Instructor: Matt Albanese

The Obscene Realm: Vulgarity, Profanity, and Euphemisms in a Biblical Worldview

Sharp disagreement exists regarding how Christians should speak. Surely Paul prohibits corrupting talk, filthiness, and crude joking. And even though certain sins and vices are not even to be named, the Corinthian correspondence is no prudish stroll through the local Christian bookstore. From beginning to end, the Bible portrays the vulgar and obscene without hesitation. Genesis narrates sexual misconduct without a blush. And the supper of God in Revelation serves up a course of human remains. What about the prophets? They don’t hold back. Have you read Jeremiah and Ezekiel? It’s gross.

Should Christians resemble and enact the Bible’s own approach to evocative expression and speech, or should they maintain its ethic and do away with its form? Do the Scriptures require full embodiment of tota biblia, or should we keep the kernel and remove the husk? This Theopolis course on the Obscene Realm explores Scriptural testimony on this topic and assesses a groundwork for thinking about the world of pervasive obscenity–dysphemism–in the Bible, and how euphemism is the normative example of expression. Until it isn’t. And when the Scriptures aren’t euphemistic, they hit readers and hearers with direct and explicit content concerning physical maladies, excreta, and sexual misconduct. In other words, the Bible knows how to covenant curse.

The course is structured around a survey of contemporary figures and discussions about sarcasm, satire, mockery, and profanity in Christian discourse. It provides literary and theological prolegomena for addressing the issues and then surveys the euphemistic expressions for biblical obscenities. Students will explore how the gospel is at its core obscene with a euphemistic head-and-heel protoevangelium. Before concluding with a theological and practical model for how, when, and if to covenant curse, the course explores the textual history of the Bible, the history of interpretation, and how explicit biblical vulgarity has been softened in biblical manuscripts and printed editions. Alongside Scriptural testimony we should not practice unwholesome speech. Christians are to be irenic in spirit. But with Ecclesiastes, we should not be too righteous. There is a time for all things under the sun. And our discourse can be serrated at its edge.

Join us March 12-14 for several days of study, worship, conversation, and conviviality.

This course will be held at Third Presbyterian Church, located at 617 22nd St S, Birmingham, AL 35233.

Matthew J. Albanese (DPhil, University of Oxford) is assistant professor of Biblical Studies at Union University in Jackson, TN. His primary research interests include the literatures, languages, and textual histories of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. He is the author of the recent SBL Press monograph Translation Technique and Literary Structures in Greek Isaiah 13:1-14:23.

Register HERE.

Theopolis Institute admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies or scholarship programs.

*This requirement was added in July 2016. For those who entered the Certificate Program earlier than that date, the oral examination is voluntary.