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Happy New Year & Book Reflection - Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy

Writer's picture: Jasmyne MichelleJasmyne Michelle

Updated: Sep 30, 2024

Episode 10 of Faithfully Uncool with Jasmyne Michelle is the first episode of 2024. In this episode I reflected on the book Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel by John Shelby Spong. This post has full show notes from that episode, including page numbers and citations for the quotes referenced during the episode.



Sources Referenced:


Spong, John Shelby. Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity through the Doorway of Matthew’s Gospel. HarperOne, 2016.


The Bible for Normal People podcast - Jared Byas - "The Making of the Modern Mindset, Part 1" - https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-176-jared-byas-the-making-of-the-modern-mindset-part-1/


Straight White American Jesus podcast - Daniel Miller - "It's In the Code Episode 81: The Inerrant Bible" - https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/its-in-the-code-ep-81-the-inerrant-bible/


Direct Quotes from Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy:


“The liturgical calendar of the synagogue is still revealed as the organizing principle behind the writing of Matthew, and indeed of all the synoptic gospels” (pg. 220). 


“Over the Sabbaths between the end of Jesus’ life and the writings of the last of the four gospels, the memory of Jesus – his life, his deeds, and his teachings–were kept alive primarily in the synagogues” (pg. 38). 


“The heart will never be drawn in worship to what the mind rejects. So we are driven to look at other possibilities. Faith can never rest on perceptions that are intellectually unbelievable (pg. 324).


 “Can the love of God embrace those who are the most eminently rejectable? Can any limit whatsoever be placed on the availability of the love of God?” (pg. 251).


“Perhaps we need to confront the possibility that Christianity has not failed, as our critics constantly assert; the reality, I believe, is that Christianity has never been understood and thus has never really been tried” (pg. 254). 


“The gospel of Matthew is a narrative written by a Jewish scribe for a Jewish audience (pg. 249).”


Full Transcript: (also below)


Hey everyone, my name is Jasmyne and welcome to Faithfully Uncool, my little corner of the internet where I talk about Christianity, spirituality and life. I often find myself overthinking, overanalyzing or nerding out about my faith, so I figured I may as well do what all good nerds do and make a podcast. No matter where you are on your spiritual journey Christian, a different believer or undefined I'm happy you're here and hope you learn something new for the road Y'all life has been life in so hard. Okay. So if you have come to 2024 feeling like 2023 was amazing and it was great, I am happy for you. I think that is awesome. But if you're coming to 2024 feeling like you have screamed and cried over the finish line of 2023, then I am also there with you. I recently saw a meme online that said I'm at the happiest and saddest version of myself this year, ie 2023. And I totally get that. So welcome to 2024.


I hope you're well and I am incredibly grateful that you are taking the time to listen to Faithfully Uncool. I am so excited to be back and recording today. I took a bit of a longer hiatus than intended from the podcast. 2023 was a crazy year. If you don't know, faithfully Uncool is just run by me. It is a one woman show, and the summer and fall of 2023 was quite a turmoil for me, as I wrestled with some health battles, travel and ultimately went through some life changes. So I am just really super excited to be back and ready to enter 2024, gear up for new episodes, more consistency, all that jazz. So today, first episode of 2024, happy new year. Today we're going to start talking about a book that I really loved reading, and then we're going to go into our Keeping Me Near the Cross segment. So strap in Hope you enjoy, let's get to it. Okay, so first off, I'd like to reflect on a recently finished and well loved book. It's annotated with tons of sticky notes on my desk and it's called Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy, by John Shelby Spong. You know just some average light reading. Seriously, though, it is highly recommended and, honestly, probably one of the most evocative or challenging whatever you'd like to say religious books I've read in a long time. Hey, friends, editing Jasmyne here to say that the full name of the book is Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel. So, not to confuse anyone, you will see that fully cited on my show notes and also on my website. But just want to make that clear that, for those of you who are following along, that is the actual full, full title of the book. But when you see its front cover it will just say Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. But it does have a subtitle. So I wanted to mention that.


