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Well, friends. Once again, thanks for joining us for cultivating ideas today. This is our final in the series for the, the Fall here and we're grateful for your time today. We have the

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privilege today to have Reverend Doctor Margaret Amer who has joined us um to teach on the Ethiopian Unu. Doctor Aer has been teaching New Testament since 2001 and joined the faculty A P T S in 2015.

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She teaches core courses on the introduction to the New Testament Exegesis in Greek and elective courses in numerous disciplines including African Americans in the Bible and feminist and womanist biblical interpretations. She became academic dean in 2022 the

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first woman and the first person of color to hold that position. Today's topic again, who was the Ethiopian eunuch? Um In acts eight, we read about the Ethiopian eunuch, an unnamed pilgrim to Jerusalem

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who appears in Luke's story of the church and then disappears after an encounter with Philip, who was the Ethiopian eunuch. And how does this role fit into the story of faith? This Bible story takes us

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through the story of the eunuch as a story of exile slavery, homecoming and the witness of the early church. So Doctor Aman, we turn it over to you what you think is going on in the

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story ready? So the beginning of the story reads first memory, the fireworks on New Year's with dad . School meeting my best friend years later in college , meeting her wedding birth of Josie, her first

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birthday, second child, Kathy. All memories flashing last one car's hood, the surprised driver. So in the chat, what happened in that story? What was that story about growing up in life?

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Experiences, brief headlines of life, someone's life flashing before their eyes, life lived in relationship with others . Remembering dramatic change, its abrupt ending, dramatic changes, an accident memories. So already you are

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lots of different ways of interpreting that story, right ? We could read it as a suicide, we could read it as a dream sequence related to one's therapist. We could read it as a parent or

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a caregiver telling a doctor about a loved one's PTSD . It could be notes for a film, actor reading the description of a scene or, or someone describing a scene at a movie scene at uh uh

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at the TV or movie scene at the water cooler . How can so few words conjure so many backstories to make sense of one little set of set of stories. See, here's the thing, interpreting a

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story and I'm gonna find a way to close this chat. Interpreting a story is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. It's like doing the jigsaw puzzle without a picture to guide you. We make our meaning from

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context, our context and the context of the world around us. Our context affects what we think a story means. If the author we're reading doesn't provide us a context or assumes that their audience understands the

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context, then you me the reader, we provide it in our mind sometimes unconsciously. So two readers reading the same story, 1 may see a suicide , 1 may see a car accident, 1 may

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see a film score reconstructing the background of the story and the narrative order of events is called Fabula. The reader or Hearer is just filling in the gaps just as you did in that little piece of Twitter

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fiction written by Thaddeus June. So the first thing I wanna say is Fabula is a completely normal part of the way we make sense of a story. We cannot possibly when you're writing, write down every

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little detail of the story. The author has to assume some familiarity from the audience about what's going on and that the audience will fill in the context. But because the context is never fully filled in our

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fabula, the way we reconstruct the story in our mind can become skewed by our biases and by our experiences of the world. And so we have to always think about and check how we reconstruct a story

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, what our Fabula is about a story. So in today's webinar, we're gonna look at Fabula in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and specifically how fabulous , how we reconstruct the story of the eunuch in

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our brain, the context we put to it, how that affects how that affects our interpretation of acts chapter eight verses 26 to 39. We'll also explore what other story might be told about this Ethiopian.

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And then finally, I will start talking about why , how we fabula a story, how we tell a story and construct a story. Why that matters to you as Christians and ministerial leaders. So here's

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the story of acts 826 to 39 in a nutshell , Philip who was a diaspora, Jewish convert to Christianity and a deacon of the early church is as Phil said, teleported by an angel of the Lord

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to Gaza. Yes, that Gaza there, he encounters a chariot carrying an Ethiopian eunuch returning from worshiping in Jerusalem. And the eunuch is reading a scroll of Isaiah. He joins the chariot and begins a

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conversation about the book of Isaiah. And after their conversation, the Ethiopian eunuch asks what prevents him to be baptized? Philip baptizes the Ethiopian who returns home with joy. The story is pretty straightforward. Yes

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. But for many interpreters, it raises this important question. Who is this Ethiopian? And that friends is where the Fabulous begins. You see my fellow interpreters have all sorts of ideas about who this guy

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is who this guy must be. Here are some examples, the standard majority fibula constructed for the story . The way that the story is fab or reconstructed is the story of the rejected pagan gentile. In

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this story, the Ethiopian eunuch goes up to Jerusalem to worship in the temple. However, he is rejected from being a proselyte or convert to Judaism or even from worshiping in the temple because he is a

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eunuch on his way home reading a scripture. He does not understand he finds acceptance for the good Christian missionary Philip. Now, just on the chat. Anyone has, has anyone of you ever heard or

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read this interpretation or use this interpretation in a sermon or in a Bible study? Nobody? OK. I see one chat. OK, Monica has anybody else? OK, Sarah Allen has anybody else?

