Eat the Bible

REELigion ... My Take on "Captain America" and the Death of Khal Drogo

2011-08-04T14:25:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, my good friend Patton Dodd, editor over at Patheos.com--a very slick, ecumenical web site on faith and religion--asked if I'd begin contributing to a new religion and film blog they're hosting. I'm a pushover when it comes to seeing my words in print, so I agreed. Hence, every once in a while, I'll devote my weekly Eat the Bible blogging to this new site, REELigion.

This week, I submitted a post on religion--or lack thereof--in the new Captain America film. Check it out!

But don't just go to REELigion for me; other luminaries in the field--among them Bradley Herling, Martyn Oliver, and Mr. Dodd himself--will occasionally contribute. And they're all a lot smarter and funnier than I am.

Exodus 3: Can We Say that God Is Good?

2011-07-28T16:56:00.001-04:00

As part of a book project, I've been picking through David Blumenthal's deeply challenging post-Holocaust theology, Facing the Abusing God. Perhaps I'll get to his argument in a later post, but I've been meditating on Blumenthal's reminder that Maimonides, the great 12th-century Jewish philosopher and theologian, contends that God is without attributes. More simply, God is so thoroughly beyond comprehension that we may not simply stick adjectives to his name. We may not say that God is "mighty," or that God is "present," or that God is "powerful," because these modifiers constrain a deity whose being is beyond human expression.

In making such a statement, Maimonides takes part in what comes to be known as "negative theology." Simply put--and perhaps too simply put--negative theology starts with the premise that God is so beyond our wildest imagination that we can only say what He is not. As a consequence, the most effective theologies may deal in negation, paradox, contradiction, and perhaps even in skillfully deployed silence.

It occurred to me, however, that Maimonides's argument is prefigured by a very early Biblical text, Exodus 3, in which God "introduces" himself to his first prophet, Moses. Here are the relevant lines:

"But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you," and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am'. He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you."’"

The Divine Name as rendered here is "I am who I am"--an evasive nomenclature if ever there was one--and we likely do not envy Moses his task. At worst, God's name feels redundant, repetitive, and frankly, dismissive. Here, I always picture God as the tired executive, lounging back in his desk chair, knees crossed, waving his hand in a slow circle. He might be talking a little bit like the Godfather, too.

However, this gnomic utterance--"I am who I am"--is not the only available translation of the Hebrew original, ehyeh asher ehyeh. In the King James Version of the Bible, Exodus 3:14 names God as "I am that I am." This rendering has allowed generations of English-speaking scholars to suggest that in this passage, God is defining himself as Being--pure essence.

But when I teach this text, I always say what my Bible professors taught me: Biblical Hebrew does not make a clear-cut distinction between the present tense and the future tense. Thus, one may acceptably translate this name of God as "I will be what I will be," a version that gets us back to Maimonides and negative theology. With this third naming, we learn that we cannot name God; only God can name God.

We cannot say what God is, or what God "will be." Only He can.

Such heady statements may lead to some downright frightening conclusions. Because for the purest of negative theologians, God is not "loving," or "compassionate," or "rational," or--most disturbing of all--"good." God is only "what he will be." And we are not privy to what this "what" is.

Job 38: "The Tree of Life" and the Voice from the Whirlwind

2011-07-13T10:29:00.001-04:00

In my heart of hearts, I consider myself a true cinephile. My credentials are sterling: I trashed Titanic when it won the Oscar, I claim to understand the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for many years, I wrote reviews of movies made for teen girls for a newspaper I like to call "the Grey Lady"--The Kalamazoo Gazette. (Is that nickname already taken?)

So it was with chagrin that I recently realized I had never seen anything by Terrence Malick, the reclusive American auteur. (I may have slept through Thin Red Line in college, but even I won't count that.)

And thus, it was with head humbly dipped that I trooped down to the Kendall Square Cinema last week to salvage my reputation and watch The Tree of Life, Malick's most recent film and a newly minted Palme d'Or winner. (If you don't know what that is, I'm not going to tell you; I'm a real movie guy.)

Tree is a hybrid film. Half mid-century, father-son drama, half cosmological speculation, it juxtaposes scenes of family life in rural Texas with sublime panoramas of the universe in flux--stars, planets, suns, and nebulous gas clouds. Brad Pitt--playing an overbearing father of three--shares the screen with a small herd of CGI dinosaurs, if not at the same time. This idiosyncratic fusion has caused some viewers to walk out of the theater after minutes. (Though I've got a name for them--pansies.)

Now first, know that Tree isn't nearly so avant garde as those early exiters would have you believe; we're not watching David Lynch here. Nonetheless, any honest effort to interpret the film must reconcile its two major strands: the celestial and the domestic. But with a little help from the Bible, I believe that it's not so hard a job as you might think. Here's why ...

Malick opens the film with a brief quote from the book of Job. The translation he chooses reads, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (38:4,7)

He then dives into his tale. The opening fifteen minutes are dominated by two images: first, a mother (played by the luminous Jessica Chastain, shown above) receiving word that her son, a soldier, has died; second, a stellar explosion that most reviewers read as the Big Bang. The rest of the film plays out both moments.

In one half, Malick delivers the pre- and post-history of that military death. In the other half, we get a de facto history of the universe, from the first explosion to the primordial goo to early fish creeping onto land to velociraptors to ... well, I could go on.

It is the book of Job that bridges the gap between the two.

Job, of course, is the story of a man afflicted by God. After losing his riches and then his children in a string of not-so-freak accidents, Job sits down in a pile of ashes to lament his sorry state. And the next thirty-five chapters of harrowing debate boil down to a simple question: Why? Job, you see, is a good man, a righteous man, and a man of God. That his life should be so devastated seems, to him, tragic--or at least tragically unfair.

However, the miracle of the book is that Job, unlike all who suffer today, receives an answer from the deity. In a passage that many simply call "the voice from the whirlwind," God takes four chapters (38-41) to respond in detail to Job's complaint. They open with the following verses, from which Malick takes his epigraph:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man, I will you question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements--surely you know!
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings started for joy?" (Job 38:2-7)

These verses--and the hundred-odd that follow--give Job a God's-eye view of his own suffering. "Your torment feels big," God seems to say; "Well, let me show you big." So God takes Job to the beginning of the universe, challenges him with the mystery of life, escorts him to the peak of the world and to the depths of the abyss. And Job is hushed by the comparison.

Malick, I believe, does the exact same thing with us; he shows us poignant loss and weighs it against the whole universe. Halfway through, I was ready to retitle the film Job: The Movie; the answers that Malick provides to the thorny questions of human suffering are downright Biblical.

Ah, but are those answers persuasive? I'll leave that question for another day.

Herman Cain, Keith Ellison, Sharia, and the Bible

2011-04-06T23:15:00.002-04:00

Have you heard of Herman Cain? No? Well, that's fine. Don't read any further; I'm not sure I want to give him any more coverage than he's already stolen.

Cain, a Republican, is a former Federal Reserve Bank chair and Godfather's Pizza CEO who's been able to grab a few headlines by forming a presidential exploratory committee. As soon as a Palin or a Romney or even a Pawlenty throws his or her hat in the ring, we'll stop hearing about him. But for now, we must be submitted to his blather.

The latest of which is an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham in which Cain claims that he'd never put a Muslim in his cabinet. Now, Cain will never have a cabinet that doesn't hang on his kitchen wall, but I digress ... here's the clip in full:

Cain goes on to argue that he doesn't trust Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, himself a Muslim, because Ellison swore his oath of office on a copy of the Qur'an. The Minnesota Independent delivers Cain's full quote in a recent article: "If you take an oath on the Qur’an, that means you support Sharia law. I support American law." Sharia is Muslim legal thinking--a set of juridical principles drawn from legal speculation on the Qur'an.

(Oklahoma's state legislature recently passed a bill that bans the use of sharia law in state courts. Here's slate.com's recent coverage. If you're wondering, no one had ever tried to use sharia law in Oklahoma, but legislators wanted to stay ahead of the game. Rumor has it they've also tried to pass bills pre-emptively curtailing efforts to name cricket the official state sport and gayness the official state sexuality.)

Now, Ellison doesn't support the promulgation of sharia in the United States. Like most American Muslims, he's pretty happy with American law. But that's not my beef with Cain. My problem is Cain's seeming ignorance of the fact that the Bible also features a very explicit set of legal principles--the Torah--most of which we no longer follow.

His flawed logic suggests that because Ellison swore an oath on the Qur'an, he will necessarily seek to subject all Americans to its strictures. By extension, then, every American legislator who has sworn an oath on the Bible must then be similarly bound to try to pass its laws.

But I have yet to hear of Paul Ryan proposing legislation that makes chicken farms illegal (Deuteronomy 22:6). And I don't think that Nancy Pelosi has any plans to make adultery punishable by stoning (Deut. 22:22). And as of yet, Mitch McConnell has never tried to ram through a bill that mandates the construction of parapets on all new buildings (Deut. 22:7). But now that I think of it, I have seen him carrying around lots of suspicious blueprints lately ...

Of course, you probably knew all this already, and I'm probably just blowing hot air now. I'll stop, but for the love of dog, I hope Cain will stop talking soon too.

Exodus 28: God Does Play Dice

2011-03-30T12:29:00.001-04:00

Last week was my first "off" week from Eat the Bible in nearly a year. Are you impressed with my resolve? My consistency? My reliable effort? Me too.

But I've got a great reason for my brief hiatus: I went to Vegas last weekend to relearn all the hard and soft lessons that city has to teach. I relearned that blackjack will kill you. I relearned that basketball games are exponentially more fun to watch when you've got money riding on them. I relearned that table service is obscenely expensive, and obscenely worth it. I relearned that my body definitely doesn't need eight hours of sleep per night. And then I relearned that my body absolutely needs eight hours of sleep per night.

Katy Perry (image from www.chicstories.com)

But this year, I also learned something new:

I love craps! I love the crowd of people. I love making change with the dealer. I love the sure weight of clay chips. I love the fleeting feel of the felt. I love the absurd "strategies" that other players use to place their bets. I love the long wagers.

But most of all, I love throwing the dice. Man, do I love throwing the dice.

Most sane people believe that the dice throw in craps is entirely unpredictable--that an impossible combination of gravity, friction, muscle memory, and momentum delivers results that, from our perspective, can only be random. But it takes all of four seconds at the craps table to see that most players believe they have real power to affect the outcome of each roll. Every veteran player has a unique ritual designed to avoid a seven, or hit the point, or pull a hard eight. (Harper's Magazine ran a fantastic feature on this phenomenon back in 2008.)

I now have one too. I like standing on the flat side of the table, to the left of the croupier. When the stick-man pushes the dice my way, I let them sit on the table for a second. Then I manipulate each die--one at a time--rotating it until it reads the number I want to roll. Then, keeping those numbers up, I brush the dice in a circle around my pass-line chips--once. Clockwise or counterclockwise? It doesn't matter; the universe decides. Then I throw, right-handed, all wrist, lightly--a soft line-drive that falls a foot before the backstop and rebounds near the wall.

It sounds insane, I know. Until you hit a streak. Then it feels like magic. Like voodoo magic. And all of a sudden, I am a voodoo-doctor, a dice-throwing hero, raking in cash not only for myself--indeed, not really for myself at all--but for the dozen screaming initiates around me.

My heart's racing right now even as I write.

But I know what you're thinking. Why do I tell you my black-arts strategies here, on my Bible blog? Because I'm not the only one who loves craps. With all due respect to Einstein, God loves rolling dice too. Wanna know how I know? Read on, my voodoo babies ...

Roughly the second half of the book of Exodus (chapters 25-40) tells of the construction of the tabernacle in exhaustive detail. After the Israelites escape Egypt, God asks them to build this tabernacle--basically an elaborate tent structure--to house both the ark of the covenant and, by extension, God himself. These chapters are full of detailed ritual prescriptions that outline not only the basic dimensions of the structure, but also the specific responsibilities of the priests who will minister to it.

At the head of the tabernacle's priesthood is Aaron, the brother of Moses. Now, God is a deity en vogue, so he takes two chapters to explain the particular outfit that Aaron should wear when working around the tabernacle (chapters 28-29). The description of the uniform begins with the ephod, a richly adorned apron with gem-encrusted shoulder pieces. (God apparently owns a Bedazzler.) Over that ephod, the priest wears a similarly ornate breastpiece, woven through with gold, blue, purple, and crimson linens.

And then there's my favorite part: God commands that the low hem of the garment should include a ring of gold bells, specifically so that "its sound shall be heard when [Aaron] goes into the holy place before the Lord, and when he comes out, so that he may not die" (28:35). Here, God is treating Aaron like a cute little kitty near a garage door.

But God explains the priest's most mysterious accessory in 28:30: "In the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummin, and they shall be on Aaron's heart when he goes in before the Lord" (28:30). Biblical scholars are still divided over what the Urim and Thummin are. Some argue that they are small sticks; others that they are black and white stones; others that they are small pebbles. And others still believe that the Urim and Thummin are, wait for it, dice.

Most all, however, believe that the they are oracular instruments that the tabernacle priests use to divine the Lord's intent--probably by throwing them.

Let that sink in for a second.

Sometimes, instead of talking to God, the priests of Israel roll the dice to find out what God is thinking. And the Urim and Thummin are those dice.

Such ritual gambling happens repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible; it is usually described in the English as "casting lots." Thus, in Leviticus 16:8, Aaron casts lots to identify the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. In Joshua 18, Joshua casts lots to find out how God wants to divide the land of Israel among the tribes. And in 1 Samuel 28, Saul knows that God is no longer with him because the dice confirm it: "When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, not by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets" (28:6). Saul must have crapped out.

Divination using the Urim and Thummin seems to disappear during Israel's monarchical period, but it makes a comeback when the Israelites return to the Land after the exile. Thus, in Ezra 3:63, "the governor told them that they were not to partake of the most holy food, until there should be a priest to consult the Urim and the Thummin."

The presence of the Urim and the Thummin in the early books of the Torah always surprises me. We usually assume that early in the Bible, God is intimately close with his people. However, the notion that the first priests of Yahweh have to cast lots to discern his intent suggests that even in the Bible's second book, He has begun his inexorable progress upwards into the unreachable heavens, leaving his magic dice behind as a mere trace of his presence.

Now, did I find the Urim and Thummin in Nevada last Thursday? Absolutely not. Did I find God in Vegas over the weekend? Unlikely. But do I think He might of cracked a smile when I hit the point for the fourth time in a row? Maybe.

The Jefferson Bible

2011-03-16T11:26:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post reported last week that the Smithsonian will spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars to restore The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, better known as the Jefferson Bible.

The Jefferson Bible--and yes, we're talking about Thomas, not George and Weezy--is the third president's cut-and-paste job on the New Testament. Simply, it's Jesus, redacted.

Jefferson used an actual knife to slice and splice six books--in four different languages--in creating his own version of the Christian Messiah. The "Bible" is that scrapbook--a text unknown to the public until around the turn of the last century.

But in the process of building his new scripture, Jefferson makes real changes to the text, all of which shed light on the founding father's religiosity. For Jefferson, it seems, Jesus was just a man with a message--not a god with a healing touch. Hence, in recreating The Life, he excised passages that display Christ's miraculous powers. Even more, he deleted the resurrection. (It is said that Jefferson didn't want anyone to know about his Bible, because he didn't want to add fuel to critics' claims that he was anti-Christian.)

So, what exactly is Jesus then, if he can't raise the dead--or be raised from the dead? I'll let you decide for yourself. Not too long ago, Beliefnet.org posted a full translation of the Jefferson Bible; you can find it here.

For my money, Thomas Jefferson's Jesus doesn't look too different from the Jesus of another Thomas, the author of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. That gospel, which didn't make it into the Bible, provides unique perspectives on Jesus's message--while leaving out all the miraculous mumbo-jumbo.

Sorry. I started channeling Thomas Jefferson for a second. Enjoy!

