Is the "Good Book" Really So Good?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Episode: Is the "Good Book" Really So Good?
Date: May 14, 2024
Guests: Dr. Bart Ehrman (host, episode interviewer), Dr. Jill Hicks-Keaton (guest)
Main Theme: Examining how "the Good Book" (the Bible) is made “good”—especially among white evangelicals—through interpretive and rhetorical strategies that resolve its troubling aspects, including violence and misogyny.

---

Overview

This episode features a role reversal: Bart Ehrman interviews Dr. Jill Hicks-Keaton about her new book, Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves. The conversation delves into how the Bible's status as "the good book" is not inherent, but constructed and maintained through complex intellectual, rhetorical, and moral labor. Dr. Hicks-Keaton especially examines the methods white evangelicals use to square the Bible’s ancient, often troubling content (violence, patriarchy, misogyny) with modern moral expectations.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Construct of "Goodness" in the Bible

• Book’s Thesis: "The goodness of the Bible is a construct that has to continually be maintained." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 03:07)
  • The Bible is not a moral agent; humans must actively interpret and frame it as "good."
• White evangelicals engage in "Bible benevolence projects," which means ongoing efforts to interpret or sanitize difficult passages to maintain the Bible’s benevolent reputation.

---

2. Bible Benevolence Project

• Definition: "A shorthand way to refer to the act of making the Bible good." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 04:40)
• Alliterative phrase reflecting the labor—in interpretation, rhetoric, and selective emphasis—required to sustain the Bible's moral authority in the modern context.

---

3. Sanitizing Biblical Violence

• VeggieTales Example (07:55–10:31)
  • The retelling of the violent conquest of Jericho via animated, singing vegetables throwing "purple slushies," erasing any depiction of real violence or suffering:
    • "For like millions of kids, the Bible has purple slushies in it. It's not real violence. There's no dead children." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 09:03)
  • Serves as a paradigm for how adults also sanitize, reinterpret, or skip troubling material to maintain the Bible’s "goodness."
  • The simplest method: ignore or skip over harrowing passages (10:58)
• Creative Reinterpretation:
  • Beyond omission, evangelicals employ “more creative strategies” that attempt to reconcile problematic content—such as ancient violence—with contemporary morals (11:30).

---

4. Paradoxical Logic in Evangelical Interpretation

• Violence as Timeless and Time-Bound (11:51–13:31)
  • Evangelical apologetic scripts often argue both that the Bible's violence is a singular, ancient event ("time-bound") and a demonstration of God's unchanging nature ("timeless"). - "Things that can't be true at the same time are true at the same time." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 11:51)
  • Strategic logic switches occur depending on what serves to make the Bible seem benevolent at the moment.

---

5. Misogyny in the Bible: Definitions and Interpretations

• Definition Debate (15:34–18:12)
  • Traditional definition (woman-hating) is strategically limited to make it easier to defend the Bible as non-misogynistic.
  • Kate Manne’s definition: Focuses on women's experiences—including regulation of their social standing and bodies—rather than checking for explicit hatred.
    • "If you ask a question like what does Jesus value women's labor force for? ... then we have a new set of questions that we can ask." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 17:44)

---

6. Debates on Jesus and Paul Regarding Gender

• Jesus as Liberator or Not? (18:12–23:05)

  • Evangelicals split between "complementarian" (traditional roles) and "egalitarian" (equal partnership) approaches.
  • Hicks-Keaton argues that both camps ultimately operate within patriarchal systems.
  • The “Syrophoenician woman” episode (Mark 5)—often used to depict Jesus as empowering women—actually, upon close reading, reflects problematic dynamics:
    • "Jesus calls a woman a bitch, that then she barks, right? ... To turn that story into a place where Jesus empowers a woman requires assumptions that women deserve less..." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 22:29)

• Paul and the "Pornodoxy" Concept (23:55–33:25)

  • Coined by Hicks-Keaton, combines "pornography" and "orthodoxy"—refers to reconstructions that imagine ancient women as dangerously sexual to justify restrictive passages.
  • Example: Scott McKnight justifies Paul's instructions to women by imagining that women in Ephesus were engaging in "seductive" behavior, based on a fictional novel (Xenophon's Ephesian Tale), thus regulating modern women based on invented ancient scenarios.

---

7. Case Studies in Evangelical Scripture Interpretation

• 1 Timothy 2 and the Contextual Excuse (26:49–34:11)

  • Passage restricts women’s authority by tying it to creation narratives.
  • Evangelical strategies often invent context (e.g., promiscuous Ephesian women) to explain away universal implications.
  • Bart Ehrman notes that the biblical author grounds the restriction in the nature of woman (Adam and Eve), not local circumstance.

• 1 Corinthians 11: Veils vs. Hair (34:51–36:59)

  • Philip Payne argues Paul was only telling women how to wear hair, not veils, as a way to lessen the passage’s apparent misogyny.
  • Hicks-Keaton points out that any regulation of women’s appearance (by men, for religious reasons) is itself problematic.

---

8. Patriarchy, Misogyny, and the Ancient World (36:59–38:41)

• By modern experiential definitions, all ancient canon is essentially misogynistic due to its embedded patriarchal structures.
• Even modern attempts at feminism may inadvertently rehearse misogynistic patterns due to pervasive social conditioning (citing Kate Manne).

---

9. Why Focus on White Evangelicals? (39:22–41:47)

• Scope: Hicks-Keaton uses white evangelicals as a case study because of their cultural and political influence, not because they're unique in these interpretive strategies.
• "Bible" is a Modern Construct: Emphasizes that the concept of “the Bible” as a singular, authoritative text is itself a modern creation.

