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Speaker 4: We talk a lot about the Bible being written by
Speaker 4: men and how Christians are often saying, you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's a pro woman book. And I want to get
Speaker 4: into that with the authors of a new book just released.
Speaker 4: It's called Clearly Written by Boys, A Woman's Guide to
Speaker 4: the Bible, written by Karis Burkowski and Dave Fitzgerald, and
Speaker 4: they joined me here. So good to see you both.
Speaker 2: Absolutely great to see you, Chris.
Speaker 4: I know that you've done some writing in the past
Speaker 4: about the man made nature of gods. I just did
Speaker 4: a speech on this. I'm always referring to my previous
Speaker 4: speeches and because you know how it is. You do
Speaker 4: this long enough, and there's always a reference work in
Speaker 4: the queue in the holster. But we see our gods
Speaker 4: that look like us, and so this is this is
Speaker 4: very familiar territory for you, right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean the first book was Why Men
Speaker 3: Made God? And then this time when David came up
Speaker 3: with the idea clearly written by boys, I just jumped
Speaker 3: on it. I loved it because it's so much more
Speaker 3: appropriate like that. The nature of that thinking behind why
Speaker 3: it was written that way is far more like a
Speaker 3: bunch of nineteen year old in celts than it is
Speaker 3: about you know, mature men.
Speaker 4: It is a biblical Mannosphere. Oh, we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about that. David Fitzgerald, historical researcher, is a buddy. We've
Speaker 4: known each other forever because we're always talking about his
Speaker 4: heretical works, including Nailed Jesus, Mything and Action Playing God.
Speaker 4: The Evolutionary History of World Religion is book on the Mormons,
Speaker 4: you blasphemer going after God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun, it's a living.
Speaker 4: Well all right, let's before we get into more unfamiliar territory,
Speaker 4: because this is a well versed audience sewing in the
Speaker 4: bimless misogynistic, and it was even the garden and blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. But you guys take a much much deeper dive,
Speaker 4: which is why I wanted to have the conversation. But
Speaker 4: we got to talk about Eve. So Eve is tempted
Speaker 4: by the snake. The snake's whispering in Eve's ear, she
Speaker 4: whispers in Adam's ear. God is somehow surprised, and then
Speaker 4: he gets pissed, and there are punishments. Now, the punishment
Speaker 4: for Adam is to he's going to have to labor
Speaker 4: on the land, but the punishment for Eve is a
Speaker 4: labor of a different kind. Caros will start with you
Speaker 4: even the garden. You want to get into some of
Speaker 4: the problems there.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, her big punishment is because she's
Speaker 3: seeking knowledge. I mean the serpent, which we kind of
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about being a character out of
Speaker 3: the old Great Goddess kind of stories, the pre biblical
Speaker 3: belief system when the Great Mother was the birther of
Speaker 3: all life on the planet and all of that. But
Speaker 3: the serpent whispers to her that she can gain knowledge.
Speaker 3: Wants to gain knowledge, so she takes the apple. Well,
Speaker 3: that's just can't be. That's just the biggest crime ever.
Speaker 3: So you know that's what makes God meant so he
Speaker 3: punishes her physically. She's going to have pain and suffering
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff, and she's going to
Speaker 3: be lusting after her husband. I'm not sure which interpretation
Speaker 3: of those words we talked about.
Speaker 2: How it can be desire for your husband. Yes, you
Speaker 2: shall rule over you.
Speaker 4: No, I totally. I totally read it as you will
Speaker 4: want to have sex, you will have sexual desire, and
Speaker 4: this is part of Eve's curse. In fact, it was
Speaker 4: how my sisters were taught about biblical womanhood in our
Speaker 4: very evangelical home. So yeah, I mean that's how I
Speaker 4: read it, Keras anyway, okay, but.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how many different ways you can spin that,
Speaker 2: and none of them are particularly good for women.
Speaker 4: Okay. So, by the way, for the pedantic in the audience,
Speaker 4: we know the Bible doesn't say apple, but Christian tradition apple, right,
Speaker 4: we got even the apple. That's how we come to
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm getting in front of it for you, Kiris,
Speaker 4: because I know where you're going with that. You included
Speaker 4: a poem in the first part of the book, and
Speaker 4: I just want to read it. It's very short by
Speaker 4: Daniel Coffin. It's titled If Adam Picked the Apple, and
Speaker 4: it says there would be a parade, a celebration, a
Speaker 4: holiday to commemorate the day he sought enlightenment. We would
Speaker 4: not speak of temptation by the devil. Rather, we would
Speaker 4: laud Adam's curiosity is desire for adventure and knowing we
Speaker 4: would feast on apple inspired fair torts, Chutney's pancakes, pies.
Speaker 4: There would be plays and songs re enacting his courage.
Speaker 4: But it was Eve who grew bored, weary of her
Speaker 4: captivity in Eden. And a woman's desire for freedom is
Speaker 4: rarely a cause for celebration. Powerful stuff that.
Speaker 5: Is so good. Where when we discover that poem, like
Speaker 5: it's perfect fit.
Speaker 4: Interesting that it's a sexual punishment for Eve, like for Adam.
Speaker 4: You're gonna work your ass off, there will be weeds
Speaker 4: on the land. Okay, fine, Eve, it's gonna hurt like
Speaker 4: a mother to reproduce, and you're gonna have the hots
Speaker 4: for your husband, who will rule over you. I just
Speaker 4: mind that. Fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course it's the it's the woman's fault
Speaker 2: that men get horny for her because you know it's
Speaker 2: it's woman's desire. Yet, you know, we don't hear much
Speaker 2: about husband rape in history. We hear a lot about
Speaker 2: spousal rape, you know, of wives.