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OK. Not that I remember. So, Aidan has OK. OK. Cool. Now African American interpreters, oh, there's some more shots coming in . Yeah, something like it. African-american interpreters have

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added to this Bula. They point out that the man is in a chariot and is the treasurer of the ruler of Meroe, the Kak. So clearly he's a man of wealth and power. Indeed,

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some have pointed out that he clearly outranks Philip the deacon. Further African American interpreters have underscored that the Ethiopian must be black, which many earlier white male European interpreters simply overlooked. This was part of the

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project of recovering the black presence in the Bible. So the story. Now is that a powerful wealthy black gentile eunuch from Mera way, the representative of a rival kingdom to Rome is rejected by Jerusalem but

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welcomed by the good Christian missionary. How about that kind of Fabula? Has anybody ever read or heard or used that Fabula before adding the aspect of blackness to it? OK. OK. So we got

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some yeses here. I see some yeses coming. OK. Now queer scholars and those who do disability or as they have put it, crypt studies have also weighed in on the Ethiopian queer folks noting his

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castration claim him as part of the gender queer community . Disabled scholars claim that his castration renders him part of the disabled community. So now we have the story of a rich queer disabled, powerful black gentile

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going up to Jerusalem to worship, being rejected, coming home and then being welcomed and baptized by the Christian missionary. So that sound familiar to people. OK. No, but I like it. OK

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. So then if that is the fabula we use for this story, what difference does it make? Well, this is what I wrote in an article published this year in the journal of biblical literature.

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This reconstructed narrative cannot help but depict Jerusalem and the Judaism for which that city is a cipher as homophobic , xenophobic and racist while making the Christian evangelist the hero of a story of first century queer black gentile

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inclusion. So what's the problem with this Fabula? What stereotypes. Does this reconstruction perpetuate? What underlying story does it reveal that is embedded in United States ? Even our Christian, even Christian progressive lenses.

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Are we as Christians responsible for perpetuating the stereotype that Judaism is necessarily homophobic, xenophobic and racist? Are we as Christians guilty of perpetuating the stereotype that only the Christian evangelist would welcome this Ethiopian into the worshiping

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community? Is that the story we want to be telling from our pulpits And in our Bible studies today , I want to propose an alternative way to read this story and it begins by going back to the

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text itself and I promise we're not doing Greek today . First, we know that the man works for the Kake or ruler of Mewe in African kingdom to the South. This man is identified as an Ethiopian

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, but that's an identification of place and ethnicity. It's not necessarily an identification of belief. Luke tells us that this man had gone up to Jerusalem to worship a very peculiar activity for a pagan, to

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be sure. And that's all that Luke tells us . We actually don't know what happened in Jerusalem. We certainly cannot say that he was rejected by the Jerusalem temple or by Jewish worshippers. We don't even

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know that he went to the temple. We know that there were diaspora synagogues in Jerusalem because we hear about them in act seven. Luke does not tell us where this man goes other than he went to

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Jerusalem to worship So part of the way we're fab rating this story is we're filling in details that aren't there. And then our third clue is the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, a book considered holy to

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Jews and Christians, but not necessarily to pagans. And this is a man who was reading the scroll suggesting that he was literate, at least in Hebrew or Greek. So what do we make of these

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three clues? Well, what context might bring Meroe Jerusalem and a scroll of Isaiah together any ideas. Here's one suggestion, this map from Princeton University shows where Jewish refugees fled after the fall of the first

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temple and the circled area with the arrow pointing south here along the Nile is the direction from which the Ethiopian comes and to which the Ethiopian returns. So if this man was descended from the Jews who were

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dispersed south down the Nile into Merrow Way and beyond , it would make complete sense that he was in merrow way that he as a Jew descended from Jews was going to Jerusalem to worship and returning home and

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that he was reading from a Jewish scripture because he's a diaspora Jew. If we begin by affirming that this man was not a gentile, not a pagan , but in fact, a diaspora Jew. This

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makes him like Philip, unlike the other deacons from a seven, like the synagogues of Acts two and like those gathered at Pentecost, the synagogues of Act six and those gathered in Pentecost at acts two.