---

10. Pedagogy and the “Good Book” in Academia (42:17–43:50)

• Hicks-Keaton avoids prescribing religious practice to students, instead aims to encourage critical engagement—especially confronting the ethical implications of scriptural content.
• Classroom exercises include close readings of violent and problematic passages to highlight their content, not to dogmatically reject scripture, but to foster critical reflection.

---

11. The Bible: Read or Retire? (44:30–45:31)

• She sees value in reading the Bible as ancient literature, and because it remains central in the cultural and political imagination.
  • "It's a cultural icon. And so it deserves study in the contemporary moment because of how people see it in the U.S. it's not just an ancient book. It's also something modern." (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 45:01)

---

12. Social and Political Stakes (45:31–46:42)

• The way the Bible is interpreted and positioned as "good" has broad impact on social policy and the structure of society.
  • "When you've got a culture that...thinks that it's based on the Bible...when they do read it, they make say something other than it says." (Bart Ehrman, 45:31)
• Hicks-Keaton’s work is positioned as an intervention: revealing interpretive moves and pushing for honest engagement with scripture.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Bible’s “Goodness” as Construction:
  • “The goodness of the Bible is a construct that has to continually be maintained.” (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 03:07)
• On VeggieTales and Sanitization:
  • “For like millions of kids, the Bible has purple slushies in it. It's not real violence. There's no dead children.” (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 09:03)
• On Contradictory Apologetic Strategies:
  • “Things that can't be true at the same time are true at the same time.” (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 11:51)
• On “Making Up Ancient History” to Excuse Sexism:
  • “He’s also inventing her sluttiness in order to condemn it.” (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 31:57, on McKnight’s reading of Xenophon to explain 1 Timothy 2)
• On Teaching Ethically Difficult Texts:
  • “It matters to me that people read what's on the page of the text...I want people to know that I think you should think about the stakes of making that literature into moral authority.” (Jill Hicks-Keaton, 42:43)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Jill Hicks-Keaton Background: 00:40–03:07
• Explaining the Book’s Thesis: 03:07–05:10
• Bible Benevolence Project: 05:10–06:36
• VeggieTales/Jericho Story as Paradigm: 07:55–10:31
• Strategies for Sanitizing Biblical Violence: 11:30–14:13
• Defining Misogyny in Interpretation: 15:34–18:12
• Jesus as (Non-)Liberator and Syrophoenician Woman: 18:12–23:05
• "Pornodoxy" & Paul’s Instructions on Women: 23:55–33:25
• 1 Corinthians, Veiling, and Philip Payne: 34:51–36:59
• Patriarchy, then and now: 36:59–38:41
• Why Focus on White Evangelicals: 39:22–41:47
• Pedagogy & Reading the Bible Critically: 42:17–43:50
• The Bible’s Modern Significance: 44:30–45:31
• Social/Political Stakes & Wrap-up: 45:31–46:42

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is lively, humorous at times (Ehrman’s puns, Hicks-Keaton’s “sassy” scholarship), but anchored in serious, critical reflection on scripture, modern interpretation, and the social consequences of both.

---

Summary Takeaway

The Bible’s status as “The Good Book” is not fixed or natural; it requires ongoing, often paradoxical, interpretive labor—especially among white evangelicals—to align its ancient values with modern morality. Recognizing and analyzing these maneuvers is crucial, not just for honest theology, but for understanding their impact on contemporary society and politics.

Transcript

[VRBO Advertiser]

Early birds always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets you closer to the action. So don't be late. Book your next vacation early on VRBO and save over $120. Rise and shine. Average savings $141. Select homes only.

[Megan Lewis]

Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.

[Bart Ehrman]

I'd like to welcome you to this special edition of the Misquoting Jesus podcast. This week I'm doing the interviewing instead of being the interviewed and I'm very happy to be interviewing Jill Hicks Keaton. I've known Jill for a number of years because she did her PhD at Duke University. Actually maybe had a class with me once. But she graduated from Duke and she got a position at the University of Oklahoma where she taught for a number of years and now has just recently moved to the University of Southern California. Jill is an accomplished author and becoming a bit of a public figure in the study of the New Testament and early Christianity. Her first book was called Arguing with Gentile Access to Israel's Living God in Jewish Antiquity. Many of you won't know, but there's a very important non canonical writing called Joseph and Asenath and that's what this book is about. Published with Oxford in 2018. And she co authored a book called Does Scripture Speak for Itself? The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation. That book came out in 2022. So that's a, that's a recent book, but it deals with the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. and provides a critical analysis of what they're really up to there, which is more closely related to the book that she's now just recently published. The book is called Good Book How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves. And so I think it is safe to say this will be a controversial book in some, some circles. So Jill, welcome to the podcast to tell us about this book.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Thank you for having me.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, this is great. And I'm a little suspicious of the title because I think you did this so that you could tell people you wrote a good book.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

I, I will never tire of that joke. It's great.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it's a good idea and so everybody uses it, so it's not FALS advertising. Well done you. So the subtitle I think is more informative because Good book is almost. You're putting good and scare quotes, basically. I mean, it's not on the title page, but. So how white evangelicals save the Bible to save themselves. Could you just kind of explain what that means, what the book's about?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Sure, yeah. So the. The major idea is that even though the Bible has this reputation for being the good book, my argument is that that has to be made. So it's not a moral agent by itself. Texts cannot be good by themselves. Humans have to do this labor, intellectual, rhetorical, moral labor. So my book is both pointing that out that the goodness of the Bible is a construct that has to continually be maintained. And then I'm looking at how particularly white evangelicals engage in creative strategies and negotiations in order to square ancient things with modern things, ancient violence with modern mores, for example.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, so calling it a good book. Yeah, okay. It's not inherently good. People are considering it good, and in this particular case, they've got to make it good. I think a lot of people listening to the podcast or watching this will know there are very troubling things happening in the Bible. But one approach to that I think probably a lot of people take is to try and some way kind of make sense of it. So it doesn't sound so bad.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Right.

