Discussing the New CHT Book on Gender in the Bible (Feat. 3 of the Contributors)

Dr. Carmen Imes, Dr. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Dr. Nijay Gupta

Episode Summary

This episode previews the CHT’s new book The Biblical World of Gender: The Daily Lives of Ancient Women and Men. Three of the authors from the book (Carmen Imes, Nijay Gupta, and Cynthia Shafer-Elliott) discuss their contributions. They touch on the gender assumptions in the ancient Near East and Roman Empire, along with some of the Bible’s challenging passages about slavery and authority.

Carmen Imes is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Biola University and the author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. She has been a missionary to the Philippines and releases “Torah Tuesday” videos on her YouTube channel. Nijay Gupta is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, and the author of Paul and the Language of Faith. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott is Associate Dean and Associate Professor in the School of Theology and Leadership at William Jessup University. She does archaeological research on ancient Israel, including households, food preparation, and gender dynamics in the family, and is an editor of the recent T&T Clark Handbook of Food in Ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible.

Chapters

Carmen Imes

- 0:00 Why we need to examine the biblical authors’ view of gender

- 3:42 The “sanctified imagination” and entering into the biblical story

- 5:20 A selection from Carmen Imes’s essay “Freedom Fighters of the Exodus”

Nijay Gupta

- 9:07 Understanding Paul’s “harshness”

- 11:58 The biblical authors on the rape of slaves

- 14:15 Examples of radical early Christian ethics

- 16:26 Gender differences in the first-century Roman Empire

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott

- 18:48 The importance of household archaeology

- 21:19 Understanding the cultural assumptions of the biblical texts

- 25:44 Hierarchy versus heterarchy

Transcripts are AI generated and are not guaranteed to correctly reflect the content of the podcast.

Transcript

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Dr. Carmen Imes
Carmen Imes (PhD in Biblical Theology, Wheaton College) is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Biola University. She was previously Associate Professor of Old Testament at Prairie College in Alberta, Canada. Her dissertation is published under the title Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai: A Re-Examination of the Name Command of the Decalogue. She has also released the results of her research in a book for laypeople entitled Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. Carmen is an active member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies.
She and her husband, Danny, have served overseas as missionaries with SIM. They have three children. Although she enjoys hanging out with other Bible geeks at conferences, her passion is to help the Bible come alive for laypeople. Carmen keeps a blog called Chastened Institutions and releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos on her YouTube channel.
Dr. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott
Dr. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott (PhD, University of Sheffield) is the Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at William Jessup University. She specializes in the historical, cultural, and archaeological contexts of ancient Israel and Judah. More specifically, she is interested in the daily lives of the average Israelite and Judahite household including economics, food preparation and consumption, religion, and the roles and relationships of the family. Her books include Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible and The Five-Minute Archaeologist in the Southern Levant. Dr. Shafer-Elliott is an experienced field archaeologist in Israel and is currently part of the archaeological excavation team at Tell Halif, Israel.
Dr. Nijay Gupta
Dr. Nijay Gupta is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He has written over 21 books, including commentaries on Colossians, Thessalonians, and Philippians. He’s written 15 New Testament Words of Life: A New Testament Theology for Real Life (Zondervan), A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Studies: Understanding Key Debates (Baker Academic), and Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church (IVP Academic), discussed in this episode. He has also written several books helping scholars research, write, and get a sense of the field of NT studies. These include The Writer: A Guide to Researching, Writing, and Publishing in Biblical Studies (Cascade) and Prepare, Succeed, Advance: A Guidebook for Getting a PhD in Biblical Studies and Beyond (2nd ed.; Cascade).