What Did Jesus Have to Say about Race/Ethnicity? (Part 1)

Published Oct 31, 2023, 1:14 PM

Welcome back to season five of Enter the Bible, a podcast in which we share "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bible...but were afraid to ask."

In episode 17 of season 5, our hosts are joined by Love Sechrest. Love L. Sechrest is Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Columbia Theological Seminary and was previously an associate professor of the New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Today our theologians will be answering the listener-submitted question, "What Did Jesus Have to Say about Race/Ethnicity? (Part 1)"

Do you have Bible questions you would like answered? Go to our website at https://enterthebible.org/about to get started.

This episode of the Enter the Bible podcast was aired on Tuesday, October 31, 2023.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5v1y2Yin2yo

#enterthebible #podcast #lutherseminary #workingpreacher #race #ethnicity #katielangston #kathrynschifferdecker #lovesechrest

Hello and welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast, where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker , and today Katie wasn't able to join us for this particular podcast, but we have a wonderful special guest today. Dr. Love Sechrest is the associate provost and professor of theology at Mount Saint Mary's University in Maryland, and the author of the recent book Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament, which is a womanist reading of several texts from the New Testament. She's a New Testament scholar, and that book is published by Eerdmans. So welcome, love. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us today.

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

Oh good good good good. Well, so this is going to be a two parter, which we which we sometimes do because the topic is so large. So we, we had a question from one of our listeners and again, as our regular listeners know, you can go to the Enter the Bible org website to ask a question of your own, which we will try to address on this podcast. But the question for today is an important topic both for biblical interpretation but also for current events, as it's very relevant for, today. And the question is this: What did Jesus have to say about race and ethnicity? And so in this, in this first part of this topic, we're going to talk a concentrate more about concepts of race and ethnicity in Jesus' time. And then in part two, we're going to talk about specific New Testament texts that Dr Sechrest has written on. So Love, I know this is a big topic. What did Jesus have to say about race and ethnicity? How would you begin to address it?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for to your readers for the question. It's one that is near and dear to my heart. I have been focused on trying to understand what the Bible has to say about race and ethnicity since I was a doctoral student. Like these were the. These were the questions that I was asking as I was first starting, you know, a very in-depth close reading of the New Testament and I, and in fact, my first book, which grew out of my dissertation, is all about that question. But it's it's focused on the apostle Paul, like his writings versus the Gospels, which we're going to talk about today. Okay. But in that.

Just tell me, tell our listeners the name of that first book.

Yeah, that book is called A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race. And it's with Bloomsbury Now is the publisher of that of that book. And in it I, I start off by, I started I was intrigued because I noticed in graduate school that as I was reading a lot of the early Jewish texts that many New Testament scholars and biblical scholars read, like Josephus, who was an historian, right?

Jewish historian around the Jewish.

Jeiwsh historian in the Roman period, Philo, who was a Jewish theologian or philosopher, writing pretty contemporaneous with the time of Jesus as well, and in both of their readings, and they have voluminous writings, right, that but in both of them they use the word genos in the Greek, which is translated, among many things, it has a number of different translations, but one of them is "race." And I was particularly intrigued when they talked about the race of Israel, right? Like the Jewish people or the Jewish race that those and I, I would always wonder, what is it that they meant by that? It can't be what we mean by that today. What is it that they meant by that? And that's what that first book explores. I found that there were a lot of similarities between what we mean by race today and what they meant. For instance, um, there's a very close relationship between our concept of race and our concept of ethnicity. So much so that many scholars are beginning, and I follow them in talking about ethno racial as a way of showing that these concepts, ethnicity and race are very close in many, many respects and similarly in the ancient world. There was a Greek word, I've already talked about the Greek word genos. Well, there was another Greek word, ethos, and this is the word from which we derive the contemporary word ethnicity. But in our Bibles that word shows up all over the place, ethnos does. And it's mostly translated Gentiles, right? And what the ancient Israelites, the early Christians meant when they said ethnos is they were talking about over and against Jewish, right? Like there were Jews and there were Gentiles. Gentile isn't really a racial group, but it is a way of signifying everyone else, right?

Non-Jews? Yeah.