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These three clues suggest that this man I'm going to give you a different fabula could have been born into that diaspora Jewish community circumcised on the eighth day as a boy raised to read the scriptures as a boy

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. And we don't know how often he had traveled to Jerusalem, but that is unremarkable activity if the man is a devout and practicing Jew, and now let's talk about the word eunuch. It's a critical

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word because Luke repeats it in the story five times . It is the most repeated word in the story . The word unit points to two other background realities . First, the word eunuch indicates that our Ethiopian

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man is enslaved. Castration was only performed on those who were enslaved, those who had no bodily autonomy , those who could not protect their own body. The way this works is fairly commonly known boys who

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showed intelligence and beauty would have been taken and castrated so that they could not impregnate any royal women and then they would grow, they could then grow up to be powerful officials in the royal court without being

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any threat to the royal line, but they were still enslaved. What this suggests is we have to read our Ethiopian as a victim of sexual violence, probably sexual violence entirely against his will. As a

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minor enslaved boys really rarely had any choice in the sexual violence perpetuate, perpetuated on them, perpetrated on them. This suggests that the Ethiopian is not queer or transgender because human sexual orientation and human gender diversity

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are naturally occurring phenomena. They are not necessarily engendered by sexual violence. As a castrati a eunuch, he would have borne both the marks of his circumcision and his castration in his genital area. And,

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and one commentator that I read said, well, he couldn't have become a Jew because they would have seen the marks of his castration and they wouldn't have been circumcised him. That's assuming you're going from castration

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to circumcision rather than from circumcision to castration. Now , none of this takes away from the man's position as the treasurer of the ruler of Meroe, the Kake. He could still have become her treasurer and

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be her slave. He could be both her treasurer and her treasure. Neither does it take away that he looks like a black skinned Ethiopian Jews were not and are not universally pale skinned people. Zephaniah,

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the prophet was probably Kushite further. If his family were enslaved, we should recognize that Children of the enslaved often begin to look like their masters because their mothers also have no bodily autonomy and thus no sexual

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autonomy. So it's very possible either because of the rape of his mother or because he simply came from black people that you've got a Black Jew. And then we have the story of a rich black,

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powerful Ethiopian Jewish eunuch going up to Jerusalem to worship and coming home reading a scroll of Isaiah. When interpretation is offered, he accepts it. That's a very common response in Judaism because you read together,

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you interpret together. There's a whole Jewish practice called Havre where you make sense of the text in pairs , then Philip preaches to him, the Christian message , he believes it and asks to be baptized.

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So, isn't that a far fetched tabulation? Well , we do have at least one other biblical model of such a person who is possibly a eunuch and definitely reading and a devout Jew. His name is

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Daniel and he was in the Persian court. Now , early ancient commentators frequently read Daniel and his companions as eunuchs in the court of the king and portrayed Daniel as beardless. Yet no one doubts Daniel's Jewishness

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, even though he was also a Jewish exile, certainly enslaved, likely castrated, literate and devout. There's even one scene in Daniel nine where he is reading a book, he's reading a scroll and is

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given guidance about how to understand what's going on by Gabriel, the angel himself. Hebrew Bible scholar, Carol Newsom writes this about that scene. Daniel is represented as reading in private consulting a book in order

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to understand the intentions of God. The only close biblical parallel is the much later scene in acts 826 to 40 where the Ethiopian eunuch is reading and pondering a passage from Isaiah. So where are we now

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with our fabulous the reading? I am proposing this reading fits the larger narrative of the beginning of acts a narrative of the in gathering of God's dispersed people . The Ethiopian Jews conversion marks an ending to Luke's

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tale of diaspora in gathering. So that with the next story, Luke can begin the story of gentile conversion that will occupy the remainder of his narrative. Just remember Luke's story of acts so far in acts

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two diaspora Jews hear the gospel in their own language . In Act six diaspora Jews are called to be deacons in Act seven synagogues of diaspora Jews accuse Stephen a diaspora Jew of Blas in Acts eight, Philip

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, a diaspora Jew converts Samaritans also a kind of diaspora Jew and then Philip goes to Gaza and so why have interpreters so often imagined this exilic Jew as a pagan? Well, we call this process exotic

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, treating a people or culture as utterly different from you exotic and strange. Now we don't always do this out of meanness or, or racism, but sometimes we do it out of simple familiar unfamiliarity.

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If for instance, all the Jews you have ever known are white and of European descent. You might immediately assume that an Ethiopian cannot possibly also be a Jew and that affects your fabrication. If you discount

00:24:11.150 - 00:24:27.990

that as a possibility at the outset, you can't possibly read him that way. One way to think about exotic organization is that it is telling a single story about a people rather than telling multiple different stories

00:24:29.290 - 00:24:51.690

. It's a single stream story rather than a complex story. In her viral ted talk novelist, Chimamanda Adichie put it like this show a people as one thing as only one thing over and over again.

