Episode 297: Alexiana Fry – Trauma in the Hebrew Bible

Pete: You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

Pete: Hey everybody. Welcome, and on this episode, I am joined by our wonderful and amazing co-host and nerd-in-residence, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott. Welcome back to the podcast, Cynthia. 

Cynthia: Thanks Pete. I’m glad to be here. 

Pete: We’ve done this a few times now, haven’t we? 

Cynthia: I think so. Yeah. 

Pete: This is fun. This is fun. Yeah. 

Cynthia: I’m really excited about today’s guest. We’re talking about trauma in the Hebrew Bible with Alexiana Fry, who is currently a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, and she’s researching all things Hebrew Bible/Old Testament trauma, gender, and migration. 

Pete: And so we talked about how, uh, Alexiana brings some of her own experiences into discussing trauma and gender and, and to a certain extent, migration as well.

And how, uh, coming to terms with those things can impact our understanding of biblical texts and be more sensitive, I think, Cynthia, to what those biblical texts can do. 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Pete: To people who, who read them, who have, uh, been traumatized for various reasons. And it gets down to, for me, um, really the ethics of the Bible. And, and what it means to understand things and to communicate them, I think sensitively to, to people. So, um, I certainly learned a lot. I don’t think about this issue very much and, um, I don’t, I’m very happy to be honest about that. And so I learned a lot from listening to Alexiana talk about these things.

Cynthia: For sure. 

Pete: So yeah, there we are folks. So let’s, uh, with that being said, let’s get into the conversation. 

Alexiana: Reckoning with trauma in the text is actually a way to get closer to a historical analysis. It’s a way to really take seriously the impact of historical events and processes. And so to some extent my pushback on some folks who are like, “you can’t do that.” Well, this feels much more honest about what we’re reckoning with. Right?

Pete: We’re gonna get into this slowly about trauma and the Bible and, um, yeah. Cynthia, you want to kick it off here? 

Cynthia: Yeah. I’m super excited to have a chance to talk to you. So, I mean, your work has just been so influential in so many ways, but I think our audience would be interested to know, and what motivated you to explore the intersection of trauma and gender, uh, within the Hebrew Bible?

So your personal experiences, if that’s not too personal of a question to ask you about. How did you get into this? What influenced you? Um, because this is not exactly the topics that most Hebrew Bible scholars would get right into when they’re doing their research or starting their careers. So I’m curious, how did you get into this?

Alexiana: My background is very seriously informed by having grown up in white-the white evangelical church in the United States, and in particular in what we now call Christian nationalism, um, white Christian nationalism. So I, I didn’t know that I was part of that, right? Like when, especially when you’re a kid and you grow up in that, I, I just didn’t know.

And I was very, very deeply invested and committed to those theologies and to those ideologies. Uh, I had gotten my MDiv and was serving at a church, um, and serving at a church where I was the only one on staff with an MDiv. But, uh, I was not, um, able to serve in that kind of way. So, um, but I, I was serving in a church and, um, 2015, 2016 sort of came on the scene, right? And, uh, that was extremely revealing to me. Um, very, very eye-opening. 

Pete: The fun years: 2015 and 16.

Alexiana: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and like many folks too, a, a lot of what I grew up in, I, I really, genuinely, I wanted to be obedient and I wanted to listen to those in authority who I thought knew more than me and they told me a lot of things that I shouldn’t read and I should not, um, because of X, Y, and Z, right?

But what came up in sort of 2015 and 2016 and some of what I do with trauma and gender is also through migration, right? Some of what I came through in 2015 and 2016 was really serious questions of, oh, I thought the church, and I thought Jesus taught these things, and I thought even these people taught me these things.

But when push comes to shove, that’s actually not what’s going on. And because of what I believed, I was also volunteering and very involved in a local nonprofit that is called Treetops Collective. And they serve, uh, teen girls and women who have been resettled in that area. 

My dissertation work at the time was done through those lenses of trauma, gender, and migration. Because I was really hoping that if I could do a reading in this lens, I would show Christians that they’re wrong and that they need to check themselves before they wreck themselves. Reread this passage, and you have to reconsider your politics, right?

I, I was really hopeful that if I wrote in this way, and if I saw it through this lens, I would show them, um, that they’re wrong, right? Um, that was a really cute thought. Um, that was really, really cute of me. 

Pete: That’s adorable.

Cynthia: Aww, that’s really adorable. 

Alexiana: But it was a really cute thought. That was really my intention in a lot of what I did, was to show them that some of these horrible texts come from certain situations, in certain instances that we can even parallel today, that we need to respond differently.

