WEBVTT 00:00.500 --> 00:06.880 Welcome to the University of Oslo and the Faculty of Theology and to this first part of 00:06.880 --> 00:15.040 Cand. theol. Ellen Aasland Reinertsen´s doctoral examination for the degree of Philosophie 00:15.040 --> 00:22.320 Doctor under the Faculty of Theology. My name is Anders Runesson and I'm the Dean and Chair 00:22.320 --> 00:31.640 of today's disputation. The doctoral examination consists of two parts. First the trial lecture of 00:31.640 --> 00:40.880 45 minutes on a prescribed topic given by the PhD adjudication committee and then after a break the 00:40.880 --> 00:47.920 public defense of the dissertation props in the parable plots the significance of intersectional 00:47.920 --> 00:56.680 female characters in attested and possible parable reception. The adjudication committee has 00:56.680 --> 01:04.480 consisted of Professor Annette Mertz Protestant Theological University of 01:04.480 --> 01:12.880 Groningen, Professor Caroline van der Stiegele, Tilburg University the Netherlands and senior 01:12.880 --> 01:20.000 lecturer Wim Munchwist Faculty of Theology University of Oslo. Before I give the word to 01:20.000 --> 01:27.200 Ellen Aasland Reinertsen please note that after the trial lecture there will be a break and we 01:27.200 --> 01:38.880 will start with the defense at 12 noon sharp. I will now invite Cand. Theol., Ellen Aasland Reinertsen 01:38.880 --> 01:46.080 to give her trial lecture with the prescribed title given by the committee an intersectional 01:46.080 --> 02:09.080 blending analysis of mark 7 24 to 30. Please Ellen. 02:09.080 --> 02:21.560 A Greek Syrophoenician wife asks the Jewish Jesus to help her daughter who is demon-possessed. 02:21.560 --> 02:32.280 Jesus refuses by naming the mother and her daughter dogs. However after the mother's clever arguing 02:32.280 --> 02:42.600 Jesus changes his mind and heals the little daughter. The Norwegian theologian Stine Kiel Saga 02:42.600 --> 02:48.680 has shown that when priests in the church of Norway preach about this stories parallel texts in the 02:48.680 --> 02:55.800 Gospel of Matthew they spiritualize the story and employ it to preach about missionary activities 02:55.800 --> 03:05.320 enduring faith, struggling faith or prayer. By doing so they ignore their suppression and 03:05.320 --> 03:13.560 marginalization in the story. The biblical scholar Sharon Ringe has analyzed the feminist scholars 03:13.560 --> 03:22.120 in the 1980s and 90s herself included interpreted this woman as the embodiment of all categories of 03:22.120 --> 03:31.800 the outcast and oppressed persons to whom the gospel suggests much of Jesus's ministry was directed. 03:31.800 --> 03:38.840 Mark has placed this story after a dispute about purity regulations Jesus has with Pharisees and 03:38.840 --> 03:46.440 scribes and the daughter has an unclean spirit because of this this story has often been connected 03:46.440 --> 03:54.600 to impurity. Jesus calls this wife and daughter impure dogs because they are unclean female non-Jews 03:54.600 --> 04:02.280 contaminated by an impure demon according to this view. She is a woman a gentile and thus a foreigner 04:02.280 --> 04:09.560 impure nameless kneeling before Jesus in desperation over her sick daughter like a dog licking the hand 04:09.560 --> 04:18.440 who beats her. In such interpretations the symmetry between her and the pure named powerful Jesus 04:18.440 --> 04:27.320 who is a Jewish man could hardly have been greater. More recent theories about power and oppression 04:27.320 --> 04:34.360 like intersectionality allows us to see greater cultural complexity in Jewish and Greek or Roman 04:34.360 --> 04:40.280 antiquity and that power and vulnerability are more complicated than previously assumed. 04:40.280 --> 04:47.160 By analyzing this text with intersectional blending I follow Kiel's saga and do not 04:47.160 --> 04:53.560 ignore the suppression and marginalization in the story. At the same time I will ask about its 04:53.560 --> 05:04.120 complex power dynamics. First I will present the theories and methods I employ then I will 05:04.120 --> 05:10.520 then after a reflection on my own situatedness I will analyze the text by using intersectional 05:10.520 --> 05:18.520 blending. I will especially focus on the dispute between Jesus and the Greek Syrophoenician wife 05:18.520 --> 05:27.080 as intersectionally blended storytelling. I conclude with a reflection on how my approach 05:27.080 --> 05:33.160 contributes to the study of this text and about the tools scholars employ in biblical scholars 05:33.160 --> 05:42.920 biblical studies. Intersectional blending is a method I developed during my PhD research 05:42.920 --> 05:50.040 where I combined elements from conceptual blending and intersectionality and advanced them into a 05:50.040 --> 05:56.680 new method for analyzing parables. I employ intersectional blending to study for example 05:56.680 --> 06:03.400 how a story about a wife who bakes with sourdough can be perceived as a story about a divine kingdom 06:03.400 --> 06:11.080 and possibly also about the lives of the interpreters. This is the first time this method 06:11.080 --> 06:21.880 is employed to study a story that is not a parable or perhaps not a parable. I will come back to that later. 06:21.880 --> 06:27.240 Conceptual blending theory derives from the cognitive study of metaphors and is developed by 06:27.240 --> 06:35.400 Mark Turner and Giles Forcarnia. In my method I especially employ Turner's concept of double scope 06:35.400 --> 06:44.920 stories. Turner argues that conceptualization of narratives happen when readers or listeners map 06:44.920 --> 06:53.960 and blend two different and sometimes opposing stories in order to create a new story. 06:53.960 --> 06:59.720 In my dissertation I employ this to study how recipients can interpret a parable story 06:59.720 --> 07:06.840 for example about a wife who bakes as a story about the divine kingdom. 07:06.840 --> 07:13.640 According to conceptual blending we do not only understand the more abstract and unknown 07:13.640 --> 07:19.800 a divine kingdom in light of the more concrete and familiar a story about baking. 07:19.800 --> 07:24.440 Meaning making goes in both directions. 07:24.760 --> 07:31.640 The result is also not that one story is just added to another but rather that something new 07:31.640 --> 07:39.720 and creative happens. When stories are blended the result is a new story. 07:39.720 --> 07:45.000 Hugo Lundhuyg was first at applying blending theory to reception studies of the New Testament. 07:45.000 --> 07:50.440 Recently a growing number of biblical scholars applied the theory. 07:50.440 --> 08:00.040 While Turner is mainly interested in how we blend stories in texts I analyze how stories from interpreters 08:00.040 --> 08:07.800 situatedness affect their meaning making. Stories from their historical cultural and social contexts 08:07.800 --> 08:13.640 their experiences life stories and other stories they might know. 08:13.640 --> 08:20.440 To analyze this I employ insights from intersectionality. 08:20.440 --> 08:28.040 Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 08:28.040 --> 08:33.240 and has in recent years become the leading theory in feminist studies. 08:33.240 --> 08:41.400 The theory applies the metaphor of intersection to investigate discrimination power and in recent years 08:41.400 --> 08:51.080 also identity as independent interdependent of various social culture factors such as gender, class, 08:51.080 --> 08:56.680 social status, ethnicity or race, ability, sexuality and age. 08:56.680 --> 09:02.840 Only the past 20 years intersectionality has been employed in biblical studies. 09:02.840 --> 09:12.120 Earlier scholars often considered women a separate analytical category when they studied female characters. 09:12.120 --> 09:16.520 Of particular value to my work is the intersectional New Testament research of 09:16.520 --> 09:26.920 Elisabeth Schisler Fiorenza, Marianne Bielankarczow and Anders Martinsen. 09:26.920 --> 09:34.760 In 2019 Gail A. Yee in her presidential address to the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature 09:34.760 --> 09:40.360 encouraged all biblical scholars to use intersectionality in their research. 09:40.360 --> 09:47.240 She did this so that they should become aware of how their own complex situations of privilege 09:47.240 --> 09:55.080 and or oppression influence what they look for and how they interpret biblical texts. 09:55.080 --> 10:00.360 Thus from being marginal in biblical studies intersectionality has become part of the field's 10:00.360 --> 10:03.880 main theoretical and methodological discussions. 10:03.880 --> 10:11.720 Although still only a small number of biblical scholars apply it. 10:11.720 --> 10:19.560 Intersectionality comes from the struggle of black American women to study their oppression from multiple social factors. 10:19.560 --> 10:24.440 As the Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name movements have made us aware of 10:24.440 --> 10:29.720 just being black or a black woman are in many places deadly. 10:29.720 --> 10:37.320 It has also made me aware that the color of my skin is not neutral. 10:37.320 --> 10:42.600 Growing up in a traditional part of Norway I've had some experience with gender discrimination. 10:42.600 --> 10:47.640 Later I have experienced both that and ageism in the church and in broader society 10:47.640 --> 10:54.040 and I've had the experience of speaking a minority dialect in Oslo. 10:54.040 --> 11:01.080 I'm also a white middle class heterosexual cisgender married able bodied state employed scholar 11:01.080 --> 11:06.840 who's also an ordained priest in the majority church in Norway. 11:06.840 --> 11:10.520 In addition I am a mother to a daughter and a son. 11:10.520 --> 11:20.200 I'm a daughter myself. I am a wife and a dog owner as well as a sister friend colleague and neighbor. 