[Bart Ehrman]

But the reason for doing that, commonly most people read the Bible, if you're talking about Old and New Testament, are Christians, and for them it's Scripture. And, you know, they don't want awful things in their Scriptures. Right. So you've got all sorts of interesting phrases in this book that I rather like. One is Bible benevolence project. So a Bible benevolence project. Just tell me what that means.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Sure, yeah. So as I was writing this book, I realized that I needed a shorthand way to refer to the act of making the Bible good. And so, you know, I was raised Baptist. Alliteration is in my blood. So Bible benevolence is what came out. And so it's just a shorthand. My saying this is how people make the Bible into the good book. They're engaged in a project of Bible benevolence. Or you could say Bible benevolence, labor, for example.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay. So the idea is that if somebody's using this. I mean, if somebody's valuing this and cherishing the Bible, they've got to contend with the fact that there is massive violence, not just in the Hebrew Bible, say, with the, you know, the destruction of the Canaanites when Israel takes over the promised land, but also in the New Testament, Book of Revelation. I mean, really, the conquest of Canaan is sort of minor comparison with God destroying the entire world and almost everybody in it. And so, and so if somebody's a peace loving person and they think God is a loving God, they've got to contend with these things. But what you're, the basic thesis is that you've got, you've got to make it good because there are parts that, you know, they translated in terms of today, it sure doesn't look good. Is that.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, I think the key word here is Bible because people are making these texts Scripture.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yes.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

And, you know, they're historians and believers. Christians will say, well, they're written in antiquity, so we would expect them to reflect ancient mores. But then when they're made into contemporary scripture, that is when this project becomes necessary. Because if the Bible is going to be what people who see it as the Good Book want it to be, they have to make it into a moral authority that squares with what they think is good. Now, which is another reason why I think this work is necessary. Necessary because the concept of goodness changes over time.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay. So the difficulty is kind of assuming, I mean, when you call it good, you mean good for now. I mean when people call it good, they call it the Good Book. You know, they're not really interested. Most people are not that interested in what Amos was saying in the 8th century. I mean, they, for them, this is scripture that is meaningful for their lives. And to call it the Good Book for them means that this is good for me. And so since obviously there are things in there that are not good for us, the Benevolence project is to make it sound benevolent or make it interpreted in a benevolent way. When it's, you know, actually when you just read it, it's not, not all that benevolent. Right.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

A lot of people don't want the Bible to affirm patriarchal social order, for example, because if the Bible is going to be a moral authority, it also needs to be good for everyone, which means good for women. And so in a time, especially in, in the modern US when patriarchal social order and it's you, violence, sexual harassment, all the things that attend that in the culture, when those things get a bad reputation.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yes.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

The Bible can't get wrapped up in that and still be the Good Book. And so there's like a detangling project happening as well.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. Where you interpret it so it doesn't say what it actually says.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, that happens. Sometimes it does.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. Okay, so I want to start with where you start because you have this great beginning with these Veggie Tales.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah.

[Bart Ehrman]

And so you start kind of at a good spot for showing the problem of the Bible with the. The battle of Jericho. So I'm sure everybody knows, but in case I don't, In Joshua, chapter six, the children of Israel are starting their invasion of Canaan. And the first city they attack is Jericho. And so they are instructed by God how to attack Jericho. And they're told to march around the city once a day for seven days. The seventh day, they march around seven times and they shout out, and the walls are to come a tumbling down. As we used to sing in Sunday school. The walls come and tumble them down. And then the Israelites are told to go in and slaughter every man, woman and child in the city. We were always taught this as kind of this glorious tale of the power of God and how great it was that, you know, God had this power and gave this power to the Israelites. But I think usually we didn't think very much about those people living in Jericho, those infants who were killed, for example, or the women or the non soldiers. But you begin this in a really interesting way with Veggie Tales. What are Veggie Tales? Can you guys say something about this? Because the way you do it is great. I think so.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

VeggieTales is a white evangelical animated product made for children that has adorable vegetables and fruits as biblical characters. So it is imaginings of Bible stories as talking and singing vegetables. That's actually a big key too. There's singing and music. And so in this retelling of the fall of Jericho, one of the things that I point out is that, you know, we've got these cute little peas and asparagus and they're playing when the Saints Go Marching In. The whole tale is rendered as a way of showing children what the good thing is when you follow God, that God will be faithful to what God said he would do. And so they do it. And the walls fall, but not before there are purple slushies thrown. Okay, so the weapons are purple slushies. And you know, there's no purple slushies in the Bible, as far as I can tell, until veggietales puts them in there. Right? So for like millions of kids, the Bible has purple slushies in it. It's not real violence. There's no dead children. There's not even a chopped salad at the end of the Jericho scene in veggietales. And so that's one way of making the Bible Benevolent, for example, for kids is to just skip over the parts that are really harrowing. And so after the walls fall in Veggie Tales, there's rubble, but there's nobody left in the city. There are no vegetables left in the city to be killed.