But what I also had realized in looking back at my history, in growing up through the church was that oftentimes, and especially the texts I work with, um, and we’ll probably get into that, um, Judges 19, uh, Hosea, the imagery that occurs in these texts often depicted really, really abhorrent violence against women in particular.

But you know, Hosea and Gomer, that’s a, that’s an oft taught text in the church. And it, whenever I felt, maybe something rise up in me like, hmm, that’s, uh, it, it’s always bypassed, it’s always explained away. It’s always, “she deserved it,” right? And there was, there was something about that that really never sat well with me, but again, I really just wanted to be an obedient follower of Christ. And so if this is what they’re telling me, I too am Gomer, right?

So that is the sort of background layer, but the other part of the story, this happened on accident. I was, uh, getting my PhD, um, really reluctantly. Hebrew Bible professor at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, he really encouraged me to pursue this, and I was like, I don’t know buddy. Um, but he pointed me into the direction of Stellenbosch, which is where I did end up getting my degree from. Um, and that is located in South Africa, for those of you who don’t know. 

And he had a friend there. And so I just assumed that I would be assigned to his friend. Instead, I was assigned as, uh, to Juliana Claassens as my supervisor. And Juliana Claassens is like the mother or one of the mothers or parental figures of sort of reading the Bible with this kind of lens. And so, you know, from the get-go, she is, “Hey, read this. Hey, read this. Hey, read this.” I’m reading things that I was not supposed to be reading.

Right? Um, I’m reading things that are going, “Oh, wow. Oh wow. And oh wow, there’s another way. And oh wow. There’s other options.” Um, and so that happened on accident, right? So I had all of these previous experiences, but this happened on accident and it just, it just worked. So I’m, I’m really grateful for how it all worked out.

Pete: Yeah. That’s great. Thank you for that, Alexiana, for laying that out for us. Um, I think before we, I would love to get into some passages with you to illustrate this, but maybe just one or two more sort of setup kinds of issues. 

‘Cause you know, I mean, trauma and gender and migration I think are new to a lot of people for reading the Bible through lenses. Like of course we all read the Bible through lenses, but it’s not always overt to us that we’re doing that. 

Alexiana: Right. Right. 

Pete: So we’re sort of put off by things like, “what do you mean? Reading it through that?”

So, um, just in a nutshell, how does a knowledge of trauma, et cetera, how does that reshape or maybe challenge traditional understandings of the Bible? And, and again, we’re gonna get into the specifics in a bit. So maybe just lay out here, why should people keep listening to this podcast episode right now?

Alexiana: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and I will say like, and this is gonna sound terrible when I say it, but trauma is, like, sexy right now, right? Um. Everybody is traumatized. And to some extent I actually kind of agree with that statement, but we’ll, we’ll talk about that, I’m sure. But it is helpful to know, you know, I, I’ve seen, like, these memes that are like, “I’m not, I don’t know why my fight or flight kicked in when I just opened this email.”

Um, and it’s, it’s a joke, but that is a natural bodily process. The scope of what happens when you respond to a stressor or a threat when it persists and when you stay in that space or when you’re forced to stay in those spaces, that’s when it becomes the, the trauma, right? Um, but we, we go through those bodily experiences all throughout the day, and that’s very, very natural, very normal.

Um, anyway, there is a lot of pushback, um, like you’ve said. When you say, I’m using a specific lens to read, “well, you shouldn’t do that.” Right? And I will say even with trauma, we, we do kind of need to be careful. I, I use this email example that’s not, well one, our ancient people did not have email. But it is important that we are not importing even our very Western-based understanding of trauma onto the text. And that’s hard because trauma is something that happens, can happen to anyone in any place at any time.

So it is ahistorical to some extent, but it also has specifics that you need to be clear about. Right? So I’m, I’m not going to try to colonize the text, but alas. Um, I think solid reckonings with some post and decolonial trauma theories, um, would probably get us a little bit closer into not importing more Western models onto ancient bodies.

Pete: I mean, it’s, it’s sort of a hard balance, but a necessary balance between recognizing the context of scripture, the antiquity of it all, but still the fact that there were actual people reading this. 

Alexiana: Yes. Yes. 

Pete: And, and, and how can you foster, like, a relationship with the text? Especially for those who have experienced trauma on whatever level, for whatever reason, um, can be very triggered by some of these stories.

