Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Robert 0:00
As a Biblical scholar, I'm a little suspicious of the notion that there is a correct reading of any particular text. The texts open themselves up to multiple interpretations, which can sound a little scary but from my perspective, it puts us as interpreters in the position of having to be agents of our own interpretation, we have to think through what is the range of interpretations that are here? How does this relate to my own sense of what it means to be a person of faith? And then what is my community saying about about these things?
So there's a conversation that happens between us and the Bible. It's not simply that the Bible tells us something and so we go to the Bible with questions and we come away with deeper with deeper thoughts about it.
Seth 1:18
Hey everybody welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I am Seth your host, I will apologize in advance. There is a raspiness to my voice, I've been a little under the weather. And that's not a good reason to not do this. So, if you can forgive the lack of clarity in my voice, I think you're about to jump into a conversation that I really enjoyed having. I sat down and spoke on the phone with Professor Robert Williamson Jr. He's a Professor at Hendricks college here in his PhD from Emory University in Atlanta. He also received his post graduate diploma in Jewish Studies from Oxford University in the UK. He has written a book The Forgotten Books of the Bible. And in it we discuss Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and Lamentations and Esther and Ruth. And when we approach texts that we don't often engage in, it's uncomfortable. What I appreciate about what Robert has done is just that; the text that that the book is on aren't really crystal logically centered, but they are community centered. They do affect the way that we live and treat others the way that we live as the majority, or the way that we act as the minority in a majority. The way that we approach sex, anger and lament and blaming and victim calling.
So excited for you to hear this conversation. Let's get into it. Professor Robert Williamson Jr. Forgotten Books of the Bible.
Seth 3:00
Robert Williamson Jr. I'm excited to have you on the Can I Say This At Church podcast. It's not often that I'm able to, to do a few things. And so I know that this is one of your first podcast interviews on your book. And it's also not often that I speak to people about the topic of your book, because I think you are right. And so in fear of burying the lead, the title of your most recent book is The Forgotten Books of the Bible, Recovering the Five Scrolls for Today. And that's like Song of Songs, Ruth limitations and a few others, and we'll get into that as the episode proceeds. But before we do, what do you want people to know about you? Like, what if I said, all right, you got three minutes. Tell me about you. What would you want people to know?
Robert 3:49
Well, I think the first thing is that I'm a Biblical scholar who has a deep interest in the church and the life of faith. And those two things don't always go together. And so I have a PhD in Bible and I teach in an academic position. But I'm also a church pastor. And I have a little community here in Little Rock where I live called Mercy Community Church of Little Rock, which is a community mostly of people who live on the streets.
And so I'm kind of inhabiting these two worlds, simultaneously, of being a scholar and a being a pastor, and of course, being a person of faith myself. So my work and especially I think, in this book, is an attempt to bring all of those things together to bring some of my expertise from the academic world, but also some of my pastoral concern from the pastoral world and to try to say something to people who are trying to live a faithful Life with a Bible as one of their sources of inspiration.
Seth 5:06
Yeah. And so you're a professor at Hendrix College in Arkansas. So where is that?
Robert 5:16
Hendrix is in Conway, Arkansas, which is about 30 miles north of Little Rock. Right on I-40. So if you ever drive West through Arkansas headed to Oklahoma, which not that many people do, but if you did, you would end up in Conway, about 30 minutes after you pass through Little Rock.
Seth 5:37
That works. Yeah, I've made that drive often, but I always get on to 30 at Little Rock. I never stay on 40. I get off a 40 somewhere before that. So yeah, I'm from West Texas. And so driving from Virginia, you know, 81 to 40 to 30 to 20, which just works well, you just count it down. But so this isn't a fair question, but of the two jobs and roles that you play What do you currently find that is that is feeding your spiritual life more? Is it the professor side or is it the pastoral side?
Robert 6:08
That isn't a fair question (laughter)
Yeah, so one of the things that I have tried to do, and Hendrix has been very good to me about this, is I've tried to minimize the distinction between those jobs. So when I founded Mercy Community Church, it was founded really as a place where I could bring Hendrix students to build relationships with people who are living on the streets. And so, Mercy Church thinks of themselves as a teaching community, which is kind of interesting.
