book report: The Galilee Episode by Goetz (2020)

Here is the quick summary. This book is a 5 star thesis with a 2 star execution. Great ideas benefit from great editors. I really hope Ronald Goetz's book, The Galilee Episode, gets picked up by a real publisher with an editorial team to cut this rough gem into a thing of beauty it deserves.

Goetz's spiritual journey started at a young age, resulting in Bible college and 15 years in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination then in the United Methodists for the past 30 years or so. At some point he saw this passage in Luke 17 with new eyes.

34 I tell you, on that night two men will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.

I have to say I never thought of these passages in their plain reading before myself, but in the fundamentalist goggles I inherited. Why are two guys sharing a bed at night? Maybe because they are gay partners. And did you know "grinding" is not slang for sex in just the urban dictionary, but is actually common  across cultures ancient and current. Even the ancient greeks talked about the women on Lesbos "grinding at their mills" in a double entendre sense. I learned all this from Goetz's deep research. 

Goetz's research is its strength and its weakness. He dives into linguistic history, Torah studies, Josephus' Jewish histories and Q studies. All of this I appreciate but it confounds the book's identity and it's audience. An editor could help him write two books, a shorter, personal narrative, less technical and more popular book focused on the Bible and a longer, more detailed, dissertation level book. Unfortunately, he tries to do both and does not succeed in either. Take myself for example, I studied New Testament Greek for two years in seminary, so I can understand his Bible research and his Greek linguisitics, but everything he offers on Q studies and Josephus and contemporary Pharisees of Jesus according to the Talmud, I have no reference for, and can only assume his assertions are correct. Coming out of decades of fundagelical apologetics, I am averse to that kind of writing anymore. On the other hand, a doctoral dissertation would engage more than he does with contrary literature and assertions to provide a more rounded discussion around his thesis. 

What is his thesis? Jesus used examples of persecution of mixed gay couples in contemporary Galilee by zealous Pharisees who were allowed to snatch the Jewish "offender" but not the Gentile who was protected by Roman law and the Governor at the time, Philip the Tetrarch. When the story is told in Matthew's gospel (24:40), it is tidied up a little, men are in a field, not a bed, so as not to offend the conservative Jewish audience it is directed towards. The men could be in the field at night, when harvesting is not happening, but Matthew's gospel leaves out the time frame. The point being, Jesus does not take the opportunity to condemn gay coupling, but to beware of religious persecution, a rapture to jail and a stoning, not a rapture to heaven. Goetz also notes the two references to Sodom in Luke never condemn the homosexuality but the inhospitality which is even worse for Jesus' emissaries in Luke 10:11-13.

Goetz does not do a good job boiling down his thesis like I did here. The details are overwhelming and their utility to the thesis are not always explained, but assumed or referenced later. His writing is strongest when he writes his personal narrative of discovery. His popular book, if he were to get it republished should focus on his skill in this area. Unfortunately, in a book collated from a blog written over years, a writing style changes as well, so the last chapter mentions "primates" frequently when referring to people. The use of primates is his style in his latest blog posts, but comes out of nowhere in the book. An editor would help with style cohesion. There are numerous typos and a few sentences that were missing verbs, not making sense. Obviously, poor editing bothers me, and it happens even in books by the big publishers. But one of his made me laugh out loud. Eschatological theology looks to the end of times. But on page 153 Goetz accidentally writes, "Christian scatologists simply harmonized..." I do not think there is a branch of Christian theology focused on shit. =)

I want Geotz to rewrite this book with an editor. His thesis deserves a better package than what he's put together here.

  

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.