Alexiana: Yes, yes. And it, I think that’s a really, really great point to bring up, right? Because some people will actually use a trauma-informed reading of a text in order to help people who are going through a similar trauma to help them go, “Oh, you’re not alone. Uh, look at this story.” Right?

For some, seeing that there is similarity is not helpful. It can be harmful, right? And, and especially when you see different mechanisms of explaining the trauma or processing through the trauma, that can be harmful for some folks. Trauma is not…it’s a one size fits all garment because it can go on any body, but it’s not gonna fit every body the same way. And of course there are certain folks, depending on where they’re at in space and place and different power dimensions that are going to be given that garment more often than other bodies. 

Alexiana: I will say too, like people who are very, very purist in, in their approach to the Bible, right? I will say reckoning with trauma in the text is actually a way to get closer to a historical analysis of the text. It’s, it’s a way to really take seriously the impact of historical events and processes. And so, to some extent, my pushback on some folks who are like, “you can’t do that.” Well…

Cynthia: …Yes I can. 

Alexiana: This, this feels very, this feels much more honest about what we’re reckoning with, right? Um, but I will also say, uh, I think what’s another complicated part about trauma is when we hear it, we immediately go, oh, “people who are victimized,” right? But trauma as a diagnostic category is morally neutral. Um, people who are perpetrators, you know, they perpetrate trauma, but they are also, they can also experience trauma by their own actions, right?

So as a diagnostic category, it’s morally neutral. Now as a moral, social, political, uh, application, then it gets different, right? That’s when we differentiate, like, again, trauma is a one-size-fit-all garment, but healing, whatever that means, um, is going to look different for different bodies, right?

For perpetrators, healing from what they have done, um, in a lot of ways it involves reparations and involves accountability. We don’t like those words, but, um, but yeah, there are, trauma is a diagnostic, morally neutral trauma as in other avenues, very much we need to be clear about what we’re saying.

So, I think that’s also helpful because there are texts in the Bible in which we have both perpetrators and victims, right? And we can evaluate different things based on some of those categories, while also still being able to say trauma could be present. And I do say could, right? Um, I am not a clinician.

Uh, I do have very specific training in other ways, but I, I’m not a clinician. I can’t sit these ancient folks down and their authors and go, “hey, so when this happened, did you feel this?” I, I cannot confirm any of these. It stays at the level of hypothetical and in part what I want to then say, in coming full circle back to the actual question you asked, right?

How does knowledge of trauma actually inform or reshape interpretations of biblical narratives? It helps us to be clear not to bypass the horror that is present. That’s part of it. It is to acknowledge the terror, the horror, all of the bits and bobs. But it also makes us aware of the processes behind the behaviors that we see in the text.

Um, so often I think we, we also bypass those and it helps us to get more clear about what might be happening behind the scenes. So being aware of what can happen when one experiences or perpetrates trauma is one way we can look back at biblical texts and see those processes at play. What does it do to read in this way and why am I doing it?

For example, um, and this is one that, um, I’m gonna throw out there. Seeing Ezekiel actually as a traumatized prophet is a pretty common, uh, commonly upheld thing in biblical scholarship more generally. Um, but what does that do? Right? 

And in some instances, seeing Ezekiel as traumatized has sadly allowed people to then go, “wow.” Then the chapters in which he depicts really terrible, terrible things towards women’s bodies, right? Again, well, “we can just let that go. Right. He’s really suffering. He’s really hurting. He, he’s also the victim here.” I think it’s important that we do recognize Ezekiel’s pain and there’s actually really, really clear, vivid language about the pain he is going through.

An embodied language and sometimes actually disembodied language, um, by the end of the book of Ezekiel, right? He’s, he’s up in Vision Land. Um, the only place that he can actually feel safe. Or, um, I would argue maybe it’s not, it’s not safe to be in the presence of the deity. Right. It’s definitively not. But the, he’s, he’s in Vision Land. That is, that is the space where he, he’s not in his box. So what does it do to see Ezekiel as a traumatized prophet? Well, for some folks it does help to see the sort of both-and of, he perpetrates violence. He’s also the victim. He is also being moved about by this deity. But it does help us to ask additional questions about how we might also use his words in public. How do we explain the processes behind why he might be saying the things he is while not excusing them?

Um, how does it help us to also bring it into some of that setting, where we are trying to work towards justice? Again, trauma is a morally neutral diagnostic category, but trauma as a category itself broadly should be used for the purpose of, of liberation and equity. 

It is uncomfortable, right? To kind of hold a lot of these things in tension. Um, and especially for folks who see these words as sacred and they’re going, “wait, what? This calls me to reevaluate how I should communicate these things, why I communicate these things.”