So my students come down from Hendrix and the Mercy Community teaches them about what it's like to live on the streets and helps them read the Bible with marginalized eyes or whatever you want to say. And then the students from Hendrix also think of themselves as a teaching community. Helping people read the Bible. One time I had a group come down and teach, teach photography lessons to folks who live on the street.
So I have tried as much as I can to, to bridge those two worlds together. I, you know, I thought for a while about being a professor who had no connection to a ministry, and I thought for a while about being a pastor who had no connection to the Academy, and neither one of those seemed right to me. And so I think it's that position in between communities that really feels feels rich to me.
Seth 7:41
Yeah, I hear that. You describing that and it sounds very similar to one of my previous guests, one of my one of my first guest, Dr. Richard Beck out at Abilene Christian where he teaches psychology, but then he intentionally engages in a community that forces him to use his theology which allows him to bring it back and teach…not better but differently
Robert 8:02
Right? Exactly right.
Seth 8:05
So why this book then? Why these five scrolls? Why are they forgotten? Like, what is? What is the birth of this book? Is it? Is it that church that you help found? Or is it something else?
Robert 8:18
Yeah, no, it's not actually, it was interesting because it's when you read the book, the introduction, talks about Mercy Community Church and the forgotten voices of people who live on the streets and Little Rock and the Forgotten voices of the Bible, and how those are connected. But really, I didn't honestly see that connection until after I had written the book. And I was trying to think about why did I want to write this book in particular, and what does that have to do with the other things that I care about? And I realized that one of the things that I care about is providing a place where voices that are not often heard in the public sphere, can say what they need to say. Believing that there is truth that is spoken by people who live on the street. And there's truth spoken by these books that are in the Bible, and we are often too busy or too distracted or too oriented to other things to hear what they say.
So, I do think there is a connection between my work at Mercy church and my, my work in this book. But the book didn't grow out of that work in any direct kind of way. I've actually been really interested in these five books, really, ever since I was in seminary, 15 years ago, at Columbia Seminary in Atlanta, the Forgotten Books of the Bible. There are five books that I'm talking about.
And those are the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. And what holds those five books together is that in the Jewish tradition, those are the five best scrolls to ḥamesh megillot, which are each read in connection with a major Jewish holiday. So in the Jewish tradition, those five books get read, they get oriented into the liturgical life of our Jewish brothers and sisters, they they are part of a language of the faith.
And in my own experience, those books are hardly ever read in, at least in the Christian churches of my background. You don't hear them read in the pulpit, you don't hear them preached; you very rarely hear them even talked about in a Bible study.
And so this book kind of grows out of this. And here is this rich resource that we have in our tradition, which has been for practical purposes has mostly been silenced. And so the question of the book is, what happens if we let those books talk and if we take seriously what they have to say?
Seth 10:58
Before we get specifically to the book some I've written a few questions about each of the books. Although I don't know that I want to get to all of them. I found your book extremely well written. And when I say all of them, I do want to get to all the questions, but I don't necessarily want to dive into each book; on on purpose, I want readers of the book to have overwhelmingly things that they've not heard before.
So I am curious, so why as Western church, and I'm going out on a limb, assuming quote, unquote, Western church, why have we detached ourselves from that tradition that, you know, we're founded from? Why do we not discuss these do you think, why are they Why are they shelved, and just let to be dusted?
Robert 11:43
Well, I mean, I should preface my response by saying I haven't. I haven't really delved too deeply into the historical events that led to the ignoring of the books that I have my own surmises about that. One of them is, I think that Christian churches, broadly speaking, have tended to downplay what we call the Old Testament, kind of in general.
So if you're going to hear a text read in church, more often than not, it's going to be a gospel text or maybe a Pauline text, it's not going to be the Old Testament texts. Second is, I think that within the Old Testament, there are sort of these great traditions that are important to the faith. I mean, and they should be read. Like I'm not saying we shouldn't be reading Genesis and Exodus and Isaiah, right. But we tend to focus on the kind of main stories and we don't have time to or energy to, I don't know what it is, to get around to these kind of minor, minor things as they're perceived, I think.