Speaker 4: I know it's going to be a subjective answer. And
Speaker 4: we see a ton of female evangelical preachers leader figures
Speaker 4: here in the twenty first century. But it's been the
Speaker 4: case for the longest time. You know what comes to mind,
Speaker 4: off Rod, We've got Joyce Meyer, we got Beth Moore,
Speaker 4: we got Paula White, we got Victoria Ostein, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Many of these people are just freaking celebrity, best selling millionaire,
Speaker 4: celebrity pastors. How do you think these people reconcile their
Speaker 4: leadership with two Timothy? You know the woman be silent thing, Karrots,
Speaker 4: you're a woman, do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: Well, they just figured out how they can use the
Speaker 3: religion to buy into the patriarchy and get some power,
Speaker 3: so they're going for it.
Speaker 4: So you think they're using the system.
Speaker 3: Religion as a tool, so they will use these women
Speaker 3: as helpers to use it as a tool.
Speaker 2: And honestly, at the end of the day, they're quistlings.
Speaker 2: They're selling out their own sex for their own money
Speaker 2: comfort power.
Speaker 4: Because they're not just preaching to women. I don't think.
Speaker 4: I think they're preaching to everybody.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and yet, yeah, there's any number of Bible
Speaker 2: verses you could throw at them for to not do that.
Speaker 2: And yet somehow, the fact that they are as successful
Speaker 2: as they are shilling for this toxic message that they're selling,
Speaker 2: it's just heinous. It's really heinous, and it's it's just
Speaker 2: another example of Christian hypocrisy. It's like they're all set
Speaker 2: to throw a Bible verse at things they don't like,
Speaker 2: stuff like this. It's explicitly forbidden in their own scriptures.
Speaker 4: No problem with it, Keros. I know Dave's background. Did
Speaker 4: you come out of a fundy faith or have you
Speaker 4: always been smarter than me?
Speaker 3: No? I was very much a good little Christian. My
Speaker 3: sort of moment when I lost it was in confirmation class.
Speaker 3: I was an evangelical Lutheran and we were in Confirmation
Speaker 3: class and we were learning about transubstantiation and consinstantiation. You know,
Speaker 3: where the priests is the magic words and then the
Speaker 3: bread and the crackers turns into the body and blood
Speaker 3: of Christ and then we're supposed to eat it. And
Speaker 3: I freaked out in the middle of confirmation classes and
Speaker 3: I'm not doing that.
Speaker 5: That's cannibalism.
Speaker 3: And that I got told to talk to him behind
Speaker 3: after the class, and things just fell apart from there.
Speaker 3: That was the moment when I started looking at all
Speaker 3: of it and thinking, this is.
Speaker 5: This is nonsense.
Speaker 4: I hear a lot of stories like that, the curious
Speaker 4: young Catholic and then the nuns sort of slapping among
Speaker 4: the knuckles with the rulers, so to speak. You know
Speaker 4: of scenario on well, you're too much trouble, and then
Speaker 4: often they just get booted. You know what, we don't
Speaker 4: like questions, have a nice life, We'll see you later.
Speaker 4: Did that happen to you?
Speaker 3: No. He kept trying to recruit me and I because
Speaker 3: it was a very like it's a small town and
Speaker 3: there was a tight Christian town, and I would have
Speaker 3: been shunned at high school. I would like, everything would
Speaker 3: have been a terrible thing if I said, no, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to do confirmation and this is crap. So
Speaker 3: I had to go along with it and just not
Speaker 3: say anything.
Speaker 4: I'll admit though, that I don't know much about the
Speaker 4: Lutherans and their teachings about women. Was it subjugation teaching
Speaker 4: in the Lutheran Church.
Speaker 3: Not overtly, but it was still the man was the
Speaker 3: ruler of the family and you know, closer to God.
Speaker 3: And we still had wear head coverings in church and
Speaker 3: stuff like that back then. It's not so much anymore,
Speaker 3: but it was pretty pretty traditional in those.
Speaker 4: Ways, written by boys. This Bible, let's stay in the
Speaker 4: Old Testament for a second, and I'll just let you
Speaker 4: take it where you want. But I got to start
Speaker 4: with Jezebel. So I walk into it a Sunday morning,
Speaker 4: Sunday school classroom, say the word Jezebel. I'm guessing I'll
Speaker 4: bet you twenty bucks. The first thing that pops into
Speaker 4: the brain to the people in the room slot murderer. Right, Jezbel.
Speaker 4: I'll start with you, I guess, Dave, you want to
Speaker 4: tell me about Jezebel, Describe who Jezebel allegedly was and
Speaker 4: what the story is here.
Speaker 2: Well, we've got two Jezebel's. We can talk about the
Speaker 2: one in the Bible that we get the most worst
Speaker 2: person you can imagine, or we can talk about the
Speaker 2: real person whose name was not Jezebel. By the way,
Speaker 2: it's not even her real name, Ihabeil, who was not
Speaker 2: only a real person, and you can't say that about
Speaker 2: a lot of people in the Old Testament, but she
Speaker 2: her husband's family, their dynasty. They were the first royal
Speaker 2: family that put Yahweh on the map as a god.
Speaker 2: Before them, yahwas just one more storm God worshiped by
Speaker 2: the ancient Judaeans and the ancient Israelites and Samaritans. So
Speaker 2: the ironies just start dog by them so fast. Jayhu,
Speaker 2: who wiped them all out, killed them in the Bible.
Speaker 2: This he's God's guy, He's God's hero doing all this.
Speaker 2: In real life, he was one of the golden calf
Speaker 2: worshipers at Shiloh. That was his So he was a heretic.
Speaker 2: So the irony that these guys hundreds of years at
Speaker 2: least three hundred years later writing this story, are making
Speaker 2: the people who put Yahweh on the map heretics, murderers,
Speaker 2: bad guys, and their killer held up as God's anointed
Speaker 2: when he was in fact a heretic himself. It's it's
Speaker 2: mind blowing.