11:20.200 --> 11:25.240 We filter new information through what we already know and who we are. 11:25.240 --> 11:31.880 Will my privileges make me overlook the suppression and marginalization in this market story? 11:31.880 --> 11:38.200 Or will my vulnerabilities make me see only that which resembles those? 11:38.200 --> 11:43.720 Will I be able to understand this story's complexities? 11:43.720 --> 11:49.880 I employ intersectionality because I need theory and method that can help me become aware of 11:49.880 --> 11:56.680 how my own embedded and embodied situatedness influence my interpretations. 11:56.680 --> 12:03.960 I also do so to require a certain distance to the text. 12:03.960 --> 12:07.400 Of particular value in seeing what I might be blind to 12:07.400 --> 12:14.840 is Mary J. Matsuda's intersectional method of asking the other question. 12:14.840 --> 12:19.480 The way I try to understand the interconnectedness of all forms of subordination 12:19.480 --> 12:23.640 is through a method I call ask the other question. 12:23.640 --> 12:29.240 When I see something that looks racist I ask where is the patriarchy in this? 12:29.240 --> 12:35.240 When I see something that looks sexist I ask where is the heterosexism in this? 12:35.240 --> 12:41.720 When I see something that looks homophobic I ask where are the class interests in this? 12:41.720 --> 12:48.120 Working in coalition forces us to look for both the obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination 12:48.120 --> 12:58.200 helping us to realize that no form of subordination ever stands alone. 12:58.200 --> 13:05.080 In my combined intersectional blending I see interpretation as complex processes 13:05.080 --> 13:09.560 where interpreters blend elements from biblical stories 13:09.560 --> 13:15.960 and understand them in light of their own varied embodied and embedded stories. 13:15.960 --> 13:23.800 Intersectionally situated stories, intertextual stories and hermeneutical stories. 13:23.800 --> 13:28.760 Intersectional blending allows me to analyze not only how a story about a baker wife 13:28.760 --> 13:37.960 becomes the story about a divine kingdom but possibly also about the various lives of the interpreters. 13:37.960 --> 13:41.960 It helps us analyze how a story can be blended in many ways. 13:41.960 --> 13:51.560 In this case how in Mark 7 24 to 30 Jesus's storytelling and the storytelling of the Syrophoenician wife 13:51.560 --> 13:55.560 are blended in different ways. 13:55.560 --> 13:59.560 I will focus on a number of intersectional factors in this analysis. 13:59.560 --> 14:05.000 Some of these are mentioned and in other cases we need to ask the other question 14:05.000 --> 14:12.920 and employ historically informed imagination to study them. 14:12.920 --> 14:19.480 When we analyze the story about Jesus and the Greek Syrophoenician wife with insights from blending theory 14:19.480 --> 14:29.800 we see that this story about them connects to another story about children, bread and little dogs. 14:29.800 --> 14:37.240 The story is first told by Jesus and then by the wife. 14:37.240 --> 14:43.640 This resembles the way parable narratives connect to their framing. 14:43.640 --> 14:49.400 I have not found any scholars who call this text a parable. 14:49.400 --> 14:54.440 Now we have found one scholar, really! 14:54.440 --> 15:00.840 I should have found one scholar who calls this text a parable. 15:00.840 --> 15:06.840 But it was not in compendium. We will talk more about that later. 15:06.840 --> 15:09.240 Much more recent, okay, exciting. 15:09.240 --> 15:16.840 However, applying blending and in other cases as well lets us see that it has many similarities with parables 15:16.840 --> 15:24.840 where a concrete and perhaps familiar story Jesus tells is surrounded by one or more interpretive frame. 15:24.840 --> 15:32.440 So maybe Anette Mertz and I have found a new parable with interesting intersectional female characters. 15:32.440 --> 15:36.840 Or perhaps it does not matter whether this is a parable or not. 15:36.840 --> 15:44.840 According to blending theory, meaning making always happens through blending. 15:44.840 --> 15:51.240 Let us look closer at the blends in Jesus' storytelling in this text. 15:51.240 --> 15:58.040 The framing story about Jesus and a Greek-Syriphoenician wife and her plea for her daughter 15:58.040 --> 16:05.640 is compared or connected to a story about dogs should not eat the children's bread. 16:05.640 --> 16:09.240 The outcome is a new story. 16:09.240 --> 16:18.840 The mother and her daughter are dogs and not children, therefore Jesus should not help them. 16:18.840 --> 16:29.640 The core element of this blended story seems to be that the mother and daughter are connected to dogs and blended as dogs. 16:29.640 --> 16:37.240 Is it a bad thing to compare someone to a dog as Jesus does? 16:37.240 --> 16:40.040 Many dogs today are beloved members of families. 16:40.040 --> 16:47.640 They are cuddled, played with, cared for and searched for by the entire community when they are lost. 16:47.640 --> 16:53.640 At the same time, my experience with dogs lets me know that I would not have liked to be one. 16:53.640 --> 16:58.040 To be obedient, to not be able to eat when I want or go where I want 16:58.040 --> 17:06.840 and not be allowed to jump up and lick visitors in the face, which I'm also not allowed to do as a human. 17:06.840 --> 17:13.240 To call someone a dog is also abusive. 17:13.240 --> 17:22.040 It might have racial connotations or religious implications when people are called unfaithful dogs 17:22.040 --> 17:28.040 or gendered or sexual shaming when girls or women are called bitches. 17:28.040 --> 17:36.040 Scholarship for a long time thought Judaism in the time of Jesus saw dogs as unclean animals. 17:36.040 --> 17:44.840 Recently, however, Mark Naines and other scholars argued that Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish sources do not support this. 17:44.840 --> 17:50.040 Like in the broader Greek or Roman world, dogs were parts of life. 17:50.040 --> 17:55.240 Sometimes described in positive ways as faithful or as part of a group. 17:55.240 --> 18:04.040 Other times used as a general insult about enemies or to slur someone as vulgar, promiscuous or shameless. 18:04.040 --> 18:18.840 That Jesus names this mother and her daughter dogs and refuses to help them has trouble interpreted from the beginning of this story's reception history, including me. 18:18.840 --> 18:33.240 When Jesus blends his stories, he seems to evoke stories from his own social cultural situatedness about dogs as the adversaries of children. 18:33.240 --> 18:39.240 These dogs seem to be far away. People throw food to them. 18:39.240 --> 18:50.040 Maybe he thinks of scavenger wild dogs from the cities in this area who steal food and maybe scare children. 18:50.040 --> 19:00.040 Jesus is in a borderland in this story. He has traveled north from the Jewish Galilee into the region of Tyre. 19:00.040 --> 19:08.840 Tyre was a Hellenized city, a port city and the capital of the Roman province of Syria in what is today southern Lebanon. 19:08.840 --> 19:14.840 The region of Tyre included the rural areas surrounding the city. 19:14.840 --> 19:22.040 As in most borderlands, the population was mixed. Both Jews and Syrophoenicians lived there. 19:22.040 --> 19:28.840 Here, Jesus hides in a house like Jesus often conceals himself in the Gospel of Mark. 19:28.840 --> 19:39.240 We do not know whether this is a Jewish or a Syrophoenician house, perhaps a Jewish house since no ethnicity is mentioned, 19:39.240 --> 19:45.240 which is not the case for the wife who immediately finds him. 19:45.240 --> 19:53.240 This wife is presented as Hellenize, Syrophoenica togenae. 19:53.240 --> 20:02.440 Earlier, scholars have translated Hellenize, Gentile and seen this as the reason why Jesus names her dog. 20:02.440 --> 20:12.040 These interpreters seem to connect Jesus' storytelling to stories in the Hebrew Bible where the people from Tyre and 20:12.040 --> 20:18.440 Sidon are called enemies of the Israelites and possibly about dogs used as metaphors for enemies. 20:18.440 --> 20:27.240 Hellenize might, however, also be translated Greek. While many feminist scholars have seen this as a poor, 20:27.240 --> 20:32.840 marginalized woman, we could ask the other question and inquire whether she perhaps is rich. 20:32.840 --> 20:44.840 In her house that she returns to, we hear about furniture, a couch, and she speaks of a table which suggests that she is at least not poor. 20:44.840 --> 20:54.840 Gert Theisen suggests that this woman comes from a cultural privilege class of Greek speaking city dwellers in Tyre. 20:54.840 --> 21:03.640 A Lebanese student I met at the conference proudly pronounced that she is a descendant of these New Testament Syrophoenicians. 21:03.640 --> 21:13.640 According to Theisen, the Syrophoenician population in the cities were better off than the rural Jewish population in the surrounding areas. 21:13.640 --> 21:23.240 He proposes that the Hellenized city dwellers may have used their financial means to buy up the grain supply in the countryside and in this way, 21:23.240 --> 21:36.440 take bread out of the mouths of the rural Jews. Such an intersectional story could blend with Hebrew Bible stories of greedy, violent dogs. 21:36.440 --> 21:50.840 In this interpretation, Jesus says, like this urban elite, the Syrophoenician mother and daughter are dogs who are asking for something that is not theirs. 21:50.840 --> 22:05.240 The woman is further presented as a gynae, most often a free married woman, a wife, with a status and relative independence that came with marriage in Roman society in the first century CE. 22:05.240 --> 22:15.040 We hear that she has at least one child. She could have had more. Her status would depend upon the number of children she had. 22:15.040 --> 22:32.240 According to the Augustan laws, Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppea, free women who had three live births and freed women with four live births were allowed to conduct business and legal affairs on their own. 22:32.240 --> 22:41.240 Perhaps she could also have been educated, although not many girls in Jewish and Greek or Romans antiquity received formal education. 