I’m onto Chapter 2 of this book now, I’ve started this new thread because the first one got Very Long and the tweets kept detaching themselves . You can view it in this tweet https://twitter.com/god_loves_women/status/1382751107928178689

This chapter is titled “Covering Up Sexual Abuse: An Ecclesial Tendency from the Earliest Years of the Jesus Movement?”

The author is focussed on Mark’s Gospel and states “The say the evangelist [Mark] portrays Jesus speaks into the situations that Mark’s householders face. One of these is sexual abuse.” HMMMMMMMMM

His argument: The disciples “rebuke” the children being brought to Jesus. The language of rebuke is “the language of exorcism”. The author characterises this as the disciples seeing the kids & their carers as “demonic” & seeing themselves as “entitled to treat kids abusively.”

It feels like a bit jump from a story about the disciples shooing away the children to THE DISCIPLES SAW THE CHILDREN AS DEMONIC AND FELT ENTITLED TO ABUSE THEM (particularly as no abuse is reported in the text). But, I’m not a Biblical scholar...

The author asserts that in Mark’s Passion narrative the Roman’s violence towards Jesus is “sexually implicit & shameful. It leads to the ultimate act of Jesus’ sexual humiliation in his death.” No evidence is given for this assertion that sexualises the crucifixion.

This framing feels a bit like when a woman is wearing clothes they like and a man sexualises her; when she objects he says “well what do you expect when you’re wearing THAT?” And suddenly her clothes (and she) becomes sexualised, because that’s how the man is reading it.

She doesn’t perceive herself as sexual, she’s dressed in clothes she likes and suddenly feels all tainted by the sexualised reading of her by the pervy man. This sexualising of the crucifixion feels a bit like that. Yes, it was horrific. No it wasn’t sexual.

Apparently “the sexual innuendos of the scene [Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ torture] are heightened. He is naked...covered only in a purple cloak. Even this is ‘stripped’ from him...the mockery & humiliation. The scene is one of sexual abuse.” No evidence underpins this assertion.

I have been sexually abused, both in adulthood and childhood. 100s of women (& some men) have shared with me stories of being sexually violated. I write resources on sexual violence that enable women & girls to realise they were sexually abused & to recover from sexual abuse.

The torture of Jesus in NO WAY fits with any of my experience or expertise on sexual abuse. It was horrific. At points He was stripped & naked. But that doesn’t make it sexual abuse. To make categorical statements that it is misunderstands sexual abuse on a Very Deep level.

Apparently Jesus’ nakedness on the cross is “a high point of Mark’s story & a low point of humiliation and sexual shaming of the evangelist’s central figure.” Yes He was humiliated, but THE PRESENCE OF NAKEDNESS IS NOT IN AND OF ITSELF “SEXUAL SHAMING”. ARGHHHHHHHHH.

By the way, please feel free to mute this thread, this is a link on how to do this https://www.howtogeek.com/667543/how-to-mute-twitter-threads-on-iphone-android-and-the-web/