And third, maybe is the Old Testament traditionally has been read in so much as it kind of points the way to Jesus. So the Old Testament is often read kind of Christologically. And there's not much in these books that lends itself to Christological reading. So if that's your orientation, you might not ever really encounter these books. So what I'm trying to do is to say, What if we just take these books kind of on their own on their own terms, and see what's there?
Seth 13:26
And I can see that I can see how these books specifically don't necessarily point easily to Christ. And what I can be surmise down into a 30 or 40 or 20 minute sermon on Sunday. And I will say in preparation of this, I went to some of the like the top 50-60 churches in the country, their websites usually will let you search out their messages. And I just typed in these books of the Bible just to see how many popped up and they were like, two; from going to January of 2018. To present we're recording in the middle of July. And so yeah, I mean, it's…
And that was a spread out amongst denominations from Catholic to, you know, everything it was it was all over the place. And so I think you've hit the nail on the head, nobody discusses these. And another nail that was hit hard. So right at the beginning of your book, as you you dive, I figured you would save Song of Songs for the end, just because that's an awkward, it's an awkward book. And if I'm honest, I never…there's a portion of me growing up that I felt like I had to be, quote, unquote, allowed to sit at the adult table at Thanksgiving to also be allowed to read Song of Songs. Which after reading some of the texts of your book, and, and I know we've joked back and forth on Twitter, like some of the pickup lines, I don't think would work but I'll try them. And so you I like the way that you handle the text with humor, but also with application. And you ask a question at the beginning you say
Our culture has a sex problem, and the church is partly to blame
so what do you mean by that?
Robert 15:00
Well, what I mean by that is, I think that the church contributes to, often contributes to, attitudes about sex and sexuality that are oriented toward maybe toward guilt and shame, or repression and control. So that people who are raised in church environments often don't know how to talk about, or how to think about, or how to experience sex and sexuality as things that are good; things that are gifts given by by a passionate God.
And so we, I think, have lost the language of the beauty and joy of human sexuality. And I think that plays itself out and I'm not suggesting that the church is solely responsible for the problems in society. But I do think that it contributes, in that when we don't have healthy ways of expressing sex and sexuality or talking about or asking about, that we tend to repress those things that then come out in problematic ways.
So my position in the book is that if we could engage the Song of Songs in ways that teach us and give us language give us ways of thinking about the goodness of sexuality, that then we can just own our own nature as sexual beings, that that might enable us to engage in conversations about the appropriate role effects in our lives and might help us and thinking about you know, the metoo movement is going on right now and conversations and churches about LGBT Q, folks and gay marriage. All kinds of things that are related to our attitudes about sex. And I think that we often just don't know how to talk about those things as church people.
Seth 17:09
How then if we're thinking about me too, and consent and other things, so as you're breaking down the Song of Songs, the woman, the Shulamite woman, she doesn't seem to care about any hierarchy. There seems to be an equality between the man and the woman. And I know that that's not the way the quote unquote traditional church would preach things. They preach more of the complementarian view, which I would never say that to my wife, because I've value my face. So I don't want to get hit.
So as people are reading the Song of Songs, I know there's multiple ways to read it, but how do they make sure when they're reading it, that they're, that they're reading it correctly? That if they read something about consent, or they or they don't understand the phrase, how do they make sure that they're they're reading it and they're not charging it with their own bias?
Robert 18:06
Well, I think that, you know, I mean this point at a much larger question, which is whenever we read any difficult texts about anything, what are we doing? And how do we make sure we're reading it, reading that correctly. And, you know, as a Biblical scholar, I'm a little suspicious of the notion that there is a correct reading of any particular text, the texts open themselves up to multiple interpretations, which can sound a little scary, but from my perspective, it puts us as interpreters in the position of having to be agents of our own interpretation, we have to think through what is the range of interpretations that are here.
How does this relate to my own sense? What it means to be a person of faith? And then what is my community saying about about these things? So there's a conversation that happens between us and the Bible. It's not simply that the Bible tells us something, and so that we go to the Bible with questions. And we come away with deeper with deeper thoughts about it.