22:41.240 --> 22:48.840 Some did. Or is she a smart lady without formal education? 22:48.840 --> 22:54.440 None of the New Testament texts say that Jesus was married or had children. 22:54.440 --> 23:09.940 As Halva Moxnes suggests, if this is the case, Jesus in this respect breaks with the masculine expectations of being a part of familias, a lord of the household whom wife, children and slaves should obey. 23:09.940 --> 23:20.040 Even though some New Testament texts suggest Jesus could read and possibly write, we do not know whether he had any formal education. 23:20.040 --> 23:34.640 If the woman is an educated, Greek speaking, urban elite wife with more children, who is perhaps also a neighbor in the house of the house, of the people in the house where Jesus is possibly unknown, 23:34.640 --> 23:44.040 the power balance between her and Jesus is more complex than those in former feminist interpretations. 23:44.040 --> 23:51.640 By asking the other question, we could also inquire whether this mother perhaps was enslaved. 23:51.640 --> 24:04.640 Slaves were the master's belongings like dogs were. Perhaps she were an elite female slave who was educated to be a tutor for her master or her master's children. 24:04.640 --> 24:19.540 Perhaps gendered slavery plays part in Jesus's offensive slur in the same way as female dogs, bitches, were seen as shameless and sexually available, so were slaves. 24:19.540 --> 24:29.340 Is Jesus blending a slave mother and her daughter as slave bitches that should not be helped? 24:29.340 --> 24:37.640 She could also have been interpreted differently. Is it perhaps more likely that she would be viewed as a free woman? 24:37.640 --> 24:44.040 Perhaps a female slave would not have dared to seek Jesus out and petition him to heal her daughter. 24:44.040 --> 24:58.240 Would she, if she were enslaved, even be seen as the mother of her daughter, since slaves in Jewish and Greek and Roman antiquity had no legal bonds to their offspring? 24:58.240 --> 25:09.040 The power dimensions between Jesus and the Syrophoenician wife are further complicated when age and disability intersect with the other social factors. 25:09.040 --> 25:20.540 The Greek term used for the wife's sick daughter is figatros, a diminutive of figater daughter. She's thus a little daughter. 25:20.540 --> 25:28.040 Although Mark could be using these two terms interchangeably, this could also signify that this is a girl before puberty. 25:28.040 --> 25:38.640 The daughter is also called pardion, a young child, and a girl in marriageable age would perhaps be called pathenos, virgin. 25:38.640 --> 25:44.440 Another figatros in the gospel is said to be 12 years old. 25:44.440 --> 25:50.140 Jesus also uses diminutive about the dogs he compares to the little demon possessed daughter. 25:50.140 --> 25:54.840 They are little dogs or puppies. 25:54.840 --> 26:03.740 Demon possession is a common way of understanding disease in the ancient world, and we do not know what sort of disease the daughter has. 26:03.740 --> 26:10.040 The girl who is healed by Jesus on this icon is not the Syrophoenician little girl. 26:10.040 --> 26:18.240 I have not been able to find any images of her healing. This is of another little daughter in the gospel. 26:18.240 --> 26:25.640 The Jewish daughter of Jairus, whom Jesus does not hesitate to heal earlier in the gospel. 26:25.640 --> 26:32.940 Jesus comes to their house, he takes the little girl's arm and restores her to life. 26:32.940 --> 26:42.640 With the Syrophoenician little girl, there is no touching. Jesus does not come to a house, but heals from a distance. 26:42.640 --> 26:57.740 Anna Rebecca Solovog suggests that both disability and ethnicity are animalized and used to other the girl and therefore refuse to help her. 26:57.740 --> 27:04.440 As a mother in a safe neighborhood in Oslo, I am able to get my children to help their need without begging. 27:04.440 --> 27:13.740 The Syrophoenician mother throws herself down on the floor to ask for help and thus tells a story with her body. 27:13.740 --> 27:21.940 If we had been present in the house, we would probably understand a lot about her intersectional situation based on her body language. 27:21.940 --> 27:27.140 An elite free wife would dress and pose differently from a slave. 27:27.140 --> 27:37.040 An educated woman familiar with public disputes might walk into an assembly another way than a person who are not. 27:37.040 --> 27:45.640 We only get one postural cue in this text when the wife throws herself at Jesus's feet. 27:45.640 --> 27:56.440 Jennifer Glancy points out that to lower oneself before another person was the most common visual marker of submission to superior authority in Roman antiquity. 27:56.440 --> 28:09.140 The wife thus tells the same story about subordination with her body as she does with her voice when she calls Jesus Kyrie, Lord or master. 28:09.140 --> 28:22.640 To be at someone's feet is also the position of a dog who is who in obedience is to come to the master's heel, as suggested by David wrote. 28:22.640 --> 28:29.140 However, the Greek Syrophoenician's wife's bodily and verbal story moves on. 28:29.140 --> 28:33.540 To be at someone's feet is also a student's position. 28:33.540 --> 28:41.240 From this foot perspective, the wife continues to speak and becomes a dialogue partner of Jesus. 28:41.240 --> 28:50.040 In all the other four gospels, Jesus always wins a dispute, as analyzed by Tyson and Annette Matz. 28:50.040 --> 28:55.940 Here, however, the Syrophoenician wife takes over the storytelling. 28:55.940 --> 29:01.640 She accepts Jesus's blend, the mother and her daughter are dogs. 29:01.640 --> 29:05.140 The children should be fed before dogs. 29:05.140 --> 29:14.540 However, however, she connects Jesus's narrative to new stories about dogs. 29:14.540 --> 29:19.940 She blends it with stories of dogs that are close, not far away. 29:19.940 --> 29:27.740 In these stories, which might be recognizable both today and in the ancient ancient world, dogs are not children's enemies. 29:27.740 --> 29:30.240 Rather, they are members of the household. 29:30.240 --> 29:33.240 They are under the children's table. 29:33.240 --> 29:37.840 They do get parts of the children's bread when the children spill. 29:37.840 --> 29:41.340 Namely crumbs which fall to the floor. 29:41.340 --> 29:47.240 Possibly, we could also hear echoes of fond relationships between children and their pets, 29:47.240 --> 29:54.740 even that children might slip bread, pieces of bread to their friends on the floor. 29:54.740 --> 30:00.240 When these new stories are connected to the blend, the outcome becomes another. 30:00.240 --> 30:09.640 In the new blended story, even though the daughter and her mother are dogs, Jesus should help the daughter. 30:09.640 --> 30:15.040 We do not know why the mother wants Jesus to help her daughter. 30:15.040 --> 30:18.240 It could be because she loves her. 30:18.240 --> 30:23.440 It could also be because of fear or shame for her illness. 30:23.440 --> 30:27.140 It could have economic motivation. 30:27.140 --> 30:32.940 If the daughter is demon possessed, they might not be able to marry her off. 30:32.940 --> 30:43.340 If the daughter is enslaved, the mother might be afraid that her master would dispose of her if she's not useful. 30:43.340 --> 30:50.940 Nevertheless, Jesus accepts her new blended story and heals her daughter. 30:50.940 --> 31:04.840 However, in this complex intersectional situation, Jesus heals as a distance as the dogs in his story are removed from the children. 31:04.840 --> 31:13.840 As a theologian, as an intersectional feminist, as a teacher of homiletics for students who might become priests, 31:13.840 --> 31:23.440 I am interested in characters and biblical stories we can identify with and the theology we derive from these stories. 31:23.440 --> 31:30.340 Throughout these texts' reception history, it has given rise to much theology and identification. 31:30.340 --> 31:36.440 In antiquity, some church fathers saw this wife as the ecclesia, the church, 31:36.440 --> 31:43.040 who prayed for her gentile children that they should be saved from their demonic pagan unfaith. 31:43.040 --> 31:49.040 For Martin Luther, she is an example of persistent faith in the grace of God, 31:49.040 --> 31:54.140 even in situations where it seems like God is against you. 31:54.140 --> 32:02.240 Kiel Saga has shown that these modes of interpreting still live on in the preaching in the Church of Norway. 32:02.240 --> 32:07.540 In the interpretation above, Jesus is the character that points to God. 32:07.540 --> 32:14.140 When we do not ignore the marginalization and dominion in the text, but study it as intersecting, 32:14.140 --> 32:17.740 it can give room for more diverse theology. 32:17.740 --> 32:22.840 If we have more nuanced understandings of the mother, Jesus, the dogs and the daughter, 32:22.840 --> 32:31.340 we might find renewed ways in which we, with our complex lives, might recognize ourselves. 32:31.340 --> 32:36.740 If Jesus here shows a glimpse of God, what would that theology be? 32:36.740 --> 32:42.940 Would it be, if you are smart and persistent enough, God will help you? 32:42.940 --> 32:47.940 In Matthew's version of this story, Jesus praises the wife's faith, 32:47.940 --> 32:51.340 and the faith is the reason why he heals the daughter. 32:51.340 --> 32:57.740 In our text, however, he approves of her reasoning, her word, logos. 32:57.740 --> 33:04.740 It's the theology, if you can argue well enough, God gives in. 33:04.740 --> 33:11.340 Alternatively, does this story tell of a God who is moved by people's needs and stories? 33:11.340 --> 33:18.840 Is it a God who is biological, as Sylvia de Lima Silva suggests? 33:18.840 --> 33:23.240 What happens if we theologize about the Syriac Phoenician wife? 33:23.240 --> 33:30.040 Her possible love for her vulnerable daughter might spark theology. 