Numbers 15: Unforgivable Sins

2011-03-02T12:18:00.002-05:00

Bible scholars--and especially those interested in the legal strictures of Torah--often make a distinction between apodictic and casuistic laws.

Briefly, apodictic laws are "thou shalt not" rules; their language does not allow for the possibility that they might be broken. The most famous example of apodictic law is the ten commandments; for instance, Exodus 20:13 simply reads, "You shall not murder," and that's it. There's no other alternative. God has spoken, and the people will no longer kill one another. The brief, assertive power of apodictic law cannot imagine a world in which God would speak his law and the people would not obey.

Casuistic law, on the other hand, is more pragmatic. Instead of "thou shalt not," casuistic law demurs, saying, "thou shalt not, but if thou shall, then ..." Exodus 21:13 is one such regulation. If a person kills, the text explains, "if it was not premeditated, but came out by an act of God, then I will appoint for you a place to which a killer may flee." Casuistic law covers the world of gray areas, liminal zones where "always" and "surely" give way to "sometimes" and "perhaps."

The Torah's apodictic laws envision a perfect--and perfectible--world. Casuistic laws acknowledge that we do not live there yet.

But Torah makes another legal distinction that's just as important; it also distinguishes between laws covering unintentional sin and intentional sin.

There are plenty of examples of the former. Leviticus 4 and the chapters that follow it outline the sacrifices a priest may offer to atone for the mistakes the Israelites make without meaning to. The chapter opens, "When anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord's commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them ..." (4:2), and it continues by outlining rituals of atonement.

This word "unintentionally" sounds like a ringing bell throughout the rest of the chapter: "If the whole congregation of Israel errs unintentionally" (4:13), "When a ruler sins, doing unintentionally any one of the things that by commands of the Lord his God ought not to be done" (4:22), and "If anyone of the ordinary people among you sins unintentionally" (4:27).

This is hedging language that expects humans to try and fail. It acknowledges the Israelites' good intentions and provides a mode of rectification for those whose intentions miss their mark. Expiating for unintentional sin requires ritual sacrifice--a sin or guilt offering--but such expiation is possible.

In the Torah, however, it is much more difficult to get around intentional sins. Indeed, it may be impossible.

Numbers 15 echoes the Levitical codes that cover unintentional sin. The text reads, "An individual who sins unintentionally shall present a female goat a year old for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for the one who commits an error, when it is unintentional, to make an atonement for the person, who then shall be forgiven" (15:27-28). You might note, however, that the stray phrase in the second sentence--"when it is unintentional"--is manic. And it sets up a crucial, even deadly distinction.

The author continues, "But whoever acts high-handedly, whether a native or an alien, affronts the Lord, and shall be cut off from among the people. Because of having despised the word of the Lord and broken his commandment, such a person shall be utterly cut off and bear the guilt" (Numbers 15:30-31). Scholars have long parsed that euphemistic adverb "high-handedly" as "intentionally," arguing that this passage from Numbers addresses those who sin brazenly and with full knowledge of their error.

A tallith.

For intentional sinners, no sacrifice will suffice to bring them back to God. Expulsion from the divine community--a fate perhaps worse than death--is the only and irrevocable result.

For this reason, perhaps, the author concludes his chapter with a reminder, the description of a physical token that might help the Israelites recall both the gravity of divine law and the severe punishments that await those who mean to breach it: "The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. You have the fringe so that, when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes" (Numbers 15:37-39).

It is for this reason that many Jewish men and women still wear a fringed prayer shawl--or tallith--when they worship. This garment helps them remember the commandments of the Lord, and the potentially high price of breaking them.

1 Corinthians 13: Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Blue"

2011-02-24T20:56:00.004-05:00

It's cop-out time here at Eat the Bible. I've got a great weekly-posting streak going, and I'd hate to break it, but I've been out of town, and I have to start grading tomorrow morning, so a more substantive post will have to wait.

Nonetheless, I've been wanting to give you a movie recommendation for a while now: it's the Polish director Kryzsztof Kieslowski's Blue--one third of his epic Trois Couleurs trilogy. The enchanting Juliette Binoche--and how can a great French actress not be "enchanting"--stars as Julie, a woman grieving the loss of her husband and daughter in a car wreck that she survives. Her husband, a composer, leaves behind the unfinished score for a choral work celebrating European unity. The film follows, among other things, Julie's hesitant struggle bring the work to completion with the help of a younger composer.

Why do I bring the film up tonight? Because I want to drop some culture on your philistine asses, that's why.

Oh yes, and the libretto for the chorale is St. Paul's hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13. The film's closing scene marks my favorite moment of Biblical intertextuality in all of modern cinema. Some other day, I'll offer my interpretation. For now, I'll just give you the link to the last six minutes; the score is breathtaking. Paul's text follows below ...

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13)

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools? Totally Legal!

2011-02-16T13:44:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned in a post last fall, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently conducted a survey intended to test Americans' religious literacy. We didn't do very well, but Americans aren't test takers; we're visual learners. If Hinduism would just start a YouTube channel ...

Nonetheless, I was surprised to hear how many survey respondents--fully two-thirds--were unaware that it is legal to teach the Bible in a public school setting. Granted, there are restrictions: teachers may lecture on the Bible--or on any other scripture, for that matter--as a literary or historical artifact, but they may not do so while promoting a particular religion. More simply, public school teachers may teach; they may not proselytize.

The development and distribution of objective religious curricula do not breach the wall that, we hope, separates church and state.

Two Supreme Court opinions in particular preserve public-school employees' right to teach the Bible. The first, as Time's David Van Biema notes in a 2007 article, is Robert Jackson's concurring opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education (1948). The relevant passage reads, "One can hardly respect the system of education that would leave the student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought that move the world society for ... which he is being prepared." Clearly, concision is not one of Jackson's strong suits, but I digress ...

McCollum v. Board struck down an Illinois school system's "released time" program, which set aside space in public schools for religious instruction sponsored by local religious groups. In banning "released time," the Court--through Jackson--nonetheless affirmed the importance of religious education. (You can find the full text of the court's decision here.)

A second opinion, by Justice Thomas Clark in School District of Abington v. Schempp (1963), confirmed the exemption described by Jackson:

"It might be well said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. The Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historical qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such a study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment."

Ironically, this statement comes in the context of a Court decision asserting that "no state law or school board may require that passages from the Bible be read or that the Lord's Prayer be recited in the public schools of a State at the beginning of each school day." (Again, here's the full decision.)

Simply, while the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the secular nature of the American public school system, it has consistently defended instructors' rights to teach religion--so long as that teaching is unbiased.

Nonetheless, I wonder about my readers' opinions. It is legal to teach scripture in public schools, but is it desirable? Or in slightly different terms, would you approve of your child being taught the Bible in a public classroom? Or the Bhagavad Gita? Or, gasp, the Qur'an?

Open Questions: Can the Bible Help Fight Bigotry?

2011-02-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

In a very helpful recent post for the CNN Religion Blog, BU Professor Jennifer Knust makes a concise argument that Biblical (and extra-Biblical) views on sexuality are significantly more complicated than some religious figures would let on. Against more conservative commentators (I suppose), she provocatively argues:

--that the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality is neither as apparent, nor as unequivocal, as we might believe
--that both Paul and Jesus take rather dim views of marriage--and human sexuality as a whole
--that God may have established androgyny--not heterosexuality--as the human sexual ideal

I've made similar points in this space (okay, not the androgyny one--that was a left-fielder for me), and I'm largely convinced by her claims.

But her much-commented-upon essay has got me thinking: is she changing any minds, especially on the issue of homosexuality? Or differently, is anyone who believes that the Bible fully supports heterosexual marriage and thoroughly condemns homosexual relations going to be persuaded by her hermeneutical exercise?

I'm not sure they will. So I ask an honest question. Are you? And do you think that hermeneutics--systematic Biblical interpretation--is an effective tool for battling bigotry? Read her article and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear your response ...

Isaiah 7: The Immanuel Prophecy in Context

2011-02-02T10:59:00.001-05:00

Alright, quick ... to whom do the following Bible lines refer?

"Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel ['God is with us']."

Did you say Jesus? Oh great! You were listening in Sunday school! Gold star! Problem is ...

You're wrong.

And you thought Sunday school would never lie, didn't you? Don't worry. It's still great for all sorts of other things--like matchstick-cross craft projects and learning the words to "Jesus Loves Me."

And you're not totally wrong--I got carried away. (I really did love Sunday school.) If you said that "Immanuel" is Jesus, you've got at least one really important ally: the author of Matthew, who absolutely agrees with you. Problem is ... he's wrong too.

I'm dropping bombs today. You should definitely read past the jump ...

So let me explain some things while I'm rocking your world. Daddy's gonna try to make this nice and easy for you.

Some of you are probably familiar with Matthew 1, in which the evangelist claims that the Immanuel prophecy cited above is fulfilled by Jesus. That prophecy comes from the book of Isaiah, and Matthew's claim is thoroughly predictable, because he's always trying to prove that Jesus is the completion of Hebrew Biblical scripture. Immediately before quoting the Isaiah line, Matthew writes that the circumstances surrounding Jesus's birth "took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet" (Matthew 1:22).

But while centuries of recitation have had the effect of adding substance to Matthew's argument, it frankly doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, especially if you take into account ancient Israelite historical context. So for all of you who don't want any divided-kingdom history this morning, I'll see you next week, when I discuss Biblical allusions in the new Katy Perry single, "Sexxxy Gurlz of Summer Toun." But for those of you who want a little lesson, read on.

Most scholars believe that Matthew cites the Immanuel prophecy more than 800 years after Isaiah writes it, in the middle of the eighth century, B.C.E., during a military conflict that comes to be known as the Syro-Ephraimite War. This was essentially an instance of civil strife, during which Israel's northern territory--here known simply as Ephraim--teams up with the Syrians to attack the southern kingdom of Judah.

Why? Well in Isaiah's time, the big imperial power on the block was Assyria, and as Assyria grew in strength, the nations on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean were shaking in their booties--or thong sandals, or whatever. (So I don't know divided-kingdom footwear. Sue me. And then just try to find dividedkingdomfootwear.blogspot.com. You'll be back.)

So as Assyria blows up, the kings of Ephraim and Syria (Pekah and Rezin, respectively) get an idea: they'll band together and try a pre-emptive strike. And they'll ask Judah's king Ahaz for help. But there's a little problem: Ahaz isn't buying. So what do Ephraim and Syria do? In a huge strategic blunder that more or less secures Ephraim's eventual destruction, they attack Judah.

And here's where Ahaz is forced to make a deal with the devil. Fearing the total annihilation of the Southern Kingdom, Ahaz enlists Assyria's help in repelling the Syro-Ephraimite forces. His gambit succeeds, but at a high cost: Judah essentially becomes an Assyrian colony. (Assyria will wipe the Northern Kingdom of Ephraim/Israel off the map just a few years later, in 722 B.C.E.)

It is this dire politico-military situation into which Isaiah--a Judean--is dropped as prophet. His task? To assure Ahaz that the Syro-Ephraimite War will not mean the end of Judah. Obviously, doing so is no small task. The wolves are totally at the door, and Ahaz is losing hope quickly. Thus, Isaiah's first efforts to comfort the faltering king come to naught.

So God and Isaiah must resort to drastic measures. Says the Lord, through Isaiah, "Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven" (7:11). But Ahaz refuses. He will not, good Jew that he is, put the Lord to the test. So God pushes through a sign on his own: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel" (7:14).

So in context, this son Immanuel (which means "God is with us") likely isn't Jesus. He can't be some far-off savior, set to arrive nearly a millennium later. He is a sign Ahaz needs right now, STAT. So does he come?

Well, yes. Probably.

Many scholars believe that "Immanuel" is actually a son of Isaiah himself. You see, God has a habit of sending prophetic signs through Isaiah's wife's birth canal. She's a lucky one, isn't she? Isaiah's eldest is named Shear-jashub, which in Hebrew means "A remnant shall return"--a hopeful name through which God promises that Israelite exiles may come back to the holy land. And in Isaiah 8, Isaiah has another son, and God commands that the boy be named Maher-shalal-hashbaz. This extremely cumbersome name means "The spoil speeds, the prey hastens," and the text promises that "before the child knows how to call 'My father' or 'My mother', the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away by the king of Assyria" (8:4). (Damascus is the capital of Syria, and Samaria is yet another name for Ephraim/Israel.)

So Immanuel is probably a third son, whose name promises divine comfort in a time of severe trial--comfrot that will arrive with the defeat of Syria and Ephraim. (The editors of the Oxford Annotated Bible note an alternate tradition, by which "Immanuel" is Hezekiah, the son of King Ahaz born around this time.)

So frankly, Matthew is stretching--hard--when he claims that Isaiah is talking about Jesus. So where does he get off? And how does his long-shot interpretation take hold? Well, most believe that he takes advantage of the shifty ambiguity of that phrase, "the young woman," and gets extra help from a secret cabal of third-century B.C.E. Alexandrian Jews. Intrigued? Me too. But this is a long post, and you've gotta get back to filing DRM reports.

Let's just call this one a cliffhanger. I'll get to it later, I promise.

Biblical Proof that God Loves the Green Bay Packers

2011-01-24T14:39:00.001-05:00

(image courtesy of gridironcity.com)

Didn't I tell y'all two weeks ago? Green Bay Packers--2011 Super Bowl Champs! AAAAAAAAGH!

From Monday, January 24:

I've been blogging the Bible for nearly two years now, and I hope that during that time, I've been able to reveal a glimmer of Judeo-Christian scripture's wisdom and beauty. But, kind readers, I begin today's post with an apology:

For nearly 24 months, I've hidden what may be one of the Bible's deepest secrets. I've kept it from you for these long weeks while I awaited confirmation of its truth--confirmation that finally arrived yesterday afternoon.

On Sunday, January 23, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Chicago Bears to become the first NFC sixth seed to advance to the Super Bowl. This miraculous run--which ended with five straight wins over teams with a combined regular-season record of 44-20--proves what I've always thought true: God loves the Green Bay Packers.

Don't believe me? Well I've got proof--indisputable Biblical evidence that the Lord of the Universe has a rooting interest in the success of the greatest, most storied franchise in the NFL. So without further adieu, my greatest Bible discovery so far, in seven tidy bullet points ...

--The apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus claims that God will "[add] glory to Aaron and give him a heritage." The Packers' perennial MVP candidate Aaron Rodgers is gaining glory with every spectacular playoff performance, and his heritage is a Super Bowl win.

--1 Kings 6:15 claims that Solomon, son of King David, "covered them on the inside with wood." Packers' cornerback--and reigning defensive MVP--Charles Woodson covers inside like a prince; since becoming a Packer in 2006, he's snagged 30 interceptions with his stellar interior defense.

--Titus 1:7 declares that a bishop must not be "greedy for gain." Packers LB Desmond Bishop energetically rejected dozens of opponents' gains during the 2010 season, racking up 103 tackles and forcing two fumbles. In the NFC championship game, he led the team in tackles with eight, stymieing even more gain.

--Isaiah 34:11 declares that the "hawk" will "possess" enemy territory. This year, Packers Linebacker A.J. Hawk owned his opponents' backfields, collecting 111 tackles. Isaiah continues, "He shall stretch the line of confusion over it" (34:12). Hawk has confused offensive lines since he entered the league five years ago.

--1 Chronicles 22:15 calls the masons that completed the temple "skilled in working." The Packers' own Mason Crosby is himself "skilled in working"--kicks through the uprights, that is. In the 2010 season, Crosby converted on nearly 80% of his field goals and crushed a 56-yarder in week 1 against the Eagles.

--In 2 Samuel 22:36 the author exclaims that God has provided the "shield of [his] salvation." He continues, "your help has made me great." In yesterday's NFC championship, rookie CB Sam Shields delivered "great" help to a tiring secondary, grabbing not one but two picks--including the dagger that killed a last-minute, game-tying drive by the Bears.

