603F Summer 2025 The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality: What it Does NOT Say

This course will investigate what the Bible (Old and New Testaments) actually says about human gender and sexuality. The Bible is invoked, used, and abused by a variety of groups from the religious right to marginalized communities, in an effort to support their positions, picking and choosing. It is a complex book, written, collated, and edited over a thousand years (ca.700BC—300AD), by authors, overwhelmingly male, literate and influential. This course will set the Bible firmly in its religious and cultural contexts from the ancient Near East to the Greco-Roman period. Issues of gender roles, marriage, rape, abortion, and LGBTQ+ matters will be considered along with questions of authority, influence, and belief. As the British author L. P. Hartley noted in The Go-Between, “The past is another country, they do things differently there.” 

John Barclay Burns, a native Scot, was educated at the universities of St. Andrews (MA, PhD) and Glasgow (BD). A Presbyterian pastor of churches in Scotland, Canada (Toronto), and Fairfax (Providence Church), he joined the Religious Studies faculty at George Mason in 1986, where he is emeritus faculty.