0:04

Hello and welcome to the Enter the Bible

0:06

podcast, where you can get answers or at least

0:08

reflections on everything you wanted to know

0:10

about the Bible but were afraid to ask.

0:13

I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker , and

0:15

today Katie

0:19

wasn't able to join us for this particular

0:21

podcast, but we have a wonderful

0:23

special guest today.

0:26

Dr. Love Sechrest is

0:28

the associate provost and professor of

0:30

theology at Mount Saint Mary's University

0:33

in Maryland, and the author of the recent

0:35

book Race and Rhyme:

0:37

Rereading the New Testament, which

0:39

is a womanist reading

0:41

of several texts

0:44

from the New Testament. She's a New Testament scholar,

0:46

and that book is published by Eerdmans.

0:48

So welcome, love. Thank you so

0:50

much for taking the time out of your busy schedule

0:53

to talk with us today.

0:55

Thanks so much for having me. It's a delight.

0:57

Oh good good good good. Well,

0:59

so this is going to be a two parter,

1:02

which we which we sometimes do because

1:04

the topic is so large.

1:07

So we, we had a question from

1:09

one of our listeners and

1:11

again, as

1:13

our regular listeners know, you can go to the Enter

1:16

the Bible org website

1:18

to ask a question of your own,

1:20

which we will try to address on this podcast.

1:23

But the question for today

1:29

is an important topic both

1:31

for biblical interpretation but also

1:33

for current

1:36

events, as it's very

1:39

relevant for, today. And

1:41

the question is this: What did Jesus have

1:43

to say about race and

1:45

ethnicity? And so

1:47

in this, in this first part

1:49

of this topic, we're going to talk

1:52

a concentrate more about concepts

1:55

of race and ethnicity in Jesus'

1:57

time. And then

1:59

in part two, we're going to talk about specific

2:01

New Testament texts that Dr

2:04

Sechrest has written on.

2:06

So Love, I know

2:08

this is a big topic. What

2:10

did Jesus have to say about race and ethnicity?

2:13

How would you begin to address it?

2:16

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for

2:18

to your readers for the question. It's

2:21

one that is near and dear to my heart. I

2:23

have been focused on trying

2:26

to understand what the Bible has

2:28

to say about race and

2:30

ethnicity since I was a doctoral

2:32

student. Like these were the. These were

2:34

the questions that I was asking as

2:36

I was first starting,

2:39

you know, a very in-depth close

2:41

reading of the

2:43

New Testament and I, and

2:46

in fact, my first book, which grew out of

2:48

my dissertation, is all about that

2:50

question. But it's it's focused

2:52

on the apostle Paul, like his writings

2:54

versus the Gospels, which we're going to talk about

2:57

today. Okay. But

2:59

in that.

3:00

Just tell me, tell our listeners the name

3:02

of that first book.

3:03

Yeah, that book is called A

3:05

Former Jew: Paul and

3:07

the Dialectics of Race. And

3:10

it's with Bloomsbury

3:13

Now is the publisher of

3:15

that of that book. And

3:18

in it I, I

3:21

start off by, I started I was intrigued because

3:23

I noticed in graduate school that

3:25

as I was reading a lot of the

3:27

early Jewish texts that many New Testament

3:29

scholars and biblical scholars

3:32

read, like Josephus, who was an historian,

3:34

right?

3:35

Jewish historian around the Jewish.

3:38

Jeiwsh historian in the Roman period, Philo,

3:41

who was a Jewish theologian or philosopher,

3:44

writing pretty contemporaneous

3:47

with the time of Jesus as well,

3:49

and in both of their readings,

3:51

and they have voluminous writings, right, that

3:54

but in both of them they use the

3:56

word genos in the Greek,

3:58

which is translated, among many

4:00

things, it has a number of different translations,

4:03

but one of them is "race." And

4:06

I was particularly intrigued when they talked

4:08

about the race of Israel, right? Like

4:10

the Jewish people or the Jewish race

4:13

that those and I, I

4:15

would always wonder, what is it that they

4:17

meant by that? It can't

4:19

be what we mean by that today.