Now In this book, the late Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong writes that the Gospel stories of Jesus are following the Jewish liturgical year, or Jewish liturgical calendar. Since these Gospels were originally shared orally in synagogues, the beloved and well-known stories within them—the birth of Jesus, Jesus' miracles like the wedding at Cana, reading the 5,000 with loaves and fishes walking on water, his baptism, etc—aren't to be understood as historical fact—that is literally—but instead as interpretive stories, a part of Jewish liturgy. In an easy-to-read and fascinating premise, Spong, focusing primarily on the Gospel of Matthew, explores how certain Gospel stories would have been read aloud and aligned with the observances on the Jewish calendar, such as Sukkot, Passover, Hanukkah, etc. So what I mean by that is that the Gospels are aligning with certain holidays and significant times of the Jewish people in the Ancient Near East at this period. The stories aren't random. They're aligning with the synagogue's liturgical calendar or schedule of events to be practiced during that time. So, for example, the days of the harvest festival of Sukkot, or also known as Tabernacles and Booths, is illustrated in Matthew's Jesus parables of harvest, such as parables of the sower who sowed seeds on various soil, or comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, and other parables in Matthew 13. In general, from the beginning to the end of Matthew, Spong posits that quote "he liturgical calendar of the synagogue is still revealed as the organizing principle behind the writing of Matthew and indeed of all the synoptic Gospels. End quote. For those of you who may not know, the synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke. John is considered separate.


Thus it is only as Judaism and Christianity become separated and more Gentile, that is to say non-Jewish followers join the faith, that the mistaken and misguided emphasis on biblical literalism grows. And this is the great heresy and error, according to Spong's book, that as Christianity moves away from its Jewish context and culture, the Gospels are ultimately misread by being popularly understood as a literal account of events rather than symbolic. Now look, there's a lot I could say about this book, so I tried to make that basic intro about what it was very, you know, as simple as I could, and it could get very nitty gritty, and I don't really want to do that, although I'm not promising that I won't get carried away, because I just love talking about this kind of stuff. But if anything, if I haven't completely lost or bored you, I'm hoping this encourages you to pick up your own copy and take a look for yourself. I truly think that by the end of this episode, hopefully you'll know that this book is something that you should really take time to process and marinate, and read and or listen to if you're an audible girly or guy or person, instead of just having it talked about, because I do think it's one of those books that you have to take time with and really truly process, digest, think about on your own, etc. Spong unpacks a lot in over 300 pages, and none of it is wasted. What really interests me for our purposes today, though, is reflecting on how this book changed, or even triggered me, you may want to say, in my faith, by sharing my own personal key reflections after reading it.


First reflection and I'm just being honest here okay? This book is hard to read, even if you consider yourself, like me, more progressive in terms of your approach to the Christian faith. As I said before, I know I said earlier, that it's easy to read. So when I say hard to read I don't mean academically, right? So earlier I was saying it's easy to read, as in, T"his is not the kind of book that you're going to open and feel like you need to three PhDs before you can really understand what he is talking about. That's not this kind of book and I think that that is a great credit to John Shelby Spong's writing and how he structured this book in particular. So it's not hard academically, but it can be hard emotionally I suppose, which is odd to say, but I think it's still relevant. The Gospel stories, at least if you kind of grew up like me, seemed kind of "untouchable in this weird way, even if you're accepting, like myself, that the premise and assumption of Biblical literalism can do more harm than good or even be plain lacking in education or intellect. There's sometimes this weird feeling of being slighted. I guess when scholars take a fine tooth to the Bible in a way that your pastor probably isn't right, Do I think that's a bad thing? No, quite often it's helpful, but it also doesn't mean that you won't have a human response to it If you grew up in a traditional church setting, that was basically: "The Bible says this. That's the historical and literal truth, and that's the end". This book turns that entire idea upside down and even stresses that Christianity's longevity and true nature relies upon doing so.


