Episode 215 (Transcript): Let's Talk About Shibboleths

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Annie Colon, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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TEASER INTRO

SH: And I am just going to say that shibboleths basically are about boundary maintenance. That's why they exist, right? It's the who's in and who's out question. And why is it important to know that? I think it's, I, well, okay, we're gonna, we'll talk about pros and cons in a minute. But basically I think human beings are addicted to this stuff.

I think we're tribal, you know, underneath. When you really get down to it all, we're tribal people. And we're all about line drawing.

EPISODE

CW: Hi, I'm Cynthia Winward. 

SH: And I'm Susan Hinckley. 

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things. And the title of today's episode is, Let's Talk About Shibboleths. 

SH: I'm excited for this conversation because I will tell you why. Ever since I found out what a shibboleth is, which I don't know when that was.

Sometime in the past 10 years, believe it or not.

CW: Same. 

SH: All the Bible scholars in the room are rolling their eyes now at us but I, it was something I just didn't, it was a concept I didn't really hear anything about I guess, you know my whole life in the church. And then as soon as I found out that word, I was like, yes, I have a word to describe all of these things that I've experienced as a member of the church.

It was just, it was one of those light bulb moments where like tons of things suddenly make sense to me about my experience, and it was all summed up in one word. So I'm really happy that we're finally getting around to talking about it. 

CW: Well, I remember a few months ago, I think, when I first brought up the idea, I was like, Hey, Susan, would you want to have an episode on this?

Before I could finish the sentence, you were like, Oh, I'm showing up for that one. So obviously, Susan, you do like this topic, because it did sum up so much, I think, of our Latter Day Saint experience in one word. So, tell us what a shibboleth is. I'm sure we have some listeners who are like, huh?

SH: Yeah, I think so, because I told my husband, yeah, we're recording on shibboleths this week, and he said, I don't know what that is. And the thing you have to understand about my husband is that he listens to churchy podcasts about half of his life. And so not just our church, but from wider Christianity, right?

And with a specific focus on Old Testament, that's sort of his thing. So when he looked at me and said, I don't know what that is, I thought, okay, you know what? Our listeners also are going to say, I don't know what that is. So I think we should go right to the Bible and pull it right out of there.

And this is a story that comes from Judges and it is two verses in Judges 12, verses five and six. “And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; That the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; 

“Then said they unto him, Say now, Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. 

CW: Whoa. 

SH: Right? It was a very successful sorting method, obviously.

But so I want to point out right here at the beginning that I feel like 42,000 is a lot of people felled by this little test. 

And I say that because I think a lot of Latter Day Saints have been felled by a culture that raises bars everywhere for members to be measured and to measure each other against.