4:21

What is it that they

4:24

meant by that? And that's what that first

4:26

book explores. I

4:29

found that there were a lot of similarities

4:32

between what we mean by race

4:35

today and what they meant. For instance,

4:37

um, there's a

4:41

very close relationship between

4:43

our concept of race and our concept

4:46

of ethnicity. So much

4:48

so that many scholars are beginning, and

4:50

I follow them in talking about ethno

4:53

racial as a way of showing

4:55

that these concepts, ethnicity and race

4:57

are very close in

4:59

many, many respects and

5:01

similarly in the ancient world. There was a

5:03

Greek word, I've already talked about the Greek word genos.

5:06

Well, there was another Greek word, ethos, and this is

5:09

the word from which we derive the contemporary

5:12

word ethnicity. But in

5:14

our Bibles that word shows up all over

5:16

the place, ethnos does. And it's

5:18

mostly translated Gentiles, right?

5:21

And what

5:25

the ancient Israelites,

5:27

the early Christians meant

5:29

when they said ethnos is they were talking about

5:32

over and against Jewish, right?

5:34

Like there were Jews and there were Gentiles.

5:36

Gentile isn't really a racial group,

5:39

but it is a way of signifying

5:41

everyone else, right?

5:44

Non-Jews? Yeah.

5:45

Not Jews was really what

5:48

you really couldn't find a person

5:50

who was a Gentile who might self-identify

5:52

that way. They might call themselves a Greek or

5:54

a Roman or, you know,

5:56

Assyrian. They would talk

5:58

about their homeland. So,

6:02

so I found that the

6:04

concepts in the ancient world of

6:06

referring to a homeland are

6:08

very common with how we

6:10

think about it today, right? That

6:13

when we we talk about ethnic groups, we're

6:15

usually or like Jewish Americans,

6:17

right? Or Italian Americans

6:19

or German Americans, we're really, African

6:21

Americans. We're talking about a homeland,

6:24

right? And that and sort of

6:26

the connection with a center of gravity

6:28

with the homeland is also

6:31

very common with how race and

6:33

ethnicity were understood in the

6:35

ancient world, one way in

6:37

which at least the ancient Jewish people

6:40

differed is that

6:43

is that even more than

6:45

a homeland, and it kind of makes

6:47

sense because Jews were in a diaspora,

6:49

right, there for a long period

6:51

of time, even more than a homeland.

6:54

Their religion, their

6:56

convictions about the God of Abraham

6:58

were self defining

7:00

more so than a homeland.

7:03

Not that a homeland wasn't important. Israel

7:05

and Palestine were very important,

7:07

but of sometimes greater

7:10

importance, was that the

7:12

convictions they had about about

7:15

their their God, their religion.

7:18

And so that becomes. Yeah.

7:20

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I'm wondering

7:23

if I'm going to try this out and see

7:25

if this is right. So I'm

7:27

a I'm an Old Testament scholar Hebrew Bible,

7:30

right? And in

7:33

the Old Testament you talk about the goyim, the nations

7:35

right surrounding Israel. So

7:38

there's this sense of, you

7:41

know, whatever the, you

7:44

know, the Moabites or the Ammonites

7:46

or the Amalekites or whoever, right? They're

7:48

associated with the

7:50

different nations, right? Surrounding Israel.

7:53

And Israel itself is a nation

7:56

or a people among them. As

7:59

you know, after the exile,

8:02

during the exile and after the exile, as

8:05

the Jews are scattered. First

8:07

the Israelites and then the Jews are scattered

8:10

across the ancient Near Eastern world.

8:12

It's not so much about nationhood

8:15

as it is about peoplehood.

8:18

Does that..

8:19

Peoplehood, yes. That's,

8:22

in fact people or

8:26

some of the translations of that word

8:28

genos are tribe,

8:32

people, nation.

8:37

All of those or even

8:41

like just sort of a swarm,

8:44

right? A race of bees.

8:46

One ancient writer uses that

8:49

sort of a type. It's getting

8:51

at the idea of a type of a people

8:54

or a type of an animal,

8:56

you know, group, et cetera. Yeah.