33:30.040 --> 33:35.940 Luther uses a mother's love for a sick child to create theology when he interprets the parable 33:35.940 --> 33:40.340 with a wife with a ten drachmas. 33:40.340 --> 33:43.740 Luther compares this wife to a mother with many children. 33:43.740 --> 33:47.140 This mother loves all her children equally. 33:47.140 --> 33:54.840 However, when one of them gets sick, all her love is transferred to this one sick child. 33:54.840 --> 34:02.540 According to Luther, Christ treasures a sinner as highly as a mother does her sick child. 34:02.540 --> 34:10.940 A mother's or other people's protective love is also the motive in many folktales and in contemporary literature. 34:10.940 --> 34:14.940 The Syriac Phoenician wife has often been the identification figure. 34:14.940 --> 34:21.640 In feminist interpretations, she has been seen as a victim of Jesus's othering. 34:21.640 --> 34:29.940 What if we ask the other question and see her as privileged and a representative of the rich elite that exploits the poor? 34:29.940 --> 34:41.640 Nicaraguan peasants and their companions recorded in the gospel in Solentiname interpret this woman as a rich old lady who must have been an oppressor. 34:41.640 --> 34:50.040 And they appreciate the fact that she needs to humble herself to get help for her privileged daughter. 34:50.040 --> 34:54.940 The wife might also be an identification figure in opposite ways. 34:54.940 --> 35:04.140 Rangini Ribera sees her as a hero and inspiration for feminists in South Asian cultures where the girl child is aborted, 35:04.140 --> 35:09.640 killed at birth or discriminated against. 35:09.640 --> 35:14.640 Yi's presidential address, where she urges all biblical scholars to employ intersectionality, 35:14.640 --> 35:24.940 sparked discussions about the legacy of the theories and methods we imply in biblical studies to invest in marketization and power. 35:24.940 --> 35:36.840 One discussion is how intersectionality rely on former academic works and methods that are embedded in ideologies of sexism and white supremacy. 35:36.840 --> 35:44.040 This debate shares some similarities with the discussions in Karoline van der Stichel and Todd Penner's Her Master's Tools, 35:44.040 --> 35:50.240 Feminist and Post-Colonial Engagement of Historical Critical Discourse. 35:50.240 --> 36:02.340 Van der Stichel and Penner employ a quote from Audre Lorde, the American writer, womanist, lesbian, radical feminist, professor and civil rights activist. 36:02.340 --> 36:10.440 What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? 36:10.440 --> 36:17.340 It means that only the most narrow perimeter of change are possible and allowable. 36:17.340 --> 36:21.840 For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house. 36:21.840 --> 36:28.540 They may never enable us to bring about genuine change. 36:28.540 --> 36:36.040 Biblical, intersectional and post-colonial research is dependent upon the tools of our masters. 36:36.040 --> 36:45.440 Findings and approaches which we have inherited from scholars and systems embedded in sexism and racism. 36:45.440 --> 36:57.040 The cornerstone of this house is the Bible, which is also sometimes racist, sexist, ableist and a number of other ists. 36:57.040 --> 37:01.540 In addition, these texts are still influential. 37:01.540 --> 37:10.440 The Matthew version of this story will be preached about again in the Church of Norway, the fifth of March this year. 37:10.440 --> 37:19.040 As Jorunn Öklund reasons, we cannot not inhabit of our father's house. 37:19.040 --> 37:26.140 Van der Stichel and Penner argue that the master's tools will not easily dismantle the master's house. 37:26.140 --> 37:32.240 It can only be done gradually, brick by brick. 37:32.240 --> 37:40.540 I also suggest that perhaps it does not only come down to whether we destroy the master's house or let it stand, 37:40.540 --> 37:46.440 but how we use its spaces, how we use the tools. 37:46.440 --> 37:50.240 Who are invited in to use the tools in the house? 37:50.240 --> 37:55.640 How do they employ them? Do they also bring new tools? 37:55.640 --> 37:59.740 Do we tear down the fences around the garden and talk to our neighbors? 37:59.740 --> 38:09.740 Have a big table where we discuss and dialogue, visit our neighbors and learn from them? 38:09.740 --> 38:15.740 I have analyzed Mark 7, 24 to 30 by employing intersectional blending. 38:15.740 --> 38:22.540 This analysis shows that the Syro-Foenician wife might have been both vulnerable because of her ethnicity 38:22.540 --> 38:27.240 and a sick daughter and a rich, elite wife. 38:27.240 --> 38:36.540 She might have been with or without formal education, enslaved or free, a stranger or a neighbor wife. 38:36.540 --> 38:41.940 When Jesus in the in his storytelling blends this wife and a sick little daughter as dogs, 38:41.940 --> 38:48.440 he engages stories about dogs as the adversaries of children. 38:48.440 --> 38:53.440 The wife tells a story about subordination with her body and words, 38:53.440 --> 38:57.840 but also takes over Jesus's storytelling. 38:57.840 --> 39:03.440 When she adds new stories about close relationships between dogs and children to the blend, 39:03.440 --> 39:09.040 the blended story and thus the outcome becomes a new one. 39:09.040 --> 39:12.940 Even though Jesus accepts her blended story and heals her daughter, 39:12.940 --> 39:28.640 the complex power and marginalization in the story endure. 39:28.640 --> 39:32.640 Here I stand in my father's and mother's house. 39:32.640 --> 39:39.340 I have analyzed an ancient complex text using both old and new tools. 39:39.340 --> 39:45.740 My embodied and embedded situations and concerns have shaped my analysis and interpretations. 39:45.740 --> 39:52.240 It might have made me emphasize some aspects of the text exceedingly or overlook others. 39:52.240 --> 39:57.240 I have also invited my, also visited my intersectional neighbors, 39:57.240 --> 40:03.740 invited them in and tried to blend their interpretations with my own reading. 40:03.740 --> 40:10.040 Intersectional blending analysis of this text contributes to a more nuanced way of studying it 40:10.040 --> 40:14.440 than those analyzed by Kiel Saga and Ringe. 40:14.440 --> 40:20.740 Intersectional blending and asking the other question makes us aware of how understandings of ethnicity, 40:20.740 --> 40:26.740 class, marriage status, number of children, education, neighborhood, 40:26.740 --> 40:33.340 whether a character is enslaved or free, age, ability, bodies and non-human characters, 40:33.340 --> 40:39.040 intersect in this story and can be interpreted in different ways. 40:39.040 --> 40:46.440 It also helps me analyze what my positionality makes it hard for me to see. 40:46.440 --> 40:52.140 I have found it especially intriguing how this method enables us to study this text storytelling 40:52.140 --> 40:59.340 as intersectionally blended, as dependent on complex power and marginalization 40:59.340 --> 41:08.040 and how first Jesus and then the wife blends the story about children, bread and dogs 41:08.040 --> 41:14.540 with unlike embedded and embodied stories and thus get different outcomes. 41:14.540 --> 41:19.740 In addition, intersectional blending lets us see that all interpretation, 41:19.740 --> 41:24.540 including those of scholars, are embedded and embodied. 41:24.540 --> 41:34.740 Perhaps it has also made us find a new parable with interesting apparent and hidden intersectional female characters. 41:34.740 --> 41:39.640 The broader interpretational possibilities this approach allow for can also give rise 41:39.640 --> 41:45.940 to more nuanced identification figures and theologies. 41:45.940 --> 41:50.040 Now I have told my intersectionally blended story. 41:50.040 --> 41:55.840 Later, other people will talk inside or outside the house. 41:55.840 --> 42:02.940 Thank you very much. 42:02.940 --> 42:07.340 Welcome to the University of Oslo and the Faculty of Theology 42:07.340 --> 42:13.740 and to this first part of Kantial Ellen Oslund-Reynholdsen's doctoral examination 42:13.740 --> 42:20.340 for the degree of Philosophie Doctor under the Faculty of Theology. 42:20.340 --> 42:28.340 My name is Anders Ryne-Som and I'm the Dean and Chair of today's disputation. 42:28.340 --> 42:32.440 The doctoral examination consists of two parts. 42:32.440 --> 42:40.540 First, the trial lecture of 45 minutes on a prescribed topic given by the PhD adjudication committee 42:40.540 --> 42:48.040 and then, after a break, the public defense of the dissertation props in the parable plots 42:48.040 --> 42:56.540 the significance of intersectional female characters in a tested and possible parable reception. 42:56.540 --> 43:02.640 The adjudication committee has consisted of Professor Annette Mertz, 43:02.640 --> 43:08.340 Protestant Theological University of Groningen, 43:08.340 --> 43:14.540 Professor Caroline van der Stiegele, Tilburg University, the Netherlands, 43:14.540 --> 43:21.440 and Senior Lecturer Veemon Blomkvist, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. 43:21.440 --> 43:26.940 Before I give the word to Ellen Oslund-Reynholdsen, please note that after the trial lecture, 43:26.940 --> 43:34.740 there will be a break and we will start with the defense at 12 noon sharp. 43:34.740 --> 43:43.140 I will now invite Kent Thioll, Ellen Oslund-Reynholdsen, to give her trial lecture 43:43.140 --> 43:54.640 with the prescribed title given by the committee, an intersectional blending analysis of Mark 7, 24 to 30. 43:54.640 --> 44:17.440 Please, Ellen. 44:17.440 --> 44:25.940 A Greek Syrophoenician wife asks the Jewish Jesus to help her daughter who is demon possessed. 44:25.940 --> 44:32.140 Jesus refuses by naming the mother and her daughter dogs. 44:32.140 --> 44:42.340 However, after the mother's clever arguing, Jesus changes his mind and heals the little daughter. 