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And that is what they become. The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. So with the Ethiopian, what we are doing is

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showing a people as one thing pagans and only one thing over and over again. And that story is incomplete. And that word Ethiopian was that exotic word for many interpreters and pastors and ministerial leaders and faithful

00:25:33.280 - 00:25:49.020

North e Northern European Christians. It was based on the assumption that Ethiopian meant African. It could not also mean Jewish. What if it does? What if there's more than one story to tell? What

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if there's more than one way to tell the story ? And so my questions for you all is, what other, what, what other fabula are you finding yourself talking about in the Bible? What other

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stories could you tell? What other stories should you tell? What questions should you be asking? And I am open to any of your comments or questions or discussion about what I have just shared as we've

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done in the past friends. You can type your question in the chat if you don't have the ability to, to say it out loud and I'm happy to read it for you or feel free to just

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come off mute or you can raise your hand if that's easier for you as well. But we welcome questions. I'll throw out a question. I'm wondering what kind of Fabula we might do for Philip.

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Um I've long wanted my superpower to be teleportation. So now I have, now I have a biblical hero for that. But, but what else do we do? We know about him and what else

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could we imagine about him? That's great question. So there are some things we know for sure. We know his name is Philip Phillipos is a Greek name, right? So he at least has a

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Greek name that doesn't necessarily mean he is Greek in ethnicity because Johanan Marcos has a Greek name and Simeon Petros has a Greek name, but we know that he is identified as one of the deacons and one

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of the hellenistic Jews. So Hebrew was probably not his first language. So he may even have been one of the converts in acts two who heard the gospel in his own language from all over the diaspora

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world. And if you read that story, that's a whole map of the Mediterranean and it continue contains um Africa, it contains Asia, it contains Europe . So Philip can look like anyone be from anywhere

00:28:22.640 - 00:28:34.110

we know he can speak to Samaritans, Samaritans. So he may or may not know Aramaic. We also know Samaritans read Greek. So we have lots of ways we can imagine Philip. But if you

00:28:34.120 - 00:28:51.160

think back to that picture of Rembrandt that Rembrandt did of Philip Baptizing the eunuch Rembrandt has enlisted an old white guy from Germany and he could look like that , but he doesn't have to look like that.

00:28:51.550 - 00:29:03.860

Right? We can begin to say, well, what can we imagine about a man of that generation who would have been a leader at that time? Who is a Jew? right? But it's not

00:29:03.870 - 00:29:25.510

a Jew from Israel. He's a Jew from the diaspora. Uh Laura says, I wonder when the Jewish tradition of desiring multiple interpretations of scripture to demonstrate the vastness of God left the tradition of Christian interpretation

00:29:25.970 - 00:29:34.820

. We miss out on so much by limiting our interpretations. How can we do better at introducing this process in our churches? So there are great, that's, first of all, that's a great question

00:29:34.830 - 00:29:52.110

, Laura. And um I think you're right about that. Um There are good resources out there on using a teaching like Hata where you learn to, to do study in Paris. Um There are great

00:29:52.120 - 00:30:08.740

resources out there on um contextual Bible study where you are. Yes. Um Thank you, Phil. Um where contextual Bible study where you work together as a group to come um to how a text might

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mean for you, for your context. Um And I think the the work of learning together and having multiple interpretations is, is partially the study work of the pastor but it's also the way the pastor encourages

00:30:25.500 - 00:30:37.060

the congregation to engage the text and to look at the text. And what do you think this means ? What do you hear? What do you see ? And we're, we don't do that nearly as

00:30:37.070 - 00:30:56.760

much as we used to. How does, how does the way that I laid this story out change the way you would preach this text? Now, how would you preach it differently if you would reach

00:30:56.770 - 00:31:33.640

it differently at all? If you're not mad at me? Wow, I shut him up. They have nothing to say. Well, I'll, I'll share something. Um, so, uh doctor Em

00:31:33.650 - 00:31:51.210

and I have had some conversations about this as she was writing, writing her article. Um One of the things that clearly comes to mind, I think because it reflects current concerns uh among um progressive pastors

00:31:51.590 - 00:32:07.040

to preach about Christianity in ways that don't denigrate the Judaism that Jesus grew up in. Um, you know, this becomes another way of saying that this , this, um shall we say distinctive and odd

00:32:07.050 - 00:32:22.810

individual? He was Jewish and I probably might push it and say he was going to his temple in Jerusalem. I it, it becomes a way of expanding what it was like to be Jewish in the

00:32:22.820 - 00:32:34.710

, in the ancient world. And so that, that is an interesting, um to me, it's kind of a new insight that's great. And Laura says, I think the fact that the word eunuch

