Hobby Lobby punked by fake Dead Sea Scrolls

I am SO FUCKING LAUGHING, as I tweeted, over confirmation that a set of 16 alleged Dead Sea Scrolls fragments at The Museum of the Bible, owned by Hobby Lobby prez Steve Green, are forgeries.

And crude ones at that.

Ancient leather. Yeah, it's ancient, but leather, not parchment.

Modern ink.

Some purchased from William Kando, son of the primary discoverer of the actual scrolls. Others may trace back to him indirectly. The independent researchers hired by the museum in 2017 to investigate believe, but aren't sure, that all the forgeries were created by the same person or persons.

I've mentioned it elsewhere as the "BAR effect."

That's as in Biblical Archaeology Review, which promoted Holy Land-itis among evangelical Christians and has long run a thriving display advertising service for antiquities, as well as running puff pieces on things like the fraudulent James Ossuary.

Evangelicals with big bucks were easy marks, as the Greens have proven on stolen antiquities looted from invaded Iraq, as well. As the National Geographic piece notes, the landscape changed after 2002. The invasion of Iraq was part of that change. And it wasn't just the Greens who bit.

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I will have a more technical piece on this story, including comments by the museum's chief curatorial officer, Jeff Kloha, whom I know personally, at my second blog.

Yahweh is an abortionist! Well, kind of sort of

Well, sort of, per Numbers 5, as Almighty God himself (no, really, he's on Twitter) reminded me recently.

I've read the passage more than once, though surely it's been more than a decade since I last looked at it and it didn't jump out then as an abortion proof text.

And, really, it's not.

As part of the Priestly Code section of the Tanakh, it's about purity in and of Eretz Israel. Within that, it's about extramarital sex and extramarital pregnancy, similar to the themes that Ezra articulates about Israel being married to non-Israelites.

But, within all of that, it does not only allow but commands the use of a potential abortifactant as a chemical version of medieval trials by fire or trials by water. I quote:

11 Then the Lord said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. … 

 16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you.20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”—21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.” … 

 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

There you are.

So, again, it's not about abortion per se. It's about ritual purity in general and sexual purity in particular.

And, note that it's about women as inferior.

There's no prescription for the cuckolded husband to bring "the other man" before a priest and to make HIM drink something that will make his nuts drop off if he has foisted a bastard child on the cuckold.

That said, it is pro-abortion in that it says that the life of an unborn baby or fetus counts even less than the wife of that woman.

So, it's sexist.

And, on ritual purity, coming from material edited by Ezra who told people to divorce foreign wives, it's arguably Zionist.

So, don't quote Jeremiah 1:15 and its "Before you formed, in the womb I knew you." Yahweh arguably knew the lesser life of the mother and the greater life of the father, too.

Besides, I'll quote back Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster."

And, beyond that, per Francisco Ayala and human conception's 25-35 percent spontaneous abortion rate, God IS the great abortionist if you believe he exists.

If same-sex marriage is OK, why not polygamy?

I know that in some corners of conservative Christianity, that's the rhetorical argument du jour against the Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage nationally last week. (That's if they've not already stooped to the ridiculous and claim bestiality or child marriage is next.)

First, especially for conservative Christians who always like that "Judeo" fig leaf on "Judeo-Christian values," er, your past religious heritage shoots you in the foot.

Many of the "heroes" of the Christian Old Testament/Jewish Tanakh had multiple wives. (Yes, technically that's polygyny, not polygamy, which cuts both ways and could also include multiple gay or lesbian marriages at once, but, usually, polygamy winds up as one man and several wives. So, we use polygamy throughout.)

But, Jesus said!

Erm, no he didn't, and claims that his comments disallowing divorce prove either that he was anti-polygamy or that polygamy no longer existed at his time simply aren't true. The actual Paul may have been anti-polygamy, and the pseudo-Paul who wrote the Pastoral Letters certainly was, but that's a different story.

However, while Greeks and Romans were one-spouse folks (not counting mistresses, of course), some sects of Judaism still allowed polygamy at the time of the New Testament.