Speaker 4: Well, when you say, in real life, how do you
Speaker 4: verify that? Are there rather historical records that document the
Speaker 4: character of Jezebel.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, unlike most like ninety nine of everybody in the
Speaker 2: Old Testament and of everybody we know and love from
Speaker 2: Sunday School, Jezebel was a real person. And we have
Speaker 2: Greek sources for her. We know her family, and we
Speaker 2: know who she was married into. We have Assyrian records
Speaker 2: about them and about the the guy who wiped out
Speaker 2: their whole line. What her real what she was real
Speaker 2: like as a person, will never know that because they
Speaker 2: don't tell her story from her point of view. They
Speaker 2: tell it from their point of view. And to them,
Speaker 2: the biggest crime was that they were so successful, because
Speaker 2: in real life they would have loved somebody who stood
Speaker 2: for yahweh as much as that family did.
Speaker 3: And in the first the first five sections, we take
Speaker 3: five characters of women from the Bible and we have
Speaker 3: them tell their story in.
Speaker 5: Their own voice.
Speaker 3: So we have Jezebel introduced as this fifteen year old
Speaker 3: getting sent off to marry a king in a different kingdom,
Speaker 3: and her whole story from there all told in her voice,
Speaker 3: and then we go on and do a commentary about
Speaker 3: all of the parts of that story so we can
Speaker 3: wear a whole different character. Like all the things, all
Speaker 3: the facts, still happen, but the how and the why
Speaker 3: in the way are different.
Speaker 4: Well, I noticed you did it with Adam and Eve
Speaker 4: write off the bat, so clever to say, rather than
Speaker 4: read chapter and verse, we're going to tell the story
Speaker 4: and we're going to really humanize it and contextualize it
Speaker 4: and paint a three D verbal picture. And to do
Speaker 4: that with these characters is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we were really faithful to telling
Speaker 2: the story as it is in the Bible. We didn't
Speaker 2: go off on preagey tangents, but we did make the
Speaker 2: switch of telling it from her point of view and
Speaker 2: having the character tell us her story.
Speaker 4: I love the Genesis account where they're hiding from God
Speaker 4: in shame God's wander around the garden like he's not
Speaker 4: on to care. Wait a minute, I thought God could
Speaker 4: see everything into it. How do you hide from God?
Speaker 4: I don't understand that. It just makes no sense to me.
Speaker 4: Delilah was another sort of Old Testament villain in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways. Caros, I'll start with you tell me
Speaker 4: about Delilah.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, we have Delilah meeting Samson at at the fair.
Speaker 3: So well, they're sitt in the marketplace and she's with
Speaker 3: her her girlfriends, and she's looking at this hot guy
Speaker 3: and she's going, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Know he's a bad dude. I think I can wrap
Speaker 5: am out.
Speaker 4: She likes the bad boys.
Speaker 5: He likes the bad boys.
Speaker 3: So she starts walking across towards him, and he sees
Speaker 3: her coming and he's looking at her like, oh, yeah, honey,
Speaker 3: I think so. And so it's just all effects of
Speaker 3: the you know, like that when they kill him and
Speaker 3: all the things they do to him and everything, but
Speaker 3: it's all told from her perspective. And so she's having
Speaker 3: fun with this story and all those times where where
Speaker 3: they tell her to find out how to tie them
Speaker 3: up with things that he can't break out of, and
Speaker 3: and we have like sex gigs like where they're times
Speaker 3: and stuff like it's different.
Speaker 4: It's old Testament sex tape. These are words I never
Speaker 4: would have put in the same sentence myself. Hey, if
Speaker 4: you want to jump on here, I was going to say,
Speaker 4: do you want to jump on Delilah? Let me rephrase it.
Speaker 4: Would you like to talk about Delilah from your perspective?
Speaker 2: We don't just tell the story. I mean we do
Speaker 2: tell the story, and that's super fun, but then we
Speaker 2: give commentary after it. It's like, yeahs are always saying, oh,
Speaker 2: you're taking out of context. Oh well, let's give the
Speaker 2: context then, and when you do, you find that the
Speaker 2: story is even worse than we already think. I mean,
Speaker 2: we all sort of know that the Bible's misogynistic, we
Speaker 2: all sort of know that the Bible puts women down.
Speaker 2: But when you actually do a little bit of a
Speaker 2: deeper dive into just how these stories were written, why
Speaker 2: they're written, and what's happening, you know, in the context
Speaker 2: of these stories, it's even worse. It's even worse. And
Speaker 2: that's true whether you're talking about Old Testament or are
Speaker 2: they're talking about the New Testament.
Speaker 4: More on some of the lesser known women in the
Speaker 4: Old Testament, and then we got to get into the
Speaker 4: New Testament with Jesus and Paul and some of the
Speaker 4: tragic attitudes and writings about women. I will continue with
Speaker 4: my special guest next next up on the conference Roster Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 4: It is Nanocon. What a lineup for that. Matt de
Speaker 4: la Hunty promised Backland Hemmet, Metta, Glenda Jordan, Forrest Valkei,
Speaker 4: and so many others. Also in August, the World Humanist
Speaker 4: Congress Baja con those are both in Canada. The Unholy
Speaker 4: Trinity Reunion that's in Fort Worth, Texas the last Saturday
Speaker 4: in August. The FFRF National Convention in Milwaukee October sixteenth
Speaker 4: through the eighteenth, and then Rocket City Reason Huntsville, Alabama,
Speaker 4: October twenty third through the twenty fifth. Details links everything
Speaker 4: you need the Thinkingatheist dot com slash events. Authors of
Speaker 4: the book clearly written by boys Keris Berkowski and Dave Fitzgerald.
Speaker 4: You got a couple of illustrators. You want to introduce
Speaker 4: your illustrators for me?
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of them is David Hayward, who's a cartoonist
Speaker 3: and a lot of the people that are on this,
Speaker 3: they're watching you right now. I might actually know him
Speaker 3: because he's called the Naked Pastor. He used to be
Speaker 3: a minister and now he does cartoons and they're they're
Speaker 3: sort of religious themed and with things that we take
Speaker 3: two pages to describe, he can put in one cartoon
Speaker 3: and there it is, right in your face.