Not Jews was really what you really couldn't find a person who was a Gentile who might self-identify that way. They might call themselves a Greek or a Roman or, you know, Assyrian. They would talk about their homeland. So, so I found that the concepts in the ancient world of referring to a homeland are very common with how we think about it today, right? That when we we talk about ethnic groups, we're usually or like Jewish Americans, right? Or Italian Americans or German Americans, we're really, African Americans. We're talking about a homeland, right? And that and sort of the connection with a center of gravity with the homeland is also very common with how race and ethnicity were understood in the ancient world, one way in which at least the ancient Jewish people differed is that is that even more than a homeland, and it kind of makes sense because Jews were in a diaspora, right, there for a long period of time, even more than a homeland. Their religion, their convictions about the God of Abraham were self defining more so than a homeland. Not that a homeland wasn't important. Israel and Palestine were very important, but of sometimes greater importance, was that the convictions they had about about their their God, their religion. And so that becomes. Yeah.

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I'm wondering if I'm going to try this out and see if this is right. So I'm a I'm an Old Testament scholar Hebrew Bible, right? And in the Old Testament you talk about the goyim, the nations right surrounding Israel. So there's this sense of, you know, whatever the, you know, the Moabites or the Ammonites or the Amalekites or whoever, right? They're associated with the different nations, right? Surrounding Israel. And Israel itself is a nation or a people among them. As you know, after the exile, during the exile and after the exile, as the Jews are scattered. First the Israelites and then the Jews are scattered across the ancient Near Eastern world. It's not so much about nationhood as it is about peoplehood. Does that..

Peoplehood, yes. That's, in fact people or some of the translations of that word genos are tribe, people, nation. All of those or even like just sort of a swarm, right? A race of bees. One ancient writer uses that sort of a type. It's getting at the idea of a type of a people or a type of an animal, you know, group, et cetera. Yeah. So , that's a great way of thinking about it. And, I think that's one big, big difference is in terms of how Jewish people, by the time of Jesus had begun to think about themselves as, as a sort of their religion was what differentiated them more from the people around them than just their territorial origins, right, by that time? Not that they weren't.

That's really helpful. And religion, I think, you know, as Christians, we sometimes think religion is what you believe, which is certainly part of it. But for Jews, especially the practices, the religious practices, right, of keeping Sabbath, of circumcision, of keeping kosher. You know, my doctor father was Jewish, John Levinson, and he talks about, you know, the reason Jews still survive is because they have a particular cookbook. Right. And circumcision and Sabbath, of course, that these practices distinguish them from the nations around them or the people among whom they live.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with him. I think that the practices that differentiated them and for the ancient Jews, it was even also difficult to separate out politics, their politics, from their practices. That was all, it was defining. It was a defining idea for them. The religion told them where to live, how to live, what to eat, to do, who to obey. Right. Like, yeah, like all of all of that, all of that was wrapped up in and that is the world that Jesus enters. That's the world that begins to differentiate especially after the death of Jesus. A new type, right? Not just Jews, not just Gentiles, but Christians as well. And in later New Testament writings and post biblical or early Christian writings, right, the Christian race is, actually becomes a new, a new construct. And that's what I was so curious about. And what started me off on this, this whole trajectory about talking about race. Now, if we want to sort of switch to like a historical understanding of what the people were saying about themselves to actually what's in the Bible. Um, I think the best way of thinking about that is to differentiate the, the, the what's similar from what's from what's different. And this religious component is one of the major differences, as I've also said. But some of the things that are similar show up in the Gospels, which are primarily concerned about the story of Jesus as well. So like the intergroup tensions that we experience today, whereas today those tensions, at least in the United States, but you can make a case that even in many countries around the globe, um, skin color becomes one defining way of talking about major divisions. Right? And, they can connect with and intersect with other ways of defining people, like economic status. I have often had people say yeah, well, in say South America, we don't think about race as black and white the same way Americans do. And I will say, yeah, well, tell me about the poor in your country. Do they skew darker or do they not, right like you? And you'll find a way that skin color intersects with other kinds of important social components like economics. But but it's true to say that in the American context, in the US context, skin color has become like the defining way of talking about race of and it's the tension between blacks and whites and in some ways also whites and Native Americans that has been the defining tension that have sorted ethnic groups throughout US history on into today. That tension isn't the same in the ancient world that the when it comes to, say, thinking about who was enslaved in Jesus' day, it were, there were conquered peoples of any skin color, right? It wasn't really a skin color kind of thing. So that's a that's a pretty important difference. But one of the major similarities, and one of the ways in which I have sought to find leverage for how the Bible can be helpful in thinking about the racial conflict that we have today, is in looking at the ways that intergroup conflict shows up in the Bible. Let's let's with one well-known one, like Pharisees versus Sadducees versus the Jesus followers. right? Like those are, that becomes a critical tension that goes through the gospel stories. But I've already talked about Jews on one hand, or Christian Jews or Jewish Christians. However you want to talk about or Gentiles, like the tensions among those groups become very helpful for thinking about for thinking about tensions and and one and the gospel that that we were going to talk about today, the Gospel of Matthew really has a lot of those kind of tensions show up in quite a number of ways that it's interesting. Let's, for instance, the Gospel of Matthew starts with the genealogy, right? And and it identifies Jesus by his tribal origins. Right? And is noteworthy in the sense is that it includes sort of the relationships that non-Jews had over time, right? Like one of the things that I've heard Old Testament scholars say, and maybe you can elaborate on this, is that in the ancient Israelite context, it's really hard to separate out like a pure strain of this people group from another people group, that there was a lot of intermingling and that you see that same thing even in Jesus' genealogy.