44:42.340 --> 44:47.840 The Norwegian theologian Stine Kiel Saga has shown that when priests in the church of Norway 44:47.840 --> 44:52.640 preach about this story's parallel texts in the Gospel of Matthew, 44:52.640 --> 44:58.740 they spiritualize the story and employ it to preach about missionary activities, 44:58.740 --> 45:04.040 enduring faith, struggling faith, or prayer. 45:04.040 --> 45:12.340 By doing so, they ignore their suppression and marginalization in the story. 45:12.340 --> 45:18.640 The biblical scholar Sharon Ringe has analyzed the feminist scholars in the 1980s and 90s, 45:18.640 --> 45:27.940 herself included, interpreted this woman as the embodiment of all categories of the outcast and oppressed persons 45:27.940 --> 45:34.440 to whom the gospel suggests much of Jesus's ministry was directed. 45:34.440 --> 45:43.140 Mark has placed this story after a dispute about purity regulations Jesus has with Pharisees and scribes, 45:43.140 --> 45:45.740 and the daughter has an unclean spirit. 45:45.740 --> 45:51.940 Because of this, this story has often been connected to impurity. 45:51.940 --> 45:59.340 Jesus calls this wife and daughter impure dogs because they are unclean female non-Jews contaminated by an impure demon, 45:59.340 --> 46:01.940 according to this view. 46:01.940 --> 46:07.040 She is a woman, a Gentile and thus a foreigner, impure, nameless, 46:07.040 --> 46:14.640 kneeling before Jesus in desperation over her sick daughter like a dog licking the hand who beats her. 46:14.640 --> 46:21.340 In such interpretations, there's symmetry between her and a pure named powerful Jesus 46:21.340 --> 46:26.740 who is a Jewish man could hardly have been greater. 46:26.740 --> 46:35.740 More recent theories about power and oppression like intersectionality allows us to see greater culture complexity 46:35.740 --> 46:44.740 in Jewish and Greek or Roman antiquity, and that power and vulnerability are more complicated than previously assumed. 46:44.740 --> 46:48.140 By analyzing this text with intersectional blending, 46:48.140 --> 46:54.340 I follow Kiel's saga and do not ignore the suppression and marginalization in the story. 46:54.340 --> 47:01.340 At the same time, I will ask about its complex power dynamics. 47:01.340 --> 47:06.240 First, I will present the theories and methods I employ. 47:06.240 --> 47:09.740 Then after a reflection on my own situatedness, 47:09.740 --> 47:15.440 I will analyze the text by using intersectional blending. 47:15.440 --> 47:26.140 I will especially focus on the dispute between Jesus and the Greek Syrophoenician wife as intersectionally blended storytelling. 47:26.140 --> 47:31.740 I conclude with a reflection on how my approach contributes to the study of this text 47:31.740 --> 47:40.340 and about the tools scholars employ in biblical studies. 47:40.340 --> 47:45.240 Intersectional blending is a method I developed during my PhD research, 47:45.240 --> 47:51.040 where I combined elements from conceptual blending and intersectionality 47:51.040 --> 47:55.940 and advanced them into a new method for analyzing parables. 47:55.940 --> 47:58.940 I employ intersectional blending to study, for example, 47:58.940 --> 48:05.640 how a story about a wife who bakes with sourdough can be perceived as a story about a divine kingdom 48:05.640 --> 48:11.840 and possibly also about the lives of the interpreters. 48:11.840 --> 48:17.540 This is the first time this method is employed to study a story that is not a parable 48:17.540 --> 48:24.140 or perhaps not a parable. I will come back to that later. 48:24.140 --> 48:28.540 Conceptual blending theory derives from the cognitive study of metaphors 48:28.540 --> 48:32.440 and is developed by Mark Turner and Giles Forcarnia. 48:32.440 --> 48:40.140 In my method, I especially employ Turner's concept of double scope stories. 48:40.140 --> 48:48.240 Turner argues that conceptualization of narratives happen when readers or listeners map and blend 48:48.240 --> 48:56.340 two different and sometimes opposing stories in order to create a new story. 48:56.340 --> 49:02.040 In my dissertation, I employ this to study how recipients can interpret a parable story, 49:02.040 --> 49:09.140 for example, about a wife who bakes, as a story about the divine kingdom. 49:09.140 --> 49:16.040 According to conceptual blending, we do not only understand the more abstract and unknown 49:16.040 --> 49:22.040 a divine kingdom in light of the more concrete and familiar a story about baking. 49:22.040 --> 49:27.140 Meaning making goes in both directions. 49:27.140 --> 49:32.040 The result is also not that one story is just added to another, 49:32.040 --> 49:36.440 but rather that something new and creative happens. 49:36.440 --> 49:42.140 When stories are blended, the result is a new story. 49:42.140 --> 49:47.340 Hugo Lundhuyg was first at applying blending theory to reception studies of the New Testament. 49:47.340 --> 49:54.240 Recently, a growing number of biblical scholars applied the theory. 49:54.240 --> 49:59.140 While Turner is mainly interested in how we blend stories in texts, 49:59.140 --> 50:05.540 I analyze how stories from interpreters' situatedness affect their meaning making. 50:05.540 --> 50:12.140 Stories from their historical, cultural and social contexts, their experiences, 50:12.140 --> 50:15.940 life stories and other stories they might know. 50:15.940 --> 50:22.740 To analyze this, I employ insights from intersectionality. 50:22.740 --> 50:30.440 Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 50:30.440 --> 50:35.640 and has in recent years become the leading theory in feminist studies. 50:35.640 --> 50:42.540 The theory applies the metaphor of intersection to investigate discrimination, power 50:42.540 --> 50:50.740 and in recent years also identity as independent, interdependent of various social culture factors 50:50.740 --> 50:59.040 such as gender, class, social status, ethnicity or race, ability, sexuality and age. 50:59.040 --> 51:05.140 Only the past 20 years intersectionality has been employed in biblical studies. 51:05.140 --> 51:09.540 Earlier scholars often considered women a separate analytical category 51:09.540 --> 51:14.440 when they studied female characters. 51:14.440 --> 51:18.540 Of particular value to my work is the intersectional New Testament research 51:18.540 --> 51:28.940 of Elisabeth Schisler Fiorenza, Marianne Bielan-Kartsov and Anders Martinsen. 51:28.940 --> 51:36.840 In 2019, Gail A. Yee, in her presidential address to the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 51:36.840 --> 51:42.540 encouraged all biblical scholars to use intersectionality in their research. 51:42.540 --> 51:49.340 She did this so that they should become aware of how their own complex situations of privilege 51:49.340 --> 51:57.140 and or oppression influence what they look for and how they interpret biblical texts. 51:57.140 --> 52:02.440 Thus, from being marginal in biblical studies, intersectionality has become part of the field's 52:02.440 --> 52:13.840 main theoretical and methodological discussions, although still only a small number of biblical scholars apply it. 52:13.840 --> 52:18.640 Intersectionality comes from the struggle of black American women to study their oppression 52:18.640 --> 52:21.640 from multiple social factors. 52:21.640 --> 52:26.440 As the Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name movements have made us aware of, 52:26.440 --> 52:31.840 just being black or a black woman are in many places deadly. 52:31.840 --> 52:39.340 It has also made me aware that the color of my skin is not neutral. 52:39.340 --> 52:44.640 Growing up in a traditional part of Norway, I've had some experience with gender discrimination. 52:44.640 --> 52:49.740 Later, I have experienced both that and ageism in the church and in broader society, 52:49.740 --> 52:56.140 and I've had the experience of speaking a minority dialect in Oslo. 52:56.140 --> 53:03.240 I'm also a white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgender, married, able-bodied, state-employed scholar, 53:03.240 --> 53:08.940 who's also an ordained priest in the majority church in Norway. 53:08.940 --> 53:12.640 In addition, I am a mother to a daughter and a son. 53:12.640 --> 53:14.640 I am a daughter myself. 53:14.640 --> 53:22.240 I am a wife and a dog owner, as well as a sister, friend, colleague, and neighbor. 53:22.240 --> 53:27.440 We filter new information through what we already know and who we are. 53:27.440 --> 53:34.040 Will my privileges make me overlook the suppression and marginalization in this market story? 53:34.040 --> 53:40.440 Or will my vulnerabilities make me see only that which resembles those? 53:40.440 --> 53:45.840 Will I be able to understand this story's complexities? 53:45.840 --> 53:51.440 I employ intersectionality because I need theory and method that can help me become aware 53:51.440 --> 53:58.940 of how my own embedded and embodied situatedness influence my interpretations. 53:58.940 --> 54:06.240 I also do so to require a certain distance to the text. 54:06.240 --> 54:12.640 Of particular value in seeing what I might be blind to is Mary J. Matsuda's intersectional method 54:12.640 --> 54:17.140 of asking the other question. 54:17.140 --> 54:22.640 The way I try to understand the interconnectedness of all forms of subordination is through a method 54:22.640 --> 54:26.040 I call ask the other question. 54:26.040 --> 54:31.640 When I see something that looks racist, I ask, where is the patriarchy in this? 54:31.640 --> 54:37.640 When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, where is the heterosexism in this? 54:37.640 --> 54:44.040 When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, where are the class interests in this? 54:44.040 --> 54:50.440 Working in coalition forces us to look for both the obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination, 54:50.440 --> 55:00.540 helping us to realize that no form of subordination ever stands alone. 55:00.540 --> 55:07.440 In my combined intersectional blending, I see interpretation as complex processes 55:07.440 --> 55:11.840 where interpreters blend elements from biblical stories 55:11.840 --> 55:18.240 and understand them in light of their own varied embodied and embedded stories, 55:18.240 --> 55:26.140 intersectionally situated stories, intertextual stories and hermeneutical stories. 