--And finally, Revelation 8:1 reads, "When the Lamb o-pened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." Similarly, thirty minutes of reverent silence fell over Green Bay in 1957 when Lambeau Field opened, ushering in fifty-four years (and counting) of the greatest football ever played.

So there you have it--amazing but true! Yahweh is a cheesehead. I could continue my list, but the afternoon is waning, and I've only got 13 days to plan the most righteous Super Bowl party ever. Go Pack!

Lil Wayne on the Bible: "It Was Deep!"

2011-01-19T11:31:00.000-05:00

What's poppin'?

You guys know you can count on Eat the Bible for all the latest news and jams from your favorite hip-hop, trip-hop, R&B, and rap artists, right?

Okay. You can't. And I don't know what trip-hop is. However, it sounds like it's at least three times as cool as hip-hop.

But I was reading the New York Daily News this morning--like I do every Wednesday morning--and I stumbled across this scripture tidbit from the music scene. (I'd imagine that real rap bloggers never use the word "tidbit.") Rap star Lil Wayne--recently released from a 242-day stint at Rikers Island--claims to have read the entire Bible during his incarceration.

Reflecting on the Gospels, he noted, deeply, "It was deep!" To which I can only respond ... no, Lil, you're deep! I wish everyone would read the whole Bible. The Daily News reports that he also plowed through Confucius, along with biographies of Jimi Hendrix and Vince Lombardi.

Myself, I need more Lil Wayne Bible commentary, so I have contacted his press people to see if I can set up an interview. (I'm not kidding.) I'm sure I won't hear back, but if I do, I'll get the interview up ASAP, and Eat the Bible will become about six thousand times cooler than before. In the meantime, here's a little Lil for your Wednesday morning. Much love ...

Job 30: President Obama on Tucson, Evil, and Hope

2011-01-12T21:29:00.005-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I chime in tonight to comment on President Obama's moving, scripture-laced speech (copied above) at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shootings. The president devoted much of the talk's opening movement to poignant eulogies for each of the six slain; he then issued a call for national unity and serious conversation in the wake of the tragedy.

But near the midpoint of his speech, the president tried to address the utter horror of our national loss by paraphrasing a passage from one of the Bible's direst books, Job:

"Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, 'When I looked for light, then came darkness'. Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath." (ABC News has posted the entire transcript here.)

Defying those who would too quickly attribute the tragedy to violent political rhetoric, or permissive gun laws, or breakdowns in our mental health-care system, Obama instead acknowledged that some of this world's evils spring from a blackness that remains maddeningly inexplicable.

Of course, that is the story of Job, a man beset by seemingly source-less ills, bereft of property, servants, and family for reasons he cannot discern. In the opening pages of the book that bears his name, Job loses his wealth, his household, and every one of his ten children. The three-dozen-odd chapters of poetry that follow feature Job's laments--his soul-wrenching cry, "Why?"

Job 30--from which President Obama read tonight--gives us the man near the utter depths of his despair:

But when I looked for good, evil came;
and when I waited for light, darkness came.
My inward parts are in turmoil, and are never still;
days of affliction come to meet me.
I go about in sunless gloom;
I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. (30: 26-28)

Expecting, yearning after, craving for the sun, Job receives terror and loss ... and is afflicted.

As are we, after Tucson. And though God speaks to Job in the book's final chapters, delivering a terrifying testament to God's own sublimity, he refrains from "explaining" Job's devastation. Job, as we, are left without easy answers.

Nonetheless, God finally praises Job's speech. Addressing him in 42:7, God claims that Job, even through his provocative lamentations, has "spoken of [God] what is right." To throw one's hands up in the face of indecipherable evil is, perhaps, "right" in God's eyes. For there are ills in this world that defy human explanation.

So I appreciate the president's allusion to Job in tonight's speech. It bespeaks humility and self-effacement in the aftermath of real, horrifying evil. And it lays the groundwork, I believe, for a future that ultimately awaits Job: restoration, reconciliation, and hope.

Haggai 2: God Will Make You Rich

2011-01-11T11:45:00.005-05:00

How do you know that God loves you?

And don't punk out and say, "the Bible tells me so." Is it because you're happy? Is it because the work you do for your temple is fulfilling? Is it because you are content when you're at church? Is it because you just feel blessed?

Or is it because you're rich? This last answer--though it may feel blasphemous to many Jews and Christians--isn't so uncommon as you might think ...

Max Weber, the father of modern sociology, argued in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that early American Christians measured God's love in terms of their own material wealth. Simply put, they knew God liked them because they had cash.

Having no other way to measure the divinity's response to their actions, American Protestants knew God was smiling on them when their bank accounts grew. (For Weber, this theory explains why Protestants are such good free-marketers--and why the predominantly Christian United States has generally enjoyed economic success.)

Weber's characterization of Protestantism finds a modern analogue in the "prosperity gospel" preached by some contemporary evangelicals, among them Atlanta's megachurch baron Eddie Long. The first title that appears in Long's online church bookstore is Think Like a Billionaire, Become a Billionaire.

Bishop Long drove a $350,000 Bentley and lived in a $1.1 million home. Or at least he did until he got caught up in a homosexual sex scandal late last year. But I digress ... according to Long and others like him, God wants to bless his faithful followers with money, with fast cars, with big houses, with cool stuff.

(Benjamin Anastas develops a fascinating critique of prosperity evangelists in a recent Harper's cover story.)

Now for many, Weber's Protestantism and the prosperity gospel are explicitly anti-religious. Jesus claims that it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for the rich to enter God's grace (Matthew 19:24), and the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah frequently argue for a form of social justice that encourages charity--not hoarding.

However, a financial or material understanding of divine blessing is not without scriptural precedent. Indeed, the prosperity gospel may find a compelling proof text in an unlikely corner of the Hebrew Bible--Haggai.

Haggai is one of three significant post-exilic prophets whose works are included in the Hebrew Bible. The others are Malachi and Zechariah, and this trio prophesied to Israelites who returned to the Holy Land after the fall of the Babylonian empire.

Haggai was written in 520 B.C.E., eighteen years after Cyrus of Persia issued the edict allowing exiled Jews to return to Israel. Haggai's main goal in his brief book is to compel the Israelites to rebuild the temple, destroyed by Babylonian invaders with the rest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.

The prophet's first efforts to persuade the Israelites to do so come in chapter 1. He writes, "Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?" (1:4) The Israelites have homes, Haggai exhorts, but God does not. The temple must be rebuilt so God, too, can have a "house" in the restored nation.

But the Israelites are slow to act. Some among them, it seems, remember the glory of the first temple--built in splendor by King Solomon--and know that "Temple, Part II: The Re-Templing" could only be a thin (and unworthy) reflection of its opulent predecessor (whose construction is described in detail in 1 Kings 5-6).

So Haggai eventually decides to hit the Israelites where it hurts: their stuff.

He channels God in Haggai 2: "Before a stone was placed upon a stone in the Lord’s temple, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten; when one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and mildew and hail; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord" (2:15-17).

Said differently, when the temple lies in ruins, God punishes his people by destroying their material possessions. This passage in chapter 2 reiterates a point made earlier in the book: when God is homeless, "you that earn wages earn wages to put them in a bag with holes" (Haggai 1:6).

If, by contrast, the people do their religious duty and rebuild the temple, God will allow them to prosper--to reap measures, to draw wine, and to earn and save money!

And Haggai, it seems, sees this ball get rolling; the Israelites eventually respond to his prophecy and begin their work, and the second temple will be finished by 515 B.C.E. When the building begins, God starts to reward his people anew: the Lord asks, rhetorically, "Do the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still yield nothing?" (2:19). And the answer is "no." So God concludes, "From this day on, I will bless you" (2:19). With stuff.

And Bishop Long and early American Protestants as well, perhaps ...

Genesis 4: Cain's Sacrifice

2011-01-05T09:38:00.005-05:00

In the beginning, as you all know, God creates the heavens and the earth. Over a brief seven days, the Lord of the universe builds the world and populates it with plants, animals, and, well, us. If only all of my weeks were so productive.

And God is pleased with his work. A humble but concise self-promoter, he deems his creation "very good" (1:31) upon finishing the job, and sits down for a nice foamy latte. With whole milk. He's earned it.

But it takes fewer than three chapters for this above-average planet to play host to the first murder, as the third earthling, Cain, kills the fourth, his brother Abel.

How does something so "very good" go so very wrong, so very quickly?

And what, in this fledgling utopia, could drive Cain to homicide with such startling speed? The answer to this question has something to do with sacrifice, but that answer is not so simple as some would have you believe.

The Genesis author introduces both brothers by their occupations: "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground" (4:2). Simply, Abel is the meat guy and Cain handles the crops. Hosting dinners, they can deliver nutritious, low-carb meals. And they'll cater your wedding for a very reasonable price.

When it comes time to give gifts to the Lord, each brother delivers the products of his labor--Cain "an offering of the fruit of the ground" (4:3) and Abel "the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions" (4:4). The Bible does not explain why the brothers feel the need to bring gifts to God; indeed, no such command has been given. And I always want to give both men credit for their politeness.

But politeness aside, the Lord only looks with favor on one of these gifts: "And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard" (4:4-5). Now, God does not punish Cain for his "regardless" offering, but Cain is angry nonetheless, and this anger--most believe--drives him to murder his brother, alone in the field.

But why does God prefer "firstlings" to "fruit"? It's a real mystery, but a consensus interpretation suggests that the Lord's choice is related to the early Israelites' vocation.

The first Hebrews--or so the theory goes--were themselves pastoralists. They, like Abel, were "keepers of sheep." Hence, God's "regard" for Abel's gift not only confirms the rightness of the Israelites' own sacrifices, but it also sanctifies the very practice of herding.

For many years, this explanation has made sense to me. But over the holiday break, I've been reading Jon Levenson's The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son--an innovative, accessible account of Biblical sonship and sacrifice. Levenson argues, cogently, that this standard reading of the unacceptability of Cain's sacrifice is wrong.

The early chapters of Genesis, he argues, seem to show a preference for agriculturalists like Cain. Indeed, in chapter 2, God asks Adam to "till" and "keep" Eden, effectively making him the first farmer. And as I've suggested earlier, both Adam and Eve--and presumably Cain and Abel--are vegetarians. So God's preference for Abel's meat is a bit idiosyncratic given its narrative context.

But for Levenson, this idiosyncrasy is both inexplicable and totally beside the point. We, like Cain, are not supposed to dwell on God's motivations--which must necessarily remain beyond our understanding. We will never know--indeed, we cannot know--why God likes prime rib and not eggplant. We can only remember to prepare short ribs the next time Yahweh comes for dinner.

What we can worry about is the only thing we can control--our reactions to God's action. Said more simply, Cain's sin is not giving a second-rate sacrifice. Cain's sin is killing his brother. Heck, God says it better than I can, so maybe I'll let Him have the last word:

"Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it" (4:7).

Matthew 2: Have a Very Bloody Christmas!

2010-12-30T14:48:00.004-05:00

So I held off on my Christmas post until after Christmas this year, because frankly, it's not very nice. I didn't want to mar your holiday--full of presents and nogs and carols and midnight masses--with a less savory, but no less pertinent, Christmastime image:

Dead babies.

Now hold on: don't click your browser's "back" button yet. I'm not trying to be unnecessarily provocative here.

I'm just telling you that if you want to think seriously--and Biblically--about the story of Jesus's birth, you may consider wandering wise men, singing angels, flabbergasted shepherds, and virgin births. But you must also ponder their cost: the death of every infant in and around Bethlehem.

I'm always struck by the stark differences that separate Luke's Christmas story from Matthew's. (Remember that John and Mark don't even mention Jesus's birth; both gospels begin instead with Christ's baptism.)

Luke's account of the nativity is the one most frequently read at Christmas Eve services, and it's easy to see why: the gospel gives us, in measured narrative detail, the census that draws Joseph to Bethlehem, the manger birth, the angel choristers singing "Glory to God," and the shepherds' adoration. And it ends so peacefully, with a new mother's quiet reflection: "Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).

Not so with Matthew, for whom the delivery of the Christ child happens abruptly, in a dependent clause attached to a sentence addressing Mary and Joseph's sexless relationship: "he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son." And Matthew adds, almost as an afterthought, "and he named him Jesus" (Matthew 1: 24-25).

Matthew's one lasting contribution to the popular, synthesized version of the nativity story is the wise men (Greek: magi), who astrologically predict the Messiah's birth and then follow a star to Bethlehem to find him. However, on the way, they make a fateful misstep that will turn Matthew's nativity story into a bloody tragedy.

In the beginning of the second chapter, the magi stop by King Herod's palace to confirm their findings. They ask the testy monarch, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage" (2:2).

In considering their approach, it's always hard for me to understand how such "wise" men could be so daft. You don't go to the king of the Jews and ask, "Hey, can you tell us where we can find the king of the Jews?" That's almost as stupid as bringing embalming fluid to a baby shower. (Oh wait ... they do that too.)

Not surprisingly, Herod is threatened; he is king, and a Messiah would mean an end to his reign--and likely his life. Thus, he tries to turn these not-so-wise men into spies--a recon crew for a band of assassins to follow. And while a pair of divine dreams--one for the magi, one for Joseph--save Jesus's life and send the holy family fleeing to Egypt, the damage has already been done.

If Herod cannot use a scalpel to remove this tumorous young king, he will use a machete: "When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men" (2:16).

Thus in Matthew, one very special baby's life is spared, but countless others are lost. And the second chapter of this gospel delivers not singing and peace, but slaughter and flight.

For at least two twentieth-century authors--Albert Camus in The Fall and Jose Saramago in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ--the massacre of infants in Matthew is the salient fact of the Christmas story. No amount of straw and swaddling can cover this miniature genocide.

Camus's Jesus lives knowing that not even he is truly blameless; this spotless lamb has some blood on his hands, even if those hands kill no one. And Saramago's Jesus is forever tortured by a guilty conscience that will not let him forget these innocent dead. For both men, Jesus will carry the memory of these small ones--who died for him--all the way to the cross.

So as you sit to dine this Christmas week, bow your heads not only for Jesus, the proverbial reason for the season, but for the babies of Bethlehem who died in his stead.

Stephen Colbert on the Baby Jesus

2010-12-22T21:46:00.003-05:00

It's Christmas week, and I have yet to buy all my presents, brew my own egg nog, or fashion a yule log from real yule. So serious contemplation on Biblical topics--or whatever it is I do here on a weekly basis--will have to go by the wayside for the holiday season.

But I'm pleased to say that on the last episode before his own holiday break, Stephen Colbert delivered the best Christmas sermon I've heard in years. So I pass it along to you, with warmest season's greetings.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

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www.colbertnation.com

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Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

March to Keep Fear Alive

Little Plastic Crosses, or, Religion and the Politics of Censorship

2010-12-14T12:48:00.011-05:00

In 1515, in the central panel of his Isenheim altarpiece triptych, the German painter Matthias Grunevald created the most macabre artistic depiction of Jesus's crucifixion ever put on canvas. No other artwork I can think of so effectively preserves the raw horror of this violent execution.

In Grunevald's painting, the Savior's body is muscled, but emaciated and contorted. His skin is pulled taut over bone and sinew, like cellophane over rancid meat. His flesh is a sickly pallor--a jaundiced yellow--and covered in scrapes and sores. A patchy beard surrounds bluish lips drained of blood, and the crown of thorns that sits atop his head is more properly a full turban of brambles tearing at Jesus's scalp.

But worst of all are the nails that pierce Christ's hands and feet. The spikes pull and distort his skin, ripping open wounds that release blood thick as candle wax. Grunewald's coup de grace is Jesus's hands, menacingly curled into stiff claws that scream the pain racking the messiah's body.

Fittingly, Mary faints, stage right.

I thought of Grunewald's painting while I read coverage, this past weekend, of the National Portrait Gallery's removal of a video by David Wojnarowicz from an exhibit entitled "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." (Wojnarowicz produced the brief piece, called "A Fire in My Belly," after losing his long-time partner to AIDS.)

