814: Does the Old Testament Dehumanize Women? Dr. Sandy Richter

Dr. Sandy Richter is LEGIT!! In this fascinating conversation, Sandy helps us understand the alleged "marry your rapist" law in Deuteronomy 22:28, which has been mistranslated as you'll see. She also walks us through the "marry your conquered enemy's wife" allowance in Deuteronomy 21. These texts have troubled me for YEARS and have raised questions in my own mind about whether the Old Testament dehumanizes women. Actually, it does the opposite. When you understand it in its own cultural context, you'll see that the Bible actually humanizes women much, much more than we realize.

Sandy's awesome book ("The Epic of Eden") that I referenced can be found here

Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department and her MA in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, MS and Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Due to her passion for the "real space and time" of the biblical text, she has spent many of those years directing an Israel Studies program focused on historical geography and field archaeology.

Richter is best known in the Academy for her work on the “name theology” of the Deuteronomistic History and a socio-historical assessment of the economic backdrop of the Book of Deuteronomy (The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: lešakken šemo šam in the Bible and the ANE [BZAW 318, 2002]; “The Place of the Name in Deuteronomy” [VT 57, 2007], “Placing the Name, Pushing the Paradigm: A Decade with the Deuteronomistic Name Formula” in Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch, Hexateuch, and the Deuteronomistic History [FAT 56; Mohr Siebeck, 2012]; “The Question of Provenance and the Economics of Deuteronomy”" JSOT [2017]; “What’s Money Got to Do With It? Economics and the Question of the Provenance of Deuteronomy in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods” in Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research [BZAR 22, 2019]). She has a commentary forthcoming with Eerdmans on The Book of Deuteronomy.

In the Church, Richter is best known for her work, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament (IVP 2008) and a number of DVD curriculums stemming from the project (Zondervan and Seedbed). She has just published Stewards of Eden: What the Scripture has to Say about Environmentalism and Why It Matters (IVP, 2020).

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