814: Does the Old Testament Dehumanize Women? Dr. Sandy Richter

Theology in the Raw

Christianity, Culture, Politics, Theology, Discipleship, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2020

⏱️ 80 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Sandy Richter is LEGIT!! In this fascinating conversation, Sandy helps us understand the alleged "marry your rapist" law in Deuteronomy 22:28, which has been mistranslated as you'll see. She also walks us through the "marry your conquered enemy's wife" allowance in Deuteronomy 21. These texts have troubled me for YEARS and have raised questions in my own mind about whether the Old Testament dehumanizes women. Actually, it does the opposite. When you understand it in its own cultural context, you'll see that the Bible actually humanizes women much, much more than we realize.

Sandy's awesome book ("The Epic of Eden") that I referenced can be found here

Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department and her MA in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, MS and Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Due to her passion for the "real space and time" of the biblical text, she has spent many of those years directing an Israel Studies program focused on historical geography and field archaeology.

Richter is best known in the Academy for her work on the “name theology” of the Deuteronomistic History and a socio-historical assessment of the economic backdrop of the Book of Deuteronomy (The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: lešakken šemo šam in the Bible and the ANE [BZAW 318, 2002]; “The Place of the Name in Deuteronomy” [VT 57, 2007], “Placing the Name, Pushing the Paradigm: A Decade with the Deuteronomistic Name Formula” in Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch, Hexateuch, and the Deuteronomistic History [FAT 56; Mohr Siebeck, 2012]; “The Question of Provenance and the Economics of Deuteronomy”" JSOT [2017]; “What’s Money Got to Do With It? Economics and the Question of the Provenance of Deuteronomy in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods” in Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research [BZAR 22, 2019]). She has a commentary forthcoming with Eerdmans on The Book of Deuteronomy.

In the Church, Richter is best known for her work, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament (IVP 2008) and a number of DVD curriculums stemming from the project (Zondervan and Seedbed). She has just published Stewards of Eden: What the Scripture has to Say about Environmentalism and Why It Matters (IVP, 2020).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Does the Old Testament command women to marry the rapist?
0:08.0	Does the Old Testament allow Israelite soldiers to take wives of deceased soldiers that they have just
0:17.4	killed as concubines or sex slaves. How does the Old Testament view women? I have been troubled, confused, sometimes
0:29.6	annoyed at some of the statements in the Old Testament about women.
0:33.4	For much of my Christian life as a male,
0:37.7	I kind of breezed over these passages.
0:39.3	Didn't give them much thought.
0:42.2	But more recently, trying to be a little more aware, a little more in tune, trying to read the text from other lenses as much as I can. I have come across several passages in the Old Testament
0:54.0	that have troubled me these troubling difficult passages in the Old Testament
0:59.8	especially when it comes to women it's something I've been thinking through for
1:02.2	a while now which is why I am so
1:04.9	excited about our guest today. Dr. Sandy Richter is Robert H. Gundry Professor of
1:10.3	biblical Studies at Westmont University. She has taught at Wheaton College
1:14.8	and several other schools. She has a PhD in Old Testament or in Semitic studies I
1:21.6	believe from Harvard University, Sandy Richter is one of the
1:28.0	most informed and intelligent Old Testament scholars in evangelicals today.
1:36.2	I listened to her give a paper last year
1:38.3	at the Evangelical Theological Theological Society's annual meeting
1:41.9	and she gave a paper on the passage that we're going to look at today
1:45.7	Duterami 28 and 29.
1:48.7	Well, the last part of Duterami 22 as a whole, which talks about various laws regarding sexual activity by
1:57.0	by well sexual sin sexual activity rape seduction and on, sex outside of marriage.
	...

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