In pulling the film, the Gallery was bowing to pressure from Catholic League President Bill Donahue and, later, Republican Congressman Eric Cantor, who threatened the museum's funding. (Apparently, it made no difference that "Hide/Seek" was entirely financed by private donors.)

Donahue and Cantor disapproved of a dozen-second clip, buried deep in the film, of what appears to be a small, plastic crucifix overrun by ants. According to the Times, Cantor called the film an "outrageous use of taxpayer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season." Donahue echoed, "I’m not going to buy the argument that this is some statement about some poor guy dying of AIDS. Was this supposed to be a Christmas present to Catholics?" (Over the weekend, Frank Rich argued that the video's censorship had less to do with religion than with sexuality, and labeled Donahue's crusade "gay bashing.")

I find the video enigmatic, eerie, and surprisingly moving--not offensive. But don't take my word for it--or Mr. Donahue's. The video follows in its entirety, though I note that it contains a masturbation scene that may not be suitable for younger viewers:

Now, you may find this video objectionable. You may find it gross, or irreligious, or tasteless. You may believe, with Cantor and Donahue, that it should not be part of a national exhibition. And perhaps someday, we can have a cup of coffee and discuss whether or not the government has the right to censor art that you think is degenerate.

But Donahue, Cantor, and the rest of their supporters seem to miss a crucial point in banning the film for its putative obscenity: by comparison, the crucifixion itself is unbearably more obscene! It is violent, provocative, disturbing--an unconscionable execution. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is torture. It is all that Grunewald paints and more.

And, unbelievably, it is the central symbol of Christianity.

Further, its thorough provocation must swallow the "offense" that may or may not be induced by Wojnarowicz's little film. The vertiginous affront of Christ on the cross dwarfs politicians' mock outrage at insects on vinyl. To know the crucifixion is to know that we can only strive to tame its unruly semantic power--its offensiveness. We cannot add to it.

Which is why I keep returning to Grunewald and the Isenheim altarpiece when thinking over "A Fire in My Belly." This painting reminds us of the crucifixion's insuperable, disgusting force. For me, "Fire" looks small by comparison. And Cantor and Donahue look smaller still.

A Noah's Ark Theme Park?

2010-12-06T13:02:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid, I used to go to Noah's Ark, a sweet-ass water park in the Dells region of central Wisconsin. The best slide was "The Plunge," a head-first, straight-down shot that dropped riders 1240 feet in 0.5 seconds. (My source for these numbers is an eight year-old version of myself.)

What did Noah's Ark--the water park--have to do with the "real" Noah's Ark described in the opening chapters of Genesis? Absolutely nothing. Except for, um, lots of water.

Sadly, some businesspeople in rural Kentucky won't stand for figurative water-park titles, so they're are in the process of raising $150,000,000 for an actual Noah's Ark-themed adventure center, complete with--you guessed it--a Biblically inspired reconstruction of the big boat. The project has drawn some criticism, however, as Kentucky's governor has offered the group backing it--a conservative Christian ministry called "Answers in Genesis"--some very generous tax breaks.

Here's an artist' rendering, courtesy of "Ark Encounter":

In a story published today, The New York Times quotes one of the project planners on the rationale behind the recreation: "We want to show how Noah would have taken care of [the animals], taken care of waste management, taken care of water needs and food needs."

Well holy crap (literally). I've always wanted to visit a park devoted to recreating the "waste management" methods of mythical Mesopotamians.

So you can suck it, "The Plunge"! I'm going to the real Noah's Ark next summer!

Genesis 9: Rep. John Shimkus, the Flood, and Global Warming

2010-11-30T19:03:00.006-05:00

A lot of American greens are getting very nervous that John Shimkus might nab the chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee--the group responsible for setting the U.S. House of Representatives' environmental agenda.

Why? Apparently, God told Shimkus that global warming isn't a real threat. Comforting, eh?

Speaking before a subcommittee meeting last March, Shimkus backed up his skepticism with Biblical evidence taken from Genesis and Matthew. Here's the Youtube clip, in all its grainy terrifying-ness:

To borrow a line from Tony Kushner, parsing this argument is like throwing darts at Jell-O; there are no satisfying hits. But let me see if I can try to break down the "theological" parts of this rambling mess.

Shimkus's first quote comes from Genesis 8, in the moments after Noah emerges from the ark onto the still-drying earth. Speaking to the head of the only family to survive the watery apocalypse, God calls a truce:

"I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease" (8:21-22).

Shimkus's second text--and yes, it sounds like he's getting ready to preach a Protestant sermon --comes from Matthew: "And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (24:31).

He concludes this bizarre Bible minute with a quick exegesis: "The earth will end only when God declares its time is over. Man will not destroy this earth; earth will not be destroyed by a flood."

Apparently, Shimkus believes that God's promise in Genesis--that he won't wipe out mankind again--means that global warming is a myth, because God won't let us hurt ourselves. (I think?) And the Matthew passage confirms that God will only usher in total global catastrophe on his own timetable. (I've never quite understood why conservative Christians take such solace in the notion of apocalypse. Granted, they probably assume they're on the right side, but come on: it's still the end of the world, right?)

As Politico reported a couple weeks back, Shimkus still stands by these claims, and as a result, he is unlikely to push for meaningful climate legislation if named chair of Energy and Commerce. This is disturbing stuff, in no small part because we should start shaking in our collective tunics if our legislators have begun governing on literalist readings of the Bible.

But for what it's worth, Shimkus is playing fast and loose with scripture here--especially Genesis--and his Biblical logic is pretty far off.

To begin, it's worth noting that no environmentalist believes that global warming is tantamount to "the earth ending"; its results may be devastating, but it is not the apocalypse. But just for fun, let's assume that when Shimkus speaks of the end of the world, he's actually referring to significant environmental disaster.

His first assumption--that only God can or will bring along such disaster--falls by the wayside in the second half of Genesis, when earth-cracking drought imperils God's chosen (Jacob's family) and drives them to Egypt, where they will eventually be enslaved. There is no evidence in the text that God sends this deadly drought, and Jacob and company only survive it by the cunning of his black-sheep son, Joseph.

Shimkus's second assumption--that man will not bring environmental calamity on himself--is also incorrect by Biblical standards. In 2 Samuel 24, David angers the Lord, who threatens the nation of Israel with drought and famine once more. And though David ultimately receives a different punishment (pestilence, hooray!), the passage leaves open the possibility that God's people can invite meteorological cataclysm whether or not the eschatological timetable demands it.

Shimkus is on firmer ground with his third claim--that "earth will not be destroyed by a flood." However, he draws from the wrong passage for support. Indeed, God makes that promise not in Genesis 8, but in 9:15, which reads, "waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh." (Whether or not water may one day destroy some flesh remains to be seen, but I'll let Shimkus's hope stand for a moment.)

That being said, let me go on the record as saying that I wouldn't trust the post-diluvian God any farther than I could throw him. Why? Well, God's promise in Genesis 9--that he will not destroy humanity by "water"--is actually an attenuation of his oath in Genesis 8, where he swears he will not destroy humanity at all.

Many Bible scholars note this syntactical distinction and argue that God is hedging his bets. After all, it took all of a half-dozen chapters to get from Eden to Studio 54-style debauchery--and the deluge; who's to say that God won't want to fire away at a new set of heathen a few more verses down the line? (Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone?) Said differently, I'm not sure I even believe God in Genesis 9, so I sure wouldn't want to base federal energy policy on a fickle Lord's promises.

In summary, Shimkus shouldn't be legislating on the basis of his Biblical knowledge--first, because doing so violates the first amendment, but second, because his Biblical knowledge kinda sucks.

Psalm 65: Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-23T17:10:00.003-05:00

It's Thanksgiving week, and I'm giving you a Thanksgiving post. I'm so cute and considerate--just like your great aunt, who sends you a card every year.

And when you're looking for a Thanksgiving Bible verse, there's no better place to turn than to the Psalms. Why?

Well, I've mentioned previously the work of Hermann Gunkel, the German scholar who first suggested that the Psalms fall into a variety of different generic categories: psalms of lament, hymns of praise, songs for the king, etc. Gunkel also argued that one of the most important minor genres includes thanksgiving psalms.

Makes my job easy, huh?

So this week, I give you my favorite, a passage from Psalm 65 in which the author praises God for the earth's bounty--indeed, in which the earth itself seems to break into joyous shouts. Here are verses 8 through 13, with my warmest Thanksgiving wishes:

"Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;
you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy."

Mark 5: On Exorcism

2010-11-16T11:05:00.008-05:00

This past weekend, American bishops met in Baltimore to prepare themselves for a rite that many thought had gone the way of other now-defunct Roman Catholic practices ... like public berating of long-winded priests, or pantsing of the smallest monk, or nun-flying.

The ritual that just won't die? Exorcism.

The New York Times quotes Notre Dame's R. Scott Appleby in explaining the bishops' rationale: "It’s a strategy for saying: 'We are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons'." And I have to admit that every time I watch The Exorcist, I'm totally on board. Please, Catholics, please: train crack demon-hunters, and keep them at the ready! Regan scares the argyle socks off of me.

Conference organizer Thomas Paprocki hedges his bets, however, by pointing out that exorcism is necessary only in very special cases: “It’s only used in those cases where the Devil is involved in an extraordinary sort of way in terms of actually being in possession of the person."

Still, the notion that the Devil might "actually be in possession" of anyone raises eyebrows. Epilepsy might have looked very much like possession to a medieval scientist--and depressives may feel as if a devil sits on their chest--but today's physicians and psychologists have the diagnostic tools to banish demons from our collective lives. We are not possessed; we have seizures. We are not possessed; we are paranoid schizophrenics.

But make no mistake, if the Catholics are on shaky medical ground, they remain on sound scriptural ground. The Biblical record is clear: this world is infested with malevolent spirits who can and will possess.

I often suggest to students that the Gospel of Mark is so full of demons that it is best read as a horror story. (I'd love to see William Friedkin's film version.) But Mark is not alone in characterizing Jesus as a Highlander-type hero pitched in battle with diabolical forces. For Matthew and Luke, too, Christ is the first ghostbuster, and the gospels speak of his exorcisms no fewer than a dozen times.

For today, I think I'll just give you my favorite--and the most elaborate exorcism story in the Bible. It is Mark's story of the Gerasene demoniac, told in chapter 5, and it goes like this:

"They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake" (Mark 5:1-13).

A few quick notes on this chilling tale ...

First, the famously laconic Mark flexes his descriptive muscles in explaining the demoniac's state: he lives among tombs; chains cannot hold him; his howls disturb the night landscape; he bruises himself with rocks. Mark might have added, "It was a dark and stormy night." Seldom in gospels--heck, seldom in the entire Bible!--do we get such narrative detail. The author knows the attractive power of a good ghost story.

Second, note that the possessed man seeks Jesus out--not the other way around. But note also that the sequence of events is jumbled. The man comes, he bows, and he screams his welcome. However, in the next verse, we find that the demoniac's first statement is actually in response to a comment that we don't hear at first: Jesus's command that the demon "come out of the man." We receive the dialogue in the wrong order; the sequence is messed up. Perhaps these destabilizing techniques are meant to mimick the tortured mindscape of the possessed man.

But note also that the demon knows exactly who Jesus is--"son of the most high God." That demons infallibly recognize the divinity of Jesus--and that his disciples almost uniformly do not--is one of the most uncomfortable truths of Mark.

Then the chilling core of the tale, when the demon introduces himself: "My name is Legion; for we are many." The pronoun slippage--from the singular "my" of the first clause to the plural "we" of the second--is a creepy grammatical effect. Many scholars also point out that the demon's name--Legion--clues us in that this story is an also a colonial allegory. Palestine, at the time, was also "possessed" by groups of Roman soldiers--legions.

And then the "denoument," if we dare call it that. For in this tale, evil cannot be wiped out: it can only be transferred. Jesus compels the demons to enter a flock of pigs, who immediately rush to their drowning death.

This is an unsettling conclusion for some. Jose Saramago, in his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, wonders what happens to these pigs; he then proposes--in a fictional extrapolation--that they are scavenged and eaten by Gentiles--for whom pigs would not be unclean--who are then themselves possessed; they go on to wreak havoc on the Palestinian landscape in what I can only assume is an ancient Palestinian preview of Night of the Living Dead.

And indeed I wonder ... what happens to exorcised demons when they are cast out? I'll have to attend the next Catholic possession clinic and ask.

Matthew 25: Jesus, Youth Hockey, and Progressive Taxes

2010-11-09T13:46:00.010-05:00

Last night as I was walking home from class in the drizzle, I was listening to Radio Lab, a snazzily produced NPR program that focuses on science topics. The title of the piece was "Secrets of Success." (You can hear the podcast here.)

In it, cohost Robert Krulwich asks author and New Yorker contributor Malcolm Gladwell why successful people thrive. (Gladwell answers this question at length in his recent book Outliers.) In responding, Gladwell brings up "the Matthew effect," a term coined in 1968 by the sociologist Robert K. Merton to describe the tendency of the rich to get richer--and vice versa.

The phrase derives from the last lines of Jesus's "parable of the talents," found in Matthew 25: "For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away" (Matthew 25:29).

Gladwell applies the Matthew effect to youth ice hockey in Canada. He suggests that when considering young hockey players, we find that talent is almost always directly related to age. Therefore, if Calgary selects its nine year-olds' all-star team, most of the players will be nine years and eleven months old; many players nine years and one month old will be left off the squad. Players on the team will receive more practice, more ice time, more coaching, and better equipment. And this trend will only snowball as time passes. Thus, a seemingly insignificant age advantage will eventually become a statistically significant talent advantage--the slightly rich get much, much richer.

Merton himself sees the Matthew effect in academic science departments, and argues that researchers with small advantages--specifically, posts at better universities--get disproportionally greater rewards than their more poorly placed colleagues. Said differently, a research scientist at the prestigious University of Wisconsin will win much greater renown--and more grant money, and better offices, and hotter research assistants--than a fellow researcher doing similar work at, say, the slightly less prestigious Kansas State. (No hate to Kansas State!)

As I got to thinking about it, I realized that we can also use the Matthew effect to rationalize progressive tax codes--whereby the rich are taxed at a higher rate than the poor.

Imagine two men residing in suburban Boston, where the cost of living for a single guy is around $50,000 a year. Imagine that both men earn that much money--$50,000--and both can make ends meet.

But then pretend that the second man also has a modest trust fund that pays out an extra $10,000 a year, bringing his total income to $60,000. The difference between the two salaries is small, but the second man's disposable income--$10,000--is infinitely larger than that of the first. If, over the course of a 30-year career, the second man puts that $10,000 a year in a standard individual retirement account, his modest investment will eventually pay out at over $1.4 million!

Small earnings advantages deliver significant income disparities over time. Just imagine, then, how larger advantages pay off. The progressive tax code softens Matthew effect disparities by taking more money from those with greater opportunities.

(And I know that I'm swimming out of my depth here--I'm not a tax lawyer. But I did find at least one tax guy who agrees with me.)

So check it out. Jesus can help you figure out tax policy. Or choose your tenure-track science position. Or pick a youth hockey team. Or write a hugely popular piece of popular sociology. You're welcome, Mr. Gladwell.

Isaiah 41: Deanna Favre's Hope

2010-10-21T20:49:00.007-04:00

As a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan, I spent the better part of the past two decades squaring the Trinity with a fourth member: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Brett Favre. I knew I was a heretic, but every time I tried to get my faith straight--"Brett Favre is not a God," I'd whisper, "You can't pray to him"--he'd do something like this:

However, things began to get fishy about five years ago. Favre started doing his diva's retirement dance at the end of each season. And while I forgave him every time, these maudlin performances started to wear after a while.

And then came 2008, when he took one sashay too many and danced himself right out of town. I was sad, but replacement QB Aaron Rodgers was good, and it's hard to hate the Jets. Besides, I told myself, Joe Montana ended his career in Kansas City, right?