It actually, instead of an either-or, trauma allows us to hold sort of a both and position on these texts. Um, and there’s a lot of folks, just because you may have experienced trauma at one point as a victim, does not mean you can’t also be a perpetrator.

Right? It doesn’t absolve you from your actions. And so, you know, making sure that we don’t, as analysts or as readers of these texts, only, uh, identify with the victims of the text, um, in recognizing that we too have that kind of aggression that can come out of us. We are not somehow better than these biblical people.

Cynthia: Wow. Well that’s, that’s really helpful to think about. So I’m wondering though, about your book, um, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible. So you combine speech act theory with trauma hermeneutics, and we’ve been talking a lot about trauma, but I think, most, probably, of our audience with people in our audience probably haven’t heard of these two methods.

Maybe you could explain what these methodologies are and how they intersect, and possibly how they enhance our understanding of biblical narratives. 

Alexiana: Inherent in a lot of trauma theories is talking about how one accesses sort of, when a trauma happens to you, how do you then talk about it? Um, how does it affect some of those processes of retrieval and memory? Does it affect how one narrates? There are a lot of literary trauma theories that talk about that, because of time collapse, because of other elements that can happen in one’s body and in even one’s memory when trauma occurs, um, that narration and styles of such will almost mirror or mimic, uh, symptomology.

It is the question of, okay, when a thing happens, how does one speak about it? How does one process it? How does one talk about it? The funny thing is, speech act theory was started by a guy named J.L. Austin who was sort of throwing out a bunch of ideas about the speech act theory that he was gonna create and then he died. 

Cynthia: Ha-ha. I’m not laughing that he died. But, the timing.

Alexiana: So everything that has happened is like from these few talks that he did on the speech act theory that he wanted to develop. And everything else has been like, we think Austin is saying this, which feels very Bible-esque. Right? Um, like “this is what he meant when he said this.”

Um, we don’t know, it’s pure conjecture, but J.L. Austin, his whole shtick was, he was interested in what words do. That sounds simple and to some extent it really, really is. Um, he was interested in how words perform things. This might sound silly, but a helpful example is when you’re at a wedding, um, certain phrases like “I do,” uh, you say that back and forth like you are committing yourself.

“I do. I promise.” Um, and “I now pronounce you spouse and spouse.” Um, well, when somebody actually says, “I now pronounce you spouse and spouse,” they are performing the act of marriage. When they say those words, in theory, they change the status of the couple. Now, this is where it gets tricky, right? Because I said that and you’re like, “but they’re-” Yes.

Did they really mean “I do.” Did they really mean it? Does the person performing the ceremony who said the words have the proper authority? Did he do the online course? Does he have the- right? Um, did he have the proper authority to be the officiant, to be able to say those words that can confer that status change, right?

Can he sign the paperwork that would then confirm that this thing happened, right? If this person, say, wasn’t licensed, they are not able to be an officiant, they don’t have the proper authority, then the speech act would then be seen actually not as felicitous. It would be seen as infelicitous. Right? 

This person said these words, but he could not actually perform that change. Other things come up like, you think of marriages then that end, and some of the things that they say were, “but you promised, you said I do.” Right? And at that moment, right, it brings up those questions.

And so basically I am just telling you that there’s a bunch of academic jargon around speech situations that we do on a day-to-day basis. There’s just a bunch of jargon that, again, because the guy died, no one can really agree on and everybody’s doing their own thing. Um, and it’s just what it means to sort of be in a social situation in general, and to go, “what did they mean when they said that? What does, what does what they say do to me? Um, what were they intending to do?” It’s all of these questions, right? And so it’s just a really fancy term for what we go through all the time. And even a lot of what we do when we read the Bible, right?

Um, and so I wanted to talk through whether or not trauma would affect or do different things and perform different things through speech. It is the question of how does trauma show itself in speech? What does it do? Right? So sometimes a text might mean one thing, but “what does it do?” is another. Right? Yeah, sure. Hosea isn’t, well, that is another question, right? Is Hosea, or is Hosea not trying to depict an abusive marriage? Um, but what it performs depends on a whole host of factors. How is that going to be received? Right? 

Pete: Yeah. Let’s get into that. I mean, let, let’s spend some time with passages that might illustrate some of these concepts and the importance of this lens of reading the Bible. So you mentioned Hosea, you’ve mentioned Judges already.

Let’s start with those two, those fun books. 