Second, I am grateful that this book showed me a new theory of how to understand my faith. Spong writes that "over the Sabbaths between the end of Jesus' life and the writings of the last of the four gospels. The memory of Jesus, his life, his deeds and his teachings were kept alive primarily in the synagogues. This wasn't an unknown concept to me, but it's helpful to remember the intertwinings of Judaism and Christianity and how placing Jesus' stories within that Jewish context isn't always well recognized by some Christians today. Spong's book, while the arguments outlined within it, won't be accepted by everyone, did lend me a new perspective to wrestle with and consider. It's the kind of book that makes you go "well, duh, and oh my gosh, tell me more. Wait, I never realized that. at the same time, which is just my favorite kind of feeling as a Bible nerd, I appreciate learning more about the Jewish holidays on the calendar, of course, given the premise of the book as the fact that the Gospel stories are aligning with the Jewish liturgical calendar, then there's a lot of description and explanation of what those holidays or seasons are or were. For me, I really appreciated learning more about that. There's a lot of Christian privilege in the States where, even if you're not Christian, you probably know what Easter and Christmas are, but it's not often that we know holidays of other faith traditions or are asked to note them based on their calendars, even in casual settings, such as when it comes to typical work or school calendars even, and the days that get observed as holidays and the days that don't. So just more of a side note, but also something that's the result of the nature of the book. This was a huge point of interest for me and I'm always grateful for those opportunities to learn more about the history of Christianity which intertwines, of course, with Jewish history as well and the great respect that this reminds us to have, not only for the Abrahamic religions but for all traditions, particularly as Christians again, who live in that bubble of not really being asked or called to think about the faiths of other people in our day-to-day lives, because there's an accessibility and a privilege and an acceptance of being Christian that maybe not everyone else feels if you're a non-Christian or even someone of no faith.


Third-- and this is for any book you read about the Bible, not just this one-- don't assume that the magic of the Bible, or in this case the Gospels, is somehow, in air quotes, "ruined when you read challenging scholarship of the scriptures. And for this point I want to explain something a bit. When I was a teenager, I loved watching movies, loved it. I still do. And because I loved writing, I really enjoyed learning more about the behind-the-scenes how a scene was crafted or a screenplay drafted, what lines or moments were written, versus the actor's improvisation or interpretation. So I would watch HBO's behind-the-scenes segments all the time to learn more. In the behind-the-scenes there'd be interviews with the director, writers, actors, producers, etc. And I loved learning all those little snippets and Easter eggs and peeling back the layers of how the movie or show became what it was. One day my mother saw me watching the behind-the-scenes of a movie and went "Oh, you really like watching those. And I said, "Yeah, don't you?" And she goes "Oh well, you know, sometimes I don't, because when I watch the movie I just like the magic of it". It occurred to me that sometimes people don't really care to know or aren't interested in taking a deep dive into how something came to be. At that moment I realized that for some people sometimes that deep dive is actually the turn-off. If I know that there was a scream written in the script, then now I know that the actor wasn't really scared. Sure, it's playing pretend, but I don't have to know the extent of the pretend.


Well, in an odd sense, I think sometimes people do that with their faith or biblical scholarship. They truly don't want to peel back the layers of why and how they believe what they believe, or at least not to such an extent as to challenge themselves or make themselves uncomfortable. They're dreading the day when the quote-unquote "magic, so to speak, ends. What do you do if the director calls cut and the scene was your view of God or the Bible? Here's the thing: Faith will always have a mystery or intangible element. It's important to understand that the concept of "unless it was historical fact, it doesn't mean anything!" Doesn't have to be the only way you view the biblical text. Jared Bias from the Bible for Normal People actually has an amazing breakdown of this thought pattern in a series called the Modern Mindset. So I encourage you to check out their episode series on that if you're curious, and I'll try to put that in the show notes too, because I do think that's worth a great listen if you want to get more into that. But to borrow a line from Spong here: "the heart will never be drawn in worship to what the mind rejects, so we are driven to look at other possibilities. Faith can never rest on perceptions that are intellectually unbelievable".


Thus, when it comes to biblical literalism, we have to be careful about this idea that the Bible is made whole and made significant only when it has fewer metaphors or symbolism within it, although I want to make a caveat here. As Daniel Miller points out in the Straight White American Jesus podcast, being a biblical literalist doesn't really work, and it's a word that people use often to more so convey a belief in inerrancy, or the idea that the Bible is infallible or without error. I'm currently listening to the Straight White American Jesus podcast series on that. They call it "in the code and at the time of recording it's still going on and they're deep diving into biblical literalism. I will put in the show notes the episode that I think might be most helpful in terms of what I'm talking about, but it's really really fascinating. So I love deep diving into that and I totally agree with Daniel Miller here and I think that throughout Spong's book I'd say he's definitely critiquing that idea of inerrancy or literalism, or whatever word is easier to convey for the general public.


