this is an interpolation. In fact, I've made videos where I've suggested that it's probably the consensus view. I don't have any robust data to indicate that. It's just that when I've seen scholarly discussions of this, seems to me that the majority of scholars agree that this is an interpolation, or at least does not originate with Paul. But in addition to these verses, he argues that verse 37 has been changed as well. Verse 37 right now says, "Anyone who claims to be a prophet or spiritual must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord." However, there are a number of manuscripts that just say that what I am writing to you is of the Lord.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher NRSVUE has a footnote on the word command, and it says, "Other ancient authorities lack a command."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So, what I am writing to you is of the Lord.

Dan McClellan Interesting.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And a command of the Lord would be uncharacteristic of Pauline writing.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so Fellows makes the case that this is also a late addition, probably by whoever added these two verses, as a way to say women are not allowed to speak. Not only that, this is a command of the Lord. Basically escalating the authority with which they say that women are not allowed to speak. So it's not just ooh, kind of touchy feely of the Lord, but no, this is a command of the Lord.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then we've got this interesting case of 1 Corinthians 16:19, where Paul makes a reference to Prisca, which is a woman's name. And Aquila, which is a man's name. And these two people are mentioned a few other times elsewhere in the New Testament, but in every other occurrence, it is Prisca who is mentioned first, and Aquila who is mentioned afterwards. Here in 1 Corinthians 16:19, Aquila is mentioned first and Prisca is mentioned afterwards. So, this verse has the man mentioned first. Everywhere else- Right ... it's the woman who's mentioned first, and there is a lot of people understand Prisca to have been mentioned first because she was an authority within the church system, more so than Aquila.

Dan Beecher And so- Interesting ...

Dan McClellan the alteration here, the switching of the two, is again, probably by the same person who put these two verses in there, intended to be a way to undermine the ecclesiastical authority of women in the passage.

Dan Beecher To demote Prisca- Yeah ... to being under her man.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Wait, are we thinking of Prisca and Aquila as a couple or are they just two different people who are mentioned in the same breath with each other?

Dan McClellan I'm pretty sure they're considered a couple. Let me just- Okay ... see if I have any.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Prisca and her husband.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So yeah, it's a way to say, "No. The man's in charge here." And so, again, probably by the same person, and this rhetoric that we find particularly in 1 Corinthians 14 would resonate with rhetoric we find in places like 1 Timothy 2, which is even more explicit. In fact, let me take a look at 1 Timothy 2:11. "Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She is to keep silent." And why is that? "For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." So, the snake tricked Eve, therefore Eve doesn't get any authority.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And neither do any women. Scholars are in widespread agreement that this passage in 1 Timothy, along with the rest of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus, weren't written by Paul, but were probably written decades after his death. And so it makes sense that someone coming through later would be like, "Hey, man, let's get that misogyny in there and make these texts agree a little better about how we're in charge and women cannot be," even when it comes to mentioning Aquila before Prisca. Which is funny because Prisca is mentioned first in the epistles of Timothy.

Dan Beecher Right. I just think there may be people listening to this who don't appreciate... They can appreciate that it's interesting that something was added in, but the importance of these verses has echoed through the ages to right, like one year ago, almost exactly a year ago, the Southern Baptist Convention kicked out a whole bunch of congregations because they were allowing women to be pastors.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Based largely on this verse, these verses.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This is something that is still happening today. This is something that is still highly relevant. One of those churches was the Saddleback Church, which is a huge church.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I believe it's in Los Angeles or something. But yeah, a very big megachurch kicked out of association with the Southern Baptists because of these verses, because of an interpretation of these verses. So it's pretty relevant to learn that these were likely not part of Paul's idea.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this is such a big problem for a lot of folks today, and particularly Christian nationalists, because it's such an important part of their worldview and their structure of power. These passages that are either pseudepigraphic, entire books that were deceptively written in someone else's name long after their death or are interpolated into passages that don't agree with that worldview. But yeah, this is something that's the embeddedness of the patriarchy in so much Christianity today is just so deep. Women weren't even allowed to have their own credit cards in our country until the '70s.

Dan Beecher Right. The man was in charge of the house and- And the finances and all of that ... and the finances and everything.

Dan McClellan And now we have a bunch of people in state and local and even in national government who are trying to return to this, who are trying to criminalize no-fault divorce.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Who are trying to argue for, I forget what they call it, household voting or something like that, where every household gets a single vote and the head of the household is the one who decides that. Here in Utah, within the last 10 years, I think it might've been 2016, there was a precinct chair up in Davis County for the GOP who went on to social media and declared that most of our social ills started once women got out of the kitchen and started voting. And I think the head of the state GOP denounced it, but there were plenty of people coming to this person's defense and saying, "No, this is right." And there are Christian nationalists all over social media right now trying to leverage First Corinthians 14:34 through 35 as well as First Timothy and other passages in the Pastoral Epistles to try to insist that it's God's very will that women be subordinate to men. Oh, who was it? This just happened yesterday. An NFL team's kicker gave- Oh ... like a commencement speech or something like that.