55:26.140 --> 55:31.940 Intersectional blending allows me to analyze not only how a story about a baker wife becomes the story 55:31.940 --> 55:40.240 about a divine kingdom, but possibly also about the various lives of the interpreters. 55:40.240 --> 55:44.240 It helps us analyze how a story can be blended in many ways. 55:44.240 --> 55:50.740 In this case, how in Mark 7, 24 to 30, Jesus's storytelling 55:50.740 --> 55:57.840 and the storytelling of the Syrophoenician wife are blended in different ways. 55:57.840 --> 56:01.840 I will focus on a number of intersectional factors in this analysis. 56:01.840 --> 56:07.340 Some of these are mentioned, and in other cases, we need to ask the other question 56:07.340 --> 56:15.240 and employ historically informed imagination to study them. 56:15.240 --> 56:19.640 When we analyze the story about Jesus and the Greek Syrophoenician wife 56:19.640 --> 56:25.340 with insights from blending theory, we see that this story about them 56:25.340 --> 56:32.240 connects to another story about children, bread and little dogs. 56:32.240 --> 56:39.640 The story is first told by Jesus and then by the wife. 56:39.640 --> 56:46.040 This resembles the way parable narratives connect to their framing. 56:46.040 --> 56:51.640 I have not found any scholars who call this text a parable. 56:51.640 --> 56:56.840 Now we have found one scholar, really! 56:56.840 --> 57:03.140 I should have found one scholar who calls this text a parable. 57:03.140 --> 57:05.740 But it was not in compendium, was it? 57:05.740 --> 57:09.240 We will talk more about that later. 57:09.240 --> 57:11.540 Much more recent, okay, exciting. 57:11.540 --> 57:16.040 However, applying blending and in other cases as well, 57:16.040 --> 57:20.140 let's see that it has many similarities with parables where a concrete 57:20.140 --> 57:24.840 and perhaps familiar story Jesus tells is surrounded by one 57:24.840 --> 57:27.340 or more interpretive frame. 57:27.340 --> 57:32.340 So maybe Anette Mertz and I have found a new parable with interesting 57:32.340 --> 57:35.040 intersectional female characters. 57:35.040 --> 57:39.140 Or perhaps it does not matter whether this is a parable or not. 57:39.140 --> 57:47.240 According to blending theory, meaning making always happens through blending. 57:47.240 --> 57:53.540 Let us look closer at the blends in Jesus's storytelling in this text. 57:53.540 --> 57:58.040 The framing story about Jesus and a Greek-Syriac-Phoenician wife 57:58.040 --> 58:03.140 and her plea for her daughter is compared or connected to a story 58:03.140 --> 58:08.040 about dogs should not eat the children's bread. 58:08.040 --> 58:11.440 The outcome is a new story. 58:11.440 --> 58:14.840 The mother and her daughter are dogs and not children. 58:14.840 --> 58:21.340 Therefore, Jesus should not help them. 58:21.340 --> 58:24.940 The core element of this blended story seems to be that the mother 58:24.940 --> 58:32.040 and daughter are connected to dogs and blended as dogs. 58:32.040 --> 58:39.640 Is it a bad thing to compare someone to a dog as Jesus does? 58:39.640 --> 58:42.540 Many dogs today are beloved members of families. 58:42.540 --> 58:45.840 They are cuddled, played with, cared for, and searched for 58:45.840 --> 58:50.040 by the entire community when they are lost. 58:50.040 --> 58:56.140 At the same time, my experience with dogs lets me know that I would not have liked to be one. 58:56.140 --> 59:00.340 To be obedient, to not be able to eat when I want or go where I want, 59:00.340 --> 59:05.240 and not be allowed to lick, to jump up and lick visitors in the face, 59:05.240 --> 59:12.240 which I'm also not allowed to do as a human. 59:12.240 --> 59:15.840 To call someone a dog is also abusive. 59:15.840 --> 59:21.240 It might have racial connotations or religious implications 59:21.240 --> 59:27.240 when people are called unfaithful dogs or gendered or sexual shaming 59:27.240 --> 59:32.240 when girls or women are called bitches. 59:32.240 --> 59:38.940 Scholarship for a long time thought Judaism in the time of Jesus saw dogs as unclean animals. 59:38.940 --> 59:43.640 Recently, however, Mark Nainos and other scholars argued that Hebrew Bible 59:43.640 --> 59:48.040 and other ancient Jewish sources do not support this. 59:48.040 --> 59:52.540 Like in the broader Greek or Roman world, dogs were parts of life, 59:52.540 --> 59:57.940 sometimes described in positive ways as faithful or as part of a group, 59:57.940 --> 01:00:02.240 other times used as a general insult about enemies, 01:00:02.240 --> 01:00:08.040 or to slur someone as vulgar, promiscuous, or shameless. 01:00:08.040 --> 01:00:14.640 That Jesus names this mother and her daughter dogs and refuses to help them 01:00:14.640 --> 01:00:24.440 has trouble interpreted from the beginning of this story's reception history, including me. 01:00:24.440 --> 01:00:30.140 When Jesus blends his stories, he seems to evoke stories from his own social, 01:00:30.140 --> 01:00:36.440 cultural situatedness about dogs as the adversaries of children. 01:00:36.440 --> 01:00:42.240 These dogs seem to be far away. People throw food to them. 01:00:42.240 --> 01:00:47.140 Maybe he thinks of scavenger wild dogs from the cities in this area 01:00:47.140 --> 01:00:53.240 who steal food and maybe scare children. 01:00:53.240 --> 01:00:56.340 Jesus is in a borderland in this story. 01:00:56.340 --> 01:01:03.240 He has traveled north from the Jewish Galilee into the region of Tyre. 01:01:03.240 --> 01:01:08.440 Tyre was a Hellenized city, a port city, and the capital of the Roman province of Syria 01:01:08.440 --> 01:01:12.140 in what is today southern Lebanon. 01:01:12.140 --> 01:01:18.140 The region of Tyre included the rural areas surrounding the city. 01:01:18.140 --> 01:01:21.340 As in most borderlands, the population was mixed. 01:01:21.340 --> 01:01:25.440 Both Jews and Syrophoenicians lived there. 01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:32.540 Here, Jesus hides in a house like Jesus often conceals himself in the Gospel of Mark. 01:01:32.540 --> 01:01:37.640 We do not know whether this is a Jewish or a Syrophoenician house, 01:01:37.640 --> 01:01:42.540 perhaps a Jewish house since no ethnicity is mentioned, 01:01:42.540 --> 01:01:50.340 which is not the case for the wife who immediately finds him. 01:01:50.340 --> 01:01:57.340 This wife is presented as Hellenize, Syrophoenica togenae. 01:01:57.340 --> 01:02:05.740 Earlier, scholars have translated Hellenize, Gentile and seen this as the reason why Jesus names her dog. 01:02:05.740 --> 01:02:12.540 These interpreters seem to connect Jesus' storytelling to stories in the Hebrew Bible 01:02:12.540 --> 01:02:16.440 where the people from Tyre and Sidon are called enemies of the Israelites 01:02:16.440 --> 01:02:22.940 and possibly about dogs used as metaphors for enemies. 01:02:22.940 --> 01:02:26.640 Hellenize might, however, also be translated Greek. 01:02:26.640 --> 01:02:31.340 While many feminist scholars have seen this as a poor, marginalized woman, 01:02:31.340 --> 01:02:36.040 we could ask the other question and inquire whether she perhaps is rich. 01:02:36.040 --> 01:02:40.940 In her house that she returns to, we hear about furniture, a couch, 01:02:40.940 --> 01:02:49.140 and she speaks of a table which suggests that she is at least not poor. 01:02:49.140 --> 01:02:54.240 Gert Theisen suggests that this woman comes from a cultural privilege class 01:02:54.240 --> 01:02:58.740 of Greek-speaking city dwellers in Tyre. 01:02:58.740 --> 01:03:03.440 A Lebanese student I met at the conference proudly pronounced that she is a descendant 01:03:03.440 --> 01:03:07.740 of these New Testament Syrophoenicians. 01:03:07.740 --> 01:03:12.440 According to Theisen, the Syrophoenician population in the cities were better off 01:03:12.440 --> 01:03:16.740 than the rural Jewish population in the surrounding areas. 01:03:16.740 --> 01:03:22.240 He proposes that the Hellenized city dwellers may have used their financial means 01:03:22.240 --> 01:03:28.640 to buy up the grain supply in the countryside and in this way take bread out of the mouths 01:03:28.640 --> 01:03:31.540 of the rural Jews. 01:03:31.540 --> 01:03:37.540 Such an intersectional story could blend with Hebrew Bible stories of greedy, 01:03:37.540 --> 01:03:38.840 violent dogs. 01:03:38.840 --> 01:03:44.040 In this interpretation, Jesus says, like this urban elite, 01:03:44.040 --> 01:03:48.240 the Syrophoenician mother and daughter are dogs who are asking for something 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:53.140 that is not theirs. 01:03:53.140 --> 01:03:56.840 The woman is further presented as a gyne. 01:03:56.840 --> 01:04:02.640 Most often a free married woman, a wife, with a status and relative independence 01:04:02.640 --> 01:04:07.540 that came with marriage in Roman society in the first century CE. 01:04:07.540 --> 01:04:10.340 We hear that she has at least one child. 01:04:10.340 --> 01:04:13.140 She could have had more. 01:04:13.140 --> 01:04:17.340 Her status would depend upon the number of children she had. 01:04:17.340 --> 01:04:21.940 According to the Augustan laws, Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppea, 01:04:21.940 --> 01:04:28.140 free women who had three live births and freed women with four live births were 01:04:28.140 --> 01:04:34.540 allowed to conduct business and legal affairs on their own. 01:04:34.540 --> 01:04:39.940 Perhaps she could also have been educated, although not many girls in Jewish and 01:04:39.940 --> 01:04:44.940 Greek or Roman antiquity received formal education, some did. 01:04:44.940 --> 01:04:51.140 Or is she a smart lady without formal education? 01:04:51.140 --> 01:04:56.740 None of the New Testament texts say that Jesus was married or had children. 