8:58

So , that's a great way of thinking about

9:00

it. And, I

9:05

think that's

9:08

one big, big difference is in terms

9:10

of how Jewish people, by the time of Jesus

9:12

had begun to think about themselves

9:14

as, as a sort

9:16

of their religion was what differentiated

9:19

them more from the people around

9:21

them than just their territorial origins,

9:23

right, by that time? Not that they weren't.

9:26

That's really helpful. And

9:28

religion, I think, you know, as Christians,

9:30

we sometimes think religion is what you believe,

9:32

which is certainly part of it. But

9:35

for Jews, especially the

9:37

practices, the religious

9:39

practices, right, of keeping Sabbath,

9:41

of circumcision, of

9:44

keeping kosher. You know,

9:48

my doctor father was Jewish, John

9:50

Levinson, and he talks about, you know,

9:52

the reason Jews still survive

9:54

is because they have a particular cookbook.

9:56

Right. And circumcision

9:59

and Sabbath, of course, that these practices

10:02

distinguish them from the

10:05

nations around them or the people among whom they

10:07

live.

10:08

Yeah, I absolutely

10:10

agree with him. I think that the

10:13

practices that differentiated them and

10:17

for the ancient Jews, it was

10:19

even also difficult to separate

10:21

out politics, their politics,

10:23

from their practices. That was all, it was

10:27

defining. It was a defining

10:29

idea for them. The religion told

10:32

them where to live, how to live,

10:34

what to eat, to do, who

10:36

to obey. Right. Like, yeah,

10:39

like all of all of that, all of that

10:41

was wrapped up in and

10:43

that is the world that Jesus

10:46

enters. That's the world

10:48

that begins to

10:51

differentiate especially

10:53

after the death of Jesus. A new type,

10:56

right? Not just Jews, not just Gentiles,

10:59

but Christians as well. And

11:02

in later New Testament writings

11:04

and post biblical

11:06

or early Christian writings,

11:09

right, the Christian race

11:11

is, actually becomes a new,

11:13

a new construct. And that's what I

11:15

was so curious about. And what started

11:18

me off on this, this whole trajectory

11:21

about talking about race. Now, if

11:23

we want to sort of switch to like a

11:25

historical understanding of

11:27

what the people were saying about themselves

11:30

to actually what's in the Bible. Um,

11:33

I think the best way of thinking about

11:35

that is to differentiate the, the,

11:37

the what's similar

11:40

from what's from what's different. And

11:42

this religious component is one of the major

11:45

differences, as I've also said. But

11:47

some of the things that are similar show

11:49

up in the Gospels,

11:52

which are primarily

11:54

concerned about the story of Jesus as well. So

11:57

like the intergroup tensions

11:59

that we experience today,

12:02

whereas today those

12:04

tensions, at least in the United States,

12:06

but you can make a case that even

12:10

in many countries around the globe,

12:12

um, skin

12:14

color becomes one defining

12:17

way of talking about major

12:19

divisions. Right? And, they

12:22

can connect with and intersect with

12:24

other ways of defining people,

12:26

like economic status.

12:29

I have often

12:31

had people say yeah, well, in

12:34

say South America, we don't think

12:36

about race as black and white the

12:38

same way Americans do.

12:40

And I will say, yeah, well,

12:43

tell me about the poor in your country.

12:45

Do they skew darker or do

12:47

they not, right like you? And you'll find

12:49

a way that skin

12:52

color intersects with other

12:54

kinds of important social

12:56

components like economics. But

12:59

but it's true to say that in

13:01

the American context, in the US context,

13:04

skin color has become like the

13:06

defining way of talking about race of

13:09

and it's the tension between blacks

13:11

and whites and

13:14

in some ways also whites and

13:16

Native Americans that has

13:18

been the defining tension that

13:20

have sorted ethnic groups

13:23

throughout US history on into today.

13:26

That tension isn't the same in

13:28

the ancient world that the

13:31

when it comes to, say, thinking

13:33

about who was enslaved in Jesus'

13:35

day, it were, there

13:37

were conquered peoples of any skin color,

13:40

right? It wasn't really a skin color kind

13:42

of thing. So that's a that's a pretty important

13:44

difference. But one of the major similarities,

13:46

and one of the ways in which I have

13:48

sought to find leverage

13:50

for how the Bible can be helpful in

13:53

thinking about the racial conflict

13:55

that we have today, is in looking at

13:57

the ways that intergroup

14:00

conflict shows up in the Bible.