Speaker 2: And he was so on board right from the get go,
Speaker 2: sin As we told him aout the project. He was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the board and his cartoon just nail it. I mean
Speaker 2: so many stuff was just absolutely perfect.
Speaker 4: Well, Hayward's interesting to me, right because he's a Christian, right.
Speaker 2: It was, he's a deconstructing Christian. If not you fully
Speaker 2: because I was going.
Speaker 4: To say, cartoons go hard at the Bible, the foundational
Speaker 4: text of Christianity, and he's given shit to the Bible
Speaker 4: all the time, and I thought, this is this is
Speaker 4: a weird believer.
Speaker 2: Weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very pro LGBT and his Jesus is very
Speaker 2: pro LGBT, and that's that's kind of cool to see
Speaker 2: that happen.
Speaker 4: I mean I like him, I really do admire and admirers.
Speaker 3: Okay good yeah, yeah yeah. As soon as we told
Speaker 3: him about it, he was right on board. So we've
Speaker 3: got sixty five of his cartoons in the book.
Speaker 4: And you're second illustrator, Kathleen or kat Hardy.
Speaker 3: The second illustrator is a female, and she has drawn
Speaker 3: portraits of the seven I guess women that we really
Speaker 3: talk about the five at the beginning that we tell
Speaker 3: their story and then Mary both Mary's very magnalate and
Speaker 3: married mother of Jesus, so we would give her a topic,
Speaker 3: like we asked her to do a Mary mother Mary,
Speaker 3: and so she sent us one usual you know Mary
Speaker 3: with the downcast eyes or you know, like the usual sweet,
Speaker 3: modest Mary. And we said no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: We told her what else to do. So she did this,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that's much better.
Speaker 5: She's got to be looking up.
Speaker 4: A So how many Mary's are there in the New ten?
Speaker 4: There's Magdalene, and then there's the other Mary and the Mary.
Speaker 4: Matter of mean, how many Marys am I talking about? Here?
Speaker 2: We focus on two of them, Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene,
Speaker 2: but even though there are multiple versions of those two
Speaker 2: women as well. And it's it's ironic because in a
Speaker 2: way we have many Mary's, in another way, we have
Speaker 2: almost no Mary of any of them. If we didn't
Speaker 2: have the Book of John, we wouldn't know anything about
Speaker 2: Mary Magdalen really. If we didn't have the Book of Luke,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't know anything really about the Virgin Mary. It's
Speaker 2: it's so amazing that we've got these tiny little slivers
Speaker 2: in the Bible, and yet it's blown up since to become,
Speaker 2: you know, a whole cot industry of Mary Magdalene and uh,
Speaker 2: the Da Vinci code, all that stuff, you know it.
Speaker 2: It was like the legend, the medieval legends of Mary
Speaker 2: Magdalene just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger.
Speaker 3: And we talk about the fact that the real Mary Mage,
Speaker 3: if it was a real, real anything in there. Mary
Speaker 3: Magdalen was a disciple, and she was a She gave
Speaker 3: them money, she helped them, she did all this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. And then this one pope gets confused and
Speaker 3: configures he's he conflates her with the woman the sinner,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, and and from then on she becomes, uh,
Speaker 3: this despicable Harlotte who's.
Speaker 5: Trying to be forgiven and just totally messes her up.
Speaker 5: And so we talk a lot about that.
Speaker 4: So back to the Old Testament. Everybody knows there's a
Speaker 4: book of Ruth. Nobody knows anything about Ruth like Hell
Speaker 4: is Ruth.
Speaker 3: Oh we have great But with that, she tells her
Speaker 3: own story too, and so okay, she's doing the with
Speaker 3: it thou goist and she's so sweet and innocent and everything.
Speaker 3: And we talk in the commentary, we talk about, well,
Speaker 3: what's really going on in the country at that time
Speaker 3: and how would she have been treated after marrying somebody
Speaker 3: from outside of her land and now he's dead and
Speaker 3: she doesn't have a man to look after her.
Speaker 5: So Mary Naomi wants to go away, so she wants
Speaker 5: to go with her because what the heck guess is
Speaker 5: she gonna do?
Speaker 3: And then we get her back in Judea and she
Speaker 3: meets Boaz in the grain field, right, and she goes
Speaker 3: back and tells Naomi, and Naoi gives her this sole planable,
Speaker 3: this is what you're gonna do. Hun You can get
Speaker 3: all dressed up in your best stop it puts a
Speaker 3: perfume one you're gonna sneak over there in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night. And so we talk about all that,
Speaker 3: and that's a story you don't usually hear very often.
Speaker 3: So and we give her agency like she's doing this
Speaker 3: on purpose because she wants to preserve her life and
Speaker 3: find somebody will take care of her and Naomi. And
Speaker 3: then at the very end, after she has the baby
Speaker 3: and marries him and everything that she has the baby,
Speaker 3: they take the baby and they give it to Naomi
Speaker 3: and they say, oh, Naomi, is that a child? And
Speaker 3: it's so like the Handmaid's Tale, like it's just you
Speaker 3: can't you can't miss it. It's great, Like, yeah, we
Speaker 3: have fun with that one too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is another case where the context really blows, uh
Speaker 2: blows your mind. So we blow your mind twice with
Speaker 2: every single character.
Speaker 4: Does remind me I'm not as familiar with Ruth in
Speaker 4: the Old Testament? Is she is that story played like
Speaker 4: she's sort of a hero of the faith or does
Speaker 4: it go there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And ironically, if it had been a moad Bite
Speaker 2: girl saying to a Jewish girl saying to her Mobiite
Speaker 2: mother in law, oh, your people will be my people,
Speaker 2: your gods will be my gods, you know, we would
Speaker 2: hate her. She'd be a filthy idolatry. But yeah, and.