Seth 19:19
And oftentimes more questions. I like that idea of it's a conversation with the Bible. Yeah, I like that.
Robert 19:26
Yeah. And I mean, one thing you'll notice in my book is, at least I hope that instead of coming away with simple answers about the way we ought to read. I hope you come away with more sophisticated questions about things that you might ask of the Bible. I mean, I make my suggestions along the way, about how I interpret these things. But there are various points along the way invitations to the reader and this doesn't work that great in a book, you know, but invitations to the reader to say like, here's what i think but what do you think about that?
And so the the way the book is written I hope is as an invitation to conversation and an invitation into a deeper kind of way of thinking about what's happening in the Biblical text that we can then been asked different questions that we might have asked before.
On the issue of complementarianism. That's a that's a difficult one. And one of the things that, that I think is true is that on any given question, the Bible itself, hold multiple perspectives. You'll see that most clearly in this book in my chapter on Lamentations, which we can talk about. But there are Biblical texts that seemed fairly strongly to suggest a complementarian view of the relationship between male and female and particularly in the deutero-Pauline letters and in the New Testament.
I don't think that the Song of Songs has a complementarian view I think it thinks about two lovers one male, one female, who are who are exploring their, their sexuality together. And there is invitation, and respect and response, throughout most of the book. And you know, my position is not that the Song of Songs says this, like that's what the Bible says. But when we talk about what the Bible says, The song songs perspective needs to be included alongside Colossians or Timothy or whatever it might be.
Seth 21:35
Last question on that book. So how do you as a pastor then preach that on Sunday without…without alienating every single uncomfortable member that you know is funding your organization? How do you ride that line?
Robert 21:52
Yeah, that's your job. Yeah, I mean,
Seth 22:00
How is that my job?! (Laughter)
Robert 23:02
Now, I mean, the book is, so you can tell in reading the book that I am somebody who teaches and somebody whose congregation I mean, you might not be able to tell this. I talked about it a little bit in the book, but in my own congregation I dont preach. I lead people through conversations about the Bible. And so I can say, well, when I read song, the songs, this is what I see. And they can say, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Or they can say, Oh, no, that's a terrible idea. And so, also when you work with people who live on the street, like there's not a lot of money involved.
Seth 22:39
Well, you know, to boil it down. It sounds like what you're saying is the preacher speaks at people less and talks with people, communally more.
Robert 22:48
Yeah, and I think I mean, you know, I'm, I do preach, I dont preach on a weekly basis, but I also my my spouse is a is a pastor, as well, and so I understand the need to be able to say something in 20 minutes, that resonates and doesn't alienate.
I also worry that when preaching, how do I preach this is the orienting question that what it results in is a simplification of the Bible in ways that are ultimately kind of problematic. So the Bible is a really rich and complicated set of texts. And if we need to boil it down always to a 20 Minute Message with a clear takeaway that I can put in my pocket. I don't think we treat it as respectfully as we might.
I also think there's a reason that I ended up as a professor and not as a pastor, which is because my intuition is always to complicate things and I'm not sure that that's, that's a way to get people to come back every Sunday, although maybe it is I haven't tried it. But when I say it, that's your problem. What I mean is, I have tried to open up the text in ways that I think show how the text is rich and pastors who are reading the book would then have to say, Okay, now that I can think about all of that, like, what do I say on Sunday morning?
Seth 24:15
I can remember when my wife and I first got married. Many years ago, the church that we were attending, where we, you know, rented an apartment, one of the first times her mom came down to visit she came to church with us in the pastor briefly pause, he said, “Guys, I'm going to pray for like three or four minutes, we're going to be talking” and he was talking about Song of Songs, and he was talking about sex. And he preface it by saying, “this is important. This matters. It's a huge part of your life, your marriage in this church. There's bigger implications. But again, if you haven't had a conversation“, and he spoken code words, “I'm going to pray for a really long time. So you got about three and a half minutes to excuse yourself or get your 14 year old out of here, whatever you're comfortable with, and then come back and get ready for some mess”.