However, he points to the idea that that leads us down flawed roads where our faith becomes more of a weapon for others than a help. Spong explores how this idea of literalism can even be reductive instead of helpful. For instance, in the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew, chapter 15, the woman requests Jesus heal her daughter, only for Jesus to respond that he's come "only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and it is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. So ouch! This story, by the way, is one I've seen many scholars discuss and talk about and it's just very interesting. Right? Like, is Jesus being prejudice, is this inflammatory on purpose to serve a point, et cetera? It's really quite interesting to break down and read different people's viewpoints of this story in Matthew. However, back to my point. Then we have the woman responding "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table" and Jesus, impressed by her faith and response, heals her daughter. In Spong's interpretation, this story is not literal and to make it so would be very reductive and a mistake. Rather, this story is a symbolic example of the love of God reaching even those who are on the marginalized and rejected. Spong writes, "Can the love of God embrace those who are the most eminently rejectable? Can any limit whatsoever be placed on the availability of the love of God?" Importantly, spong also points out that "the Gospel of Matthew is a narrative written by a Jewish scribe for a Jewish audience".


So the Canaanite woman is outside of that Jewish context and relationship with God as a Gentile. The story is an example of accepting that God's love is to be available to all, without caveat or exception. And we see her story still in the marginalized people groups of today, whether they be different people of color, the LGBTQ community, women, etc. Groups who have been on the outskirts of the Church's compassion. This particular chapter I am referencing in Spong's books is one of my favorites actually. So if you have the book, I am talking about chapter 23. And the passages about the Canaanite women are more dense than I can totally explore in this episode. But towards the closing of this chapter, Bishop John Shelby Spong writes something that will probably stay with me for a long time, and I quote: "Perhaps we need to confront the possibility that Christianity has not failed, as our critics constantly assert. The reality, I believe, is that Christianity has never been understood and thus has never really been tried. Here's the thing: I'm not here to say that I agree with everything in Spong's book, nor am I urging you to, if you've happened to check it out already. But I can't help but see this quote as a call to action or challenge. What does it look like when Christianity is really tried then? How does that play out politically, socially, interpersonally? That's what I wrestle with when I read that, and I'm not here to give easy answers, but I do think that getting on the mat with it is worthwhile. So if you're afraid to seek out other ideas about your faith, if deep diving into hundreds of pages of biblical commentary or analysis or listening to all the podcasts about it isn't your vibe, then that's fine. But if you dare to, don't worry.


The magic can survive, even if it takes a new shape. God can handle it and you know what? So can you.


And with that we're going to wrap up the bulk of this episode. Friends, again, I could go on and on, and nerd out about this, but I would much rather you pick up this book yourself. If you're curious and if you're interested in having a further discussion with it, please feel free to email me at faithfullyuncool@gmail. com. You can message me on Instagram, faithfullyuncool_ podcast, and I'd be happy to have an interesting, respectful conversation with you about what you thought about the book, or things that you think about going into it if you haven't read it, or things you have thought about or that have stayed with you since reading it if you've already read it. I would love that. Alright, so if you want to start a little impromptu like book discussion of sorts in my DMs or in my emails, I would appreciate that. I think that'd be super, super cool. But for today, we're going to wrap that up and I hope that you enjoyed hearing my reflections on the book Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. I hope I did it justice. For those of you who have read it, if there's something that you wished I did discuss that I didn't quite get to -- like I said, this is my best attempt at saying my main takeaways in a quick and easy digestible way, but hey, that's what the DMs and emails are for so don't be shy on me now. Alright, so, moving forward, we're going to start our segment of Keeping Me Near the Cross.


Something I do way too often is read too many books, consume too much TV and use my phone. But you know what influences a lot of pop culture? Christianity. As a writer, I'm familiar with exploring my faith tradition through creative arts, and it's interesting to find Christian themes in pop culture around me. Maybe I'm stretching, maybe I'm getting a little too philosophical, or maybe I've just had a tad too much Moscato with some of these conclusions, but somehow these things are keeping me near the cross, alright. So, as you all know, in this keeping me near the cross segment, I highlight something religious or non-religious that's strengthening my faith at the moment and that would be, today, a new practice I've adopted. It's sort of strengthening two things. I guess, both my French studies, and FYI that I do try to keep up with the French language a lot. I studied French for many, many years and I'm trying not to forget it. So I read a lot of books and watch a lot of media in French so that I can build up my understanding of that language, keep up my speed of comprehending native speakers and also keeping up with my vocabulary All the things that you try to do when you're learning a language or trying to keep remembering a language that's not your native one, right?