Wrong. 2009 rolled around, and in a move that could only be read as a phlegm-wad in the face of all old fans, Favre signed with the Packers' most hated rival: the Minnesota Vikings. I wasn't so much angry as disillusioned. It didn't have to end this way. If he could have skipped all the ridiculous dithering, he could have played in Green Bay until he was 50. Instead, he's now throwing passes to Randy Moss. Randy Moss!

And finally, the coup de grace: a sexting scandal. You can go to deadspin.com for all the sordid allegations--and more grainy cell pics than you're likely to want--but here are the basics: While in New York, Favre took a liking to a pretty little thing in the Jets organization named Jenn Sterger. After she spurned his initial advances, he did what any red-blooded Mississippian would do (apparently): he sent her cell phone shots of his genitalia. Classy, huh?

Of course, what makes this affair all the classier is the fact that Favre is married to a gorgeous, uber-devoted cancer survivor named Deanna--and has been since 1996. Deanna stuck with Brett through excessive partying, bouts of alcoholism, a Vicodin addiction, the premature death of Favre's father, and who knows how many other bumps in the road.

And now Deanna has to deal with Brett's iPhone camera. I don't know how she does it.

This week, USA Today reports that Deanna has found some solace in the Bible; since the storm hit, she's posted a passage from Isaiah 41 on her refrigerator:

"'I have chosen you and not cast you off'; do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. Yes, all who are incensed against you shall be ashamed and distracted; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all. For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you'" (41: 10-13).

I hope these verses are of help to Deanna through what must be heart-wrenching times. The Isaiah text reminds the devout that the Lord will not abandon those who call His name. But frankly, I've got a better advice for Deanna. Pray later. Right now, call a divorce lawyer and get your Elin Woods on.

For me, I'll keep watching youtube clips from the 90's while trying to pretend that Favre never left the Green and Gold.

Philemon 1: What Does Paul Want?

2010-10-20T16:07:00.004-04:00

You don't tug on Superman's cape. You do not tell Dirty Harry that you're feeling lucky. You don't challenge Biff to a fight ... at least not until the second half of Back to the Future. And you most certainly don't mess around with Paul, the epistolary genius of first-century Christianity.

You wanna know what a badass Paul is? He's so money, they put one of his kitchen table notes in the Bible. It's the book of Philemon. Look it up.

Philemon is a Bible-blogger's dream. (That might be the first time anyone has uttered that sentence.) At just 25 verses, it's quick and digestible. If I want to blog about Psalms, I might have to slog through 150 chapters. With Philemon, I'm done in five minutes.

Philemon is the shortest of the genuine Pauline letters. The apostle writes it from prison, and it takes its name from its recipient. The subject of the letter is one Onesimus, a slave of Philemon's who has found his way into Paul's company. Paul is sending Onesimus back home, and his note is an "appeal" to Philemon regarding his slave: "I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment" (v. 10).

But the funny thing about the letter is that in it, Paul never explains the nature of his "appeal." This is some extremely vague prose--so vague, indeed, that I can paraphrase it in 25 words: "Hey Philemon. Paul. Yup, still in prison. You remember that thing I asked you to do with Onesimus? Can you do that? You're the best."

It's a quick note. It's a hasty email. It's a Twitter post. But it's also in the Bible. Do your grocery lists become scripture? Didn't think so.

Because Philemon is so laconic, scholars have spent a lot of time trying to reconstruct both its message and its historical context. Many argue that its appeal is simple: Paul requests that Philemon free Onesimus. But the letter's language is never so explicit, so the mystery of Paul's request remains.

For me, however, there is a more interesting question: why did Philemon make it into the New Testament? Here, we can only speculate. Clearly, this brief message had great meaning for the early church. Perhaps it was canonized because it was associated with Paul--a Christian leader whose charisma rivaled that of Jesus. Or perhaps Onesimus himself went on to become a significant figure, and Philemon marks the beginning of his ministry. Or maybe we're way off; Philemon may commemorate an unknown event that is lost to us--and whose nature may be indecipherable from the narrative content of the letter.

But there's one thing we do know. Don't challenge Paul to a writing contest. He'll kick your ass. His imprisoned jottings get turned into holy writ.

2 Kings 5: Biblical "Taqiyya," or Lying about Faith

2010-10-11T11:00:00.009-04:00

About a year ago, Mamoun Fandy used the opinion page of the Christian Science Monitor to propose a new reason why Americans cannot trust Iran in nuclear negotiations. (Apparently, the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust-denying megalomaniac is not enough.)

Iranian Shi'ites, Fandy argues, practice taqiyya, a "doctrine of deceit" that encourages Muslims to lie when discussing "political or worldly affairs." For Fandy, then, American politicians cannot believe a word that Iranian officials say.

Since Fandy and others raised the issue, some Islamophobic bloggers have gotten their claws on taqiyya and argued that no Muslim can ever be trusted because all are under religious orders to lie. Such specious reasoning has added fuel to the Obama-is-Muslim fire; here's one crazy youtube video:

But such broad slanders simply aren't true, because taqiyya is not "lying." The term more closely translates as "fear" or "caution," and it's a minor or nonexistent part of most Muslims' religious practice. Etan Kohlberg narrowly defines taqiyya as "precautionary dissimulation" and suggests that it arose as a defensive practice for persecuted Muslims.

Said differently, Muhammad does not encourage his followers to lie; he allows them to hide their faith if doing so will save them from violence. (Boston University Professor Kecia Ali noted at a recent roundtable that the strategy has been used most frequently by Shi'ites to save themselves from harassment by Sunni Muslims.)

But while it is wrong to hastily broaden the definition of taqiyya in mischaracterizing Islam, it is also wrong to cast "precautionary dissimulation" as a uniquely Muslim practice. There's at least one instance in the Bible in which a prophet of God--Elisha--allows a new convert to lie about his faith, to practice a Biblically sanctioned form of taqiyya.

In 2 Kings 5, we hear the story of Naaman. Naaman is warrior of Aram--a nation-state that battles Israel frequently in the Hebrew Bible. However, this "heathen" warrior is special because he is blessed by God: "by him the Lord had given victory to Aram" (5:1). (God often empowers rivals as punishment for the Israelites' sins.)

But Naaman is also cursed; "though a mighty warrior" (5:1), he suffers from leprosy. His white skin flakes off, and his limbs are vulnerable branches on a withering tree. (Why the Aramaeans let a leper lead them, I don't know. Is Naaman so "mighty" because he can distract enemies by throwing fingers at them?)

One day, an Israelite captive suggests that Naaman consult the prophet Elisha so that he may be healed. Naaman does, and offers the prophet a significant offering, but Elisha--an early proponent of single-payer insurance reform--does the job for free, replying, "As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!" No copay? I have no idea how this man keeps up his summer home in the Keys.

Naaman is impressed--so impressed, indeed, that he converts, swearing to worship no god other than Elisha's. But the healed commander is still an Aramaean, and must return to his idolater-king. Hence, he begs Elisha to pierce a loophole in his new-found faith: "When my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count" (5:18). Rimmon is the god of the Aramaeans, and Naaman asks forgiveness in advance for faking the Rimmon-ese religion when worshiping with his leader.

Elisha responds, "Go in peace" (5:19). The prophet gives Naaman permission to practice taqiyya, to lie about his allegiance to God and avoid persecution. The takeaway? Both Muhammad and the Bible offer similar advice to believers facing peril: you may hide your belief.

So perhaps we should stop worrying that Obama is a Muslim and start hoping that Ahmadinejad is actually a stealthy Christian.

Ezra 4: The Original Settlement Freeze

2010-10-06T10:56:00.003-04:00

Another presidency, another failing attempt to negotiate a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A month back, President Obama got leaders from both camps in the same room for the umpteenth time to try to hash out a deal. And this week--also for the umpteenth time--the talks are in danger of falling apart. Why? The expiration of the so-called "settlement freeze."

For talks to begin, Palestinian leaders asked that Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu call for a temporary stop to Israeli construction in Palestinian territories. He did, setting a ten-month moratorium. However, the freeze ended last week, and Palestinian leaders are threatening to leave the negotiating table. (Here's the Times's latest update on the story.)

All this talk of settlement freezes got me thinking about the Biblical book of Ezra, in which King Artaxerxes issues a very different kind of building moratorium--one that stops construction of the holiest structure in Israel.

In the Hebrew Bible, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are one; as a composite, they tell the story of the Israelites' return to the Holy Land after the Babylonian exile. Roughly speaking, Ezra narrates the reconstruction of the Temple, and Nehemiah deals with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

But much like the book of Judges--in which the Hebrews' entry into Israel is a bloody, complicated slog--Ezra-Nehemiah describes the Return as a difficult process.

It all begins well. Ezra 1 gives the text of an edict released by King Cyrus of Persia, who decrees that the Israelites may go home and rebuild their holy places. He even releases the contents of the Temple treasury, which had apparently been moldering in a really big Babylonian safety deposit box for the last fifty years.

Tens of thousands of exiled Israelites heed the decree and head back to Jerusalem to start building. However, no sooner do they lay the foundations for the new Temple than the locals start getting restless: "the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and made them afraid to build, and they bribed officials to frustrate their plan throughout the reign of King Cyrus of Persia until the reign of King Darius of Persia" (Ezra 4:4-5).

This "discouragement" reaches a peak in 4:7 and following, when the other residents of the land send a letter to the sitting king, Artaxerxes, asking him to revoke the Israelites' building permit. In their letter--the entirety of which is reproduced in chapter 4--they argue that the Hebrews are are a rebellious people, and that the Temple is merely the first step in a new revolt: "They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city; they are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now may it be known to the king that, if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be reduced" (4:12-13).

The letter is persuasive, and Artaxerxes issues his own moratorium. Construction on the new Temple is stopped, not to begin again until the reign of a later king, Darius. (This "second Temple" will be completed in 515 B.C.E.)

For me, Ezra 4 provides two insights that might help us understand the current negotiating impasse in Israel.

First off, the chapter explains some Israelis' rationale for opposing a settlement freeze. It goes something like this: "The Persians (read: Iranians) told us we couldn't build in the Holy Land 2500 years ago. Who are you to stop us now?"

But there's another passage in Ezra 4 that is equally relevant to this discussion. Before the "people of the land" begin agitating against the Israelites, they offer an olive branch: "When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families and said to them, 'Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him'" (4:1-2).

There's nothing in the text to suggest that these adversaries' request is not sincere; nonetheless, the Israelites reject it: "You shall have no part with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel" (4:3).

This exclusivist language--"our God"--is telling. The Israelites believe that they have a unique claim to the land, and to the construction of their temple. They don't want to share their building--or their God.

Here's hoping that today's Israelites are more flexible. After all, the "adversaries" are at the table, willing to talk.

The Bible and the Iranian Computer Worm

2010-10-01T10:02:00.003-04:00

Dude ... the Bible can even help you crack cases involving international cyber-espionage! Seriously! I have to grade papers today, so I'll let the New York Times do the heavy lifting here.

Pew Survey: Religious Illiteracy or Willful Ignorance?

2010-09-29T18:27:00.006-04:00

A new survey recently administered by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life proves what all of us already knew: Americans know frightfully little about religion. As the Times reports, the survey tests respondents' knowledge of a variety of religion-related topics, from the Bible to Christianity to world religions to the relationship between church and state in America. The average score is a dismal 50%.

I didn't take the poll, but the questions I've seen seem pretty easy. Of course, I have a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, so I'm contractually obligated to think the survey is beneath me. But you can see for yourself: here's a link to some sample questions.

Progressive news outlets like MSNBC and the Huffington Post have been trumpeting the fact that atheists and agnostics score best on the quiz. (Though even these groups shouldn't be too proud: they average only slightly better than 60%.)

The Times quotes Dave Silverman, president of the advocacy group American Atheists, on non-believers' above-average performance: "'I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people', Mr. Silverman said. 'Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists'.” Translation? Believers are dumb. They don't even read their own texts. If they did, they'd be atheists too.

But this explanation--repeatedly raised by Keith Olbermann and Lawrence O'Donnell last evening--is facile and, frankly, uninformed. I would wager that most Christian believers know their own scriptures very well; most of my religious friends do.

But I wonder if there isn't a more nefarious reason for believers' relative ignorance. Perhaps they score poorly on a survey testing broad-based religious knowledge because some of them want to remain in the dark.

As I mentioned earlier this month, the would-be Qur'an-burner Terry Jones claims to have never read Islam's holy book. And one of the scariest banners floating around the protests against the Park51 community center in Lower Manhattan reads, "I learned everything I need to know about Islam on 9/11." Maybe some believers fare poorly on the Pew test not because they are stupid, but because they choose to remain ignorant of other traditions.

This theory holds water for me, because despite atheists' claims to superiority, they are not substantially smarter than their religious neighbors. But non-believers may have an edge because they allow themselves to be exposed to other faiths.

Frankly, though, I hope I'm wrong.

Exodus 14: The Red Sea Parted, But Who Cares?

2010-09-24T09:59:00.006-04:00

Early in the week a group of scientists in Boulder released a report arguing that Moses's parting of the Red Sea--described in Exodus 14--could have actually happened. The Christian Science Monitor explains:

"A team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., has identified what it argues is a plausible physical explanation for a parting of the waters. At the right spot – a sharp bend where a shallow river meets a coastal lagoon – and with the right contours of a waterway's bottom, wind moving across the bend could in effect push water both upstream and downstream, exposing the bottom. When the sustained winds finally die down, water returns from both directions to cover the muddy land bridge. The phenomenon is known as wind setdown."

Wind setdown, eh? I can respond to this fascinating advance in Biblical atmospherics in only one way: utter disinterest. Who cares?

The problem with this and other forms of religious pseudoscience--no matter how valid the research that backs them--is that they entirely miss the point of that Tanakh. The Exodus isn't one man's weather log; it's an account of one people's encounter with the transcendent divine. With God! It doesn't primarily engage the rational, the natural, or the analytical--it wrestles with the supernatural.

So when science steps in to join the fray, lab techs can only sound ridiculous as they turn a lasting symbol of slavery and divine liberation into a weather anomaly. God's miraculous freeing of the people Israel is reduced to an after-effect of el nino. And you all remember what el nino means in English, right? The nino.

So why do scientists do it? Or said differently, whom does this new theory--wind setdown--serve?

Certainly not the devout. Christians and Jews who take Exodus as "true" believe that God--not a unique wind pattern--parted the Red Sea. To suggest that such a parting could have happened naturally is to rob chapter 14 of its spiritual pith.

Perhaps atheists and skeptics get off on wind setdown; now, they can argue that God didn't "really" part a sea for Moses 3000 years ago. However, as I've mentioned before, if one scientific explanation of one Biblical miracle is your best argument against faith, you've never thought seriously about the complexities of belief.

But this theory is extremely unhelpful to me, and readers like me, many of whom are progressive believers. Setting theology aside for a moment, it's worth saying that we do wrong to treat ancient texts--not only the Bible--primarily as pieces of historical or scientific literature.

Most of the time, we know to avoid such folly: no one has looked into whether Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia actually caused the winds to pick up and send his fleet to Troy. And no one will ever try to prove that Xerxes actually commanded his troops to lash the Hellespont. These are old stories about insights more timeless than "wind setdown."

But the Bible makes people a little crazy--even upstanding scientists. Perhaps because literalists have ruled the day for so long, too many of us attend to the Bible's truths--little "t"--while losing track of its Truths--big "T."

So let me repeat one of the basic theses of this blog: the Bible uses figurative language to describe the experience of the numinous. To take that language as "real" and then to prove or disprove its historical or scientific veracity is to fight literalists on their own shaky ground. To do so is to reduce world-breaking scripture to an Excel spreadsheet of air velocities and water levels.

If intelligent discussion about religion and religious texts is ever to advance, we need to begin treating scripture as polysemantic literature capable of creating many meanings, the most important of which are never "scientific."