[Bart Ehrman]

Right. So it's kind of a paradigm for what we do because, you know, no one would think you should teach little kids about slaughter, the innocence there. But. But on the other hand, trying to teach them the Bible is good with this heroic tale, which in fact is a horrible tale. It's a way that gets translated then into how adults also approach the Bible because they. They sanitize it and reinterpret it in a way so it doesn't seem so. Doesn't seem so horrible. I guess.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

So, yeah. What I like to tell people is that that's actually, I think the most obvious and boring way to make the Bible good is to ignore something or to skip over it. Yeah, that it's the more creative strategies that people engage in when they actually encounter the real text and realize that there is these texts, what has been called texts of terror in the Bible and they're unlearning Veggie Tales and seeing what is on the pages. And it's those strategies that I think are the most interesting, more interesting things.

[Bart Ehrman]

They're far more relevant to all of us because. So just explain, I mean, how do people sanitize the violence against the Canaanites? I mean, how do you make sense of a God? You know, people read this who try to make sense of and try to make it sound good are people who think that God is a God of love, for example, how do you deal with the conquest narrative of dummy.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

So what I found as I was reading, particularly how white evangelicals do this, is that I call it a script. So a script developed as I was reading widely, how white evangelicals make the Bible good when it comes to the Canaanite violence. In Joshua and Deuteronomy, they repeat the same arguments over and over again and cite each other so that really there is sort of a standard script that is used. And one of the things that I point out is that things that can't be true at the same time are true at the same time. In this script example, the violence is both timeless and time bound. So you can make the violence feel less of a moral problem. If you say it was time bound, it was just that one time in ancient Israel. It can't happen again. It was special circumstances. And so my quip is that they don't see God as a serial killer. But then the same argument will include they'll switch strategically to say that the violence is also timeless because God hasn't changed. So God threatened to punish the Israelites and God might even punish contemporary people if they do not center the Bible as a moral authority. And so the violence is both of those things at the same time. And so the script sort of switches between them based on which one makes the Bible better in that moment.

[Bart Ehrman]

So they'll say, yeah, look, God wasn't telling you to go out and kill your next door neighbors or the people in the next town because God isn't violent. But you know, if you disobey, you're going to be destroyed.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Right, exactly.

[Bart Ehrman]

But the problem you're pointing out is they're trying to do both things at once. Right. You could do one or the other, but I mean like doing both. Yeah, that doesn't work too well. Right?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, well. And there are several of those paradoxes. So they hold things in tandem that really cannot be true. And at the same time. And so what I want to do is instead of saying, hey, that's wrong, you can't do that, you shouldn't do that. Mostly what I want to say is that's interesting. Let's redescribe that as creative logic. That's like a step that is needed or like the building materials that are needed to make the Bible good one of them. You got to have creative logic.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, but the problem with that creative logic is that it's self contradictory.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

It is, Yeah. I mean, that's creative about it.

[Bart Ehrman]

It's not just that it's creative because you could have a creative interpretation that would be non problematic. But I mean, you know, but in this particular case, I mean, it's like, which is it? Most evangelical Christians think that God's going to be sending a lot of people to eternal torment. What good does it say? Well, he didn't really want to. The Jericho thing was just a one off. I mean, no, it's consistent with his character. But according to your definition. Yeah, right.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

There's a similar switch between like loving and just those two things. You know, people are able to see the deity as both of those things at the same time. But really what's happening is a strategic switching between them depending on the circumstance.

[Bart Ehrman]

Just unpack this. So in other words, if God were really loving, he wouldn't torment people for trillions of years for something they did for 10 years. But he's just so he has to do that. But if he's really doing that. How is he loving? And so you're saying, like, it's like, internally, There's a creative inconsistency here.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Okay, yeah. Consistency is not the main value.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, right. Okay. A lot of your book deals with. Some of it deals with violence. Another big portion of the book is on misogyny. So I want to talk about misogyny. I'll tell you. You know, I used to do. At Chapel Hill, I used to do a class debate on. I'd have a student. I'd have students do class debates. And one of my debates was resolved. The Apostle Paul was a misogynist.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Okay.

[Bart Ehrman]

So the affirmative side would say, yes, he was, and native side would say, no, he wasn't. They'd argue it out, and that way they could get into the biblical passages and try and figure it out. But I had to stop doing that because I realized after a while that about a third of my class didn't know what the word meant. It wasn't a good sign. Yeah. So I had to change how I do it. But you actually do go into the meaning of the word in a rather significant way. So, I mean, technically, the word just etymologically the word means hatred of women. Misogynist is somebody who hates women. But it's more complicated than that. So could you just say something about how you understand the word? Sure.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah. That's the meaning of woman hater means that if you're gonna identify, if you're gonna find misogyny, you've gotta, like, pry someone's brain open and see what they're feeling. If they have, like, a feeling of hatred towards women, which is really not practical. And you can't break open a text that way and see how, you know, Bible. How do you feel? Do you hate women? And so part of what happens is that people who make the Bible good strategically constrain that word. People who make the Bible good strategically constrain the word misogyny to its etymological meaning as woman hater. Because then it makes it much easier to make the Bible good. Because the Bible doesn't hate women, as it can't hate women. So I use the work of a moral philosopher named Kate Mann, who said, instead of trying to pry people's brains open and see if they hate women, really, we should be focused on the experience that women have and focus on how they are encountering regulation of their bodies, of their social standing, of their opportunities in a world in which women, for example, have to work harder to get less in a Patriarchal social order. What I argue is that thinking with that definition of misogyny opens up different questions to ask of the Bible and of biblical interpreters in order to see the labor that is going into making the Bible good. Because it's much too easy just to say the Bible doesn't hate women. But if you ask a question like what does Jesus value women's labor force for? So that we are focusing instead on the women's experience rather than the character or someone else's potential hatred of women, then we have a new set of questions that we can ask and potentially reach different conclusions.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, it sounds like your point is, is that Jesus is not as sometimes portrayed in many evangelical Christian writings as being a liberator of women. Is that fair to say that you have evangelicals with different views. Right? You have some evangelicals who say that Jesus actually was a liberationist and he was, because, you know, he's talking to women the whole time. He's, he's healing women, he's touching women in public and he's, you know, interact. And so like he's actually kind of a first century feminist. And you have other people who are saying that actually Jesus and everybody else in the New Testament, they agree that men should have prominence over women. And that really is how it should be because that's, that's better for women. You call those things, one of them is complementary or. And the other is egalitarian. I forget which word you use is that.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, those are not my words, but those are sort of self. Those are titles that evangelicals have come to use of themselves to say whether they're complementarian, which means that women are created to complement men and patriarchal social order is good and fun and happy and Right. And then egalitarians present themselves as seeing men and women as equal. And it's mostly around marriage as a partnership and women having access to church leadership.