Yeah. You see that famously there's only four women mentioned in Jesus genealogy in Matthew 1. And, they're all for, you know, kind of marginalized women for various reasons. Tamar is the first one who is a Judah's, not wife, exactly, but actually daughter in law. And then, yeah, mother of his children. And Tamar is a Canaanite as far as we know, right? She's not an Israelite. And then you have Ruth, who is, of course, a Moabite. Famously. Yeah. Who who joins herself to the nation of Israel. Right? But she's she's not herself Israelite. She's a moabite. And then, of course, you have Bathsheba, though in Matthew's gospel, she's not named, she's called the wife of Uriah. And there's some debate whether she's Israelite or not, but she's certainly. She's not, she, there's some right. The circumstances of Bathsheba and David's relationship is, of course, fraught with.

Yes

With power dynamics and

Yes, yes.

Anyway, that's a story for another time. And who have I? But of course I missed Rahab.

Yeah, yeah.

Before Ruth, even the the father of the mother of Boaz is Rahab, who is again, of course, a Canaanite who saves the really dense Israelite spies right, at the beginning of Joshua. So, so, yeah, I think it's a it's a really interesting way to begin the gospel.

It is! He's mixed.

To say that Jesus is not pure or yes, in the sense of racially pure that white supremacists talk about today. Right?

That's right, that's right. He is mixed, right? He is part he is part Canaanite.

Yeah.

In some sense. Right. Like that's something that many or at least one leading woman anist scholar Mitzi Smith talks about and tries to highlight that aspect of Jesus' identity as a way for us to reflect on today in light of some of the right, the discourse and, you know, some, you know, sort of fascist kind of discourse that wants to talk about purity. Yeah, racial purity in a way that just doesn't bear up under scrutiny, for even Jesus

Exactly, exactly.

Is one, is identified in our holy book in along those lines. But there are other, there are other of these moments in the Gospel of Matthew that seem loaded with sort of ethnic tension as well. There's the that another highlight moment really is the great commission, which is kind of I'm going to actually bring this up right now in my Bible software so that I can get the the wording, "therefore go and make disciples. I'm reading 28:19 Matthew 28:19 though for go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. So right there, there is a moment which, depending on your ideology, has been a sort of. it has become a fraught moments, not necessarily fraught in the context of Matthew, but inasmuch as that kind of an ideology of taking over, right? other countries and imposing your, your perspective or your religious views on another country has been associated with the the evils of colonialism and conquest. Right? Like there and there's there's one African woman, scholar, Musa Dube, who writes about that in her book Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. She talks about like the ideology that has come to dominate parts of US history and world history, right? Taking off from this sort of important conquest notions into the spread of Christianity. So that can be a problematic moment. This isn't what I don't think Jesus had in mind. But what's interesting is that we don't talk a lot about verse 20, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, which is a really interesting, very Jewish moment. Right. Like in that

The Rabbi Jesus.