Speaker 4: Then we've got Esther, who eventually would become the queen
Speaker 4: of Persia. I don't know if there was a real
Speaker 4: Esther or not. I'm just familiar with the biblical Esther.
Speaker 2: Story though a great story. And we talked, and that's
Speaker 2: another thing we do, is we talk about how we
Speaker 2: know these stories are just made up BS stories and
Speaker 2: not based on real people. And there's lots of reasons,
Speaker 2: there's lots of giveaways that do that, and and so
Speaker 2: we don't just talk about the origins of them, but
Speaker 2: we talked about how they were interpreted later and how
Speaker 2: Perham came out of that, and there's just so much
Speaker 2: more behind all these stories that's fun to get into.
Speaker 4: But I mean, how many of these, like the christ
Speaker 4: myth et cetera, were borrowed from other or surrounding mythologies.
Speaker 4: A bunch of them, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I keep going
Speaker 2: back to is one of the reasons I like Jessicbel
Speaker 2: so much, not her real name, but that character so much,
Speaker 2: is that she's one of the very very few people
Speaker 2: in the entire Old Testament who's a real person and
Speaker 2: that we actually have historical sources for, and we know
Speaker 2: who her niece was, and you know these things, and
Speaker 2: it's it's wild to me how many of them are
Speaker 2: just not And this is how we know the story
Speaker 2: of Ruth is made up. This is how we know
Speaker 2: the story of Esther is made up. It's just one
Speaker 2: thing after another.
Speaker 3: And so the book is in three sections. The first
Speaker 3: section is five stories of five important women in the Bible,
Speaker 3: told from their perspective, and then the commentary that goes
Speaker 3: with them. Then there's a great Then there are a
Speaker 3: bunch of topics like menopaus and like menstruation, which is
Speaker 3: you know, like unclean, unclean, all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Depart the camp for seven days until now stop bleeding
Speaker 4: it and then thou might return kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And a big section on virginity, because the virginity, the
Speaker 3: whole thing about making virginity such a big deal leads
Speaker 3: to so many things like making young girls the one
Speaker 3: that you want to go after, which then we kind
Speaker 3: of kind of tie it into the Epstein wells and
Speaker 3: we did, you know, like there's a whole lot of
Speaker 3: stuff in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's some very interesting things when you get
Speaker 2: into the nitty gritty of what the Bible says, who
Speaker 2: the Bible says you can have sex with, and who
Speaker 2: you can't, but mostly who you can have sex with.
Speaker 2: There's some really jaw dropping moments in that chapter.
Speaker 4: Without being too graphic. I mean, I always it has
Speaker 4: to be asked, so I will ask the question. But
Speaker 4: if god soldiers go in and they kill the Midianites
Speaker 4: and capture the virgin girls, and if you're going to
Speaker 4: take a woman and test her for her virginity, how's
Speaker 4: that done? In the Old Testament times? I mean, it's
Speaker 4: now my brain is going to some very dark places.
Speaker 4: Does anybody else ask those questions?
Speaker 2: Book? Is it provokes all these conversations, that provokes all
Speaker 2: these questions. That's what we're really loving about it from
Speaker 2: the reaction of the people who've read it so far.
Speaker 3: Right, and we even talk about how there's a kind
Speaker 3: of surgery you can have done now in the modern
Speaker 3: world that rebuilds the hymen, so you can conte that
Speaker 3: you were a virgin, like I mean, we talked about
Speaker 3: how that's being done in various countries, and we've met
Speaker 3: female doctors talking about that stuff.
Speaker 5: Now we go right into it, we do.
Speaker 4: You've got a chapter in your book called your Hymen
Speaker 4: or Your Life, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because why if you didn't bleed on your wedding
Speaker 3: night and there weren't signs of blood on the sheets,
Speaker 3: then you got stone to death.
Speaker 4: Let's come back to clearly written by boys. I'm reversing
Speaker 4: in my brain the King Solomon scenario. Right, So let's
Speaker 4: say it was Ruth or Naomi or you know, one
Speaker 4: of the Mary's or whatever that had seven hundred spouses
Speaker 4: and three hundred male concubines. How would that have gone
Speaker 4: over in the older New Testament, right.
Speaker 2: And there's so many things like that that they just
Speaker 2: throw it out and we just we've heard it all
Speaker 2: our lives, so we don't think about it. But when
Speaker 2: you stop and think about it, well, if this is
Speaker 2: the other way around, it changes their perspective.
Speaker 4: Well, Karis, if I'm talking to someone who is talking,
Speaker 4: I mean, let's get into the this relates to today
Speaker 4: as we see the people that are going after LGBT marriage,
Speaker 4: et cetera, and they're saying one man, one woman biblical marriage,
Speaker 4: and these same people are okay with seven hundred wives
Speaker 4: and three hundred concubines, Keras, how do you think they
Speaker 4: get around that?
Speaker 3: Well, they like what they like. They just take it
Speaker 3: from what they want, just like the whole Bible's written
Speaker 3: by guys who wanted to make things be the way.
Speaker 5: They want them to be. So yeah, it's really not We've.
Speaker 3: Got a section and I was just trying to find
Speaker 3: the cartoon it shows my vout marriage.
Speaker 4: With the Biblical I've got one illustration queued up and
Speaker 4: it's got this. It's got a man sitting on what
Speaker 4: looks like a throne with a crown, and he's surrounded
Speaker 4: by hot babes, and Christians are okay with that. They're like, ah, hey,
Speaker 4: King Solomon, what an admirable figures? And then the other
Speaker 4: Then I come back to more logistics, Well, how do
Speaker 4: you how do you deal with one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 4: wives and three You wouldn't need an Excel spreadsheet to
Speaker 4: keep up with your own relationships?
Speaker 3: Is all a really nice section about when the queen esther,
Speaker 3: when she gets chosen to be one of the concubines
Speaker 3: before she becomes the queen, and we describe what that
Speaker 3: would have been like, like what the what the concubine
Speaker 3: facilities were for the king?