So I took many years of French and I visited France for the first time in October 2023. So we're recording this in January, so technically, really just three months ago, but also last year, you know, if we're gonna do that and Paris was breathtaking. Honestly, I got complimented on my accent, so your girl was living her best life. Okay, okay, all right?! All right, I was not on my dumb American "can't speak anything but English" wave in France, all right. People were very, very kind and very appreciative of the fact that I did speak French and I was really proud of myself for just doing it and, honestly, it was easier than I thought. I thought that I might be really shy, but after a while it just became like "I'm immersed in this and this is what I want to do and I just really got a hang of it and I'm proud of myself for doing that. But on that note, I am currently memorizing the Lord's Prayer in French, so that's a small step I'm taking to expand not only my language studies but also my faith. My aunt got me a French Bible years ago and I really enjoy reading that, so it's been a real joy to read the gospel stories I'm familiar with in English, but seeing the French translations is helpful. It literally forces me to think of the text in a different context, which is very cool.


Also in France I visited the Sacre-Cœur and learned about Saint Rita. She's the patron saint of impossible causes and it felt so timely. When I learned about her, I came to the altar area of the church where her story is displayed and it honestly brought me to tears. Fun fact, I was kind of weepy during my French trip. I was really kind of like, I had low moments during it and I didn't quite understand why. But I realized upon returning to the States that not only was I COVID positive, but right after COVID I got my period. So I was PMSing slightly on the trip but also dealing with like headaches and brain fog and just overall having a good time but also not a good time and my body was just doing all of the things at once and it was not fun. But during the trip I didn't feel super, super sick. It was only after I returned, and like kind of on my flight back, that it really hit me that something was really not right. So I returned. I felt something majorly wrong, but my sister, who was with me the entire time, shared a hotel room and bed with me, never caught COVID. So it's really confusing how that worked out. My immune system just checked out of the building. It was like, "girl, we barely liked you in America, we don't know what to do with you in France. All right, this is not what we signed up for. You're getting COVID and that's what happened. So friendly reminder to please be safe and take care of your health. Folks are being careful, masking, doing what we can, getting boosters, getting the shots, but at the end of the day sometimes COVID still happens and I just pray that we all take care of ourselves the best way we can and do whatever preventative measures that we are able to.


So when I stumbled upon St Rita, I was at the Sacre-Cœur having this weirdly emotional day, and so I just had this overwhelming feeling of peace and gratitude like wow, a saint to speak to, for hopelessness. I don't know. It was warming in a way, and so I hope that that makes sense.


Another thing keeping me near the cross are my 2024 goals. I am, story of my life, once again trying to be more disciplined and for hard-lined quantitative goals, such as "read 10 books by the end of the year, or publish a podcast episode monthly --which you all can absolutely hold me to, by the way-- or posting on Instagram, et cetera, I am actually breaking those down into quarterly goals, such as Q1, q2, q3, and Q4 goals, so that I can achieve them in a more bite-sized way, without looking at the entire year and being overwhelmed. So there is a fun fact for you if you find that helpful as well. But as for overall mindsets and reminders, I'd like to focus on this year: I am also trying to give myself more grace.


One way to do that is to practice being done. That's something that I repeat to myself. It's like a self mantra "practice being done, Jasmyne. As a perfectionist and an anxiety sufferer, I find myself returning to tasks a lot, even when they're completed, to redo them, rethink them, review them, check them, and often that's either not necessary or causes unneeded delay in moving on with my day or the next task. So if you've ever heard "done is better than perfect", then it's kind of that same concept. Sometimes you've done your best and it's time to move on. People are going to think what they're going to think. Stuff is going to happen, but that's all you can do Practice being done and with that, not to be cheeky, I'm going to end the episode and practice being done right here.


Thank you so so much for listening. I am incredibly grateful if you have spent this time with me and I hope that your new year is off to a great start. Follow me on Instagram at faithfullyuncool_ podcast, faithfullyuncool@gmail. com for emails, and thank you so much. Once again. I literally can't put the gratitude in words. All right, be well friends and, as always, go in peace.



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