Because Jesus. Right. He's a rabbi and he teaches about the correct interpretation of Torah. That's really what Jesus has been doing throughout the Gospel of Matthew has been saying, your interpretations of Torah are this. But I say, this is what God the Father meant or prefers in terms of how you interpret Scripture. So that so it's both a very it's kind of I want to say that Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, has these universalizing tendencies, right? Go to all nations and teach them. But it also has these very particularistic tendencies as well, teaching them all about Torah. Right? Yeah, that's a very particularistic move.

Well, it kind of reminds me of of Isaiah, right. Like Isaiah 2 where all the nations are going to come together. Right? And we're going to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, which is just this beautiful vision, right? That has never been realized yet in world history. Right. So it's so it's universalist, universalistic in that kind of sense, but it's also very particular. Right. What? No. They're coming to Mount Zion, right? The Mountain Lord's house to worship the God of Israel. Right. So it's not it's not kind of all paths lead to the same, you know, mountaintop. It's a very particular God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that all the nations are coming to, to worship in a very particular place in Jerusalem.

In a very particular place. And I think you see, you begin to see those tensions in the text that we're going to explore in just a little bit. But there are there are moments in Matthew 10, for instance, right in the beginning of the chapter, Matthew 10:5 , this is where in the narrative Jesus has sent the the disciples out to do their own missionary journey. In fact, chapter ten is called the Missionary Discourse. It's where he's teaching them about how you know how they should interact with conflict, how they should preach the preach the good news. And but the first thing he says as he's sending them out is don't go among the Gentiles or into a Samaritan city. Right. It's a very particularistic moment. And in Matthew 15, which is the text that where Matthew engages or I'm sorry, Jesus engages with the Canaanite woman, this whole interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is one that is just loaded with ethnic, uh, ethnic discourse or ethnic influences. It talks about. I just want to read a little bit. Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon, which are outside of Israel. So it's a moment where Jesus is, is going into territory outside of Israel, having just told the, you know, or some chapters back, having told the disciples that that isn't a part of their mission. So there's that. So, so there's that, there's that tension happening right then and then a Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, show me mercy, son of David. Very interesting there that first of all, she's mentioned as a Canaanite, which is hearkens back, right, to sort of an ancient way of thinking about the other. Not not she's not a Gentile of origin, which, you know, Matthew uses the word gentile all over the place. Um, but she's a Canaanite, which which immediately sort of evokes the legacies of hostility and animus and, and war, right, that have between Israel, sort of, and their chief opponents that have gone through many Old Testament history. Right. The history of, of the Jewish people. So by calling her that, Matthew, who's actually recording this, right, who is who is putting the story together, he's reflecting on the Jesus tradition and writing it down in ways that sort of reflect his cultural context, and calling this woman a Canaanite. So already we have this. We have ethnic tension. But then she calls him Son of David, which is a sort of a messianic title to give. So it's very much like having a foreign king come to your homeland and address him as if he's your king. Yeah, right. Like so. It's so already she is exhibiting a she's making a political and religious statement in a way that just peeking ahead to the end of this story, that goes beyond what he might have seen in his own homeland, right? Where as he's engaging in conflict with the religious leaders of the day. Here's this, here's this outsider. Yeah. Already giving him the deference and heralding him as a as a messianic figure when when so many inside Israel have not yet been able to come to that conclusion or still coming really grappling hard with that conclusion.

Yes. So she so she's seeing things that even his own disciples or maybe his disciples, but even people within the Jewish community don't recognize let, I'm going to pause us here just because we're going to we're going to move to those texts, that text and another one in Matthew in the second part of this series. But let me just say again, thank you for joining us for this podcast, Love. And I look forward to diving more into the details of the text in, in the next podcast and that's part two of this podcast. So let me just say to our listeners. Thank you for listening again to this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. Come back for part two and you can get high quality courses, commentaries, resources, videos, and other reflections at Enter the Bible.org. Thank you for joining us.