Alexiana: Um, actually this is funny because I do TikTok, um, inconsistently. I’m very inconsistent. Um, but when I was first talking about Ezekiel, um, and sort of the marriage metaphor, right, which is a really broad thing. It shows itself up in different ways.

But in Ezekiel, it’s, it’s particularly bad. Ezekiel chapter 16 in particular, of course there’s 23, but again about Judges and Hosea, what was funny about that is when I started to talk about how I was going to analyze Ezekiel 16 that depicted such violent language towards women, and that that does something. Um, and communicating that without caveat, especially in congregations, right, without caveat that this is not something that we need to be importing in our day-to-day lives. Um, this is not, uh, this is not to be condoned. 

I consistently was getting messages from people who were like, “don’t you realize it’s a metaphor? Why don’t, you don’t understand anything? You call yourself a biblical scholar?” And, um, I’m very aware that it’s a metaphor and part of the problem is that it’s a metaphor, right? It, it does create sort of an essence of remouth from the text.

Cynthia: Like, it’s okay because it’s a metaphor. 

Alexiana: It’s okay because it’s a metaphor, right? This didn’t really happen, right? It’s a story, yeah, calm down lady. 

Cynthia: But metaphors often reflect reality. 

Alexiana: Why would he use the metaphor, if there wasn’t—you use a metaphor in order to make something that is unexplainable more explainable, right? So he used patriarchal marriage as a way to describe covenant. And, and so do with that what you will. Um, and people have done with that what they will, um, which again has, has turned into a lot of bypassing and excuses.

Um, so why do we still talk about it? It’s because it does things, right? And so, we have to address what it can do and what it has done in order to, again, use this lens for the purpose of providing justice.

Hosea 9 and 10, when he is talking about, Hosea is talking about the judgment that he has against Israel. He says, you know, the sin of Gibeah. And so there’s a lot of questions. What does he mean when he says the sin of Gibeah? Is he referencing Judges 19?

Which for the hearer is something that happens in Gibeah. Some of it happens in Gibeah. Is, is that what he’s referencing? If so, why? If so, what is the sin?

And so I wanted to re-look at these texts and see if they spoke to each other actually. Um, and I will say I can’t actually prove whether or not they speak to each other, but it was a fun exercise. I’ll say that. Um, so yeah, both Judges 19 and Hosea contain really explicit portrayals of abuse and, um, murder of women by the hands of an intimate partner.

Judges 19 ends with the secondary wife of the Levite after having been sexually assaulted. So what most people assume the sin of Gibeah is, is what those in Gibeah do to this woman, which she, um, might I be clear, is raped by multiple persons, um, all through the night is what they say actually. And she, they are given permission to some extent to do so by the men who are in the house. Um, she is seized and thrown out of the house because the men actually ask if they can know the men in the house first. They want to violate the men in the house.  Um, and just again, to be very clear about that, um, because Judges 19 also has very similar parallels to Genesis 19. Um, this is about power. This is all about power. This is about dominance. This is about dominating. Um, it does not have to do with sexuality preferences. 

Cynthia: Yeah. In fact, I think Ken Stone would call it-

Alexiana: Ken Stone! Yes, yes!

Cynthia: Feminizing the, the men of the household and really upending, you know, hospitality norms as well. 

Alexiana: Yep. 100%. And what’s interesting is, as I, I don’t like this word, but I play with sort of that, in that, what I do, um, in my dissertation is I actually read the, the woman who is raped, and then, um, what ends up happening is the Levite or the husband, actually the term switches to Adan in verse 26, right? So he is the master by the end. He’s not the Levite, he’s not the husband, he is the master over this woman. 

Cynthia: That’s a good point.

Alexiana: The master cuts her into twelve pieces after this and in, in the Septuagint, she is already dead when this happens. In the Hebrew Bible, we do not know. 

Cynthia: Yeah, it’s really inconclusive in the Hebrew Bible. 

Alexiana: I gotta be honest, I love the Hebrew Bible for all of the gaps it leaves for its readers. Um, and I wish some of them were filled because we have done a whole lot of things with those gaps.

But alas, um, I read through that sort of metaphor. Um, it’s actually common military language to rape your, your enemy. Um, that, and that happens actually both symbolically and literally, right? Um, that is a common thing that does happen in instances of war. Just generally, to also feminize, right?

But also as ownership, as domination. But lands have been seen as raped by those coming in, right? And so I see the woman’s body actually as the social body of Israel who is raped, um, and then cut into 12 pieces and sent out, um, never to be brought back together as a whole. And so I, I do see it as sort of a symbolism that could be invoking some exile tropes there. But even that is conjecture, right? So thus the trauma, gender, migration elements.