A Christian Google, or Raising Your Turtle-Woman Hybrid

2010-09-20T12:58:00.006-04:00

The Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan blogged yesterday about the minor but real proliferation of, shall we say, "orthodox" competitors to Google: search engines that deliver results filtered according to their compatibility with various faith systems.

Hence, there is imhalal.com for Muslims, jewogle.com for Jews, and seekfind.org for Christians.

Not surprisingly, all three are works in progress. Jewogle seems devoted only to providing information on famous Jews. An enigmatic line on its homepage simply reads, "Did you know that ________ is Jewish?" However, that space remains blank no matter how you click on it--I tried all sorts of creative tactics. And I can't quite figure out how the site will help me if I don't already know any famous Jews. Am I supposed to fill in the blank with my own wishful thinking? "Did you know that Pat Robertson is Jewish?" Or am I supposed to be provocative? "Did you know that Jesus is Jewish?"

I'mhalal, by contrast, is properly devoted to providing "Islamic" searches, but it doesn't significantly alter the results. An I'mhalal search for "jihad" turned out sources similar to those produced by Google. (Notably missing from imhalal.com's list is a link to jihadwatch.com, an increasingly popular--and alarmist--web site devoted to "bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world.") Links on the side of the results page send you to a Qur'an search or to Al Jazeera's web site.

But if you're looking for a kooky at-work diversion, seekfind definitely takes the cake. Seekfind promises "to provide God-honoring, biblically based, and theologically sound Christian search engine results." However, it significantly filters results, and it produces site lists with an obviously ideological bent. NPR's Habiba Nosheen notes that a search for "gay marriage" sends you to sites devoted to abolishing it. Further, if you search "Democratic Party, you will be sent to sites on Marxism. (Really, seekfind.org? That's a Christian belief?)

It's worth noting that a majority of seekfind's material seems to come from two sites: Probe Ministries, a conservative Christian news outlet, and christiananswers.net. This narrowness notwithstanding, I still wanted to see what else seekfind could turn up, besides slurs against progressives and homosexuals.

So I looked up "Marxism." Seekfind's first result was an essay called "Marxism and Science" that supposedly demonstrates Darwin's reliance on Marxist philosophy in developing his evolutionary theories. I knew that Darwin was a damn commie!

Then I searched "Bill Clinton," only to find a film review for the Tarentino film Kill Bill 2. Sneaky.

Then, to be edgy, I searched "bestiality." The fourth result was a piece called "Animal/Human Hybrids" that takes very seriously the possibility of mad goat-men roving the land. The author writes, "The formation of an entity that is both animal and human raises questions of personhood and challenges our definition of humanness. These beings will inevitably be met with challenges that go beyond identification with a minority group." To say the least!

If my sister produces a turtle-daughter after experiencing the love that really dare not speak its name, the least of my hybrid niece's problems will be minority group identification ... we'd have to be so careful that she didn't accidentally flip onto her back!

Seekfind's not-so-cleverly-hidden message dovetails nicely with an old saw of gay-bashers everywhere--the slippery slope argument. If we allow men to marry men, what's next? Men marrying snakes? Or dogs? And if we allow men to marry dogs, and the dogs have kids, what will we do with the hybrids?

These are weighty matters, but seekfind is here to help you out.

Eat the Qur'an, Too

2010-09-16T16:06:00.007-04:00

In a post earlier this month, I outed myself as a supporter of all types of scriptural literacy--not just Biblical literacy. Basically, I'm excited if you're going to read the Bible more, but I'm also excited if you're going to read the Torah, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tao te Ching, or the Analects of Confucius, or hell, Dianetics!

Okay, maybe not Dianetics ... I guess my own willful ignorance begins with Scientology. Sorry, John Travolta.

But in this day and age, it is perhaps most crucial that we know the Qur'an better. And Islam, too. There is so much hatred, so much vitriol, so much mean-spirited bluster surrounding the ongoing discussion of that religion's place in America that we can't afford to be ignorant any longer. We need to know more, and we need to know better ...

Especially those of us who consider ourselves tolerant of Islam, who support Feisal Abdul Rauf and his vision of inter-religious dialogue, who condemn the Qur'an burners of the world, and who hope to rebuild an America devoted to the seminal--and Constitutional--religious freedoms guaranteed by our founding documents.

We need to learn more, start dialogue, and engage.

If you want to do so, you might start by reading two brief pieces that have inspired me in recent days. The first is an op-ed in USA Today written by a dear friend, Ismat Sarah Mangla. In it, Mangla argues:

"We need more dialogue, more reading of the Quran, both inside the Muslim community and out. After all, more than a billion Muslims in the world and 2.5 million in the United States are living quietly unsensational lives. These stories — of the silent majority of peaceful Muslims — are not headline-worthy. But they are nonetheless real."

She also points to passages in Muslim scripture that affirm those values that Americans hold most dear: truthfulness, justice, and freedom of worship.

The second is Valerie Kaur's "Shadow Generation," which appeared recently on the Huffington Post. Kaur issues a call to action to those youth who consider themselves tolerant and understanding, but who still seem to dwell in the shadows, ceding the stage to pundits and conservative blowhards. She writes:

"It is time for young people everywhere to emerge from the shadows. We know how to form common ground with people different from us, whether Muslims or Evangelicals, conservatives or progressives. We can draw upon these experiences to help overcome the fear driving hateful expression on both sides of the debate. We can invite opponents of Park51 to dialogue with Muslim Americans, so as not to conflate Islam with the acts of those who have committed violence in its name. And we can ask Muslim allies not to denigrate opponents of Park51 as ignorant or racist, and instead engage directly with the anxiety and misinformation driving Islamophobia. But only if we commit to action."

Kaur is a driving force behind the Common Ground Campaign, a "coalition of young people standing against hate speech and violence against Muslim Americans in the wake of the 'Ground Zero Mosque' controversy"--this from the campaign web site. How can you not sign her charter?

So read Mangla. Then read Kaur. Then crack open the Qur'an. Stop tolerating, and start getting involved. I'll do the same, even while I keep Bible-thumping here.

Matthew 5: Christine O'Donnell, the Bible, and Masturbation

2010-09-15T13:27:00.007-04:00

Another Wednesday morning, another surprising primary upset for the Tea Party. Last night, insurgent candidate--and Sarah Palin endorsee--Christine O'Donnell pulled out a six-point win over establishment favorite Michael Castle in the race for an open Senate seat in Delaware. (That's her on the left, in a Washington Post photo.)

But The New York Times reports that many Republicans are glum at the news, because they believe O'Donnell's views are too extreme to appeal to the general electorate. Maybe they're right: O'Donnell's on the record as opposing masturbation, of all things!

CNN cites an old MTV interview in which O'Donnell comes out against sexual solitaire on Biblical grounds: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. [And] you can't masturbate without lust." And an interview appearing in today's Guardian suggests that she hasn't backed away from her position.

The candidate's engaging in some exegetical acrobatics here, but at least she's quoting a real text--Matthew 5:28, in which Jesus says, "everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

But context matters, and Jesus is not forbidding masturbation in this passage; he's warning people away from the thorny path to infidelity. Here's the full quote: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery'. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Jesus's point, I think, is that fantasies matter: if you're lusting after your neighbor's husband or wife, you're already on a slippery slope toward trying the trick.

So technically, I suppose O'Donnell could argue that Jesus is discouraging sexual fantasies here. But masturbation? Not explicitly, so far as I can tell ...

However, if O'Donnell really wants to campaign on the Bible's distaste for autoeroticism, she'd be better off going to the old classic: Genesis 38. In this chapter, God smites a man named Onan because he "spilled his semen on the ground" (38:9)--hence "onanism," a mostly arcane synonym for masturbation. (Most scholars now argue that Onan is killed because he refuses to impregnate his wife--not because he likes pleasuring himself. But I'll leave that quibble for a later date.)

But for now, I'm going to go ahead and advise O'Donnell to keep this plank--no pun intended--out of her platform. It's a non-starter on Biblical and political grounds. Polls suggest that 90% of men and 65% of women masturbate regularly. I wouldn't want to work against those types of majorities.

Ecclesiastes 12: Of Making Many Blogs, There Is No End ...

2010-09-14T11:10:00.007-04:00

A miniature milestone has crept up on me as I've been working my way through this meandering Bible blog. Today is my hundredth post. Are you proud of me?

So I thought I'd celebrate by diving into one of my favorite Bible books, Ecclesiastes. I love the author's canny wit, his stark ironies, and his painfully honest sense of the real. The Ecclesiastes author pulls no punches.

But I find that my selection is ill-timed. Because I think that the Ecclesiastes author, if he came to my 100th-post party, would deliver a depressing message: Please stop writing your blog. Ouch.

Early rabbis believed that King Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, along with the Song of Songs and Proverbs. They argued--sensibly if not correctly--that he composed the Song, an erotic love ballad, in his lusty youth; Proverbs, an collection of wisdom sayings, in his mature adulthood; and Ecclesiastes, a darker paean to human grasping, in his old age. ("Dark paean" may be an oxymoron.)

And Ecclesiastes is somber reading, indeed--grim nursing-home fodder. In it, "the Teacher"--the book's ostensible speaker--gives us such bright urgings as "those who increase knowledge increase sorrow" and "there is nothing new under the sun" and "dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a foul odour."

These are not hopeful messages, but the Ecclesiastes author could have had a great career as an ironic greeting card writer. "Happy graduation! But remember, 'the wise die just like fools'." (The world would be a better place if there really were ironic greeting card writers.)

The Teacher's cheery aphorisms aside, the book's last chapter is the one that gives me pause. This epilogue, chapter 12, opens with a despair-inducing portrait of old age giving way to apocalypse: "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain" (12:1-3). Such passages helped inspire Eliot to write "The Waste Land."

Now I'm not too old, so these verses don't sting much (yet) ... though the teens I teach make me dwell a little longer in the mirror over the darkening bags under my eyes. ("All is vanity," says the Teacher.)

But the last few verses of Ecclesiastes are especially painful to me. There, the author writes, "The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (12:11-12).

Can this blog, into which I have put time and effort and energy, be the mindless "book-making" the Teacher discourages? Is the "goading" wisdom of the Bible--or of Ecclesiastes--"all ye know on earth," to quote Keats, "and all ye need to know"? Should I simply take the word of the Teacher in verse 13--"Fear God, and keep his commandments"--and stop all this cyberspatial bloviating? Perhaps.

But I'm too invested in my sinking ship of a project. Studying is my job, and "making of many books" will get me tenure someday, perhaps. So my blog will continue past 100 posts. But it will do so, I think, in spite of the Teacher's wise advice.

2 Samuel 15: "The Hearts of the People"

2010-09-07T11:20:00.005-04:00

How do you win the hearts of the people?

As midterm elections creep nearer in the United States, politicians across the country--or at least, sadly, those up for re-election--are trying very hard to come up with an answer.

On the left, President Obama has proposed two ideas likely intended to win voters' favor as November draws nigh: a capital investment tax credit for small businesses and a $50 billion public works plan to spur job growth and update infrastructure. (There's also a research tax break floating around somewhere.)

On the right, candidates are proposing less and crowing more; many echo a chorus I heard yesterday on the Howie Carr Show: "Are you better off than you were two years ago?" Presumably, Republicans' answer is "no." (It's worth noting that the time frame--two years--has been halved since Reagan coined the phrase in his debates with Carter thirty years ago. I wonder how low politicians can go? "Are you better off than you were fifteen minutes ago? No? Then vote for Michele Bachmann! ... Yes? Did you eat a sandwich? Oh. That makes sense.")

But at least one politician in the Bible--and a nefarious one at that--knew something that Obama and the right seem to have forgotten in the sturm und drang of the midterm election season: that winning the hearts of the people has less to do with talking than it does with listening.

That "politician" is Absalom, the son of King David who, for a brief moment, usurps his father's throne. (Marc Chagall's depiction of Absalom's reconciliation with his father appears above.)

For some, Absalom is a classic villain. He is a conspiring murderer who gains power through deceit and subterfuge. But for others, he's a man looking to settle scores in the wake of a heinous wrong.

Absalom has a beautiful sister--for whom he cares deeply--named Tamar. However, he's also got a half-brother, Amnon, with a taste for half-incest. Amnon falls hard for Tamar, rapes her, and discards her. But when David hears of his son's disgusting sin, he fails to punish him; actually, he fails to do anything: "When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn" (2 Samuel 13:21).

Understandably, Absalom is livid--at Amnon for his crime and at David for his blind eye. But Absalom is also the classic snake in the grass; diabolically, he waits two full years for his revenge, catching Amnon completely unawares and slaughtering him at a feast. (He intends to do in his father too, but David does not show.) David, however, is consistently soft on his princes gone wild, and he stands by as his homicidal son flees.

When Absalom returns, at his father's request, he still harbors a deep hatred for the king and plans his overthrow. But dethroning this particular monarch--the spectacularly popular David--is no small feat. So Absalom adopts a surprisingly simple strategy for winning the people to his side: he listens to them.

Here is the author of 2 Samuel to explain:

"Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the road into the gate; and when anyone brought a suit before the king for judgement, Absalom would call out and say, ‘From what city are you?’ When the person said, ‘Your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel’, Absalom would say, ‘See, your claims are good and right; but there is no one deputed by the king to hear you.’ Absalom said moreover, ‘If only I were judge in the land! Then all who had a suit or cause might come to me, and I would give them justice.’ Whenever people came near to do obeisance to him, he would put out his hand and take hold of them, and kiss them. Thus Absalom did to every Israelite who came to the king for judgement; so Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel" (15: 2-6).

Note two things: first, Absalom asks the first question. He inquires of the supplicant, reversing the expected roles. (Usually, you address the prince; the prince does not address you--not so here.) Then, he sympathizes with the travelers, telling them that their cause is legitimate. I know from countless hours in graduate seminars that the words "You have a good point" are some of the most empowering in the language.

Second, when the person seeking "judgement" tries to bow to Absalom--to "do obeisance to him"--his immediate response is a kiss and an embrace.

The implicit message of these two movements is clear: I hear you, and I love you.

And the rest barely need be said: the king isn't available right now. Can you leave a message?

Notice that Absalom never actually resolves any of the cases brought before him. Indeed, we learn nothing of the complaints of the Israelites, and perhaps we know that Absalom doesn't care. But the mere act of bearing witness is enough to sate the people's appetite for a leader. And with it, "Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel."

This word "stole" is of course telling, and it reminds us that Absalom does not have the best interests of his people in mind. Nonetheless, his pantomime is enough to inspire a majority to join his de facto revolt.

So do you hear me, President Obama? John Boehner? And Reid and Angle and Feingold and McCain and the rest? Talking is pretty. But listening? That's power.

Moses "Restoring Honor": Glenn Beck Uses (and Misuses) Exodus

2010-08-31T10:09:00.011-04:00

The mainstream media didn't know quite what to do with Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, held last Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial. It was newsworthy--upwards of 100,000 people showed--but what was it? A Tea Party event wrapped in the mantle of religious rhetoric? More demagoguery by the bete noire of the progressive left? A pep rally for Albert Pujols, who accepted an award for "Hope." (I really need to get my hands on one of those "Hope" awards--I'm absolutely brimming with optimism. Or perhaps I should gun for an award in some other pithy ideal ... perhaps Trustworthiness, or Dyspepsia.)

Consensus opinion is that it wasn't overly political--despite Sarah Palin's headlining speech--but that it was extremely religious. If there were a thesis, it was simple: America should return to God. Here are some stray Beck quotes, pulled from rushecho.org's transcript of the event: "Look to God and make your choice." "Turn back to God." "Praise be to God." "We still have faith in God in America." "America is not just good because God has chosen her." "Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ... oh my God." (Okay, that last one was Usher, but the first five were all Beck.)