Speaker 5: It's yeah, we we have a lot of fun with
Speaker 5: all these topics.
Speaker 2: It's a fun book. It takes you places you didn't
Speaker 2: know you were going to go.
Speaker 4: So, when we talk about rape culture in the Bible outright,
Speaker 4: but especially in the ot, is it true that the
Speaker 4: rape of a woman was not considered as much a
Speaker 4: violation of the woman but a property crime against a man.
Speaker 3: Goes right, and you could pay the father some money
Speaker 3: because you've rapped his daughter, and he could accept that money,
Speaker 3: and then she would have to marry him and live
Speaker 3: with this rapist and you know, the father could say, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's fine and let that happen, or he could say, no,
Speaker 3: you don't have to marry him, but the guy still
Speaker 3: has to pay him money.
Speaker 2: But her opinion has no part happen to do with it,
Speaker 2: however whatsoever.
Speaker 4: I have this trick that I occasionally use. Some people
Speaker 4: agree with that, some people don't. But I get into
Speaker 4: the kidnapping of the virgins, and you can keep her
Speaker 4: for thirty days and change your appearance, and if she
Speaker 4: doesn't please you, you can release her like a straight cat.
Speaker 4: And the buying and selling of women, how they're devalued
Speaker 4: by half, and the bitter water test, where if she's
Speaker 4: suspected of adultery, you drink the thing. And I always
Speaker 4: I start with I read these horrible things in the Quran.
Speaker 4: Islam is such a barbaric religion, and the Christians like,
Speaker 4: this is horrific? How can anyone believe this? And then
Speaker 4: I pull the rug out from underneath him. Some people
Speaker 4: think that's an a dishonest and underhanded approach. It may be,
Speaker 4: but I do it.
Speaker 2: I do so yes, what they instantly do, it's like, oh, wait, oh,
Speaker 2: you're taking that seth oh it's really beautiful and wonderful, or.
Speaker 4: Even more alarming, is divine command theory or vertical morality? Well,
Speaker 4: if God wants it that way, then it becomes moral
Speaker 4: by default, which is terrifying.
Speaker 3: We talk about the fact that this has led to
Speaker 3: even modern like in modern times, and I think it
Speaker 3: was in the sixties in Italy you could still do
Speaker 3: rape marriage like you could rape a girl. And we
Speaker 3: talked about a specific case and give the chapter in
Speaker 3: verson names of the newspapers have talked about it, even
Speaker 3: where this guy captured a girl out of her house
Speaker 3: and raped her, took her away with her his buddies
Speaker 3: for a while, and then let her go back and
Speaker 3: went to the father and said I want to marry her,
Speaker 3: and she was supposed to marry him, and that was
Speaker 3: the law of the land at the time.
Speaker 2: She was the first one to say, no, that's not
Speaker 2: going to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh, you don't say that in a world of men,
Speaker 4: in a book written by boys, do you?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: If I move out of the books of the Old
Speaker 4: Testament into the news, one of the arguments from at
Speaker 4: least the casual Christian is well, yeah, God was kind
Speaker 4: of a barbaric nasty, judgmental, temperamental asshole back then. But
Speaker 4: Jesus is love and light. New Testament.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so horrible Old Testament stuff. Now we have the
Speaker 2: New Testament.
Speaker 4: Yay, Jesus, How do you address that? How do you
Speaker 4: Jesus loves everybody, and he honors women in the NT.
Speaker 4: How do you respond.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even honor women by ancient standards, and ancient
Speaker 2: centers are not exactly a high bar. But there are
Speaker 2: pagan and foreign religions that do a better job of
Speaker 2: treating women than Jesus does.
Speaker 4: Well. I mean, I know he compared the gentile woman
Speaker 4: to the dog, and I want to say it was
Speaker 4: Mark or is one of the gospel obviously one of
Speaker 4: the gospels. But you know he and he treated his
Speaker 4: own mother pretty poorly, as I remember, didn't Caros.
Speaker 5: Yeah he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he distired a couple of times. And we've got
Speaker 3: a section in there that's like a cosmo quiz, and
Speaker 3: it's called these Jesus a bad boyfriend, And we take
Speaker 3: all these different questions and answer them based on what
Speaker 3: it says in the Bible. And I know, I had
Speaker 3: a couple of Christian friends read the book and they
Speaker 3: were fine with everything up until then they said, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's educational and it's funny, it's well written, and it's
Speaker 3: fun and I like the cartoons and everything got to
Speaker 3: Jesus and it was like, oh, no, I can't say this, no, no, sorry,
Speaker 3: I had to stop reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why we want you to give this
Speaker 2: to your Christian women friends. Buy this book for them,
Speaker 2: because yeah, everyone is willing to, you know, take a
Speaker 2: pass on the Old Testament. But as soon as you
Speaker 2: start pointing out how Jesus is not that great either, boom,
Speaker 2: that's a whole different.
Speaker 4: I mean Paul Paul's famous approach to women throughout the
Speaker 4: What thirteen book that he had penned. When he references women,
Speaker 4: it's usually go home, tell your husband. You don't have
Speaker 4: the authority to open your mouth in church. I mean,
Speaker 4: Paul was not a fan of females.
Speaker 2: Knew that's a whole different rabbit hole we could go down.
Speaker 2: I will say in his defense, the most misogynistic things
Speaker 2: attributed Paul come from forgers in his name, like Titus
Speaker 2: first and second Timothy. But he's wildly indifferent to the
Speaker 2: thought of sleeping with women. And he says, I don't
Speaker 2: understand why all men can't be like me, perfectly able
Speaker 2: to withstand the temptation of women, you know, while he's
Speaker 2: gallivanting with his buddy Barnabas and his boy toy Timothy.