[Bart Ehrman]

So the evangelical tradition I was raised in was that, that women are to be subordinate to men and that makes them happy and it makes men happy. And so that would be the complementary view. But I don't know how long it's been, maybe since the 80s or so, where, where in fact there's more kind of a, what would you call it, an evangelical feminist thing where, I don't know what you call it, but where in fact, you know, the Bible supports that we' equal and Jesus. So you got those two views and you don't take a stand on whether Jesus was one or the other. You kind of object to the Idea of having those two views. Is that how it works?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Well, I think it's all patriarchy. I don't think. I don't think egalitarianism, so called egalitarianism, actually is accomplishing what it thinks it's accomplishing. And so, for example, I mean, both of these camps are using Jesus as a model. It's more interesting in terms of the good Bible benevolence labor to think about how egalitarians are using the text, because since it was produced in a patriarchal world in antiquity, it's not surprising that it has patriarchal more. It's to a historian. But for somebody who's scripturalizing these texts, making them into Bible, they need them to support egalitarianism, this position, or just to be, you know, liberating of women, empowering of women. You have this interesting puzzle to figure out of how to make a text created in patriarchal antiquity into a modern handbook for how women are liberated now. So they use Jesus as sort of the key example of their narrative is that Jesus was progressive and that, you know, because he talked to women, that he was remarkable and that because he healed men and women, that that shows that he saw them equal as equals. And what I point out is that we gotta think about the building blocks in the stakes of this. So to assume that Jesus speaking to a woman is empowering her without considering the words that are actually coming out of his mouth. People see Jesus as good and what he says as good because they're starting with that presumption rather than actually evaluating what he says. So a famous example is a Syrophoenician woman that he, you know, calls a dog and refuses to heal her daughter.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, right. Explain. Explain this thing because people may not know the story. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, yeah.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

So in Mark 5, Jesus encounters a Syrophoenician woman, so a gentile, non Jewish woman. And she is begging him to heal her daughter. And he quips to her that basically his healing is for the people of Israel. And in the course of saying no, he likens her to a dog. And a lot of people interpret her response, which is like, okay, but even the dogs at the table get the children's crumbs, right? So she's like, you know, pushing back at Jesus to wrangle this healing for her daughter or this exorcism for her daughter. And a lot of people see that as like a woody riposte that like, oh, look, she's empowered and Jesus is empowering her, is the logic. When actually if we Pay attention to what he's saying. And I put this in like a sassy way in the book that, you know, Jesus calls a woman a bitch, that then she barks, right? So like she chooses to inhabit that position of dog towards him. And so to turn that story into a place where Jesus empowers a woman requires assumptions that women deserve less, that women should beg for something that men are entitled to, and other assumptions that actually do not square with contemporary feminism.

[Bart Ehrman]

Right, okay. Yeah. So once again, I mean, you're doing it from a historical point of view. It might make sense, but you're not trying to say that it's saying something about how Jesus is, you know, in a. In any modern sense is. Is being good. I mean, that would be an unacceptable conversation in, in modern discourse. Yeah. Right. Okay, good. You talk about Paul a lot too, of course, because Paul is either famous or infamous, depending on whom you ask for his views of women. And I especially was taken by your discussion of a couple of scholars who are published New Testament scholars. And I don't mind naming names. It's in your book. I mean, so there's a guy named Scott McKnight who you say engages in, I don't know how you pronounce pornoxic. Pornodoxic reconstruction. Is that how you say pornhox? I think. Did you make that up?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, I made that up.

[Bart Ehrman]

That's good. Okay. I hadn't heard pornhodoxy before, so. But you say you talk about Scott McKnight's pornodoxic reconstruction. Okay, so that since you coined the word, tell us what it means.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah. So I'm combining a couple of different concepts here to describe a phenomenon that I observed happening. Pornodoxy is a combination of pornographic. I hope that that is self explanatory to reader or to auditors. But it has to do with sex and sexiness and sluttiness of women body is on display. And then the other word is orthodoxy. So. Right. Belief. Okay. So what I say is that interpretations of Paul and particularly the context that his letters were sent to often, and this happens in McKnight's invent dangerous sexy women through creative reconstructions of history and some might say inaccurate uses of ancient literature in order to imagine invent these women who are engaging in sexual promiscuity and behavior that is unacceptable. And that that is the reason that Paul wrote his letters. And therefore Paul words are good for women because they deserved it is the underlying logic that's not said out loud. But in the course of that what happens is that women who are reading McKnight's work, I would suspect, are themselves regulated by what good women can and can't do. So the. The Bible's actually good in that instance, only for good women who are not engaging in those behaviors that are attributed to the made up, dangerous, sexualized women.