As for today? There's religious freedom grounds for it, primarily for Islam, but also for the Fundamentalist LDS. And, while Ashkenazi have officially banned it for a millennium, Sephardi still accept it, and Orthodox among them still argue for it today. And, to really screw with fundy Christians, a "Messianic Jewish" rabbi practices it in London.  And, although legally banned, it's also practiced in Israel.

So, why shouldn't polygamy be legally protected? Fredrick de Boer offers an in-depth argument in support.

I agree. First, per my comment about mistresses, he says polyamory's been around as long as the "nuclear family." Beyond "mistresses," polyamory as all multiple relationships, none of them "legalized" by marriage, has been gaining steam.

Second, the legalization of same-sex marriage has refuted the old "for having kids" argument. Of course, older straights getting married has always been Argument No. 1 against that.

deBoer then notes that traditional marriages, like polygamous ones, can be havens of abuse. Duggar Family Values, anybody?

I would go beyond deBoer, at least what he explicitly mentions.

I would require a man or a woman wanting to enter a second or additional marriage to publicly disclose he's married to another person already. As it already generally is considered with no polygamy today, such failure to disclose would be legally considered fraud — and should be considered felony-level fraud

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For commenters or others who think this is "snark," it's not.

To go beyond my comment response to Joshuaism, most of the comment is red herring.

First, consent is "manufactured" in single marriages. Don't tell me you haven't heard of Indian-Americans still marrying the spouses their parents have arranged for them.

Second, the consent issue has nothing to do with incest, which I'll tackle separately.

Third, to elaborate on my comment about Macedo's Slate article, of course there can be one-to-one meeting on each marital partner in a plural marriage. Maybe there can't be one-to-one 100 percent meeting, but if you're expecting that, then you've got a definitely naive, possibly harmful "absolute soulmate" view of marriage in general. No marital partner should be, or should be expected to be, the 100 percent match, complement, "meeting" or whatever of another marital partner.

This expands on what I noted was of concern in Kennedy's ruling — the over-uplifting of marriage as more than it really is, or really should be expected to be.

For both him and possibly Katy, beyond the public health angle, I think the state can make a plausible, even compelling, public mental health angle against incestuous marriage. While questioning the over-uplifting of marriage, I don't want to over-devaluate it, either. And,  yes, especially with kids, the whole wrecking of the normal plot of extended family relations that an incestuous marriage would cause would be a public mental health concern.

Yes, the bible is anti-gay, contra deniers

For people coming here from the AcademicBiblical subreddit go here for updates, mainly a condensed version of my responses to Aractus, including links to the two journal pieces he cites … but, no, not directly to his comments.

And no, the New Testament part of the bible is DEFINITELY NOT “pro-gay.” Go here for refutation of someone making claims as groundless as some would-be amateur historians who have claimed Abe Lincoln secretly was teh gay. Or, even more, like claiming Lincoln was an atheist.

Updated in 2015 to note that Jesus' silence about homosexuality issues as an alleged mark of liberality actually doesn't necessarily mean that. See italicized section below for details, about 25 percent down. Or just click here.

There are several passages in both Old Testament/Tanakh and New Testament that have commonly been cited by Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, and Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox Jews (on the Tanakh side) as strongly condemning homosexuality.

Two similar and interconnected but not identical questions arise:
1. Are the passages that clear about what they're condemning?
2. Are they condemning homosexual desires/status/inclination or "just" individual acts of homosexual sex? (That's assuming the two are that delinkable.)

More on both of these, with a passage-by-passage overview of the biggies, below.

Now, I can understand liberal Christians (and to a lesser degree, liberal Jews against less animosity on the issue) wanting to say, no the bible doesn't say that. For liberal Christians, I can definitely understand them wanting to say the New Testament with Jesus, love, and other pablum, wanting to say that. (That ignores the fiery Jesus of Revelation, the Jesus of "I came to bring a sword, not peace," and other things.)

I can less understand a certain strand of atheists, whether gay or straight, who try to defend the Judeo-Christian scriptures. In fact, having read nonsense by one such person, defended by another on Facebook, that's the primary trigger for this post. (I refuse to link to the post, especially since its defender hauled back down the Facebook post that linked to the original blog post. If you can't stand the debate, while attacking me, you don't deserve or get the PR.)