And our mother and my new mother in law sitting next to us and my wife was like, Oh, this is gonna go badly. This is gonna go so badly. And at the end of it all, and I think she would mirror this. She's like, that's one of the best messages I've heard in a long time. Like, we should talk about this more. I was like, Yes, we did it right. Well the pastor did it right.
Seth 25:41
I want to move to Lamentations and the reason being is lately, something that I've been preparing for discussions on is the prosperity gospel. Because I don't like it. I just I tried to not often give my opinion, but I'm not a fan of the prosperity gospel. And when you were breaking down Lamentations, I kept hearing echoes to a prosperity gospel, but because of the theology that you list that people will use from Deuteronomy 30, in 16, and 18, basically saying that, you know, God gives us what we deserve. And so if you know if our house burnt down, you did it wrong. Or if you're being successful, you probably did it right. Can you break down that theology a bit, and you did not really, that's that's me again, and forming my bias into what I read.. But I couldn't help detach the two as I read that, as I read that portion of it
Robert 26:28
I think that is a reasonable interpretation of the theology of Deuteronomy. Of course, it's always more complicated than you can boil down to, in one or two sentences. But Deuteronomy, what I call in the book is reward punishment theology. In scholarly circles, it's often called the deuteronomistic theology, which just means it's a theology of the book of Deuteronomy.
But essentially where the book of Deuteronomy comes out is God saying to Israel, if you follow the Torah, I will bless you. And if you do not, I will curse you. And so this is a message of obedience to God and reward for obedience and curse or punishment for disobedience.
The way that prosperity gospel works in my mind is it just, it just works that equation backwards. So it says, if you have been blessed, it's because you've been obedient. And if you have been cursed, it's because you've been disobedient. Which is not actually what Deuteronomy does. But Deuteronomy lends itself to that kind of interpretation.
You see something similar in Proverbs actually on a more individual basis. And then you see books like Job that are really pushing back on that and saying, look, here's the here's your righteous sufferer and he’s done everything right and he's still suffering. What are you going do with that? So the Bible itself recognizes that prosperity gospel gets us into trouble where we we all know people who live good lives and bad things happen to them. So how how can you account for that within the theology of Deuteronomy? So we have to find other ways of thinking of in addition to the deuteronomistic theology.
Seth 28:24
As I read through that, that portion of your book, there were different voices in Lamentations and I might, I'm probably going to say I'm wrong, but you have the person that victim blames, you have the strong man, and you have the scoffer. Can you briefly go over those but what I really want you to speak on is the scoffer because I feel like that's the voice and the echo chamber, that many of us in today's climate of America I feel like that's the hat that a lot of us aware on Twitter and on Facebook and on whatever you know, social circles we run in? Could you Recently goes through those just different voices and then zero in on scoffer?
Robert 29:04
So, scholars have recognized for a while now that there are multiple speaking voices in the book of Lamentations, and they don't all agree with each other. The person that taught me about this was Professor Kathleen O'Connor, who was my teacher at Columbia seminary.
People talk about the voices differently. I myself see five. One is a figure called the Daughter of Zion in Lamentations. She's basically a personification, a female personification of the city of Jerusalem. The second is a guy who speaks in Lamentations 3, who he just says, I am the man and he uses a word that means a warrior So, so we call him the strong man.
There is a funeral singer who speaks in the first couple of chapters and ends up engaging in some dialogue with daughter Zion. There's the scoffer, who you mentioned, who I see in Lamentations 4. And then at the very end of the book in the last chapter, there's a communal voice that speaks as a we instead of as an I. And I see that as kind of the community's response to to what's gone before.
There's a couple of dynamics that I think are really interesting in that set of voices. One of them is that two of those voices, well, three of those voices, have experienced destruction and trauma themselves. So daughter Zion says, this happened to me. The strong man says this happened to me, communal voices, this happened to us. And then there are two voices that seem a little distant from the suffering so they talk about, look what happened to Jerusalem, look what happened to Jerusalem.