01:04:56.740 --> 01:05:01.840 As Halva Moxnes suggests, if this is the case, Jesus in this respect breaks 01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:06.340 with the masculine expectations of being a part of familias, a lord of the 01:05:06.340 --> 01:05:12.140 household, whom wife, children and slaves should obey. 01:05:12.140 --> 01:05:17.040 Even though some New Testament texts suggest Jesus could read and possibly 01:05:17.040 --> 01:05:22.240 write, we do not know whether he had any formal education. 01:05:22.240 --> 01:05:27.040 If the woman is an educated, Greek speaking, urban elite wife with more 01:05:27.040 --> 01:05:33.940 children, who is perhaps also a neighbor of the house, of the people in the 01:05:33.940 --> 01:05:38.640 house where Jesus is possibly unknown, the power balance between her and 01:05:38.640 --> 01:05:46.240 Jesus is more complex than those in former feminist interpretations. 01:05:46.240 --> 01:05:50.040 By asking the other question, we could also inquire whether this mother 01:05:50.040 --> 01:05:53.840 perhaps was enslaved. 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:58.440 Slaves were the master's belongings like dogs were. 01:05:58.440 --> 01:06:03.140 Perhaps she were an elite female slave who was educated to be a tutor for 01:06:03.140 --> 01:06:06.840 her master or her master's children. 01:06:06.840 --> 01:06:12.740 Perhaps gendered slavery plays part in Jesus's offensive slur. 01:06:12.740 --> 01:06:17.840 In the same way as female dogs, bitches were seen as shameless and 01:06:17.840 --> 01:06:21.740 sexually available, so were slaves. 01:06:21.740 --> 01:06:26.640 Is Jesus blending a slave mother and her daughter as slave bitches that 01:06:26.640 --> 01:06:31.540 should not be helped? 01:06:31.540 --> 01:06:34.940 She could also have been interpreted differently. 01:06:34.940 --> 01:06:39.840 Is it perhaps more likely that she would be viewed as a free woman? 01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:43.640 Perhaps a female slave would not have dared to seek Jesus out and petition 01:06:43.640 --> 01:06:46.240 him to heal her daughter. 01:06:46.240 --> 01:06:50.840 Would she, if she were enslaved, even be seen as the mother of her daughter 01:06:50.840 --> 01:06:55.440 since slaves in Jewish and Greek and Roman antiquity had no legal bonds 01:06:55.440 --> 01:07:00.440 to their offspring? 01:07:00.440 --> 01:07:04.640 The power dimensions between Jesus and the Syrophoenician wife are further 01:07:04.640 --> 01:07:11.240 complicated when age and disability intersect with the other social factors. 01:07:11.240 --> 01:07:16.840 The Greek term used for the wife's sick daughter is figatros, a diminutive 01:07:16.840 --> 01:07:18.440 of figater daughter. 01:07:18.440 --> 01:07:22.740 She's thus a little daughter. 01:07:22.740 --> 01:07:26.840 Although Mark could be using these two terms interchangeably, this could 01:07:26.840 --> 01:07:30.340 also signify that this is a girl before puberty. 01:07:30.340 --> 01:07:34.340 The daughter is also called pardion, a young child. 01:07:34.340 --> 01:07:40.840 And a girl in marriageable age would perhaps be called pathenos, virgin. 01:07:40.840 --> 01:07:46.640 Another figatros in the gospel is said to be 12 years old. 01:07:46.640 --> 01:07:51.040 Jesus also uses diminutive about the dogs he compares to the little 01:07:51.040 --> 01:07:52.340 demon possessed daughter. 01:07:52.340 --> 01:07:57.140 They are little dogs or puppies. 01:07:57.140 --> 01:08:00.840 Demon possession is a common way of understanding disease in the ancient 01:08:00.840 --> 01:08:06.040 world and we do not know what sort of disease the daughter has. 01:08:06.040 --> 01:08:11.340 The girl who is healed by Jesus on this icon is not the Syrophoenician 01:08:11.340 --> 01:08:12.340 little girl. 01:08:12.340 --> 01:08:16.340 I have not been able to find any images of her healing. 01:08:16.340 --> 01:08:21.840 This is of another little daughter in the gospel, the Jewish daughter of 01:08:21.840 --> 01:08:27.840 Jairus whom Jesus does not hesitate to heal earlier in the gospel. 01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:32.240 Jesus comes to their house, he takes the little girl's arm and restores her 01:08:32.240 --> 01:08:35.140 to life. 01:08:35.140 --> 01:08:38.940 With the Syrophoenician little girl, there is no touching. 01:08:38.940 --> 01:08:44.840 Jesus does not come to a house but heals from a distance. 01:08:44.840 --> 01:08:49.840 Anna Rebecca Solvog suggests that both disability and ethnicity are 01:08:49.840 --> 01:08:57.740 animalized and used to other the girl and therefore refuse to help her. 01:08:57.740 --> 01:09:04.040 As a mother in a safe neighborhood in Oslo, I am able to get my children 01:09:04.040 --> 01:09:05.640 to help their need without begging. 01:09:05.640 --> 01:09:10.440 The Syrophoenician mother throws herself down on the floor to ask for 01:09:10.440 --> 01:09:13.940 help and thus tells a story with her body. 01:09:13.940 --> 01:09:19.540 If we had been present in the house, we would probably understand a lot 01:09:19.540 --> 01:09:23.240 about her intersectional situation based on her body language. 01:09:23.240 --> 01:09:28.340 An elite free wife would dress and pose differently from a slave. 01:09:28.340 --> 01:09:33.940 An educated woman familiar with public disputes might walk into an 01:09:33.940 --> 01:09:37.440 assembly another way than a person who are not. 01:09:37.440 --> 01:09:44.140 We only get one postural cue in this text when the wife throws herself 01:09:44.140 --> 01:09:46.040 at Jesus' feet. 01:09:46.040 --> 01:09:51.740 Jennifer Glancy points out that to lower oneself before another person 01:09:51.740 --> 01:09:56.140 was the most common visual marker of submission to superior authority 01:09:56.140 --> 01:09:57.440 in Roman antiquity. 01:09:57.440 --> 01:10:03.440 The wife tells the same story about subordination with her body as she 01:10:03.440 --> 01:10:09.240 does with her voice when she calls Jesus Kyrie, Lord or master. 01:10:09.240 --> 01:10:15.940 To be at someone's feet is also the position of a dog who is who in 01:10:15.940 --> 01:10:20.040 obedience is to come to the master's heel as suggested by David wrote. 01:10:20.040 --> 01:10:29.340 However, the Greek Syrophoenician's wife's bodily and verbal story 01:10:29.340 --> 01:10:30.040 moves on. 01:10:30.040 --> 01:10:34.640 To be at someone's feet is also a student's position. 01:10:34.640 --> 01:10:39.840 From this foot perspective, the wife continues to speak and becomes 01:10:39.840 --> 01:10:41.540 a dialogue partner of Jesus. 01:10:41.540 --> 01:10:49.940 In all the other four gospels, Jesus always wins a dispute as analyzed 01:10:49.940 --> 01:10:51.240 by Tyson and Annette. 01:10:51.240 --> 01:10:56.540 Here, however, the Syrophoenician wife takes over the storytelling. 01:10:56.540 --> 01:11:03.340 She accepts Jesus's blend the mother and her daughter are dogs. 01:11:03.340 --> 01:11:06.340 The children should be fed before dogs. 01:11:06.340 --> 01:11:12.840 However, she connects Jesus's narrative to new stories about dogs. 01:11:12.840 --> 01:11:21.040 She blends it with stories of dogs that are close, not far away. 01:11:21.040 --> 01:11:25.840 In these stories, which might be recognizable both today and in the 01:11:25.840 --> 01:11:29.540 ancient world, dogs are not children's enemies. 01:11:29.540 --> 01:11:32.240 Rather, they are members of the household. 01:11:32.240 --> 01:11:34.440 They are under the children's table. 01:11:34.440 --> 01:11:38.840 They do get parts of the children's bread when the children spill. 01:11:38.840 --> 01:11:45.140 Named crumbs which fall to the floor. Possibly, we could also hear 01:11:45.140 --> 01:11:48.840 echoes of fond relationships between children and their pets. 01:11:48.840 --> 01:11:53.640 Even that children might slip bread pieces of bread to their friends 01:11:53.640 --> 01:11:54.240 on the floor. 01:11:54.240 --> 01:12:01.440 When these new stories are connected to the blend, the outcome becomes 01:12:01.440 --> 01:12:06.540 another. In the new blended story, even though the daughter and her 01:12:06.540 --> 01:12:09.640 mother are dogs, Jesus should help the daughter. 01:12:09.640 --> 01:12:16.440 We do not know why the mother wants Jesus to help her daughter. 01:12:16.440 --> 01:12:19.340 It could be because she loves her. 01:12:19.340 --> 01:12:24.840 It could also be because of fear or shame for her illness. 01:12:24.840 --> 01:12:28.640 It could have economic motivation. 01:12:28.640 --> 01:12:33.140 If the daughter is demon possessed, they might not be able to marry 01:12:33.140 --> 01:12:38.040 her off. If the daughter is enslaved, the mother might be afraid that 01:12:38.040 --> 01:12:41.140 her master would dispose of her if she is not useful. 01:12:41.140 --> 01:12:50.640 Nevertheless, Jesus accepts her new blended story and heals her daughter. 01:12:50.640 --> 01:12:58.740 However, in this complex intersectional situation, Jesus heals as a 01:12:58.740 --> 01:13:03.240 distance as the dogs in his story are removed from the children. 01:13:03.240 --> 01:13:12.240 As a theologian, as an intersectional feminist, as a teacher of 01:13:12.240 --> 01:13:17.440 homiletics for students who might become priests, I am interested in 01:13:17.440 --> 01:13:22.140 characters in biblical stories we can identify with and the theology 01:13:22.140 --> 01:13:23.740 we derive from these stories. 01:13:23.740 --> 01:13:29.240 Throughout this text's reception history, it has given rise to much 01:13:29.240 --> 01:13:35.140 theology and identification. In antiquity, some church fathers saw this 01:13:35.140 --> 01:13:40.340 wife as the ecclesia, the church, who prayed for her gentile children 01:13:40.340 --> 01:13:43.640 that they should be saved from their demonic pagan unfaith. 