00:32:34.740 - 00:32:45.910

is repeated five times should certainly make us focus on the meaning of that more. That's right. I , I, we don't think enough about the pain this man has lived through, right? We don't

00:32:45.920 - 00:33:00.390

think enough about the fact that um in the exile Hezekiah is told his Children will be made eunuchs. And this man has read that part of Isaiah already , right? That's back in Isaiah 39. So

00:33:00.400 - 00:33:12.710

he understands what that means to be cut off. He understands what that means to be isolated. He comes from an exilic people. What does it mean to read the story of exiles that way? Do

00:33:12.720 - 00:33:25.200

we have exiles among us still today? Do we have people who have fled um the kinds of violence that exiles face? How, how is this text ? Good news for them, Rick. I see

00:33:25.210 - 00:33:45.870

your hand. Um Yes, I uh I, I think that uh were I to preach this um text? I would um I think what you've shown me is that I would need to look from different

00:33:45.880 - 00:34:02.100

perspectives. It's not just from the perspective of Philip or uh of the author uh uh Luke or e even of the, the eunuch. Um I would need to look at all uh pers all of their

00:34:02.110 - 00:34:23.180

perspectives and, and uh and, and how they are interacting from their perspective and, and do more research on what the possibilities are as you obviously have done uh in, in presenting us with um you

00:34:23.190 - 00:34:37.490

know, what, what, what are the circumstances of their lives? What are the possibilities of the circumstances of their lives? And how does that change the narrative in a way that um can bring more

00:34:37.500 - 00:34:53.740

relevance to, to the, to the story in today's world? Thanks. One of the things I think about when I think about the eunuch as a victim of sexual violence is pe victims of sexual violence

00:34:53.750 - 00:35:10.280

. Asking, am am I too damaged to be part of the church? Right? You think about those who have survived childhood abuse, those who have survived um adult um abuse and rape coming to the

00:35:10.290 - 00:35:28.930

pasture and saying, where, where can I find hope? Where can I see that I can be welcomed and I damaged goods and similarly those who have survived, you know, disability. Um can I

00:35:28.940 - 00:35:42.680

still be a full member of this congregation? Can I still be a full member of this church? And we can do that with the Ethiopian without trying to, without making this a fault of Judaism?

00:35:47.070 - 00:36:07.640

Yes. Yes. They um we don't have to find someone to blame. Right. Yes. Yeah . Does it change the role of conversion? Recognizing if if he is coming from a Jewish background as

00:36:07.650 - 00:36:22.190

opposed to a gentile background? And then does that change the role of baptism as well that takes place ? Right. So coming from a the conversion here is similar to what happens in acts. This is

00:36:22.200 - 00:36:37.970

the Jew who is accepting Jesus as Messiah. This is not what happens in acts 10 when Cornelius who is a God fearer and a proselyte but not circumcised who does not follow the whole law. One presumes

00:36:37.980 - 00:36:50.910

that this is a man who goes to Jerusalem to worship and is reading the school. He's probably a law abiding Jew. So this is a different story than, than the, than the Cornelius story,

00:36:50.920 - 00:37:00.090

which happens in 10. And one of the things you'll read, a lot of commentators saying is, well, this is really the first gentile convert, but he doesn't have to deal with baptism. Uh

00:37:00.100 - 00:37:14.110

He doesn't have to deal with circumcision because he couldn't be circumcised because he was castrated, which is like different organ of the body. People not the same thing at all. Right? And that's a way

00:37:14.120 - 00:37:28.470

to kind of tie yourself in knots about it rather than saying this is an extreme example of what can happen to people who are in exile. People who are in exile who still are connected to this temple

00:37:28.480 - 00:37:42.910

who still worship the God of their ancestors who still faithful Jews can be castrated can look like the other people that they live in can live very far away . But the same gospel that's preached in acts two

00:37:43.790 - 00:38:01.160

to them is preached also to and, and, and, and accepted is also acceptable and accepts these people who are living in the far off lands to the ends of the earth. Wow. Look at

00:38:01.170 - 00:38:13.350

. That's an amazing um comment. Laura Laura writes in the chat. I had a college student in Romania who'd been told by her orthodox priest that she was not even worthy to read the Bible because of

00:38:13.360 - 00:38:35.200

her sin. The damage done to sinners by other sinners is so sad and we must do better to help people find ways to connect to the liberating power and choose the scripture. Hey, Ezekiel unmute yourself

00:38:37.930 - 00:38:51.090

. Thank you, Doctor Ay so much for the all the abundance of gifts you so upon us, I, a couple of things uh when I seen the him or come come Manuel, you know,

00:38:51.520 - 00:39:01.970

I, I broke uh I break down usually because I always remember it. Of course, I have been, I have lived here more than any place else. I mean, even in the home country