Lefties are seething at the conflation of religious sentiment and patriotism, but Beck's message--that America is holy, and that Americans should therefore be holy--is as old as the United States itself. Since the Puritans' arrival, prominent Americans have described our nation as a "Promised Land" and characterized the United States as a new Israel--a people selected by God for especial blessing. Conrad Cherry rounds up primary historical documents on this theme in a nice anthology, God's New Israel.

Beck made this America-as-Promised-Land link clear through the Biblical allusions in his keynote address. Here's the new Moses himself, courtesy again of rushecho.org, hearkening back to the old Moses:

"It occurs all through history: we fall asleep and then wake up, from time to time. It has from the burning bush: Moses, freedom, then they wander in the wilderness till they turn back to God. In Egypt, they prayed for deliverance and Jehovah sent Moses with a stick. Those bringing Freedom were just men—they were just like you! Coming across the plains they relied on God. America is not good just because God has chosen her — America is good and great because citizens are good and great.

The takeaway, as I see it, goes something like this: America is enslaved--"in Egypt"--and the "Restoring Honor" rally was Glenn ben Moshe's effort to train tens of thousands of new Moseses--"just like you"--to "bring Freedom" to the masses.

Okay, it's a cute allegory, but the progressive conspiracy theorist in me wants to finish the metaphor with the obvious subtext: the Egyptian taskmasters are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and their leader is that hard-hearted African pharaoh, Barack Hussein Obama! But Beck didn't go there Saturday, so I won't go there today.

However, for the sake of Biblical accuracy, it's worth noting that Beck is playing fast and loose with the Exodus myth here ... and not only because he calls Moses a guy "with a stick."

First of all, the Israelites themselves never "pray for deliverance" from the Egyptians. God merely hears "their cry" and knows "their sufferings" (Exodus 3:7-8)--and they're enslaved, so they probably cry and suffer a lot. To imagine the Israelites kneeling in Egypt, praying devoutly for the arrival of a divinely sanctioned savior is to thoroughly misunderstand their corporate character.

Indeed, the Israelites' first utterance as a liberated people paints a very different picture. Seeing the Pharaoh's army chasing them, they complain to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? [...] It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness" (Exodus 14: 11-13). This rabble is not going to be given the "Faithfulness" award at Beck's next rally.

Such kvetching is of a piece with the Israelites' attitude throughout their time in the wilderness, and a pile of other instances suggest, contra Beck, that the chosen people did not simply "rely on God" during their wanderings. Further, from my perspective, they are not "good and great," as Beck calls his gathered chosen. If I had to choose adjectives to describe God's people wandering outside Egypt, I'd choose "short-sighted" and "bitchy." Sorry. It's true! Read Exodus again.

Further, the Bible's Moses doesn't hold mammoth, self-aggrandizing rallies in front of the Tutankhamen Memorial to win recruits. He fights God tooth and nail. When God calls Moses at the Burning Bush and asks him to liberate Israel, Moses comes up with no fewer than five distinct excuses as to why he can't do what God asks: 1. I'm nothing next to Pharaoh (3:11), 2. I don't know you (3:13), 3. They won't believe me (4:1), 4. I can't talk pretty (4:10), and 5. Why me? (4:13). Beck seems to salivate over the savior's role; Moses doesn't really want it at all. Only when God gets pissed does Moses relent and take the job.

Now, I don't want to suggest that Beck's casual treatment of the Bible is unique; his understanding of Exodus isn't too far removed from that of other Americans. But because most devout Christians and Jews don't understand their scriptures, paper tigers like Beck can use them as, dare I say it, propaganda. He can twist the Bible in such a way as to convince the masses that he is from God, and that they should be from God too.

However, in Exodus, just about no one turns to God, relies on God, or rejoices at being chosen by God. They turn from Him over and over again. And Beck is not a new Moses--he is a savior of his own creation, leading his flock we know not where.

Of course, Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial drew criticism because it took place on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech, given at the same location. King, too, famously uses Exodus to frame his project, but he does so with better knowledge, and with a darker sense of nuance. He evokes Moses's death--outside Canaan--in another speech delivered shortly before his own assassination. This is the closing movement of his "I've been to the mountaintop" speech:

Watching King, I take a page from Beck and tear up.

But let's make one thing perfectly clear: I prefer King's Exodus.

Qur'an Burner Hasn't Read the Qur'an!

2010-08-26T09:30:00.007-04:00

I was reading this morning about Terry Jones, the Gainesville, Florida pastor who has garnered national attention--and international disdain--for planning a Qur'an burning on the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

The New York Times reports that Jones is organizing the conflagration because he believes that the Qur'an is "full of lies." His claims, previously ignored, come at a particularly sensitive time, given the national debate over the Muslim community center set to be built in Lower Manhattan.

However, for me this story of mind-blowing bigotry morphed from tragedy to farce when I discovered one fact: Jones has never read the Qur'an! The Times quotes him, “I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”

Pardon my French, but holy shit.

So let me step away from my usual harangue about reading the Bible and scream to Jones and anyone else who might be listening, READ THE QUR'AN TOO, especially if you're planning on ignorantly slandering it. One of my dirty little secrets is that I'm not just for Biblical literacy--despite the subject of this blog--but for all literacy. And that includes familiarity with the Qur'an--the other world-shattering scripture of the monotheistic West.

Maybe if Jones read the Qur'an, he'd learn that the Prophet Muhammad promulgated a religion of tolerance--one that promoted an unprecedented level of spiritual dialogue among Muslims and people of other faiths.

Indeed, Muslim scripture holds special regard for Jews and Christians, calling them "People of the Book," or ′Ahl al-Kitāb. In the first centuries of global Islam, Jews and Christians living in Muslim lands were granted special status as dhimmi. Dhimmi were offered protection and were allowed to practice their religions freely, without compulsion to convert.

Indeed, the Qur'an reads, in 2:256, "There is to be no compulsion in religion. True direction is in fact distinct from error: so whoever disbelieves in idols and believes in God has taken hold of the most reliable handle, which does not break." Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike "disbelieve in idols and believe in God," and Muhammad lauds all who join his crusade against idolatry.

(This translation is Thomas Cleary's, from his Essential Koran, a distillation of some of the most important passages from Muslim scripture. It's not a comprehensive volume, but it's great for those looking to get a foothold.)

If only Jones would take Muhammad's lead and treat American Muslims as dhimmi in his own land, we could stop talking about burning scriptures and start talking about reading them.

Evangelical Nerds Salivate as German Company Announces Massive Bible Video Game

2010-08-25T15:56:00.010-04:00

When I was a little kid, I got my hands on a game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System called "Bible Adventures." The game featured modules based on three stories from scripture: "Noah's Ark," "Baby Moses," and "David and Goliath." I mainly remember the first one, a clunky side-scroller in which a rectangular Noah walks around a painfully 2-D jungle picking up animals and, with luck, lofting them into a menacing gray-brown cavern--presumably the ark, though it always looked to my adolescent mind like a big sinkhole.

I vaguely recall the Moses game too, but only because you can't kill the baby--it's a Christian game, after all. I spent most of my time lofting the infant savior of the Israelites like an over-ripe turnip, into bad guys and streams.

"Bible Adventures" was independently released by Wisdom Tree Games because Nintendo never officially approved it. It's hard to see why, though: they clearly passed up a goldmine. I mean, what kid wouldn't want to drop $35 on a NES title whose main objective is hoisting animals over your head, rushing around gunning for the best prize of all: Bible verses!

However, fans of "Bible Adventures" wet their pants earlier this week when German company FIAA GmbH--pronounced "fee-aah gim-buh" (kidding)--announced the release of a massive multiplayer online (MMO) Bible game appropriately titled "Bible Online." That's right, "World of Warcraft" meets "Word of God." In a fight to the death, who will win?

The first chapter is called "The Heroes" and is apparently based on stories from Genesis, or "the Genesis," as the slightly askew English translation of the press release reads. It continues, "As the leader of their tribe, players have to construct their villages, manage recources [sic] and the budget." God, I love the chapter when Isaac manages his budget--I'm so excited to see how Feyah Gimbah will do it!

After successfully managing a budget--if players can stand the excitement--they'll begin questing for the Promised Land in an effort to get Abraham to Canaan. But it's not all Abraham's show here, folks: "The game also offers role playing elements. The birth right system introduces Abraham's successors Isaac and Jacob. Side quests allow users to experience less known stories of the Genesis."

Now, I'm not sure what the "birth right system" is, but I know for a fact that God was just waiting for the day when someone would finally allow Jews and Christians to learn "the Genesis" through "side quests." I'm personally looking forward to one from Genesis 38, in which Judah sleeps with his daughter-in-law Tamar. It's probably going to be like a kinky Japanese anime video game.

There's no word yet on whether "Bible Online" will include other pieces of the Torah: the near-sacrifice of Isaac, Simeon and Levi's slaughter of Shechem, the creation of the world. (I always wanted to see what the universe would have looked like if God made light after he made humans--I picture lots of primeval heads bumping on doorposts.) I'm also hoping for a Wii-style power-pad race up Jacob's ladder.

Nonetheless, one thing's for certain: I want in on the beta testing ... it starts September 6.

The Bible Is a Forgery

2010-08-24T13:24:00.006-04:00

Last week, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that a Muslim Egyptian publisher has released a new version of the Bible that, its editors claim, proves Christian scripture to be a forgery.

In the text's introduction, the Islamic Enlightenment Publishing House's Abuislam Abdullah writes that there are many versions of Christian scripture and argues that the texts included in his "Bible" predate the Tanakh. Their existence, he concludes, proves that the Bible as Jews and Christians know it is a fabrication.

Of course, most Biblical scholars--even devout ones--agree with Abdullah's contention that scripture exists in many versions. (For reference, see the variant copy of Isaiah found with the Dead Sea Scrolls.) Further, early reports suggest that the "forged" Bible is actually of 16th-century Arab origins.

Nonetheless, Egypt's Coptic Christians--who make up 10% of the country's population--are outraged at the implied critique, and at least one Coptic leader has considered filing a complaint with Egypt's attorney general. (I can imagine it now ... "Dear Egyptian Attorney General, Abuislam called our book fake. Can you yell at him? Love, Christians")

But this miniature debate obscures a simple fact: much of the Bible is "forged," at least by contemporary standards.

Most simply understood, a forgery is a fraud, an inauthentic object passed off as authentic. Discussions of forgery usually begin with either money--where good fakes can earn a bank, or fill one--or art.

Regarding the latter, one of the most frequently forged painters is Corot, whose style is easily aped. (That's his "Interrupted Reading" above.) Though Corot himself produced just a few thousand original works, it is said that thousands more "Corots" circulated during the height of his popularity. A Louvre curator once joked, "Corot painted three thousand canvases, ten thousand of which have been sold in America."

Forgery persists in the modern era because with paintings, sculptures, or even books, there is a huge difference between real value and symbolic value. Three charcoal lines on a placemat are worthless ... unless Miro's signature floats beneath. A scrap of poetry is doggerel ... unless T.S. Eliot scribbled it down in his youth. Certain artists have cache, and works attributed to them are extremely valuable, no matter their putative quality.

The same can be said about many of the early heroes of Judaism and Christianity. And quite a few Biblical books attributed to these heroes--but not necessarily written by them--made it into the Bible.

Take, for example, the New Testament writings of Paul. Paul was the epistolary genius of the early church, and his letters both spread the message of Christianity around the Near East and articulated the earliest Christian theology. However, most scholars argue that of the fourteen letters traditionally ascribed to Paul, only half were likely written by the man himself (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians).

Significant stylistic, theological, and historical variations suggest that the other seven were written later, likely by students of Paul trying to capitalize on his fame and influence. The authors of these deutero- or pseudo-Pauline letters were not trying to steal Paul's thunder; instead, they were attempting to keep his word alive. Examples from the ancient Greek world suggest that such pseudonymous authorship was an acceptable--if not laudable--way of carrying on a teacher's message.

In similar fashion, many books of the Hebrew Bible are traditionally ascribed to its most notable characters. Many orthodox Jews still believe that Moses wrote the Torah, that David wrote the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote the Song of Songs. Historical research has made all these claims extremely doubtful--as scholars can confidently date the composition of many Biblical books to centuries after the lives of their "authors." Nonetheless, such traditions persist.

And why shouldn't they? There is a poetic allure to imagining that David wrote Psalm 51 while atoning for the murder of Uriah. Or that Moses dictated the Torah from his deathbed with God's help. Or that Ephesians is as much a part of the Pauline corpus as Romans. Such claims--whether they are "true" or not--only deepen the meaning of scripture and open up new interpretive possibilities.

So I agree, Mr. Abdullah. The Bible is a forgery. But not because of your book.

Iowa Pol Finds AIDS in the Bible!

2010-08-18T09:24:00.008-04:00

Initially, I didn't want to spend too much time on Iowa State Senate hopeful Jeremy Walters, who recently reported on his facebook page that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. (And why, again, do campaigns allow their candidates unfettered access to facebook?) But after scanning his brilliantly asinine assault on reason, common decency, and basic grammar, I can't help myself ...

As support for his radical claim, Walters trots out an old favorite of the gay-bashing right, Leviticus 20:13. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."

Crippling the English language as he cripples his candidacy, Walters begins his piercing commentary, "This tells me alot so should we kill them NO." Well, we've got a humanitarian in our midst, don't we! I can see the campaign posters now: "Jeremy Walters '10: He won't summarily execute homosexuals!"

But Walters isn't done; he continues, "They also need to know that when it says that their blood shall be upon them that tells me it is AIDS." You heard it here first, folks: ancient Jewish jurists identified the HIV virus more than 25 centuries before modern scientists did--and Jeremy Walters has the scriptural evidence to back it up!

But Walters is humble about his remarkable discovery. He wraps up his post, "Thats how I feel." Let it never be said that modesty is dead--though correct apostrophe usage is teetering dangerously on the brink.

In a follow-up post, Walters comes out swinging: "homosexual 'GAY' is not of God!!!!" Personally, I wasn't sure I agreed with him until the fourth exclamation point. After quoting the Leviticus passage again in full, he ends with a flourish: "Only a Fool says there is no God." And only a luminary of Walters's caliber could transition so fluently from epidemiology to exegesis to theology in the span of two short status updates.

To sum up, I can only chime with fellow facebook aficionado Jason Bellinger and "like this" (see the posts, below). I'm signing up to campaign for Walters later this afternoon, because this is clearly change we can believe in.

Deuteronomy 22: On Stoning

2010-08-17T14:37:00.003-04:00

Readers of the New York Times woke up to a chilling story on the front page of today's paper. Over the weekend, Taliban leaders in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz stoned a young couple to death for eloping. The woman, Siddiqa, was 19 years old; her father promised her to a relative of her lover, Khayyam, but the couple were unwilling to part. They escaped their village to marry but were lured back under the false assurance that their marriage would be allowed. Upon their return, they were hastily tried before a group of local mullahs and sentenced to death by stoning. Nearly 200 men--including Khayyam's father and brother--participated in the execution, which, the Times reports, took on a festive air.

Siddiqa and Khayyam were convicted of engaging in a sexual relation forbidden by local religious authorities' interpretation of sharia law--the body of Muslim legal precedent, derived from Muslim jurists' exegesis of the Qur'an and their understanding of the sunna, or examples of the Prophet. (There is no one global sharia; indeed, religious scholars approaching Muslim scripture with different hermeneutical assumptions may develop widely varying interpretations of the text.) This strident display of Taliban power suggests that their influence in the country is waxing, but a chorus of voices in Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world has roundly condemned the killings. Even some conservative Muslims have decried the execution as an unacceptable form of vigilante justice. (Radio Free Europe's web site continues the discussion here.)

Nonetheless, the mullahs' sharia is not the only religious code that calls for the stoning of men and women convicted of sexual impropriety. The Torah also demands that those involved in certain illegal romantic relationships be stoned.

The Hebrew Bible explicitly recommends--er, requires--that no fewer than seven types of criminals deserve stoning as punishment for their sins, among them blasphemers, idolators, witches, and children who disrespect their parents. (A handful of passages in Exodus also outline crimes for which oxen can be stoned--poor oxen.)

