Red Thread Podcast Episode 4: Fragments of Myth

City Life Church Luton

Heard the one about when the sons of God took human wives and had babies, immortal babies!? But God put a stop to that little episode (Gen 6:1-4). There are several seemingly weird vignettes like this in the Torah. In this episode, Neil and Helen have a look at a few of these, to see if they can make sense of them and, as always, add these snapshots to the bigger picture of Scripture.

Things we mentioned that you might want to look up:

• Bible translations - we talk about a few different translations of the Bible, for example the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) and the NIV (New International Version). Both are translations from the original Hebrew (when we’re talking about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible), but translate in slightly different ways. As we see here those differences can be very important (though often not).

• Rabbinic Judaism - refers to a time from about the 3rd century BC when groups of Jewish scholars, called Rabbis, were discussing the Bible in a particular way. Modern Judaism is descended from Rabbinic Judaism.

• ‘Makes the hands unclean’ - a phrase from Rabbinic Judaism (e.g. in Mishnah Yadayim 3:5). The idea seems to be that certain holy things, like the books of Scripture/the Bible, have a sort of ‘holy contagion’. Seems backwards, but i think it might help explain some of the laws around menstruation. One thing against this interpretation is the long time difference between the Rabbinic writings (recorded in the Mishnah and Talmud) and the Biblical laws.

• Laws around rape discussed - the laws we discussed are in Deuteronomy 22:25 and 22:28. They say:

25 But if in the countryside a man finds a young woman who is betrothed, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offense punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbour.

28 If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, 29 the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

The first law seems to be about rape, the second about consensual sex (though ‘seizes’ (taphas) seems coercive). The Hebrew word translated ‘forces’ in 22:25 is ‘chazaq’ and that in 22:28 ‘seizes’ is ‘taphas’. The NIV translates both words as ‘rape’. No matter how we should understand these laws, it seems clear enough that we shouldn’t use the same word to translate the two different words. A lot more needs to be said about this, but those are the basic facts about the words used.