00:39:01.980 - 00:39:15.740

where I was born. But uh uh uh the culture wants to remind you uh often that you're here but you're not part of it, right? And , and, and I think we're talking about disabilities

00:39:15.750 - 00:39:30.740

and uh Miss Laura uh talking about her student in Romania. I had a parishioner which uh he was constantly told by his family that he was not worthy because he had a drug addiction problem. And uh

00:39:30.750 - 00:39:44.620

he's a grown man 55 years of age and he was, he broke down crying and I said you are worthy. You are worthy because of what God through Jesus did for you. And, and I

00:39:44.630 - 00:39:59.260

think the good news for us, those who are evangelists or those who claim to be disciples of the girl of the good is to open the table and open the gates. And one of the things that

00:39:59.270 - 00:40:13.740

I keep saying is that the Hollywood, uh folks , uh because they are beautiful and handsome and have fun and money until tragedy knocks upon the door, they, and then they realize that whatever they have

00:40:13.750 - 00:40:32.760

is not enough. Mhm. Uh, you've muted yourself. Ezekiel. I'm sorry, I, I , I keep saying that the good news that we have is like nothing else and whether you're rich or

00:40:32.770 - 00:40:46.010

poor, beautiful or not so beautiful, there is always good news and I think we have to embody that and really believe it. But I think it makes sense more for folks. You know, I

00:40:46.020 - 00:40:58.170

, of course I'm not gonna sing but I'm just gonna read, uh, is Elvis Presley has a son? Uh, I, I'm not, uh , uh, of that time but I have heard

00:40:58.180 - 00:41:12.590

the son walk a mile in my shoes, just walk a mile in my shoes and before you abuse me, criticize and accuse me, just walk a mile in my shoes. Mhm. That's right.

00:41:13.560 - 00:41:25.700

That, that, that's such a refreshing news. And again, if we go back to Ephesians talking about, you know, before you're a foreigner, before you're alien, before you are immigrant before,

00:41:25.710 - 00:41:39.550

before, before. But now you are part of the people of God. Now you have a seat at the table. I am telling you there's nothing like that news when you have been excluded or being

00:41:39.560 - 00:41:57.380

told that you don't belong. I cannot tell you how meaningful those words are when you are open. When you are welcome to a table which you have been previously excluded from. I feel like I'm preaching

00:41:58.160 - 00:42:37.770

. You are, but you're preaching. Well, how about others? We're gonna have a few more minutes. How does this change your perception of Jews in the New Testament? How does this affect the

00:42:37.780 - 00:43:07.300

way you see the people that we think of or talk about as Jews in the New Testament? Margaret . Yes, Rick. So, um and I'm sorry, there's a glare behind me, but that's

00:43:07.310 - 00:43:25.970

OK. Um s so, I, I was raised in an evangelical theology and um the Jew, the Jewish people were always seen as the enemy, the ones who rejected Christ so forth and so on

00:43:27.670 - 00:43:47.290

. Um And I think the reality was is that uh they were just following their faith and they worked with, you know, just be um those that did not accept Christ as the messiah that didn't make

00:43:47.300 - 00:44:05.530

them evil, that was just who they are. Um And um and it wasn't, you know, um you know, they never get into what it was, you know, because it was planned for

00:44:05.540 - 00:44:15.330

Jesus to die on the cross. So it was like the Jews that killed Jesus but it was the , it was, it was the, it was the Roman State, he, he was tried and

00:44:15.340 - 00:44:25.980

convicted for a crime against the State of Rome. And so, you know, it, it wasn't the Jewish people as a whole and, you know , that, that, that, you know,

00:44:25.990 - 00:44:42.210

did something evil. And, uh, and I , I, I took, um, of course it, it's seminary, uh, Jesus and the , uh, and the rabbis and, uh,

00:44:42.220 - 00:44:59.750

it, it was taught by Louie and uh you know, and it wasn't all, it wasn't that , that necessarily that the Pharisees were uh evil and out to get Jesus. But one possibility that,

00:45:00.150 - 00:45:15.360

that Louis presented was maybe it was just part of the mid rash. It was just part of that debating that Jewish rabbis do with each other and, and that Jewish leaders do. Um uh you know

00:45:15.370 - 00:45:30.290

, I learned that uh in the Jewish faith, the answers are unimportant. It's the questions that are important. Mhm. And, and so maybe that's what was going on and it wasn't as conflictual and

00:45:30.300 - 00:45:40.690

it wasn't an as antagonistic as we've been, or at least that as I had been taught to believe that it was. And so I think, you know, you presented that in, in, in