14:03

Let's let's with one well-known

14:05

one, like Pharisees versus

14:07

Sadducees versus the

14:09

Jesus followers. right? Like those are,

14:11

that becomes a critical tension that

14:13

goes through the gospel

14:16

stories. But I've already

14:18

talked about Jews on one hand, or

14:20

Christian Jews or Jewish Christians. However

14:22

you want to talk about or Gentiles, like

14:24

the tensions among those

14:26

groups become very helpful for thinking

14:29

about for thinking about

14:31

tensions and and

14:33

one and the gospel that that

14:35

we were going to talk about today, the Gospel of Matthew

14:38

really has a lot

14:40

of those kind of tensions show up in

14:42

quite a number of ways that it's

14:45

interesting. Let's, for instance, the

14:47

Gospel of Matthew starts with the genealogy,

14:49

right? And and it

14:52

identifies Jesus by his

14:54

tribal origins. Right? And

14:57

is noteworthy in the sense is

14:59

that it includes sort of

15:01

the relationships that non-Jews

15:05

had over time, right?

15:07

Like one of the things that I've heard Old Testament

15:09

scholars say, and maybe you can elaborate on this,

15:11

is that in the ancient

15:14

Israelite context, it's really hard to

15:16

separate out like a pure

15:18

strain of this people group from

15:20

another people group, that there was a lot of intermingling

15:23

and that you see that same thing even

15:25

in Jesus' genealogy.

15:28

Yeah. You see that famously

15:30

there's only four women mentioned

15:32

in Jesus genealogy in Matthew 1. And,

15:35

they're all for, you

15:39

know, kind of marginalized

15:41

women for various reasons.

15:44

Tamar is the first

15:46

one who is a Judah's,

15:49

not wife, exactly, but actually

15:52

daughter in law. And then, yeah,

15:54

mother of his children. And

15:56

Tamar is a Canaanite as far as we

15:58

know, right? She's not an Israelite. And then you

16:00

have Ruth,

16:03

who is, of course, a Moabite.

16:05

Famously. Yeah. Who who

16:08

joins herself to the nation

16:10

of Israel. Right? But she's she's

16:12

not herself Israelite. She's a moabite.

16:14

And then, of course, you have Bathsheba,

16:17

though in Matthew's gospel,

16:19

she's not named, she's called the wife of Uriah.

16:22

And there's some debate whether she's Israelite

16:24

or not, but she's certainly.

16:28

She's not, she, there's

16:30

some right. The circumstances

16:33

of Bathsheba and David's relationship is,

16:36

of course, fraught with.

16:38

Yes

16:39

With power dynamics and

16:41

Yes, yes.

16:42

Anyway, that's a story for

16:44

another time. And

16:47

who have I? But of course I missed

16:49

Rahab.

16:50

Yeah, yeah.

16:52

Before Ruth, even the

16:55

the father of the mother

16:57

of Boaz is Rahab, who is

16:59

again, of course, a Canaanite who

17:02

saves the really dense

17:06

Israelite spies right, at

17:08

the beginning of Joshua. So, so,

17:11

yeah, I think it's a it's a really interesting

17:13

way to begin the gospel.

17:15

It is! He's mixed.

17:15

To say that Jesus is not

17:18

pure or yes,

17:20

in the sense of racially pure

17:22

that white supremacists talk about

17:25

today. Right?

17:25

That's right, that's right. He

17:28

is mixed, right? He is part

17:30

he is part Canaanite.

17:32

Yeah.

17:33

In some sense. Right. Like that's something

17:35

that many or at least

17:37

one leading woman anist scholar Mitzi Smith

17:39

talks about and tries

17:42

to highlight that

17:44

aspect of Jesus' identity as

17:46

a way for us to reflect on

17:49

today in light of some of the right, the

17:51

discourse and, you

17:53

know, some, you know, sort of fascist

17:56

kind of discourse that wants to talk about

17:58

purity. Yeah, racial purity

18:00

in a way that just doesn't bear

18:03

up under scrutiny, for even Jesus

18:06

Exactly, exactly.