Working in order of appearance, we'll start with Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. On the surface, this appears to be their destruction for wanting gay sex with the angels in disguise. However, with Genesis 18 as background, we learn that they've already been marked for destruction and Yahweh has not specified for what sin or sins. Therefore, I'm in agreement that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (which the blogger above didn't cite, anyway) is not about anti-gay issues.

The biggies, on the Old Testament side, though, are Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, two similar passages that list a range of prohibited sexual activities, most of which either explicitly or by implication are deemed worthy of death.

Leviticus 18:22 says: "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable."

Leviticus 20:13 says: "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Now, here's where our atheist blogger starts to get fun and funky. 

First, trotting out a German phrase from biblical scholarship, "Sitz im Leben," he claims that the priestly writer can't have been condemning homosexuality because it was never so condemned, and never singled out for condemnation, anywhere in the ancient Near East.

Well, "Sitz in Leben" just means "community setting." And, yes, religious books are written to particular communities in particular settings. However, the entire ancient Near East was NOT the SiL for Leviticus! To claim such makes a mockery of the whole idea.

Also, to claim that religious scriptures can never talk about an idea de novo, even for a true SiL, not a red herring one, is false. I cited for said blogger the example of Buddhism discussing new ideas, and old ideas in vastly new ways, as compared to the proto-Hinduism contemporary with the start of Buddhism.

Said blogger was obtuse enough to not grasp that one can list two separate and independent lines of logical argument in attack on the same point, first of all. Second of all, he appeared to simply not grasp what I said about Buddhism.

Second, in the same response to my comment on his blog, he claimed that the male-male sex in Leviticus was about forcible sex only!!!

That was an easy one to shoot down. In a second comment, I noted that none of the other passages implied force, just sexual acts, period. (I said I wasn't going to return to see his response.)

The person who posted his blog post to a Facebook group then made the claim that Orthodox Judaism has never had the same opposition to being gay (or lesbian), just opposition to actual acts, kind of like some Christian denominations, or Catholics on priests and acts. 

That said, beyond the lack of forcibility, the context of both Leviticus chapters, for all the forbidden acts, at least leaves open the possibility of interpreting them as ongoing relationships. And, overall, are sexual acts really that separable from sexual orientation, inclination, or "status"? Only if one expects gays to be celibate.

Beyond that, at the time of Jesus, many a Pharisee (while not rejecting the idea of unclean foods) would have agreed with him that what came out of the heart was the ultimate definer of purity, an idea Jesus also stresses in the Sermon on the Mount. That, too, would point at sexual inclination, not just individual acts.

One thing the blogger did not do with Leviticus, though I've seen it elsewhere, is claim that because only a male-male sexual act is mentioned, that means that the Old Testament is not anti-homosexual.

Hah!!!

Every sexual act in Leviticus is mentioned only from a male-initiator point of view. The reason lesbian sex isn't mentioned in Leviticus is because Leviticus is sexist in general.

Update, March 4, 2015: Now, per the update, what about Jesus? Details below the fold.

#Rick_Perry_False_Prophet: Pray harder

Time for a new Twitter-hashtagged header, even as I await Google Plus adopting hashtags.

The story behind that? Predictions of a new La Nina for Texas right around the corner are getting more insistent. And, it's clear, nearly four months on, that Perry's first round of calls for prayer didn't work.

Ergo, per tea partier-level logic? He's a false prophet.

And, as Deuteronomy 13 tells us, false prophets are supposed to be stoned to death.

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder ...  you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. ... You must purge the evil from among you. ... Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death.

Deuteronomy 18:20 makes this clearer and blunter:

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.

Beyond that, Zecharaiah 13:3 says people aren't supposed to be prophesying in general today:

And if anyone still prophesies, his father and mother, to whom he was born, will say to him, 'You must die, because you have told lies in the LORD's name.' When he prophesies, his own parents will stab him.

So, all good, bible-fearing Texans, you know what to do. Rick Perry has claimed to be a prophet, and used his call to prayer as an attempted sign. It's a false sign of the false god of the GOP and his ego.

So, start picking up stones. (And, contra John 7:53-8:11, if you accept the reality of climate change, you are without sin on this one.)

Meanwhile, back to the reality of science, not the false prophecy of making your ego a god.