01:13:43.640 --> 01:13:49.940 For Martin Luther, she is an example of persistent faith in the grace of 01:13:49.940 --> 01:13:54.640 God, even in situations where it seems like God is against you. 01:13:54.640 --> 01:14:00.440 Killsaga has shown that these modes of interpreting still live on in the 01:14:00.440 --> 01:14:06.540 preaching in the Church of Norway. In the interpretation above, Jesus is 01:14:06.540 --> 01:14:12.240 the character that points to God. When we do not ignore the marginalization 01:14:12.240 --> 01:14:17.240 and dominion in the text, but study it as intersecting, it can give room 01:14:17.240 --> 01:14:22.240 for more diverse theology. If we have more nuanced understandings of 01:14:22.240 --> 01:14:26.140 the mother, Jesus, the dogs, and the daughter, we might find renewed 01:14:26.140 --> 01:14:30.540 ways in which we, with our complex lives, might recognize ourselves. 01:14:30.540 --> 01:14:38.240 If Jesus here shows a glimpse of God, what would that theology be? 01:14:38.240 --> 01:14:43.140 Would it be if you are smart and persistent enough, God will help you. 01:14:43.140 --> 01:14:50.440 In Matthew's version of this story, Jesus praises the wife's faith, and 01:14:50.440 --> 01:14:54.740 the faith is the reason why he heals the daughter. In our text, however, 01:14:54.740 --> 01:15:00.940 he approves of her reasoning, her word, logos. It's the theology. 01:15:00.940 --> 01:15:08.440 If you can argue well enough, God gives in. Alternatively, does this 01:15:08.440 --> 01:15:13.940 story tell of a God who is moved by people's needs and stories? Is it a 01:15:13.940 --> 01:15:21.940 God who is biological, as Sylvia de Lima Silva suggests? What happens if 01:15:21.940 --> 01:15:27.040 we theologize about the Syriac Phoenician wife? Her possible love for her 01:15:27.040 --> 01:15:34.240 vulnerable daughter might spark theology. Luther uses a mother's love 01:15:34.240 --> 01:15:38.540 for a sick child to create theology when he interprets the parable with a 01:15:38.540 --> 01:15:44.740 wife with a ten drachmas. Luther compares this wife to a mother with 01:15:44.740 --> 01:15:50.340 many children. This mother loves all her children equally. However, when 01:15:50.340 --> 01:15:57.140 one of them gets sick, all her love is transferred to this one sick child. 01:15:57.140 --> 01:16:01.540 According to Luther, Christ treasures a sinner as highly as a mother does 01:16:01.540 --> 01:16:07.740 her sick child. A mother's or other people's protective love is also the 01:16:07.740 --> 01:16:13.540 motive in many folktales and in contemporary literature. The Syriac 01:16:13.540 --> 01:16:17.840 Phoenician wife has often been the identification figure in feminist 01:16:17.840 --> 01:16:24.240 interpretations. She has been seen as a victim of Jesus' othering. What if 01:16:24.240 --> 01:16:28.440 we ask the other question and see her as privileged and a representative 01:16:28.440 --> 01:16:33.740 of the rich elite that exploits the poor? Nicaraguan peasants and their 01:16:33.740 --> 01:16:39.040 companions recorded in the gospel in Solentiname interprets this woman 01:16:39.040 --> 01:16:44.740 as a rich old lady who must have been an oppressor. And they appreciate 01:16:44.740 --> 01:16:48.740 the fact that she needs to humble herself to get help for her privileged 01:16:48.740 --> 01:16:57.240 daughter. The wife might also be an identification figure in opposite ways. 01:16:57.240 --> 01:17:02.640 Rangini Ribera sees her as a hero and inspiration for feminists in South 01:17:02.640 --> 01:17:07.540 Asian cultures where the girl child is aborted, killed at birth, or 01:17:07.540 --> 01:17:14.240 discriminated against. Yi's presidential address where she urges all 01:17:14.240 --> 01:17:18.340 biblical scholars to employ intersectionality sparked discussions 01:17:18.340 --> 01:17:22.540 about the legacy of the theories and methods we imply in biblical studies 01:17:22.540 --> 01:17:29.540 to invest in magnetization and power. One discussion is how intersectionality 01:17:29.540 --> 01:17:35.040 rely on former academic works and methods that are embedded in ideologies 01:17:35.040 --> 01:17:41.440 of sexism and white supremacy. This debate shares some similarities with 01:17:41.440 --> 01:17:45.340 the discussions in Caroline van der Stichel and Todd Penner's her master's 01:17:45.340 --> 01:17:50.640 tools, feminist and post-colonial engagement of historical critical 01:17:50.640 --> 01:17:55.940 discourse. Van der Stichel and Penner employ a quote from Audrey Lord, 01:17:55.940 --> 01:18:00.540 the American writer, womanist, lesbian, radical feminist, professor, and 01:18:00.540 --> 01:18:06.740 civil rights activist. What does it mean when the tools of a racist 01:18:06.740 --> 01:18:10.440 patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? 01:18:10.440 --> 01:18:17.340 It means that only the most narrow perimeter of change are possible and 01:18:17.340 --> 01:18:23.440 allowable. For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house. 01:18:23.440 --> 01:18:32.440 They may never enable us to bring about genuine change. Biblical intersectional 01:18:32.440 --> 01:18:37.440 and post-colonial research is dependent upon the tools of our masters. 01:18:37.440 --> 01:18:43.240 Findings and approaches which we have inherited from scholars and systems 01:18:43.240 --> 01:18:50.340 embedded in sexism and racism. The cornerstone of this house is the Bible, 01:18:50.340 --> 01:18:56.440 which is also sometimes racist, sexist, ableist, and a number of other 01:18:56.440 --> 01:19:04.940 ists. In addition, these texts are still influential. The Matthew version 01:19:04.940 --> 01:19:09.540 of this story will be preached about again in the Church of Norway the 5th 01:19:09.540 --> 01:19:18.540 of March this year. As Jorunn Öklund reasons, we cannot not inhabit of our father's house. 01:19:18.540 --> 01:19:25.940 Van der Stichel and Penner argue that the master's tools will not easily 01:19:25.940 --> 01:19:31.740 dismantle the master's house. It can only be done gradually brick by brick. 01:19:31.740 --> 01:19:39.540 I also suggest that perhaps it does not only come down to whether we destroy 01:19:39.540 --> 01:19:46.740 the master's house or let it stand, but how we use its spaces, how we use the 01:19:46.740 --> 01:19:53.940 tools. Who are invited in to use the tools in the house? How do they employ them? 01:19:53.940 --> 01:20:00.540 Do they also bring new tools? Do we tear down the fences around the garden and 01:20:00.540 --> 01:20:06.140 talk to our neighbors? Have a big table where we discuss and dialogue? Visit our 01:20:06.140 --> 01:20:15.840 neighbors and learn from them. I have analyzed Mark 7, 24 to 30 by employing 01:20:15.840 --> 01:20:21.740 intersectional blending. This analysis shows that the Syrophoenician wife might 01:20:21.740 --> 01:20:27.540 have been both vulnerable because of her ethnicity and a sick daughter and a rich 01:20:27.540 --> 01:20:33.440 elite wife. She might have been with or without formal education, enslaved or free, 01:20:33.440 --> 01:20:42.040 a stranger or a neighbor wife. When Jesus in his storytelling blends this wife and a 01:20:42.040 --> 01:20:47.640 sick little daughter as dogs, he engages stories about dogs as the adversaries of 01:20:47.640 --> 01:20:55.840 children. The wife tells a story about subordination with her body and words, but 01:20:55.840 --> 01:21:02.240 also takes over Jesus' storytelling. When she adds new stories about close 01:21:02.240 --> 01:21:07.040 relationships between dogs and children to the blend, the blended story and thus 01:21:07.040 --> 01:21:14.540 the outcome becomes a new one. Even though Jesus accepts her blended story and heals 01:21:14.540 --> 01:21:30.840 her daughter, the complex power and marginalization in the story endure. 01:21:30.840 --> 01:21:37.340 Here I stand in my father's and mother's house. I have analyzed an ancient complex 01:21:37.340 --> 01:21:44.840 text using both old and new tools. My embodied and embedded situations and concerns 01:21:44.840 --> 01:21:49.740 have shaped my analysis and interpretations. It might have made me emphasize some 01:21:49.740 --> 01:21:59.040 aspects of the text exceedingly or overlook others. I have also visited my intersectional 01:21:59.040 --> 01:22:05.940 neighbors, invited them in and tried to blend their interpretations with my own reading. 01:22:05.940 --> 01:22:11.240 Intersectional blending analysis of this text contributes to a more nuanced way of 01:22:11.240 --> 01:22:18.040 studying it than those analyzed by Kiel Saga and Ringe. Intersectional blending and 01:22:18.040 --> 01:22:24.540 asking the other question makes us aware of how understandings of ethnicity, class, 01:22:24.540 --> 01:22:30.240 marriage status, number of children, education, neighborhood, whether a character is 01:22:30.240 --> 01:22:37.140 enslaved or free, age, ability, bodies, and non-human characters intersect in this story 01:22:37.140 --> 01:22:44.740 and can be interpreted in different ways. It also helps me analyze what my positionality 01:22:44.740 --> 01:22:51.740 makes it hard for me to see. I have found it especially intriguing how this method enables 01:22:51.740 --> 01:22:59.940 us to study this text storytelling as intersectionally blended, as dependence on complex power and 01:22:59.940 --> 01:23:06.940 marginalization, and how first Jesus and then the wife blends the story about children, 01:23:06.940 --> 01:23:16.940 bread, and dogs with unlike embedded and embodied stories and thus get different outcomes. 01:23:16.940 --> 01:23:22.540 In addition, intersectional blending lets us see that all interpretation, including 01:23:22.540 --> 01:23:29.640 those of scholars, are embedded and embodied. Perhaps it has also made us find a new parable 01:23:29.640 --> 01:23:38.340 with interesting apparent and hidden intersectional female characters. The broader interpretational 01:23:38.340 --> 01:23:43.840 possibilities this approach allow for can also give rise to more nuanced identification 01:23:43.840 --> 01:23:53.540 figures and theologies. Now, I have told my intersectionally blended story. Later, other 01:23:53.540 --> 01:23:59.740 people will talk inside or outside the house. Thank you very much.