Speaker 4: And yeah, short break, and we will continue this conversation
Speaker 4: in just a second. Talking here with my very special guest,
Speaker 4: Dave Fitzgerald and Karis Burgkowski, authors or co authors of
Speaker 4: the new book Clearly Written by Boys's Guide to the Bible,
Speaker 4: which is linked in the description box. Both of you
Speaker 4: took me back in the book. You took me back
Speaker 4: to my high school days of true love weights and
Speaker 4: abstinence pledges. And I remember there was one I had
Speaker 4: a friend and their parents said, if you will abstain
Speaker 4: from sex until marriage, we have like in escrow. And
Speaker 4: this sounds made up. It it's true five hundred bucks,
Speaker 4: which was a lot of money anyway, but it's really
Speaker 4: a lot of money. Back in nineteen eighty three. We
Speaker 4: have five hundred dollars that we'll just give you if
Speaker 4: you promise us and you keep that promise. And I
Speaker 4: thought that's jacked up, Like that's jacked up, guys, But
Speaker 4: you get keros old pinball to you purity culture. In
Speaker 4: the book, tell Me where you go with this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about the purity balls and the purity
Speaker 3: the whole purity culture.
Speaker 4: You got to describe a purity ball because there will
Speaker 4: be a few new listeners who haven't heard us talk
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: Where the father and the daughter go to this ball
Speaker 3: and they're all dressed up like they're going to a
Speaker 3: wedding practically, and she promises not to have sex and
Speaker 3: puts already gives her a ring and like gets like
Speaker 3: he's her boyfriend for till she's old enough to get married,
Speaker 3: and oh my god, it's really creepy.
Speaker 4: If you want to see examples of this, go to
Speaker 4: YouTube and type in my name is Seth Andrews, and
Speaker 4: then a speech called God likes to watch because let's
Speaker 4: face it, biblical marriage is always a threesome, right, and
Speaker 4: you and your partner and God is overseeing, so it's
Speaker 4: always a threesome. But I show examples of fathers who
Speaker 4: are telling their very young daughters that you will I
Speaker 4: will be your boyfriend until you get married, and in
Speaker 4: the purity ceremony, creepy like eleven year old girls in
Speaker 4: a wedding gown. Sometimes looking up before these big, looming,
Speaker 4: giant crosses and kneeling down and writing their names on
Speaker 4: these pledges. And they've got rings with scriptures on them.
Speaker 4: And it's freaking culty. It's very culty. And in the book,
Speaker 4: purity culture is rooted in actual verses of scripture. I mean,
Speaker 4: these fathers and pastors and guardian mothers, whoever can go
Speaker 4: back chapter and verse right.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, And because David's been working with those kinds
Speaker 3: of things in all of his other books, Like every
Speaker 3: thing we say has a Bible verse, like you can
Speaker 3: look it up in your Bible, Like pretty much everything
Speaker 3: is backed up, and we give them lots of tools.
Speaker 3: And then at the end we have a whole section
Speaker 3: for book clubs, like get your friends together and have
Speaker 3: a book club, and here's the questions you can ask
Speaker 3: and things you can look up and yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, one thing I really appreciate is that you
Speaker 4: really go far beyond the surface again of what this
Speaker 4: audience is going to know. Whether it's the bitter Water
Speaker 4: test or slavery or I don't know, the treatment of
Speaker 4: women by Jesus. These are things that are often well known.
Speaker 4: You guys go a lot deeper so as you were
Speaker 4: doing your research, I mean, give me something that surprised you,
Speaker 4: something that maybe you didn't even know starting the journey.
Speaker 4: Was there something where you're like, oh, like shit, this
Speaker 4: is crazy, anything popped to your mind.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were several that like, wow, it's even
Speaker 2: worse than we thought, especially when you get through the
Speaker 2: context behind these stories. You Yeah, things get really disturbing
Speaker 2: really fast. And then there's just things that are happening now,
Speaker 2: like female circumcision that's just so horrific we can barely
Speaker 2: even stand to think about it. Well, there were some,
Speaker 2: there were some surprisingly optimistic things we came across too,
Speaker 2: And that's that Now, since the pandemic, since this whole
Speaker 2: the last twenty years or so of Christian evangel evangelism
Speaker 2: becoming so misogynistic, openly misogynistic, that for the first time
Speaker 2: in recorded four decades of Christian trend tracking, there are
Speaker 2: more men in the pews than women women are. They're
Speaker 2: not protesting, they're not making a fuss. They're just Irish exiting.
Speaker 2: They're just we're done.
Speaker 4: In Irish exiting.
Speaker 2: They're just gone. And now there groups like the Barnet
Speaker 2: Group that track they make their living tracking Christian trends.
Speaker 2: They've never seen anything like it in all the years
Speaker 2: they've been keeping track.
Speaker 4: I'm sure. I'm sure. I literally see a line in
Speaker 4: my brain, a line of women walking out of the
Speaker 4: Southern Baptist Convention that still thinks it's the year eleven.
Speaker 4: By the way, Yeah, you know, I Caris, you've been
Speaker 4: watching what's going on with the SBC and all of these,
Speaker 4: Like I tended to think that even even mainstream Christianity
Speaker 4: was kind of over it, like we're going to get
Speaker 4: rid of all this other stuff and we're going to evolve. No,
Speaker 4: there's a whole section that's going back. They literally want
Speaker 4: some sort of a gender feudalism, right, yeah, phrase, I.
Speaker 2: Wish we'd put that in a book.
Speaker 4: You're welcome, I'm a giver project.
Speaker 3: They want to take a loans rate to vote, like
Speaker 3: one vote for household.
Speaker 4: And then we saw it was at a Turning Point
Speaker 4: USA event where there was a group full of women
Speaker 4: and they were like saying, I'm good with it. The
Speaker 4: slaves are celebrating their chains. Karas. So you're a woman,
Speaker 4: does how does a woman go into the auditorium and
Speaker 4: say less liberty for me? Yay?
Speaker 5: What do you think is happening there rainwashing?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, literally, we were talking to Brady Goodwin, who
Speaker 2: is a black ex Christian recording artist now turned atheist.
