Well, this was a heck of lot of fun!

Literally, while I was marching at the National Trans Visibility March yesterday, my episode with Liam and Peterson on the Bible Bash podcast was released. We talked about Jesus and the eunuchs and Matthew 19:12 in particular, including three excerpts from OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. Peterson did a pretty great edit to get all my talking to fit into the 30 minute time slot!

They always include a reading from an additional text on the Bible Bash, but they let me pick that selection this time. So I read a word from Dr Audre Lorde, which was a great honor at several levels.

I started by reading my main excerpt about Zey Jesus and talked about pronouns. Of course, I also read Matthew 19:12. Then I read my bit about Jesus saying “Let those who can accept it, do so.” Finally, I read the closing of chapter 17 where I talk about Origen and the early “Church Fathers” arguments about what Jesus meant by all this talk about eunuchs.

Listen for yourself

I know that some folk will be saying that I am “queering” the text, but I actually think that I am keeping to a rather plain reading (Dr Joy Ladin taught me about pshat in her Soul of the Stranger). I mean, when you get to cite the disagreements between Origen and Tertullian in the second and third centuries, you really can’t dismiss me as a modernist gender radical, can you?! (Though I am sure that they will).

Matthew 19:12 is probably the most controversial statement we have from Jesus. All I am doing is taking red-letter Jesus seriously, while “literalists” and even professional Bible translators wanna explain it away as something figurative.

I am really glad that Peterson somehow made our 45 minute conversation fit into a 30 minute segment. He’s got some real podcast production magic going on lately. Seems that podcasting is his new calling. What a gift!

Compiled by Mx. Chris Paige on September 29, 2019.

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