00:45:40.700 - 00:45:59.550

this mhm presentation analysis of the story that, you know, each group or each person, each character , I, I is acting from their experience and , and not necessarily with an evil intent. Right

00:46:00.320 - 00:46:15.310

. Well, and the thing that's fascinating to me is how much has been built up in the story about him being rejected at the temple. Yes. When Luke literally says nothing about it, I mean

00:46:15.320 - 00:46:30.960

, literally, no, he was returning from the temple on up the worship and was returning. That is all that Luke says. And so you wonder what is it that we are? What are the

00:46:30.970 - 00:46:47.770

blanks that we are filling in? Going back to that first story I shared, right? What are the blanks that we are filling in that allow us that compel us to assert that he went up to

00:46:47.780 - 00:47:07.590

the temple and was rejected. Maybe he went up to the temple and was accepted but was just compelled by the message of Philip. Maybe it was not a choice between a bad and a good but between

00:47:07.600 - 00:47:25.740

something that he loved and cherished and something that he found fulfilled the heart of what he loved and cherished . Mhm In other words, why do we make it a rivalry? Right? Sometimes it's a rivalry

00:47:25.750 - 00:47:43.270

in the text but but, but sometimes it's not . Mhm And for Lou in this case, that's not the issue. Tim mentions there's also no one phenotype of Jews. Uh Yes, we say that

00:47:43.280 - 00:48:02.170

all the time. Good week, sometimes forget it . Um We, you know, we talk about Bible pictures and Bible movies and they, it's amazing how many Bible movies have, you know, slightly

00:48:02.180 - 00:48:22.250

toasted skin folks have slightly, they, they may be sat out in the sun a little bit. They might get as dark as Ezekiel lightly toasted. Yeah. Um start in Isaiah to get to the

00:48:22.260 - 00:48:35.320

good news in the time short span of time of a ride. Wonder where he was in Isaiah. Um Yes, I, I, so, so Laura is asking a great question about where the Ethiopian

00:48:35.330 - 00:48:46.050

, what, what, what was the Ethiopian actually reading in Isaiah? Um And he had the Luke actually tells us that I have to pull up the text to find it. Um But I was afraid

00:48:46.060 - 00:49:04.420

I had too much material. Not too little, so I didn't put it in um to my, my uh presentation. Luke actually tells us in acts 826 that he read the part like a sheep.

00:49:04.430 - 00:49:19.150

He was led to the slaughter and like a lamb silent before its shearer. So he does not open his mouth in his humiliation. Justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken

00:49:19.160 - 00:49:45.650

away from the earth. Now, if you were castrated as a child, what do you hear in that? Do you not hear your own story? Do you not hear the text speaking about something you

00:49:45.660 - 00:50:00.220

have personally experienced like a sheep. He was led to the slaughter and like a lamb silent before his shearer. So he does not open his mouth in his humiliation. Justice was denied him who can describe

00:50:00.230 - 00:50:15.140

his generation for life, his life is taken from the earth. This is a man who will never be able to father a child, which in that world is a problem. He has been cut off

00:50:20.500 - 00:50:39.210

and this process of empires um um sterilizing people against their will has never stopped, hasn't even stopped in this country. People have been doing that in this country. Women go in thinking they're getting medical help

00:50:39.220 - 00:50:59.700

and find out they've been sterilized, you know. so he understands this. That's where he is in the text, Laura. And you can see how Philip then would have taken that story and tied his

00:50:59.710 - 00:51:23.490

experience of being humiliated, cut off to jesus' experience another Jew, another person that with whom he would relate. But one that Philip holds to be the messiah and you can see why that would be good

00:51:23.500 - 00:51:42.150

news to this man. Might he hear his community in that story if you are exiled and enslaved, right? You have been exiled let out of your home like sheep to a slaughter. Justice has been

00:51:42.160 - 00:51:58.750

denied you. Your life has been taken from the earth. People don't even uh people don't even believe that you exist. He may hear his whole community in that. He says to Philip, who do

00:51:58.760 - 00:52:15.720

you think the text is talking about here? Let's jump in, let's talk, let's let's engage. I don't have it in front of me. But what do you make of the? Isn't, does

00:52:15.730 - 00:52:23.470

he say who's there's no one to explain it to me. I think that would it, what do you make, what do you make of that aspect of it in the text too? Well, I

00:52:23.480 - 00:52:43.150

think, I think we come from a society in which understanding is to be done internally by ourselves. We value the person that can digest the story by themselves and come up with their own answers. But

00:52:43.160 - 00:53:02.760

he and Daniel and many others understood, understanding and scholarship is something that's done in conversation with each other . Understand, understand, understood, understanding of something that comes from explanation and dialogue and reason. Not