Pete: Can I, can I ask a question? Because I think you’re making a very, very important point, I think. And so people might read this and they say, well, it’s just a metaphor for the, the dissolution of the 12 tribes and all that kind of stuff. Right. 

Alexiana: Right. Chill out.

Pete: Exactly. But the thing is, that it’s—why that metaphor? Right? And, and that’s, and the thing is, regardless, this, to me, this is like the ethics of interpretation. Regardless of what the intention was of an author, which we can’t possibly uncover, we can make conjectures about. That’s what we do for a living. We guess.

Alexiana: I would not have a job if, if we knew. 

Pete: I know, exactly. So boring. But, um, we can’t get into their heads. But the fact is that people are still reading the story.

Alexiana: And they’re doing things with them.

Pete: Right. And so they’re either being used to maybe add to people’s trauma by maybe neglecting these stories. It’s not a big deal, you know, whatever, it was the olden days and there was all sorts of crazy stuff. Right. Yeah. 

Alexiana: Yeah. This happens.

Pete: But it’s also, um, something that people who have been traumatized, um, will be impacted by. And, and I guess the question then is how do you, like, what do you do? How do you help these people? How do you help? I mean, I’ve, I’ve never been traumatized by the Bible. And that’s a position of privilege, I think. And I realize that. But I, what do people who, who have been traumatized by sexual abuse, for example, who are reading these stories and, and how, how, how can you help them?

Alexiana: Yeah. Yeah. And again, I think this speaks to some of how trauma itself is a very fluid thing and it affects people in different ways. And so there are many different ways to read this with a lens of trauma. Um, the trauma in and of itself, because of its fluidity, means that there are multiple ways of interpretation. And so it can be wielded in a way that could speak to assisting multiple sets of needs. 

Um, so for the person that maybe, maybe they had something abhorrent happen to them, maybe they were violated themselves. Um, what’s an interesting detail about Judges 19 in the Hebrew Bible, in the LXX it also, uh, the Septuagint, it also cleans it up.

So nice of them to do so. Um, but in the very beginning of Judges 19, the secondary wife, she is unfaithful. Um, but, and so often readers who take the Bible literally. Uh, “she got what she had coming to her. She got what she deserved” is, is a lot of what I hear, right? Um, because she’s unfaithful, this is what had to happen. She deserved this.

We’ll come back to that. That’s problematic first. Um, but we’ll come back to that. So, for people who are really struggling, they maybe stumble upon this text. Or for somebody who is like, “what do I do with this text?” Especially for somebody who might be affected by this, in an adverse way.

And to some extent, you should be affected by this in an adverse way. It’s a terrible text. In one way, you can read through it. And since it is close to the end of Judges, and this is kind of how it has been interpreted over for a while, right? Um, you can read it and you know, at the end it’s like, “well, there’s no king in Israel” and so we need to like, look at how bad it is, right? 

And there’s no God in this chapter. There’s no deity figure. Um, so on one level, if you’re going to just take it at that, sure, you can read it as a text where, and this is abhorrent, but you, there is possibility to read it and go, “well, she got what she had coming to her” and that could be a way in which the biblical interpreters meant it. Genuinely. 

Um, that, that is a really terrible thing that we have to come to terms with. And of course we do know that regardless of whatever the author intended or whatever the story was intending to do, people have been reading it in that way since forever. And that has done enough damage.

Another way to read it though, because it has that undertone of there’s no monarchy, there’s no consistent leadership, we’re doing all these bad things, is that this is a sign of disease. And, you know, of course it’s depicting itself through such a terrible, terrible event and violation. And so does God approve of this?

Some people have looked at this and went, “oh, this is the sign of, like, a terrible, terrible, terrible society.” And so doing things like this, saying that she deserved it, “God would never.” Right? Um, that is one another way to read it. Um, and I think that produces a little bit more fruitful “what does it do?” That is a little bit nicer on, on the—Granted, to some extent, I will say for myself, I prefer some more honesty about “This is what it was saying, but we do not approve.” Right? I really cannot say—

Pete: And we believe God doesn’t approve.

Alexiana: Right. 

Pete: Right. I mean that’s like, that’s, the two get connected very quickly. God doesn’t care about women being abused, which is—

Alexiana: Right. Right, right. 

Pete: —I’m hoping is complete nonsense. 