[Bart Ehrman]

Let's talk about the detail here, because I think it'll explain if we kind of expound on an example. So when you're saying made up woman, what? I'll give a basic example that isn't really yours, but then we'll get to the one you do do with Scott McKay. But when I was growing up, the whole thing with First Corinthians, Paul says women have to, I still do think probably means a veil over your head, women have to be veiled, and that the women in Corinth weren't being veiled, and the Corinthian Christian women were in church without veils over the head. And what we always heard was only prostitutes could do that and go out without veils on their head. And so Paul was attacking the Corinthian women for looking like prostitutes. It's kind of like making something up, right? It's saying that, like, you know, that's not what Paul said. Paul doesn't say anything about prostitutes and doesn't say anything. And so you come up with something else to make sense of what Paul actually says. And the example that you use was really quite interesting is first, the first Timothy 2 passage, which is probably the most notorious passage in the New Testament with respect to women. Could you say what the passage is and summarize it, then tell us what. How McKnight explains it away.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Sure. So this is a passage that is in a letter attributed to the Apostle Paul. So I want to clarify that from a historical critical standpoint, we can say Paul probably didn't write this letter. Paul didn't write this letter. But in the white evangelical authors that I'm reading, they assert Pauline authorship. And so, so I got to sort of engage in this fun project of pretending that Paul wrote this letter. Okay, so I'm going to talk about Paul, but please interpret it as being in scare quotes. So Paul has written this letter to Timothy, who is a leader at the church, reportedly in Ephesus. And we get these instructions that women cannot be an authority over men, that women are to dress modestly, that women are going to be saved by childbearing. And so this is like really uncomfortable passages for people who see the Bible as scripture and also as good for Women. Because these things do not square with modern feminist notions or even people who wouldn't use the word feminism, but would argue that the Bible is good for women and also know that it's not okay to say that women can't speak. Oh. It also tells them to be quiet. Right. That's the other thing.

[Bart Ehrman]

And the thing about this passage in First Timothy 2 is that it. It tells women that they cannot exercise any authority over a man, and that the reason is because you know what happens? You know? Well, it goes back to Adam and Eve. Right. Adam wasn't made for Eve. Eve was made for Adam. And so Eve is secondary and is made to help the man. And what happens when she does teach a man? Well, she gets misled by the devil and leads him into sin. So you can't have women exercising any authority over you, because this is what will happen. She'll lead you into sin.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah. It's a wild interpretation of Genesis because it says inaccurately that it's Eve who's deceived.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

And not Adam.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I know. But what's always struck me about it is that it is rooting the problem of women in kind of the nature in the creation story. I mean, it's like it's inherent in women's nature, you know, to be deceived by the devil and lead the man astray. Okay, so when Scott McKnight, like, sanitizes that, how. How does he save it from sounding awful?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

One of the ways that white evangelicals make this passage good for women is to make up ancient history, and they do that by. And McKnight does this, as I think I demonstrate in a book where he pulls together literature or pieces of literature from antiquity that are not in the Bible that he uses to, like, build a context for ancient Ephesus. So he's imagining, what was Ephesus?

[Bart Ehrman]

Like, why Ephesus?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

That's where the purported setting is for Timothy.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Where the letter was sent to.

[Bart Ehrman]

All right. Timothy's in Ephesus. And so he's trying to show what was culture like in Ephesus at the time? Because that'll explain this passage. Okay, Right, right.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

And drawing on other people, drawing on other people's work, McKnight develops this thesis that there were women in Ephesus just, like, around other places in the Roman Empire where women were, like, baring their breasts in worship services and engaging in these, like, really promiscuous behaviors. And in order to show that, he uses an ancient novel called Xenophon's Ephesian Tale. Which is an ancient romance. It's a fictional work. It describes a young woman of 14 years old who is dressed as Artemis, a virginal huntress, and is participating in a public town festival when the God Eros, who's jealous of this man Habricomes, impels these two to fall in love as like part of a plan to get back at Hakomis. And so in the moment of their meet cute at this public town festival, we are told a little snippet in McKnight's book from this, this novel that she threw modesty away. And so McKnight uses that line from one ancient fictional novel about a woman to say that not only were real women doing it, but real women all over Ephesus were doing it, throwing modesty away.

[Bart Ehrman]

Does it mean like she bared her breast or something? Or is that what.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

How I mean, he calls it seduction in a worship service.

[Bart Ehrman]

So you have a 14 year old girl, young woman, okay, who does this in a fictional novel that is fictionally located in ephesus. And Scott McKnight is saying, so this is what's going on in Ephesus, that women are illicitly seducing men.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Is that, that is what he writes? Yes. In the ancient novel, not Only is she 14 and dressed as a virginal huntress, but that moment in the novel is the beginning of this romance between her and her husb, to whom she is sexually faithful wherever. And so what I say is that he's also inventing, inventing her sluttiness in order to condemn it.

