Political Gridlock and Presidential Politics

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 1 September 2011 3 Comments
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Question

I heard you speak in Charlotte last October at Myers Park Baptist Church and thoroughly appreciated you and your books.  I have bought two sweet young pygmy goats to help me with the weeding on our four acres.  I have never had anything more than a dog or a cat as a pet so this is an adventure of sorts.  I know many folks raised around livestock do not have the same appreciation that I do for this inquisitive, alert creature.  I have even started a goat blog to share our experiences. (Don’t worry, I am a middle school counselor during most of the year and my husband is in law enforcement. - we do have other things to do in our life!)  My concern is how the Bible characterizes goats as opposed to sheep. Don’t laugh, okay, laugh if you must…but I don’t think from what I’ve found they are getting a fair personality assessment.  YOU are the man I’d like to hear from about how this negative reputation for goats in the bible came to be. I bet it’s another of man’s distortions or perceptions at the time scripture was written.  I’d love to see your response to this—wonder if your audience would be interested.  I enclose a picture of my goats for your enjoyment.  Keep on with your marvelous work.

Answer

Dear Debbie,

I’ve never been asked about the image of goats in the Bible before, so thank you for forcing me to expand my thinking.  In my career there are very few questions that I haven’t had to confront previously, but yours is quite new.  My sources turned up very little, but I will share what I have learned.

Goats are more independent than sheep, more adventuresome and thus harder to manage and control.  That may be the source of some of the negativity.  Goats are strong minded creatures and are, therefore, not good followers.  The Church and its leadership have always preferred passive sheep-like lay people and clergy.  Goats seem to like freedom and do not like being confined.

The reason the sheep and the goats have to be separated at night– as the shepherd was said to do in the parable of the Judgment in Matthew 25 – is that goats need to be kept warm at night and are therefore housed inside while sheep prefer the open air.  In biblical times, sheep also cost more than goats since sheep had more uses, producing both wool and meat, so they were thought of more highly.  Economic value, I suspect, is part of the biblical system that accorded a higher worth to a sheep than to a goat.

I have also read that goats are symbolic of sexuality, sexual desire and even lechery.  This reference came to me from one who is supposed to be an authority on dreams and dream analysis and I do not know how to evaluate its correctness, but if that is true the church has historically tried to repress and to devalue all sexual feelings..  Perhaps we see an echo of this when a man who makes women feel sexually uncomfortable is referred to as “an old goat.”

In the Bible a goat is also mentioned in Leviticus as part of the Yom Kippur Liturgy.  The goat is the creature upon which the sins of the people are symbolically laid before it is driven out of the assembly.  The goat is thus the sin bearer that carries the people’s sins with it into the exile of the wilderness, leaving the people sinless and virtuous.  This image may also have led to the biblical negativity toward goats.

We refer in our vernacular to a grouchy person as someone from whom another has “gotten his goat.”  In tracing down this image, I discovered that it came from the custom of placing a goat into the stall of a nervous horse because of the goat’s calming influence. If the goat was removed prematurely the horse became or remained irritable.  So we say of a nervous and irritable human being that “someone must have gotten his goat.”

Boil all of this down and perhaps we might find some clues to explain the Bible’s negativity toward goats.

For what it is worth, I also learned in my research that the tail of the sheep is made up primarily of suet.  I do not know what that proves, but it was something I did not know before and so I pass it on.

I’m not sure that sheep come off in the Bible or in our culture with a very positive reputation either.  They are not considered to be particularly bright.  Sheep are followers not leaders and are referred to as “dumb sheep.”  I’m not sure that the traditional image of clergy as shepherds and the congregation as sheep is a very positive image!

Hope this helps.  Enjoy your new pets.  Thanks for sending me their pictures and yours.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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