Texas' peak wildfire season is in the fall. And, La Nina is supposed to return by November. For an already-parched state, that means more trouble. The National Weather Service is predicting a lot of gusty winds along with the increasing grip of the drought.

Computer software confirms 'documentary hypothesis

Ever since the idea was first proposed more than a century ago by Julius Wellhausen, nonfundamentalist biblical scholars (of course, fundamentalist, by self-definition, aren't full-fledged biblical scholars) have postulated, developed and refined a "documentary hypothesis" for the writing, then later editing together of various sections of the Torah/Penteteuch, or the first five books of the Tanakh/Christian bible, which the nonscholars allege was written by Moses.

The hypothesis says that a "Yahwist," called the J author because Wellhausen was German, and the J has the y-sound there, ja, wrote large chunks, especially of Genesis, that focus on the use of the divine name. Theoretically, this author lived about 900 BCE in the southern "kingdom" of Judah after a united Israel (if it existed, as Old Testament minimalists question) split.

Another author, writing slightly later, is the "Elohist" or E author. He allegedly wrote slightly later, from the post-split northern kingdom of Israel, which included Ephraim (an "E" help mnemonic, as Judah is for the "J").

Then, a third author, a "Deuteronomist," is posited as the primary author of the book of Deuteronomy, just in time for Josiah, king of Judah, to "discover" about 621 BCE.

Fourth, a "Priestly' author wrote down all the ritual observances, the first version of the Genesis creation story, the dietary laws and similar stuff, after leaders of Judah were carted off to exile in Babylon.

Some say this person may have lived later and been the scribe Ezra, of the book of that name. Some postulate an original priestly author, but Ezra as a major redactor.

Well, at least between the priestly and nonpriestly sections, new computer research confirms the division. That's despite this background:
Three of the four scholars are religious Jews who subscribe in some form to the belief that the Torah was dictated to Moses in its entirety by a single author: God.
Just a reminder that religious fundamentalism isn't limited to Christianity.

Anyway, the computer software found multiple authors elsewhere, not just in the Torah. The software sees multiple authors in Isaiah, as do critical scholars.

#RickPerry, Bible mangler

Gov. Helmethair, in trying to claim that big government is socialistic and we should rely on private enterprise, first mashes up two different biblical narratives into one, and then totally ignores they refute his point.

Perry claims that like Joseph in Egypt, or like the "Sabbath years" of Leviticus (it appears he's mangling two different things together), we need to sock away money for lean years.

However, he claims that if we don't we'll be slaves to the government.

Well, you asshat, Joseph was working for the government of Egypt. The Leviticus plan has Israel as state as well as church.

Oh, have some fun and crash the poll about Perry on the homepage of this newspaper.

Do you think Gov. Rick Perry should try a run for president of the United States?
Yes, he'd make a great president and could turn this country around.
No, he's more valuable guiding Texas the next three years.
No, Perry has been bad for the state and he'd be worse for the nation.

Need I say more?

Bible quiz! Marriage, sex and more!

No, not by a Gnu Atheist, but the eminently mainstream New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. That said, fundamentalist types, if they answer the simple questions by a blindered belief system, will fail.

Atheists know the bible better than Christians

Nope, no joke. (And, like other atheists, no, I'm not surprised, either.)

And, some of the results are just sad, for the people involved, that is. 45 percent of American Catholics, on the Eucharist, apparently think their church is Reformed, for example.

Here's why I think this is like this. Usually a convert has fuller knowledge than a lifelong adherent. Since Christians are a much bigger pool than atheists and agnostics, and also atheists and agnostics who "convert" to that want to know what they're converting from ...

Praying Glenn Beck doesn't know his Bible or Jesus

At his "Reinventing Himself" rally Saturday, among other inanities, monstrosities and pomposities, Glenn Beck exhorted the crowd to:

Recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us." He asked his audience to pray more. "I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see.

Just one problem.

Whereas Jesus said ...
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. ... When you pray, go into the room, close your door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. ... And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans.
So, there you have it, from Jesus' mouth to your ears. Glenn Beck is a hypocrite.

Bible study – Jesus was anti-capitalist

OK, in a previous Bible study, I said Jesus was clearly a socialist, not a capitalist.

