The Mother God Experiment

Two Women, Possibly Three, Knew Jesus Was Messiah. The Church Remembered Peter.

Leave a Comment / Mother God Experiment / Susan

We’ve been telling this story wrong. Ask most Christians who first recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and the answer comes quickly: Peter. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). It’s the confession that launched a church, the rock on which a tradition was built. Sunday school lessons, seminary lectures, papal […]

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Salome Was a Child: Stripping Away the Male Gaze from Scripture’s Most Infamous Dance

4 Comments / #MeToo in the Bible / Susan

Mt. 14:1-14 “Then during the celebration of Herod’s birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced for them…Prompted by her mother, she said, ‘Give me the head of John the Baptizer on a platter.’” Herodias’ Daughter’s #MeToo One day I read this familiar passage and with the Spirit’s help, I realized that Herodias’ daughter was a victim

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A Brief History of the Holy Spirit as Mother

Apocryphal Literature, Holy Spirit / Susan

I just read two awesome books called Finding Holy Spirit Mother by scholar Ally Kateusz and Our Mother The Holy Spirit by scholar Marianne Widmalm. According to them, there is good evidence that the early church and Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as Mother. This feminine metaphor for the Holy Spirit was edited right

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The Motherly Father God

2 Comments / God as Father / Susan

Back in the day (say, 1910), dads didn’t think much of the idea of Father’s Day. They didn’t relate to the sentimental gifts given to mothers on Mother’s Day. But as fathers have softened over time, they’ve also learned to accept a holiday in their honor. What we love about fathers now is typically a

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Martha, Disciple of Jesus

Bible Women, Easter / Susan

Martha has a mixed reputation. In Catholic and Orthodox circles, she is a saint. Nonetheless, we tend to think of her as a profoundly practical woman, in contrast to her more spiritual sister. However, like other women of the Bible, there is more to Martha than we see at first. In fact, she is a

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Woman Wisdom–God or Not?

2 Comments / Wisdom / Susan

Was Woman Wisdom in Proverbs just a metaphor? Or God Herself? I asked this question several years ago in this post. But after I wrote it, I came to disagree with my own conclusions. I read Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s wonderful book, The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female. I now believe that

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The Women of the Nativity

2 Comments / Bible Women / Susan

We are all familiar with the myths surrounding Christmas, such as that Jesus was born on December 25. But some erroneous assumptions hang on, such as: –that Joseph was the only helper at Jesus’ birth –Middle Eastern shepherds were middle-aged men, and that –the Magi were men. Though these statements seem factual due to our

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They Were Not White, Part 3: Solomon’s Bride

6 Comments / Bible Women, Race in the Bible / Susan

The woman in the Song of Songs was “black and beautiful” (Song 1:5). She is often thought of only as the Shulamite today (6:13), and many scholars assume her to be fictional. However, from the time of Origen, readers have speculated that Solomon wrote about his actual first wife, an Egyptian, says scholar Alice Ogden

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They Were Not White, Part 2: Hagar

2 Comments / Bible Women, Race in the Bible / Susan

In Part 2 of the series They Were Not White, I would like to help us re-envision Hagar, the Egyptian woman who served Sarah, was Abram’s concubine/second wife, and who gave birth to Ishmael (Gen. 16). Let’s start with ethnicity. Scholar Peter T. Nash writes that for most of the twentieth century Biblical researchers presumed

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They Were Not White, Part 1: Zipporah and Moses

Bible Women, Race in the Bible / Susan

The people of the Bible are the ancestors of people of color. No one in the Bible looked like the white people who live in North America, Canada, Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand or anywhere else. (And here’s an argument that Jewish people are not white). I’d like to take a closer look at dark-skinned

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