Alexiana: I would really like to, yeah. I would like to hear, and I think, you know, people need to hear that. On another level too, there is something about recognizing that if this is a text that is being used by the author to describe what they have experienced through exile, what they as a community have experienced through exile.

Then it becomes, well, one, there’s some problematic language in there, but on another level, do people who have experienced such trauma, are they allowed to speak of some really abhorrent things while they’re processing? So that, that, again, that’s a both-and. 

Now, if you read it as a symbolic trauma narrative for a community, and they go, “oh wow, this happened to us. And we’re grieving.” This, one, can be a text in which they are able to explain their trauma and they’re grieving through it. 

Um, they’re making sense of their trauma through this. Um, on another level, it can also be something that, um, and this is maybe unpopular. Um, it can be also something that goes, “there’s no God in the text, but the Levite is kind of a God figure and we have been told that we’ve “zonah”ed and thus we deserve this. But do you see what he’s done to us? Do you see what has happened? Like, he allowed these people to come in to do this thing to us. He, he actually threw us out the door” and actually being, I, I use this term, secondary wife, it’s pilegesh in Judges 19.

For many years it’s been concubine, that’s how we’ve understood it. But that has some decently orientalist terms. And so unless you understand some of the context of that term, it’s difficult. So secondary wife is a nice way to put it. Um, I typically just say pilegesh, but you know. Describing your marriage as being a secondary wife. They’re already undercutting some things by going, “yeah, we’re not even the primary wife. We’re not even-”

Cynthia: And there’s no primary wife in the picture either. 

Alexiana: What’s fascinating about that conjecture too, is then why does he have a secondary wife? Right?

Cynthia: There’s a reason for that.

Alexiana: Is she just enslaved? Is she just there to have his children? Is she just there for sexual pleasure purposes? So there’s so many things that this text brings up that could be undercutting even “this is what happened to us and who’s to blame. You say we “zonah”ed. This is, this is far beyond what we deserved. This is far beyond anything that you should have done, and actually you are the one at fault.” Um, it could be a text of protest against how they have been treated by the hands of God. 

And I, I wanna say to people who have suffered through a trauma, you can shake your fist. That’s a very holy thing. You can stomp your feet. You can cry, you can, you can say some stuff. Now, again, this comes back to even the, the imagery that Hosea depicts in the first three chapters. Um, is this something that Hosea approves of and he’s going, “yes, this is exactly right,” or because it is abusive, is there a tone of “what, what is going on, God?”

Pete: Alexiana, what, what is happening in the opening chapters of Hosea? Just remind our listeners.

Alexiana: Um, so Hosea 1, God tells Hosea that he should take a zonah. There’s that word again. Uh, and we have a lot of questions about the word zonah, right? Um, so mainly if it’s, if it happens in the context of a marital relationship already, then it probably has the tone of she had intimate relations, she had sex with somebody outside of the marriage, so she was unfaithful, right? She’s cheating. 

Now, if it does not happen inside a marital relationship, it could just mean she’s a sex worker. Um, and so that becomes the question, even kind of right from the get-go, he is told to marry a zonah. Is she a sex worker or is she previously married? And that’s where it becomes interesting. I think in, is it chapter 3? Where he is told to marry again somebody who is married to somebody else?

Cynthia: Yeah. It’s so strange ’cause it kind of gives you an unclear picture of what’s going on and who the woman is, or women.

Alexiana: Is this Gomer again? Is this a different woman? And what’s, and I think too for Hosea, and there’s a lot to unpack about the historical setting, potential historical setting. Again, all conjecture, right? Of Hosea, what is he actually depicting? We have all those redaction questions and who’s saying what, when, why, how?

But, um, chapter 1 talks about how you, he’s gonna have children with this, with the sex worker, Gomer. And um, of course he then tells them what the kids’ names are gonna be. And it’s, you know, not-my-people. Uh, Jezreel. Um, no-mercy. Um, and that’s what he’s gonna do to Israel, right? Um, so it is to depict the covenant relationship that he has with, um, Israel and Judah.

Then in chapter 2, there’s this beautiful imagery of how he’s then gonna woo her back. He’s gonna speak to her heart. He’s love bombing her and he brings her back. He does do some pretty abhorrent things. He strips her, you know, shows her “self.” Um, so there it’s. Many people reading that text have seen very classic, um, intimate partner violence and abuse patterns. Even with that really lovely chunk, like that’s a pretty standard practice for people who, um, abuse their wife.