But, Luke 16 takes it further; middle management gets the green light to cheat the “owners of the means of production.” Verses 1-9 have the details:

1Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'

3"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg— 4I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'

5"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'

6" 'Eight hundred gallons[a] of olive oil,' he replied.
"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'

7"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'
" 'A thousand bushels[b] of wheat,' he replied.
"He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'

8"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

But then (assuming there was an actual Jesus and these were, approximately, his actual words, some “law and order” editor, now called “Luke,” has to go spoil the whole parable, in verses 10-15:

10"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?

13"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

14The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. 15He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

Sorry, but Jesus the anti-capitalist didn’t say that at all.

Instead, let’s say you’re working for EDS as a middle manager. You electronically pencil-whip a bunch of doctors’ and clinics’ Medicare billings. In exchange, you get free plastic surgery for life, including a new boob job for that blonde bimbo you’re cheating on your wife with.

Bible study – Jesus was a SOCIALIST! (I think)

No, don’t let the success theologians, or the fundamentalists and others who are willfully wedded at the hip to the GOP, tell you Jesus is a capitalist.

Beyond the fact that capitalism as we know it today didn’t exist 2,000 years ago, the bible clearly shows us Jesus is a socialist. Or even a communist, for doorknob’s sake!

Matthew 20:1-16 clearly shows that:

1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5So they went.

"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'

7" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

8"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'

9"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

13"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

16"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

While Jesus doesn’t use Marx’s phrase, it’s arguable that Jesus had some version of “each according to his needs” in mind.

On the other hand, it’s arguable that he was an unregulated Gilded Age capitalist. If he says he has the right to pay whatever he wants, he obviously doesn’t believe in a minimum wage. By rebuking one of the early workers, he clearly doesn’t believe in unionism.

By hiring day laborers in the marketplace, he probably does believe in exploiting labor. Would probably have been OK with unrestricted illegal immigration by the Nabatean Arabs into Roman Palestine.

It’s certainly NOT arguable, though, in reference to the success theologians, that trying to make modern economic arguments and justifications from the bible is almost as inane as trying to do that by ID/creationism.

Kenneth Copeland refuses to ‘render unto Caesar’

Showing he has a highly selective reading of the Bible, including the words of Jesus himself, the Revvvvvv. Kenneth Copeland refuses to give the Senate Finance Committee copies of his IRS records.

“It’s not yours, it’s God’s, and you’re not going to get it,” Copeland says of his financial records.

Besides ignoring Jesus’ charge to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, Copeland forgot these words from Romans 13:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. … He who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. Rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but those who do wrong.

Kenneth Copeland, grade-A “religious” hypocrite.

Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers – my analysis

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor and the focus of right-wing inflamed controversy smears, including death threats, was on Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight in what will surely be Moyers’ top-rated show for some time. (See the Moyers blog for more.)

Wright overall was pretty good, and especially with the “God Damn America” sermon, Moyers did a nice segue/setup.

That said, while Moyers was certainly a sympathetic, and knowledgeable, interviewer, he didn't give Wright a 100 percent pass on his relations with Farrakhan or what he noted Wright mentor Martin Marty called Wright's “rough edges” and “abrasiveness.”

Here are some other observations of mine.

First, I now know more about where Wright gets his “black Jesus” ideas from. Early in the show, a clip from Wright’s church showed him claiming almost all the Bible takes place in Africa.

WRONG.

The Fertile Crescent/Middle East are in Asia. Indeed, “erev” and “assu” or similar are old words in Hebrew and related Semitic languages, and are of course the roots of “Europe” and “Asia.” (The Greek myth of Zeus and Europa was lifted from the Fertile Crescent.)

Wright was right, in many ways, about the “prophetic voice.” I’ve heard preachers both white and black have a voice like that for this-world prophetic justice. Beyond that, as for the church’s slogan, “Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” Wright had the quote of embracing Christianity without abandoning Africanity. That said, the motto was adopted under the pastor before Wright.

“Bad,” and more seriously from my small American minority point of view, came back, though.

Wright, as with Arianna Huffington, whom I blogged about earlier this week, though not so explicitly, seemed to indicate religious belief was necessary to find meaning in and give meaning to life.

WRONG.

And, that’s not just a white atheist guy saying that.