18:07

Is one, is

18:11

identified in our holy book in

18:14

along those lines. But there are other,

18:17

there are other of these moments in the Gospel

18:19

of Matthew that seem

18:22

loaded with sort of ethnic

18:24

tension as well. There's the

18:26

that another highlight moment

18:29

really is the great commission, which

18:31

is kind of I'm going to actually bring

18:33

this up right now in my Bible software so that

18:35

I can get the the

18:38

wording, "therefore

18:40

go and make disciples.

18:42

I'm reading 28:19 Matthew 28:19

18:45

though for go and make disciples of all

18:47

nations, baptizing

18:49

them in the name of the father and the son

18:51

and the Holy Spirit. So right there,

18:53

there is a moment which, depending

18:57

on your ideology,

19:00

has been a sort

19:02

of. it has become a fraught moments, not

19:05

necessarily fraught in the context of Matthew,

19:07

but inasmuch as that kind

19:09

of an ideology of taking

19:11

over, right? other

19:15

countries and imposing your,

19:18

your perspective or your religious views

19:20

on another country has been associated

19:22

with the the evils of colonialism

19:25

and conquest. Right? Like

19:28

there and there's there's one African

19:31

woman, scholar, Musa Dube, who

19:33

writes about that in her book Postcolonial

19:36

Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. She talks

19:38

about like the ideology

19:42

that has come to dominate

19:44

parts of US history

19:46

and world history, right? Taking off from

19:48

this sort of important conquest

19:51

notions into the

19:53

spread of Christianity. So

19:56

that can be a problematic moment. This isn't

19:58

what I don't think Jesus had in mind. But

20:00

what's interesting is that we don't talk a

20:02

lot about verse 20, teaching

20:05

them to obey everything I've commanded

20:08

you, which is a really interesting,

20:10

very Jewish moment. Right. Like

20:13

in that

20:14

The Rabbi Jesus.

20:15

Because Jesus. Right. He's a rabbi and he

20:17

teaches about the correct interpretation

20:20

of Torah. That's really

20:23

what Jesus has been doing throughout the

20:25

Gospel of Matthew has been

20:27

saying, your interpretations of Torah

20:29

are this. But I say, this

20:32

is what God the Father meant

20:35

or prefers in terms of how

20:37

you interpret Scripture.

20:39

So that so it's both a very

20:41

it's kind of I want to say that Matthew,

20:44

the gospel of Matthew, has these universalizing

20:47

tendencies, right? Go to all

20:49

nations and teach them. But it also

20:51

has these very particularistic tendencies

20:53

as well, teaching them all about Torah.

20:56

Right? Yeah, that's a

20:58

very particularistic move.

21:00

Well, it kind of reminds me

21:02

of of Isaiah, right. Like Isaiah

21:04

2 where all the nations

21:07

are going to come together.

21:09

Right? And we're going to beat our

21:11

swords into plowshares and our spears into

21:13

pruning hooks, which is just this beautiful vision,

21:15

right? That has never been realized

21:17

yet in world history. Right. So

21:20

it's so it's universalist, universalistic

21:23

in that kind of sense, but it's

21:25

also very particular. Right. What? No.

21:27

They're coming to Mount Zion, right? The Mountain

21:30

Lord's house to worship the

21:32

God of Israel. Right. So it's not

21:35

it's not kind of all paths lead to

21:37

the same, you know,

21:39

mountaintop. It's a

21:41

very particular God, the

21:44

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that all

21:46

the nations are coming to,

21:48

to worship in a very particular place

21:51

in Jerusalem.

21:51

In a very particular place. And I think

21:54

you see, you begin to see those tensions in

21:56

the text that we're going

21:58

to explore in just

22:00

a little bit. But there are

22:02

there are moments in

22:04

Matthew 10, for instance,

22:07

right in the beginning of the chapter, Matthew 10:5 ,

22:10

this is where in

22:12

the narrative Jesus has sent the

22:15

the disciples out

22:17

to do their own missionary journey.