[Bart Ehrman]

So explain what that has to do with Paul saying women shouldn't teach and have authority over men.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

I mean, this is, it's not so baldly stated, but the implication is that the women are not behaving in ways that are appropriate. And so therefore they needed Paul's instruction, they needed his discipline. And this is where the orthodoxy part of pornodoxy comes in. Because women who are reading McKnight's work will learn how they are supposed to behave in order to get the privilege to teach or to have the authority they have to be disciplined into what the men want them to be able to do.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, so it's, I mean, there are two issues going on there. One is the kind of the historical issue that it's a little bit strange be using Xenophon's novel. It's a fictional. It's a novel that's fictionally replaced in order to interpret what Paul has in mind in First Timothy chapter. That's a little odd. But also the Problem is that when what you're saying, you use the term scripturalize is a nice term. When, when you take this passage, allegedly by Paul and you. You say, then somehow it's kind of authoritative for how I should run my life now, you understand? Oh, yes, I. I don't want to behave in a sexually seductive way, and I need to be obedient to you, my husband. And so in other words, you incorporate it as a moral mandate for your own life. You're basing it on this kind of strange interpretation of it in order to kind of get rid of the weirdness, Is that.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yes. So for white evangelicals and others for whom this text is scriptural, is Bible, if you're looking for a way to make it relevant for now, you've got to say, here's why it was applicable then and why we shouldn't be using it now. Because the women are not doing what they were doing in antiquity. The women are not seducing people in the middle of worship services. And so that's one way to get around this idea that Paul was a misogynist and that therefore the Bible can't be an authority on gender relations.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, that's precisely the problem I have with it, too, is that Paul doesn't precisely doesn't use that argument, you know, that women are doing this in Ephesus. His argument is that it goes back to Adam and Eve.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, right.

[Bart Ehrman]

It's rooted in the. The human race. And so it. You can't use that argument because, I mean, there it is. This is why it's a problem. So. Okay. Yeah. Well, thanks. So there's this other passage that is in Paul that is actually one of the letters that people call the. One of the Undisputed Letters, First Corinthians, which you mentioned earlier, chapter 11. And there's another scholar that you mentioned. I mean, Scott McGuire is a scholar. He teaches a, you know, professional New Testament scholar. And then this other scholar you mentioned is Philip Payne. He spent a lot of his career, I think, writing about this passage in First Corinthians 11. Can you say something about what the passage is and how he tries to get around the problems?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Sure. So in First Corinthians 11, Paul is writing to tell women how they should either wear their hair or their clothing on their head. So there's a debate around is he telling Corinthian women to veil or is he telling them how to wear their hair? And Philip Payne is someone who is. He just had a book come out that was sort of a summary of a lot of his work, which includes work on this passage. And he goes through a lot of effort to argue that Paul was talking about hair and not about veiling.

[Bart Ehrman]

So it's not about putting a veil over it. Like, people object to that kind of thing today because they think, oh, those Muslim women, they're so oppressed. You know, Christians aren't like that. And so.

[Megan Lewis]

Right.

[Bart Ehrman]

But he's insisting. So it's not the veil, it's, it's something to do with how their hair is.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Right. So he's, he's arguing that Paul is not anti women or misogynist because he's telling them how to wear their hair, not how to wear their clothes. And so what I point out is that, you know, if that's the question you're asking, you've already limited your terms so that you win either way.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well, look, I mean, if you're telling women how to wear their hair, I mean, why should the man tell the woman how to wear her hair? I mean, it's like, really? But does that not bother him at all? I mean, it's like.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

So.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, all right.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

I mean, it does not appear to me from his writings that there's any question around asking if that's enough. So making Paul regulate hair instead of dress is, is good enough.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah. Okay. If you had a woman, woman authority telling men how they had to wear their hair to be pleasing to God, I think most people would find that highly problematic.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yes.

[Bart Ehrman]

And so here you have a man telling women how they have to wear their hair. Even if you agree with his interpretation, which I don't. I think it's a veil. But, but apart from that, and he does say in this passage that the man is the head of the wife, so the wife has to show submission to the man because. And the veil shows that you're under submission to the man. Right.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

It's one of these passages that you have to make it say the opposite of what it actually says.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, right. Okay. Are there any books from the ancient world that are, are they all misogynist? I mean, how are there any that are not. Because when we're using misogyny, even when you're, you know, you're following this, this very interesting definition where it's not just, you know, hatred of women, it's not like any kind of an emotion for. But it's kind of participating in this kind of patriarchal society that, that really kind of controls women and it's participating in it in one way or another. And that, that in A sense is, is how this is being defined. But so I suppose in the ancient world there's nothing that's. Is there anything that's not misogynist by that standard?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

I mean, probably not by that definition. And honestly, there might not even be a lot of things that are written today that are not misogynist by that definition. There's a whole lot of regulation of women through things that aren't even spoken in society. How they dress, how they wear their hair, what they're allowed to say. And so there probably is nothing from, from the ancient world that one could use. And I am suspicious that there's a whole lot in modernity either.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, I'd say today there are a lot of feminists who are actually not misogynist. Would you agree with that?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Well, okay, so here's where I'm going to come back to Kate Mann, that I am persuaded that misogyny exists, even among people who purport to be feminists. So because women are still encountering an environment where their behavior is, you know, misogyny is like the. Kate Mann calls it the shock collar. It's like how you learn how you're supposed to behave in order to advance in society. And I think that that happens among feminists as well.

[Bart Ehrman]

Do you think Kate Mann is a misogynist?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

No.