Meet The Infidel Guy, Reginald Finley, arguably America’s top black atheist. I know he would have the same condemnation.

Anyway, Wright then spoke in more detail about the “God damn America” book. First, getting back to that prophetic voice, the voice of people like Amos and Hosea, or the blessings and curses (or conDE/AMNnations, if you will) of Deuteronomy, he said religious leaders are supposed to, per their tradition, challenge government.

Of course, politically and socially conservative white evangelical churches are clueless about that in the pews, in large part from preachers who refuse to engage in such condemnations, unless it’s the hot-button issue of abortion or gays.

But, Wright spelled out the results of that.

When you start confusing God and government … you’re in serious trouble. (It’s like), ‘My government, right or wrong.’

The sermon clip was complete enough to show Wright explaining how the Roman government of Jesus’ time and the British Empire of a century ago both failed, then making a segue to the failures of American foreign policy before coming to the “God damn America” line.

I have a linguistic hair to split, though. Wright would have been better saying “God damnS America” to make that point clear.

Moyers also had Wright talk through the sermon he gave the Sunday after 9/11, where he used Psalm 137 as his text, the famous “By the waters of Babylon” psalm, for those of a Judeo-Christian background. It is called that from its opening line, which sets the words of the psalm on the lips of Jewish exiles in the Babylonian captivity under its King Nebuchadrezzer (the actual name of the biblically misrendered “Nebuchadnezzar”).

Anyway, here’s the last line of that psalm, Wright’s sermonic cornerstone:

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us —
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against a rock.

Wright told Moyers he was speaking to the people of his church who, like many other Americans, wanted revenge after 9/11. He said the psalm showed they had biblical precedent for feeling that way, but that the Bible called people beyond that to growth.

But, one problem, not just of Wright, but of about any Christian minister or Jewish rabbi. The psalm itself ends with that as the last verse. Before a “bible,” or an Old Testament/Tanakh, or even a book called “Psalms,” or even one its five original separate books, was assembled, that psalm was read alone.

As a cry for vengeance.

Later on, Wright mentioned racism in all sorts of holy books, not just the Bible, but also places like the Babylonian Talmud and the Hindu Vedas. (And he’s right.) He also mentioned problematic passages, like the Levite of Judges 19 who has a concubine then abandons her to be gang-raped to death.

But, he ignored something like the holocaust Yahweh himself expressly commanded in I Samuel 15, in talking about Psalm 137.

No, Rev. Wright (and 99 percent of other preachers), your God was originally understood and embraced as a God who wanted vengeance. The author of that psalm understood that.

So, Wright did a pretty good job of selling his theology. And, by that, I mean Christian theology, not just black Christian theology. But, that “prophetic voice” has some devil’s tritone clarion calls.

Bible as literature in public schools? Yeah, but look who’s behind the idea

It’s gay-baiting Texas State Sen. Warren Chisum who’s pushing this baby, so when he claims this is to treat the Bible as only literature “and not a worship document”, don’t believe him for a second.

Besides, IMO, this still runs into church-state separation First Amendment issues if the Bible is the only scripture so treated. (And, please do NOT trot out the “Judeo” fig leaf of “Judeo-Christian” beliefs, scriptures, etc., because it is, ultimately, just that — a fig leaf.)

So, if I counter Chiusm by saying, fine, let’s also teach the Quran as literature, including the sections about jihad, or if I say, fine, let’s teach the Norse Elder Edda, about Ragnarok and Valhalla, what then?

First, I’ll say, let’s teach the Bible as myth (by literary definition), alongside the others. Then let’s watch him blow his stack.

Then, I’ll say, Warren, are we going to have kids reading Song of Songs? The passage in Genesis where Lot is willing to substitute his daughters to rape rather than visiting angels? The passage in Judges where a man abandons his concubine, then, after finding her raped to death the next day, dismembers her body and sends pieces around tribal Israel as a cry to jihad of his own? The chapter after that, where the tribe of Benjamin is left so male-decimated they are officially encouraged by other tribes to abduct women from a village that didn’t show up for battle, as a means to replenish their numbers?

So, yes, Warren Chisum, Bible as literature? Bring it on. I’ll go get my teaching certification and gladly teach the most juicy parts as literature.

What a nutbar.