Dan Beecher I saw that.

Dan McClellan You saw that?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Didn't that make your skin crawl?

Dan Beecher Yeah. I was shocked about it. I don't know why I was shocked. And I don't know what school it was at. I didn't catch what school it was. So if it was a Christian school, if it was specifically a conservative Christian school, it would make more sense.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He wasn't booed off the stage that I could see.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher It definitely wasn't Mount Holyoke or whatever, but I don't know why I chose that one.

Dan McClellan So it was at Benedictine College.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan A Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas.

Dan Beecher And- But yeah, he went into a whole thing about how- Kansas City Chiefs kicker, yeah ... he went into a whole thing about how he was very proud of all of the women who got their degrees, but he hopes that they can find their true avocation, which is to be a wife and a mother, and that his wife wasn't happy until she found hers, and all this.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher He went into a whole bunch of stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He says, "I'm on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation as a wife and a mother. I am beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all, homemaker."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which there's nothing wrong with wanting- Being a homemaker, yeah ... to be a homemaker. And that's fine if you can make that work for you, and it's what you enjoy. And you somehow are able to- Whether you're a man or a woman.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Great. Go have fun. That's fine.

Dan McClellan But that's- In this economy, if you can do that, more power to you.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Good luck.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Get yourself a professional kicker.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah, the idea that this is a biblical take- Yeah ... which is what he's basing this on- Yeah ... let's not be disingenuous here. That book has plenty of misogyny and plenty of patriarchy and- 100% ... all that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But they're leaning so heavily on these verses- Yeah ... that we've been talking about, and if these verses can be pretty confidently demonstrated to be not from Paul, at very least not from that source.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Just half an hour ago, I was saying that we might as well leave in stuff even though we know that it wasn't originally there. So I can't be too hypocritical about that. This was clearly the expression of a prominent belief of the time.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Because it's an expression of a prominent belief of this time.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher We got to be real about that. But if you're leaning that heavily, if you're making major decisions for entire denominations of Christianity- And it might influence- ... based on these ...

Dan McClellan legislation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If it has controlled women's access to power and resources and liberty, as it absolutely unquestionably has for thousands of years, it's important to get it right.

Dan Beecher I think it's safe to call that out as being sort of an unacceptable use of a spurious part of the book.

Dan McClellan It's like- And I think this reveals something disingenuous about a lot of people's approach to the Bible.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan It's unacceptable not because God deems it unacceptable, but because their worldview is so deeply embedded in their understanding of themselves that it is just not acceptable to change it, even if the message is, "Hey, guess what? You can still consider everything else God's word. You should be happy that we have discovered that, hey, it turns out this isn't actually part of God's word," depending on how you understand that. You can get rid of these passages now, and you can live in a freer, more equal society, and it's like, "No, I prefer the less equal society."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's no reason you can't say, "Okay, guess what? That's superfluous. We don't need it anymore. We're going to renegotiate our understanding of society based on what we have a better idea of as the actual genuine Bible." But I think because of inspiration, because of inerrancy, because of univocality, the house of cards of that worldview has to be held up, and no one card can be taken away.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which shows that the concern is not for understanding what's true. The concern is for preserving the house of cards above all else.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, and especially when- the preservation of the house of cards, especially when you're one of the ones living comfortably in that house of cards- Yeah ... and becoming rich because of that house of cards.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There are people, men, who are deeply devoted to maintaining this misogynist, patriarchal worldview.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so, yeah, they lean on those verses as their support structure for that.

Dan McClellan And I think it's easy to say everybody on our end of this particular spectrum benefits in one way or another from it. Maybe not directly. There are plenty of people who are getting the short end of the economic stick these days who are still agents of this worldview because the minority that more directly and more openly is exploiting this is able to convince them that their own identity is so entangled in the success of the minority that they go to bat for them, they carry water for them. And this kind of thing happens in all different kinds of ways. A lot of historians will talk about the Revolutionary War, how there were ways that the powerful folks convinced poor whites to go to war for the wealthy by ginning up the enemy on the other side and convincing poor whites that their interests were met or they were best served by carrying water for the interests of the wealthy. I think there are a lot of different ways that people cognitively get convinced that their self-identity, their self-esteem, and everything is just entangled with the interests of the powerful.