So I see part of that dynamic is insider — outsiders people who have themselves been traumatized and people who haven’t. One of the things that I'm trying to do in that chapter is to say, trauma in this case of destruction of the city of Jerusalem in the temple, causes multiple theological responses. And the book of Lamentations doesn't try to choose one of those. It lets them all kind of stand side by side. Daughters Zion is, is angry at God, for the suffering, she hasn't heard, and she never really moved past that. She's just, she's upset. She doesn't think she deserved it. And she thinks there is no hope for the future.
The strong man who also seems to have experienced suffering, he actually has a prosperity gospel kind of attitude. So he's basically saying, I'm suffering because I did something wrong. So if I just wait out God's anger, He will bless me, God will bless me again.
So there you have a prosperity gospel and an anti-prosperity gospel voices that are in the book and both expressed by people who have experienced trauma. The two voices that have not experienced trauma, one is the funeral singer. And in my reading he starts out a little judgmental about daughter Zion you know, saying because you suffer because you sin so why are you so upset? But after he listens to her for a little bit, he changes his tune, and even starts to weep on her behalf.
The scoffer you're interested in starts that with that same position, you're suffering because you did something wrong and you know you deserve it. So like what what problem is it of mine? And he never changes his tune. He just like that's what this copper thinks. You got what you deserved! You know, I say in the book, he's, he's the one voice in that in limitations that I would get rid of if I could like I, I don't like what what he has to say but Lamentations is insistent that he's part of the community too.
So even if you don't like what he says, you, you kind of have to figure out a way to let him hang around. Maybe he'll change his mind later. I don't know. But, but we've all got to stay together as a community. That's kind of the message of that of that book, I think.
Seth 33:30
And when I read it, what I don't want to hear but what I feel like I am hearing and since since reading your book, I've gone back and I've read Lamentations a few times. And that started with a different a different book I read Prophetic Lament from Professor Soong Chan Rah. And so there's just been a lot of that, which is, when you engage that much and said text, it tends to make you a bit sad, but what I'm understanding or what I think I'm beginning understanding is everyone's entitled to their voice. But everyone's not entitled to be 100% true and correct that there's a portion of the daughter of Zion and a portion of the scoffer and a portion of every other voice that is in some way or form correct because it's, it's their personal story. But that doesn't mean that anyone else is necessarily incorrect. And I think that that's the piece that so many in the church today Miss or at least what I think so many people in the church miss.
Robert 34:30
Yeah, you know, that chapter starts out with conversation about Black Lives Matter and the role of anger and protest, both in the church and also in society; and what I view as people trying to shut down those voices and say, it's time for you to move on to something else. And my reading of Lamentations says that community, the Black Lives Matter protesters, they get to be angry for as long as they are angry. And, you know, I see Daughter Zion kind of representing that kind of position. And Lamentations never tries to move her along. It just lets her be angry. And I mean, I assume the hope is that at some point she comes to something else. But for the duration of the book, she she just gets to speak her truth.
And, you know, I don't know if you necessarily need to say she, her truth is true, but it's only partially true, or something like that. I don't think Lamentations actually gets us there. I think it just says, she has a truth and it is her truth. And that truth might be incompatible with the truth of the strong man, who also has his own truth. And they get to think what they think and Lamentations doesn't correct them. But what it does do is hold them together. So it says, even when we are fundamentally incompatible in our theological or political responses to things, we still belong to each other. And so somehow we have to figure out a way to all be in community together without trying to shut down or even to kind of limit the fullness of the truth of others in the community. It is a beautiful idea. I don't know exactly how one does that in practice. But I think Lamentations is offering us a vision of a community that holds together even though the people in it have very different theological perspectives; it's a really beautiful image, I think.
Seth 36:55
Yeah, I don't know how you do with either. I find the churches begin even if they start that way they quickly homogenized down to a common denominator and then just branch off into the “we don’t agree”. And that's that's why we have you know, 197 million different church denominations. That's an exaggeration but we'll probably get there in the next you know, 40-50 years get that many.
