The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch has, quite reasonably, received a great deal of attention from those interested in gender and theology. It is a strongly positive portrayal of a person whose gender was non-standard, and who would have been perceived as deviant and threatening by the dominant cultures of their time; a person who is, in the narrative, shown to be uncommonly intelligent, inquiring, and able to be received rapidly into the new Christian community. (Note that I will generally use the pronoun “they” for eunuchs in this essay; though most or all would have used “he”… Read more Continue reading Bodies marked by power

Once we get past the first three chapters of Genesis, there is no text in the Bible which has been such a flashpoint for discussions of gender, power, economics, or the human future as the Revelation to John of Patmos – and it is not a coincidence that these two texts sit in a single sentence, for John is very deliberately writing a book which, after taking on and taking up the entire prophetic tradition, consciously returns to and rewrites the very beginning of scripture. John’s Revelation has been significantly repositioned by recent scholarship, which has understood its connections to… Read more Continue reading Girl and snake at the end of time