[Bart Ehrman]

Exactly. So there are. But you'd be hard pressed to find somebody in the ancient world. Of course, you don't have very many women authors, and that itself says a lot about the ancient world. Okay, so throughout your book and in your title, it's really about white evangelicals. And I think some people will wonder, you know, why, why evangelicals? That means we just pointed out, since about everybody, it participates in this. And so could you just explain both things, like, you know, why evangelical Christians are you focusing on, as opposed to other Christians? Are evangelicals the ones doing this? And why evangelicals? Why not? Why not African American Christians today? Or why are you focusing on white evangelicals? And what is that? What's that all about?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Yeah, it's a great question. So, I mean, yes, lots of people are engaged in this project that I'm calling Bible Benevolence. This is something that everybody who is using the Bible as a moral authority has to engage in, I think, and they do it in different ways. What I want to do in this book is use white evangelicalism, which I'll get to in a second, as sort of the example or the place of analysis to show how one way in which a group of people is making the Bible good or ways in which one particular group are doing it. And I focus on white evangelicals for pragmatic reasons. One is that I've already written a book on white evangelicalism, and so I was familiar with this material and, you know, trained as an ancient historian. And so this foray into American religious history and critique of contemporary religious practice is something that has come along in my trajectory of work and thinking as I come to really grapple with the fact that the Bible is not an ancient thing, that it does not exist as an ancient thing out there. It is a modern concept that. That is dealing with antiquity, thinking about antiquity, using texts that originated in antiquity. But Bible as people are using it now, that's a modern thing that they have made. So I'm focusing on white evangelicals as like a modern example of people who are scripturalizing these texts, making the Bible good. I think that other people could look at other traditions and see how they make the Bible good. And it could be like an interesting compare or contrast. Some of the things that the white evangelical authors that I study probably go beyond white evangelicalism, but it's at least in white evangelicalism. Okay, so that's one reason. The other reason is that white evangelicals have been this subset of Protestants in American religious history that's gotten a lot of scholarly attention and a lot of critique in newspapers headlines because of their outsized political influence and aid in the unlikely rise of. Of President Trump in 2016. And so I think that it's also, you know, for me, this is a relevant group to be studying because of the power that this group has politically in the US Right now.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, right. So it's not that you're going after evangelical white evangelicals per se and singling them out from others. You're basically saying that, you know, others may be doing this as well, and probably. And they are. Probably are. But this is the group that you studied, and that is most important for you, because I think it could be read that, like, white evangelicals in particular are the ones doing this. So you teach biblical studies, right? What do you teach? Do you teach New Testament?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

I'm kind of. Right now I'm teaching Jesus and film.

[Bart Ehrman]

Jesus and film. It's a great. I teach. Saying we should compare notes sometimes. I teach that class, too. It's great. It's a great class. Ask, how do you talk to your students about the Bible? I mean, you. You went to, you know, your graduate work in the south, and you grew up in the south, and I'm in the south but do you tell them that it's not a good book or that it shouldn't be used as scripture, or how do you actually do it in the classroom?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

No, I don't say that to my students. No. I think that my task as a teacher is to reveal, describe, help people think critically, and that my role is not to tell people how to practice their religion. Now, having said that, it matters to me that people read what's on the page of the text. So we do close readings of the Rape of Dinah. I teach a class on sex in the Bible. We study the rape of Dinah. We study the Levites, concubine and Judges. Like, we read Hosea as. And Ezekiel as divine rape narratives and sexual violence against women as Israel as a woman. And we study mark 5 and uncomfortable, potential uncomfortable passages about Jesus. Because I. I want students to see what's on the page. And my hope is that what I'm doing in the classroom is maybe not as sassy as what I do in the book, but that I want people to know that I think you should think about the stakes of making that literature into moral authority. So. So I would be fine if my students leave with that idea. But, no, I'm not telling them, don't use the Bible.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, okay. No, no, it's. It's really important because, I mean, you know, most people, if they. If they have any contact with sustained contact, it usually isn't as scripture. I think what your book does is it shows that when you actually read it as a book, it's a difficult thing to make this into a guide to your life in some way.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

It's one of those things that feels obvious to people. Like, it feels obvious to people that the Bible is supposed to be the good book. So they come with these expectations. And I think it's worth pointing out those expectations and showing that that expectation comes from somewhere and it's not from the text itself.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay. Do you yourself think, is it an important thing to read the Bible? Because, I mean, you could imagine people just saying, well, okay, that's it. There's no point in reading it. And apart from the fact that you and I would be unemployed, is. Is there. What do you think? I mean, do you read it as, like, an important. Like, other books? Like, you know, you read Homer and you read Virgil and you read the Greek dramatist, and you read the Bible, and it's like, is it that kind of thing? Or is it that, like, this one is, like, it's. It's dangerous. We should just get rid of It. What. What's your view about it?

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Well, I do read it as ancient literature, but I also recognize that lots of people make it Bible. And so it's. I think it's gonna be special to people no matter what. And it has this sort of central place in, you know, like the US imaginary. And it's a cultural icon. And so it deserves study in the contemporary moment because of how people see it in the U.S. it's not just an ancient book. It's also something modern.

[Bart Ehrman]

I mean, really, the task that you're laying out is really, it's a serious one because it invol. Has huge implications for social agendas and for political policy. We're not talking about just antiquarian interests here about, you know, how do you interpret a passage about women in first Timothy? It's about, like, how. How our society is structured and how it understands itself. When you've got a culture that is. Lots and lots of people think that it's based on the Bible and they don't even know what the Bible says. And when they do read it, they make say something other than it says. And so in some ways, your book is an intervention in that to show that. That in fact, you know, it's not saying that and you need to take it for what it really says. And you realize that it's very difficult to argue for a number of these values in our current day. And so. Well, okay, thanks. This has been really interesting for me, and I think it's a really interesting book. And again, for those of you watching listening, this Jill Hicks Keaton Good Book book. How White Evangelicals Saved the Bible to Save Themselves. So it's a great title. It's a great book. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jill.

[Jill Hicks Keaton]

Thank you for having me.

[Bart Ehrman]

You're welcome. So we'll be back next time with another. Another podcast on Misquoting Jesus, and this time you'll be hearing me interviewed again. Until then, thanks a lot.

[Megan Lewis]

This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart E. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Barterman's YouTube channel, so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.