(Laughter from Robert)
I want to shift to Ruth and I don't think we'll get to the other couple books that you've written on and that's fine. Specifically because I don't hear, well I've dealt a bit with Ruth and with a bit with Esther this year in some other readings, but I like the idea of both Esther and Ruth are giving a voice to the immigrant and and Esther does it more of you can assimilate to a point I think and but you also need to remember where you're from, and remember why you have a voice and use it wisely. [That] is what I hear in Esther. But Ruth is more the opposite. You break down Ruth and when I read you, when I read what you've read about it, it's about commitment, and it's about going to and making a decision standing by that decision but doing it logically and in a way that betters the community. Is that an overgeneralization? It probably is. I'm sure that it is.
Robert 38:18
I mean, everything is always an overgeneralization. Right. But yeah, the two books do have a lot in common Ruth and Esther. The distinction that I would make, I think, is that Esther is written from the perspective of a community that is a minority in the place where it finds itself. So it is written from the perspective of Jews living in the capital of the Persian Empire. So its perspective is how do we live when we are not the dominant culture?
Ruth is kind of the opposite of that. It's written from the perspective of people within the land Israel. And the question is, how do we relate to this foreigner this Moabite in Ruth, who has come to build her life among us, as the as the daughter in law of this Israelite Naomi? So she's married into an Israelite family, her husband and her father in law have died. And now she and her mother-in-law are trying to make a life in Israel where she is a foreigner. But the perspective of the book is from is from the perspective of Israelites who are the dominant culture.
So the question is, what is the role of a foreigner and you know, the way that I read the book, and it's not the only way to read it, but I think it's a productive one is to read the book of Ruth in light of other Old Testament books, like Ezra and Nehemiah, that have kind of an anti-foreigner orientation to them. So foreign women in particular are suspect and maybe should be even exiled out of the country.
Ruth by contrast, says, look, here's this woman she's a Moabite. She is a traditionally an enemy of the Israelites or her people are. But she comes into Israel, she learns the customs, she commits herself to her mother-in-law, she builds a life for them. And in some ways she saves the life of her mother or Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi. And as we find out at the end of the book, she becomes the great grandmother of King David, the greatest king of the Old Testament.
So on the one hand, the book of Ruth is making that kind of a claim that foreigners have something to contribute, immigrants have something to contribute, and so we ought to welcome them. But at the very end of that chapter, I've spent some time reading particularly Gale Yee, who's a Chinese American Biblical scholar, and Yolanda Norton who's an African American Biblical scholar, and they read that book from the perspective of someone who doesn't fit into the dominant culture. So they are they are more attuned to the character of Ruth than somebody like me.
And so, they point out the ways in which Ruth has had to compromise her own ethnic identity and has had to let go of the traditions of her own people. And so they they lament the book of Ruth in an interesting kind of way like…Yes, okay. It says that immigrants can belong to the culture but it says they can do that only by way of losing touch with their own roots. So, that chapter for me, suggests, so it reads against Ruth a little bit to say we should welcome immigrants, we who are in the dominant culture, but we also need to be careful about the ways that we are asking people to let go of their own cultural heritage.
Seth 42:13
Yeah. And that's a conversation that's happening daily in America. I'm not not to bog down on a political immigration policy question. So I'll defer all that. A concept that I wasn't necessarily familiar with, again, because of my lack of reading of the book and my lack of understanding of ancient history is the role of Redeemer that Boaz plays. And so what does that look like today? Like, is there a role similar that today that we could call someone you know, the 21st century quote, unquote, Redeemer? Is there anything like that, that we still do?
Robert 42:51
Oh, that's an interesting question. The book of Ruth is a little confusing about exactly what it means about the role of the Redeemer. But the way that I read the role of the Redeemer is that the character Boaz has a responsibility for his relative Naomi, who is a woman whose husband has died, and she owns a piece of land that has some value. And so his role as Redeemer is to make sure that she is is able to survive (and) is taken care of, has a place to live, is able to eat, and takes care of her property until a descendant of hers can take it back from him. So he's almost like the property is entrusted to him. So I'm struggling a little bit to think of what is what is the parallel some kind of a trustee of estate?