00:53:02.770 - 00:53:14.670

just from me, reading on my own. This is I see Bill on, on, on asking himself. This is, this is what he does in, in his classes. He gets studentss to

00:53:14.680 - 00:53:30.730

have conversation about difficult texts together and the conversation is um is what illuminates the text. I I saw the lo the note, what you said, Laura about the, the uh a note in the study

00:53:30.740 - 00:53:44.630

Bible that Philip might have directed him to Isaiah 56 or not. You see, that's the thing we , we are trying so hard to try to figure out what Philip is saying about this man because we

00:53:44.640 - 00:54:00.610

haven't dealt with the fact that he's castrated to begin with and what that implies about who he is. One of the people that was really helpful to me in writing this story was Chanel Smith and Chanel wrote

00:54:00.620 - 00:54:13.840

about the woman Babylon. It was Chanel who pointed out that she is both enslaved and powerful. At the same time, we have a hard time with that, that you can be both enslaved and powerful

00:54:13.850 - 00:54:27.200

at the same time. And again, we have this Fabula where if you're powerful, you can't be enslaved. And if you're enslaved, you can't be powerful. Yes, I, I, I'm having

00:54:27.210 - 00:54:39.260

a hard time shying away from uh Von Hofer, but I'm gonna get closer by quoting Martin N Moer . Uh And when he talked about the poem, you know, first they came for the communists and

00:54:39.270 - 00:55:00.690

I did not speak out and, and again, not because we are not the group that has been targeted for a particular injustice. That means that I will not some time down the road be the target

00:55:00.700 - 00:55:19.080

of that vitriol that is being uh unleashed upon a particular group of people because of who they are so on and so forth. So, uh again, is standing with those who are abused even though you

00:55:19.090 - 00:55:37.490

have not been abused yourself. And I think that Martin Luther King said, you know, injustice anywhere is in justice everywhere, something like that. Mhm We have about three minutes left. I have a

00:55:37.500 - 00:56:09.700

question. How, how did they know he was a eunuch? Luke mentions it seven times. What's the clue that he was a eunuch omniscient? It , it could be the omniscient narrator male in the

00:56:09.710 - 00:56:25.210

court. What, what do you mean by that Tony? Um the fact that he's serving in a court and he may be close to the women. And so that proximity, the other thing that there

00:56:25.220 - 00:56:39.620

would, would have been a sure sign is that he was, would have been beardless as he would not have gone through male puberty. The removal of the testes would have had impact on his hormonal production

00:56:40.610 - 00:56:52.530

. And just like when you uh neuter a cat or a dog, it changes its physiology. It also does for humans. So he would have been visibly different looking. And so this is where I

00:56:52.540 - 00:57:07.570

think the queer reading is very helpful to remember that even though this person would not necessarily have identified as transgender or identified as queer because this is not a choice he made or this is not an identity.

00:57:07.580 - 00:57:24.620

He claims he still would have been in some way queered in the society that does not mean again from the text that he was rejected, but he would have been visibly different. And I think that gets

00:57:24.630 - 00:57:38.950

at the question, what is to prevent me from being baptized? Because he knows that Philip can see that he's a eunuch. His voice may not have dropped as much. His face may be beardless.

00:57:39.510 - 00:58:05.510

He knows what Philip can see and can perceive. Yep, visibly different crystal. But the visible difference is difference is not his skin color and that is the piece we need to remember. Final questions.

00:58:05.520 - 00:58:16.380

Anyone is we have, oh, we just hit one o'clock. But if anybody has a final question , we'll leave the space. I'm talking about. This has been enlightening and made me want to go

00:58:16.390 - 00:58:28.130

research UNIX more because like you said, it said seven times in there, I feel like there's a worthy opportunity here to, to dive deeper into understanding what the role of the eunuch was in the scriptures

00:58:28.140 - 00:58:40.490

. So thank you for inviting us to Fabula and to, to think imaginatively and creatively even uh this has been very en lightful. So everybody just handshake wave uh give a big congratulation. Thank you to

00:58:40.500 - 00:58:47.980

, to doctor Ammon. We really appreciate this. And again, um we hope that you will take a little bit of time here to fill out our survey. It's in the chat there and I'll drop

00:58:47.990 - 00:58:58.680

the link one more time. We have our, our uh spring lineup coming up as well. It is all on the website and you can see that whole line up. Um They're active as well as

00:58:58.690 - 00:59:06.360

you can register as well. So, we're really grateful for your time today and throughout all of the the fall, this has been a great series. We're really truly grateful and Doctor Aer for all the

00:59:06.370 - 00:59:12.920

faculty, we're, we're truly grateful for the time and for the continued learning. We get as well . So blessings to you all and a blessed advent