Speaker 2: And it's the parallels between the way the Bible treats
Speaker 2: women and the way the racism and the sexism of
Speaker 2: the Bible kind of go hand in hand. And like
Speaker 2: the slave sermons. Jeremiah Kamara, who did that amazing book
Speaker 2: movie Contradiction and amazing books on slave sermons, they are
Speaker 2: so indoctrinated to be slaves, and all Christianity is meant
Speaker 2: to be slave. The very fact that we hold our
Speaker 2: hands like that the way a slave gets his wristbound.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Dan Barker's pointed that out these are all this is
Speaker 2: a slave religion, and and it's not black people, it's everybody.
Speaker 2: Everybody is a slave in this religion. Some have managed
Speaker 2: to become on top of the slave pile and make
Speaker 2: lots of money of it and lots of power, but
Speaker 2: they're all still slaves.
Speaker 4: Kris, would you have an extra thought? I heard you
Speaker 4: jump in.
Speaker 5: I can't even remember what I was going to say.
Speaker 4: I do the same thing. Well, I noticed, like this
Speaker 4: proof I've read the book Everybody, but you reference the
Speaker 4: Civil War era civil rights activist Frederick Douglass, who was
Speaker 4: an amazing human rights activist in regard to slavery, and
Speaker 4: Douglas's words really resonates all these many many years later,
Speaker 4: don't they.
Speaker 2: Basically you said, of all the slave owners, the ones
Speaker 2: that we most feared were the religious slaveholders, because they
Speaker 2: were the worst, the most vicious, and they slept easy
Speaker 2: at night knowing that they were living a righteous life
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as the Bible tells them, they can beat their
Speaker 3: slaves and how to beat them and what to do
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, God wills it has been the biggest freaking cop
Speaker 4: out in history, has it not. Women can't vote during
Speaker 4: the suffrage. You know, they're protesting God wills it. The
Speaker 4: ownership of people LGBT people. You know, it's God's idea,
Speaker 4: not mine, not my problem. I always think of that
Speaker 4: Susan B.
Speaker 2: Anthony quote when they're having babies numbersticker. I said it,
Speaker 2: God believes it. That settles it.
Speaker 4: I think Susan B. Anthony was quoted as saying, I
Speaker 4: distrust when someone tells me what God wants because it
Speaker 4: usually coincides with what they want. I totally paraphrase that.
Speaker 4: Any final thoughts about the book before I let you
Speaker 4: two beautiful people go, I'll start with you, caris you
Speaker 4: want to do an elevator picture? Anything I've missed.
Speaker 3: I just think that the book is worth reading just
Speaker 3: because it's fun to read. It's written in a conversational,
Speaker 3: fun kind of a way. You learn a lot, but
Speaker 3: you don't feel like you're in class like you learn it.
Speaker 3: Some of it will make you laugh, some of it'll
Speaker 3: make you cry, some it'll make you really really pissed off,
Speaker 3: because some of our readers have told us that they
Speaker 3: just had to slam the bookshut and sit there for
Speaker 3: an hour before they could go on and read some more.
Speaker 3: So read it because it's going to be an experience
Speaker 3: to read it, like you'll learn stuff.
Speaker 5: But read it because you're going to enjoy reading it.
Speaker 2: David, I would like to say, speaking as a man,
Speaker 2: even though I'm half mother on my mom a half
Speaker 2: woman on my mom's side, this is not a book
Speaker 2: for women. It's a book for men. It's a book
Speaker 2: for atheists, it's a book for Christians, it's a book
Speaker 2: for everybody, because at the end of the day, it
Speaker 2: points it's it's talking about how the Bible misuses women.
Speaker 2: But where it miss uses women today, it misses men tomorrow.
Speaker 2: You're next. As long as you let the Bible do
Speaker 2: this to women, or to gay people, or to trans people,
Speaker 2: or to black people, whatever you are, you're also in
Speaker 2: those crosshairs. No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the main thing. There's no such thing
Speaker 3: as the word of God. And don't let anybody tell
Speaker 3: you this is God's word.
Speaker 4: Just what that makes me want to buy copies and
Speaker 4: send one to Joyce Meyer, Paula White, Beth Moore, Victoria Ostein.
Speaker 2: And that's all your Christian women friends, all your Christian
Speaker 2: men friends.
Speaker 4: I'm sending it to you in love, in the Love
Speaker 4: of Jesus, In the Love of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yours in Christ, Seth Andrews.
Speaker 4: Harris Burkowski David Fitzgerald, co authors of the new book
Speaker 4: Clearly Written by Boys, A Woman's Guide to the Bible,
Speaker 4: which I will link. You got what paperback, hardcover, kendall audio.
Speaker 4: You guys do audio on that, you do the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Audio wills come when we can make that happen. Okay, Wow,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be paperback and audio.
Speaker 3: Paperback and ebook, sorry, book, but audio will come and
Speaker 3: it's going to be fun too, because we're going to
Speaker 3: make it more like a radio play with each of
Speaker 3: these women talking in different voices and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I love it. I love it like a like an
Speaker 4: audio stage play. That's going to be fun. Okay, well
Speaker 4: linked in the description box. Congrats. I know this has
Speaker 4: been a labor of love a long time coming, and
Speaker 4: I'm telling everybody it's good and it's a little different
Speaker 4: than you think it's It goes beyond what an educated
Speaker 4: person even about the Bible, will expect, and I think
Speaker 4: it might help you in conversations you have about the
Speaker 4: Bible's approach to both men and women. Thank you both
Speaker 4: for talking to me today. Good to see you, Thank.
Speaker 5: You very much.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Sam, and we'll see it baha,
Speaker 2: yes see you.
Speaker 4: Bahaka in August, Sarnia, Ontario, Bahcoon dot com. An amazing conference.
Speaker 4: Thanks again, guys.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thanks all.
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