#GruntGod ch.11 (Joan and Gender)
The eleventh installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Every chapter I cut good material to keep it moving for readers who just want the story. This week you get what got cut — the grammar, the Greek, the history — one post a day at 0800, building toward the chapter's actual claim: Scripture never made maleness a condition of command, and most of what did was added later by people with something to protect.
This week: five posts, one theme, straight from the "Joan and Gender" chapter of God Is a Grunt, 2nd edition.
Here's what's coming
Monday, 2.11.1 — "Does God Have Lady-Sperm? What Hebrew Grammar Actually Says" Genesis calls God's breath a feminine noun. The word for "human" isn't a man's name. Abba means "dad," not "biologically male deity." None of this is a stretch — it's the plain grammar most translations quietly paper over. This one lays out the actual case behind a line I toss off in one sentence in the book.
Tuesday, 2.11.2 — "The Judges Who Don't Get the Sunday School Treatment" Deborah wasn't Barak's co-pilot — she was his commanding officer, and the text says so in plain language most flannelgraphs skip. Then there's Jael and the tent stake, and the uncomfortable counterexample of Athaliah, because I'm not interested in a version of this argument that only works when it's convenient.
Wednesday, 2.11.3 — "The Women Who Founded Your Church and Got Written Out of the Org Chart" Lydia bankrolled the first church in Europe. Priscilla corrected a trained preacher's theology so thoroughly that some scholars once thought she wrote a book of the New Testament. The early church's actual leadership chart runs through their houses, not around them.
Thursday, 2.11.4 — "Phoebe Was a Commander, Not a Casserole Committee" The one I fought hardest to keep in the main chapter and cut anyway. Paul hands his most important letter to a woman he calls a diakonos and a prostatis — words that mean "ruler" and "one who commands" everywhere else Paul uses them. Most English Bibles translate her into a nice lady with a checkbook instead. I make the case, and I show my work on where the argument is genuinely contested.
Friday, 2.11.5 — "From Welsh Wizard to French Battlefield: A 500-Year-Old Prophecy Finds Joan of Arc" The short, strange one. A mad Welsh prophet, a pseudo-history of Britain, and two hundred years of rumor later, a court mystic tells the king of France that an old legend points at one specific forest near one specific farm girl. Doesn't make Joan's calling less real. Should make you more careful about calling any of this simple.
All five are drawn from material cut during the book's second-edition revision — too good to lose, too academic for the main chapter. If you're here for the scholarly side of this project, this week is for you.
First post drops Monday at 0800.
Chapter 9 of the #GruntGod Season Pass will include:
📝 A revised chapter exploring Joan and gender.
🎨 An original digital icon of Joan the Beast—part of the GruntGod Icon Series
🎧 A high-quality, ad-free MP3 download of the podcast episode, featuring exclusive insights from [Sarah Heath?].
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