Cynthia: Yeah. That’s, there’s so much there. And the lenses that you use, really show us how much there is to still look at that we haven’t really, you know, at least within traditional biblical scholarship, have looked at carefully. And so, you know, you using these lenses and introducing them to us, um, it’s been really helpful. And I’m wondering, and as we just wrap up here, maybe you could, um, the way I always put it with, you know, my students is the so-what question. You know, so what’s the takeaway? 

How do we, how do we move forward with this? Especially as, you know, the Hebrew Bible is full of really problematic passages and, you know, we, we tend to just ignore them, you know, within the church and within other faith communities. But we really, in order to, to address them, we have to, we do have to look at them. And so what’s the, what’s the so-what? What’s the takeaway as far as what we can do or how we can take these passages and, and look at them differently? 

Alexiana: That’s a really great question. I’m actually gonna bring it back to, then, Judges 19. Um, because what’s so interesting there is- the, I’m not the first person to use speech act theory with Judges 19. There’s a scholar named Helen Painter, who is also just a wonderful, wonderful human being. Um, Helen recognizes, so the woman’s body is cut into 12 pieces, and then it is sent out to the 12 tribes. Now what happens in that, um, unfortunately, that is something that the 12 tribes would have recognized as a summons to war.

Um, it happens in 1 Samuel 11, I think. Actually Saul cuts up an ox and sends it out to the 12 tribes. So again, it’s horrifying that what would be done to an animal is done to a human body in this text. But people, they recognize what it is, right? They get the body part, whatever part they get, and they recognize what it is, and they do respond. So her body is used as a speech act. It is used as a message. Is it her message or is it his? Now when we get into Judges 20 and 21, it’s very clear that it is his message. He uses her body to write his own message and to absolve his own behavior.

Cynthia: And he’s not very, and he’s not very truthful about what happens.

Alexiana: Oh no. He—and it’s a sham trial. It is a sham trial. Uh, there’s some—and again, what I find so interesting when we talk about trauma in general is because it’s not dealt with justly there, right? In that instance.

Just about, I mean, obviously women aren’t murdered, but men, but the same thing that happens to the woman, happens to lots of women in Judges 21. So what is not dealt with persists and, and perpetuates and multiplies. Um, and the text shows that it’s not even a metaphor at this point. It’s literal, right? 

Uh, so what’s interesting though is Judges 19:30 actually uses, I mean, it could be the neuter, but it uses the feminine, um, suffix. Uh, “consider her” or “it” right? But “consider her, take counsel, and speak” is Judges 19:30, that’s how it ends, is the people respond to getting this body part. And of course, they’re gonna show up for war. But, um, the end of the chapter ends with “consider her, take counsel, and speak.”

And so what I’m trying to do with trauma, and so what? What do we do with texts that not only depict such abhorrent things? But what do we do when we’re told we also need to sit and consider this? What does this mean? What does this do? It means we slow down and we ask the hard questions. It means we go, what if this isn’t the only option? What if this isn’t the only way? What, if there’s—what would be the woman’s message? Now she’s dead. We, we will never know and we probably shouldn’t speak for her or on behalf of her.

Um, but what we should do is mourn. We should grieve and actually one of the main things in trauma, because it is extremely painful to mourn and grieve and to point out truth and to sit with it and to feel it. Trauma should consider her, take counsel, and speak. This, this way of viewing the text, this way of rereading the text is to say, what if there’s another way? What if we can sit and mourn and grieve instead of move on to the next part? What if we slow down? 

Cynthia: I think that’s the title of your next book. 

Pete: Yeah. That’s, yeah. That’s wonderful. Alexiana, thank you for, um, those last words as well to give us some direction because it’s complicated. You know, trauma is complicated, responses to trauma is complicated, and yeah, so we appreciate your time and taking the time to be with us to talk about all these things and I, I know I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure our listeners have. 

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Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People. Don’t forget, you can catch our other show Faith for Normal People in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Joel Limbauan, Savannah Locke, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.

Alexiana: Um, because normally Jared is a part of this. Right? And so I get the pleasure of having Cynthia here, which is amazing, but I need to make this joke. Did I get Billy Graham-ed? Is this the Billy Graham rule in action? 

Pete: What’s that? Oh, he’s like—

Alexiana: Oh, he’s like, “I’m gonna be with two men initially and I’m a woman and that’s not allowed.”

Cynthia: No! Ha-ha. 

Pete: No. It’s because neither Jared nor I know what we’re talking about, the topic here today.

So anyway.

Alexiana: Yeah.

Cynthia: That is hilarious. 

Alexiana: It’s a joke. But yes.

Cynthia: That’s a good joke.

Alexiana: Thank you.