Seth 44:01
There might not, there may not be one. Because as I read you break it down. It was basically. I mean, he basically took a big risk and saying, Yeah, you know, we'll do this you can have it not a big deal. Almost like a chess match on knowing his opponent knowing what that would be like. But he did it in a selfless way. And I can tell you, as a banker, a lot of times trust never let assets leave the trust. It's not always selfless. You would hope that it is. But it's often not, and I wasn't certain what your answer would be. I just was genuinely curious as I sat there and thought about I was like, does this…because it is a good role for someone to be able to play
Robert 44:41
Yes.
Seth 44:43
I just didn't know if it still in some way, existed. It would be beautiful, if it did.
Robert 44:47
You know, one of the things I'm trying to do in the book is open up the ancient context in ways that suggest connections to contemporary life. But there are lots of folks whose background or experience is different than mine, and they see different connections than I see. And I think this was one of those cases where it never actually occurred to me to ask whether there is a role like Boaz’s role in contemporary life, but like as a question that occurred to you, and so one of the things that I hope will happen when people read the book is that they might see different connections than I see. Which might lead to different or richer or better interpretations than the ones I'm able to offer.
Seth 45:32
Yeah, well, I will forget my last question because that was it. What is your hope when people read the book, and I think you beautifully just answered it there. And so where can people engage with you Robert Williams and where can they get a hold of the book? Obviously Amazon and everywhere else. It launches on August 1, I believe?
Robert 45:51
The book is published by fortress press and so so any any of the fortress press connections you can find the book is launches on August 1 is is available Of course on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and places like that. I think if you order if you preorder it it'll it'll ship on August 1 and then otherwise it's available. You can find me on Facebook at my author page is Robert Williamson Jr. The URL is RobertWilliamsonjr.com author facebook.com slash. And I also have a website, where I'm blogging about things right now I'm not blogging about the book but I'm writing about biblical texts and their connection to contemporary life. And that's just RobertWilliamsonjr.com so they can find me there as well.
Seth 46:45
And I'll encourage listeners as you go out, and you can purchase the book one of my favorite parts is is Robert gives some pickup lines and Song of Songs to use with your significant other. So I would encourage you to try those and then just give some feedback. You know which ones worked … which ones didn't… maybe change them, maybe give some common day variations. I think that would be, that would be a fun thought experiment, why not?
Robert 47:08
I think that's a terrible idea. People can try it if they want.
Seth 47:12
I read a few to my wife and she's like, where's this sounds like it's from the Bible. I mean, this is Holy. This should work. Yeah. So anyway, thank you so much for your time today. I'm happy to have you on and maybe in the future we can have you on for different topic.
Robert 47:30
I would love to I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, Seth, and happy to talk with you anytime.
Seth 47:51
I'm going to challenge you all to listen in at what your communities of faith are talking about. Are they taking the Easy passages, the easy roads, the parts of Scripture that don't require us to think about immigration, and don't require us to think about sex and equality and assimilation, and lamination and grief. And if your church is not doing that you're called to do something about that to speak out and say, hey, it's a huge segment of Scripture that we're not touching on. And for our church fathers and for the history of our church that has historically mattered and we need to make it matter again.
Go out and get a copy of Roberts book. And if you do, send some feedback to Robert you can find him at RobertWilliamsonJr.com. Thank you so much for listening today.
Thank you to the Silver Pages for the use of your music. One last thing before we leave, I have an inkling of thoughts of what I would like to do with next year of this show. And that sentence in and of itself is a little bit bigger than I thought it would be. I had no intention that the Can I Say This At Church podcast would turn into what it's turned into. And I'm enjoying every minute of it. I'm enjoying how the community continues to grow week over week over week, and talking with you all, and reading books with you all studying scripture and debating Scripture with you all. It's fantastic. And I would like to do some of that in person I would like to hold maybe live recordings or gatherings where we can meet, discuss, grab a beer, or wine or tea or whatever it is that you grab. That will not happen without your help, though. So if you have not yet committed to do so please go to the Patreon page, which you will find in the show notes or at CanISayThisAtChurch.com and pledge some support. I look forward to meeting you all If you'll help me do so, I'll talk to you next week. appreciate each and every one of you.
Be blessed.