22:19

In fact, chapter ten is called the Missionary

22:21

Discourse. It's where he's teaching them

22:23

about how you know how

22:26

they should interact with conflict,

22:29

how they should preach the preach the

22:31

good news. And but the

22:33

first thing he says as he's sending them

22:35

out is don't go among the Gentiles

22:37

or into a Samaritan city. Right. It's

22:39

a very particularistic moment.

22:42

And in Matthew 15,

22:44

which is the

22:47

text that where Matthew engages

22:49

or I'm sorry, Jesus engages with the

22:51

Canaanite woman, this whole

22:53

interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite

22:55

woman is one that is just

22:57

loaded with ethnic,

23:00

uh, ethnic discourse

23:02

or ethnic influences.

23:05

It talks

23:08

about. I just want to read

23:10

a little bit. Jesus went to the regions

23:12

of Tyre and Sidon, which are

23:15

outside of Israel. So it's

23:18

a moment where Jesus is, is going

23:20

into territory outside

23:23

of Israel, having just told the, you

23:25

know, or some chapters back, having told the

23:28

disciples that that isn't a part of their mission.

23:31

So there's that. So, so there's that, there's

23:33

that tension happening right then and then

23:35

a Canaanite woman from those territories

23:38

came out and shouted, show me mercy,

23:40

son of David. Very

23:43

interesting there that first of all,

23:45

she's mentioned as a Canaanite, which

23:48

is hearkens back, right, to

23:50

sort of an ancient

23:52

way of thinking about the

23:54

other. Not not she's not

23:56

a Gentile of origin,

23:58

which, you know, Matthew uses the word gentile

24:00

all over the place. Um, but

24:03

she's a Canaanite, which which

24:05

immediately sort of evokes

24:08

the legacies of hostility

24:10

and animus and,

24:13

and war, right, that have

24:15

between Israel, sort of, and their

24:17

chief opponents that have

24:19

gone through many Old Testament

24:23

history. Right. The history of, of the

24:25

Jewish people. So by calling her

24:27

that, Matthew, who's actually recording

24:30

this, right, who is who is putting

24:32

the story together, he's reflecting on

24:34

the Jesus tradition and writing it

24:36

down in ways that sort of reflect

24:38

his cultural context,

24:41

and calling this woman a

24:44

Canaanite. So already we

24:46

have this. We have ethnic tension. But

24:48

then she calls him Son

24:50

of David, which is a sort

24:52

of a messianic title to

24:55

give. So it's very much

24:58

like having a foreign

25:00

king come to your homeland

25:03

and address him as

25:05

if he's your king. Yeah, right.

25:08

Like so. It's so already

25:10

she is exhibiting

25:12

a she's

25:14

making a political and religious

25:16

statement in a way that

25:20

just peeking ahead to the end of this story, that goes

25:22

beyond what he might have seen in his own homeland,

25:24

right? Where as he's engaging

25:27

in conflict with the religious leaders of the day.

25:29

Here's this, here's this outsider.

25:32

Yeah. Already giving him

25:34

the deference and heralding him as a

25:36

as a messianic figure when

25:39

when so many inside Israel

25:41

have not yet been able to come to that

25:43

conclusion or still coming

25:46

really grappling hard with

25:48

that conclusion.

25:49

Yes. So she so she's

25:51

seeing things that even his own disciples

25:54

or maybe his disciples, but

25:56

even people within

25:58

the Jewish community don't

26:00

recognize let, I'm going to

26:02

pause us here just because

26:05

we're going to we're going to move to those texts,

26:07

that text and another one in Matthew

26:09

in the second part of this series. But let

26:11

me just say again, thank you for

26:14

joining us for this podcast,

26:16

Love. And I look forward to diving more

26:18

into the details of the text in,

26:21

in the next podcast

26:23

and that's part two of this podcast.

26:25

So let me just say to our listeners.

26:27

Thank you for listening again to this episode

26:29

of the Enter the Bible podcast. Come

26:32

back for part two and

26:34

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26:36

resources, videos, and other

26:38

reflections at Enter the Bible.org.

26:41

Thank you for joining us.