Further, like the version of sharia acted upon by the mullahs of Kunduz, Deuteronomy 22 also demands that certain sexual miscreants be stoned. Verses 13 through 21 describe a first sex crime punishable by death: if a man discovers that his new wife is not a virgin, she can be stoned to death outside the city "because she committed a disgraceful act in Israel by prostituting herself in her father’s house" (v. 21).

However, verses 23 and 24 describe another romantic relationship--also punishable by stoning death--nearly identical to the "crime" committed by Siddiqa and Khayyam. That passage reads as follows: "If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbour’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." This passage would cover situations like that of the young Afghan couple, and would call for death.

Contemporary Christians and Jews, though they still condemn adultery, no longer demand such heinous retribution. However, later Biblical evidence suggests that some believers in the early first century still did.

In John 8, Jesus is approached by a group of Pharisees escorting a convicted adulteress. Confronting Jesus, the Pharisees say, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" (8:4-5)

In response, Jesus draws a line in the sand and challenges the crowd: "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (8:8). Jesus's gambit works, and as the crowd--the whole crowd--disperses, Jesus turns to the woman and says, "Neither do I condemn you" (8:11).

Tens of millions of Muslims all over the world share Jesus's sentiment when they hear the story of Khayyam and Siddiqa: neither do they condemn them. And nor do we.

Islam's Jesus: "The Gospel of Barnabas" on Lebanese TV

2010-08-13T13:18:00.007-04:00

Reports out today from the BBC note that protests by Lebanese Christians have led to the cancellation of a television series based on the life of Jesus. What? Shouldn't Christians be excited about a TV show starring Christ, you ask?

Not if its hero is more Muslim than Christian.

Believers are upset because the series's narrative relies heavily on the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas, a late retelling of Jesus's life that is ascribed to Paul's traveling companion in Acts. (Scholars note that Barnabas directly quotes Dante's Inferno, so most argue that it was composed between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, hundreds of years after Jesus's death.) The earliest manuscripts are in Spanish and Italian, but they borrow huge chunks of the Vulgate Bible--Saint Jerome's fourth-century Latin translation of holy writ.

However, this "new" gospel isn't controversial for what it borrows from previous texts, but for what it leaves out--specifically, Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. In the book, Jesus teaches, does miracles, and speaks with God, but he is neither killed by Romans nor brought back to life by the deity. Given these deletions, Barnabas's Jesus closely resembles Islam's depiction of the Christian savior.

Muslims believe that Jesus, like the prophet Muhammed, is a rasul: a "messenger" of God even cooler than a run-of-the-mill prophet, or nabi. (According to the Qur'an, other Biblical heroes, like Moses and Noah, also earn the title rasul.) For Muslims, Jesus has a direct line to the divine, but he is not God's son. Nor is he raised from the dead. He is a holy man and an influential teacher, but he is not the atoning sacrifice he is for Christians.

Because of such similarities, many see Islam's version of Jesus in Barnabas. For years, some Muslim scholars have contended that Barnabas is an authentic gospel that corrects the mistakes of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--and of Christianity, for that matter.

Of course, Muslims are welcome to their views--both on the putative divinity of Jesus and on the authenticity of this late gospel. But Lebanese television producers' decision to broadcast a Barnabas-based TV show during Ramadan--Islam's holiest month--was unnecessarily provocative to the region's Christians. And authorities' decision to cancel it is a smart move toward inter-religious reconciliation in the hotbed that is the Middle East.

Nonetheless, I admit that I'd like to see the series, if someone would care to subtitle it for me. Its cancellation, while advisable, reinforces the perception that there is one "correct" understanding of the Christian savior--the Bible's. Indeed, there are literally dozens of other gospels, all of which deliver different perspectives on the life and death of Jesus. And while none is so early or influential as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all can provide valuable insights into the ways new generations of believers--and non-believers--understand and interpret the man who Christians say died for their sins. Even the Gospel of Barnabas.

Matthew 19: Jesus Against Gay Marriage ... and All Marriage!

2010-08-10T09:23:00.011-04:00

Last week, Justice Vaughan Walker--a Reagan appointee, left--handed down a decision declaring California's gay-marriage ban unconstitutional. (If you hadn't heard, please stop trying to get your news from my blog.) Excerpts from Walker's decision can be found here.

Walker's decision has unleashed an expected gush of bile from the American right, and the blogosphere is once again awash with 1) fearful warnings that marriage is under renewed attack, and 2) fervent declamations that gay marriage is un-American, immoral, and irreligious.

In calling gay marriage irreligious, many critics point to the Bible's putative support for heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Most begin with some form of the tired, old argument, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." But frankly, they can't get much further.

On CNN's Opinion page, Bishop Harry Jackson defends heterosexual marriage on Edenic grounds ... but, hilariously, can only cite the same passage from Genesis three times as support. (He cites Genesis 2:24 and then two Gospel passages that quote it too.)

Now, as I hope all of you know already, the Bible has nothing to say on the topic of gay marriage--an institution about as old as Miley Cyrus. And its statements on male homosexuality are negative but often ambiguous. Many argue that Paul, whose writings are frequently cited in condemnations of homosexuality, is actually more concerned with ending male prostitution. (The Bible says nothing about lesbianism.)

However, the Bible's silence on the issue of gay marriage aside, its support for monogamous, heterosexual marriage is not so uncomplicated as its defenders would suggest.

First, many heroes of the Tanakh--among them Jacob, David, and Solomon--are polygamists. Impressively, Solomon has 700 wives, according to 1 Kings! To adjust the aphorism, it's not Adam and Eve ... it's Adam and Eve and Sarah and Kelly and Liz and Ethel and Havilah and Rachel and Sue.

But second, and more importantly, Jesus himself takes a very dim view of the institution of marriage. His advice? Avoid it if you can!

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus addresses marriage twice, first in Mark 12. (Different gospels narrate these episodes with only slight alterations). Here, Sadducees come to Jesus with a question: if a widower remarries, which wife will he have in heaven? (The Sadducees are trying to trip Jesus up.)

He answers their challenge with the following: "when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). For Jesus, marriage is a this-worldly convention that will be left behind in the next. It's a stepping stone that will fall beneath the waves when we all become angelic.

It's not heavenly; it's not even permanent.

However, Jesus's unvarnished feelings on marriage come out in Matthew 19--a discussion of divorce. In the first part of the chapter, Jesus harshly condemns those who would seek to end their marriages casually: "whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery" (19:9). Translation? You may not divorce your wife unless she is unfaithful. Jesus's stance significantly intensifies Moses's command, in Deuteronomy 24, that a husband who wishes to divorce his wife must notify her in writing--itself a win for early women's rights.

(Here, I repeat the important point that that Jesus repeatedly condemns divorce in the gospels but says nothing about homosexuality.)

For the disciples, Jesus's new law is difficult, perhaps untenable; they respond, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry" (19:10). Jesus's effective reply? "Yep." He says, "there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can" (19:12).

Now, we're not entirely sure what a "eunuch for the kingdom of heaven" is, but most believe that it's someone who avoids women as part of his spiritual seeking. The New International Version of the Bible makes no bones about it, calling these "eunuchs" those who have "renounced marriage." More simply? Avoid marriage if at all possible, as it will hinder your religious progress.

To tweak the old saw once again, it's not Adam and Eve, it's, well, just Adam.

Of course, actions speak louder than words, and this is advice that Jesus himself follows. And for all the hot air and spilled ink let loose by conservative Christians, they must conveniently ignore the fact that the institution they so revere is one that Jesus himself eschews.

It's worth noting that Paul--the other pillar of New Testament teaching--also stays single, saying, "to the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am" (1 Corinthians 7:8).

Thus, I close by agreeing with all those who scream that marriage is under attack! But "the gays" aren't mounting the assault. Jesus is.

Scripture as Red Herring: The Bible and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

2010-08-04T14:44:00.005-04:00

As a part-time, tongue-in-cheek Bible commentator, I don't have many chances to do spoiler alerts. With the Good Book, the juicy material has been out on the table for more than two millennia.

Eden spoiler alert: Eve eats the fruit.

Genesis spoiler alert: Lot sleeps with his daughters.

Genesis spoiler alert 2: Judah sleeps with his daughter-in law.

Judges rhyming spoiler alert: Jephthah slaughters his daughter.

Gospel of Mark spoiler alert: Jesus dies. (Twist: Jesus comes back.)

Apocalypse of John spoiler alert: There's an apocalypse. (No twist: The world actually ends.)

But today, I'm writing about Biblical allusions in Stieg Larsson's summer must-read, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I will give away the ending ... so, um, spoiler alert! For real!

Tattoo follows an unlikely pair of Swedish detectives--Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist--as they track down a murderous member of one of the country's leading industrial families. As the bodies pile up, Salander and Blomkvist discover that the killer seems to follow a Biblical logic when choosing his victims, eliminating those who transgress Levitical law.

Hence, the investigators assume that a woman found stabbed to death next to a slaughtered cow ran afoul of Leviticus 20:16: "If a woman approaches any beast and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the beast; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."

And a fortune-teller whose head is bashed in with a rock appears to have broken Leviticus 20:27: "A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones."

A cryptic diary entry confirms a few more of these connections.

But as the plot thickens, this easy correlation falls apart, and it turns out that the father-and-son serial-killing team--indeed, there are two--are just sadistic freaks. The Bible is an arcane standard arbitrarily applied to the occasional victim, likely to throw law enforcement off the track. For the police and for the reader, scripture is a red herring.

Having had a little bit of time to digest the novel--which, though entertaining, does not deserve all the superlatives thrown at it--I admit that I'm bothered by this false lead.

First, I'm troubled by Larsson's unsubtle implication that Torah law, if strictly applied, would be deeply, violently misogynistic. Larsson's probably not wrong; nonetheless, I don't appreciate his gruesome demonstration of the discovery. (The novel's murders sadly recall scenes from Afghanistan and North Africa where conservative Islam's version of sharia is applied to women in similarly frightening ways.)

But I'm more troubled by the fact that Larsson is careless in his treatment of such grave Biblical themes. Scripture's blood need not be hastily multiplied, and Larsson lets it flow. And whether you're a believer or a non-believer, the Bible deserves a modicum of respect; Larsson gives it none.

Having solved the case, Salander and Blomkvist reflect on the killers' motives: "There's some sort of Biblical gibberish that a psychiatrist might be able to figure out, something to do with punishment and purification in a figurative sense. It doesn't matter what it was."

Biblical gibberish? Leviticus is the foundation of Judaism; how can Larsson be so flippant? And why is a psychiatrist best suited to plumb the depths of religious thought--even perverse religious thought? Have we dispensed with priests and rabbis, only to hand spirituality over to the other men in white coats? (It's worth noting that the novel's other religious emissary--an aging pastor--is a barely coherent defender of the faith.)

Further, how is it that such material "doesn't matter"? The purifying power of violence is heavy, complex, and yes, troubling stuff. But Larsson's casual dismissal of his own conceit suggests that it is not the "Biblical gibberish" that doesn't matter, but his own treatment of it.

Now don't get me wrong: I don't mind authors--even mystery novelists--working with the dark parts of religious and Biblical history. Umberto Eco does so gorgeously in The Name of the Rose. But to do so as Larsson does, with a glib smattering of keyboard strokes, smacks of opportunism. His treatment of the Bible seems carefully prepared to take advantage of the often unreflective atheism of the European left and the book-buying public's disturbing taste for the macabre. It's a disconcerting combination.

Now, I probably shouldn't lay into Larsson, who's been dead for nearly six years. Nonetheless, I do want to take issue with the critics who call Tattoo "super-smart" (Fresh Air), "meticulous" (The Boston Globe), and "intricately plotted" (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). It's not. It's a shallow, dark page-turner that will keep you reading--but not thinking.

Joseph Smith's Bible

2010-08-02T08:49:00.004-04:00

If you've got $1.5 million lying around, you can buy a true piece of Americana--the family Bible of Joseph Smith. The Deseret News reports this morning that financial distress has forced an anonymous seller to unload the precious text.

Joseph Smith, for those who haven't been keeping up on American spiritual history, is the founder of Mormonism, the Utah-based religion whose most famous members include presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and Donny and Marie Osmond. For a completely unsubstantiated list of other famous Mormons, go to www.famousmormons.net. (Aaron Ruell--who played Napoleon Dynamite's older brother--is also a Mormon. Isn't the web great?)

Though the Mormons' best-known scripture is the Book of Mormon, they join Christians in revering the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. Smith's Bible--an 1831 edition--was originally owned by him and his first wife, Emma Hale, whose descendants held onto the text for years before selling it to a third party. (Smith, the old charmer, had over thirty wives during his short life; you can find a full list here.) This Bible is especially valuable because an inset between the Old and New Testaments features a hand-written copy of Smith's family tree.

I mainly report on this story because it gives me a great chance to post a hilariously campy '70s-era cartoon outlining pieces of the Mormons' very trippy creation myth. But let's not kid ourselves--most creation myths are pretty trippy.

Genesis 32: Jacob and the Vampire

2010-07-20T21:18:00.009-04:00

For the love of God, no: this is not a Twilight post. I would never sink so low in my efforts to make the Bible hip and relevant. (But tune in next week for my snarky take on scripture references in Courteney Cox's career-reviving sit-romp, Cougar Town!)

But you don't need me to tell you that vampires are currently en vogue. There's the Twilight series--in book and film form--there's the CW's Vampire Diaries, there's talk of a new Buffy movie, and Broadway producers will bring an all-fangs reboot of Rent to the stage early next year. (Just kidding on the last one.) Entertainment Weekly even reports that Will Smith has recently signed on to produce and star in The Legend of Cain, a film that re-imagines the Bible's first murderer as a vampire. More to come on that, surely. For myself, I'm hooked on True Blood, the sexy HBO camp-noir series that takes place on the Louisiana bayou.

But sad as Will Smith and I are to say it, there aren't really any blood-suckers in the Bible. However, there's one mysterious being that is nearly vampiric, and he wrestles with Jacob on the shores of the Jabbok in Genesis 32.

Many of you know Genesis 32 as the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. The third patriarch, on his way to meet with his estranged brother Esau, meets an angel at the riverside and wrestles him. Can you see the painting now? Jacob has flowing auburn locks, and the angels wings are only slightly askew? Neither can best the other, so the angel breaks Jacob's hip and gives him a very important new name: Israel.

The only problem with this version of the story? In the Bible, there's no "angel." Here's the opening: "Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him" (32:24-25). The Genesis author will only call him "a man" and say no more. Indeed, Jacob himself is curious, demanding that the wanderer reveal his name. But the man refuses, and the mystery deepens.

For me, there's always been more menace than miracle in this dark stranger. The story continues: "Then he [the man] said 'Let me go, for the day is breaking'" (26). This little roll in the mud has gone on a little long, and both fighters may want to grab a Luna bar before going their separate ways. But why is the "man" so concerned about daybreak? We presume that a member of the heavenly host would not be afraid of morning, so why is the WWE wannabe so eager to avoid the sun's rays? The text reveals nothing.

Jacob, of course, obliges, agreeing to let the man go in exchange for a blessing. He gets one, and the man slips away before sunrise. In the postgame press conference, Jacob tries to call the man God's messenger--or perhaps even God Himself: he calls the place "Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved'" (v. 30). However, this line always sounds like wishful thinking to me, and I'm not sure that Jacob knows what just happened to him; he can only guess.

Harold Bloom, in his Book of J, is suspicious of this strange "man"; he even goes so far as to argue that there's more demon than divine in Jacob's fellow wrestler. I can't help but agree, for this is an extremely dark movement in the Torah narrative. And I always think I catch a glimpse of the "man" licking his fangs as he slinks off into the shadows.

Tim Tebow NCAA '11 Bible Verse Contest

2010-07-13T16:27:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, dear readers. These are the summer doldrums: the mercury has topped ninety for the last seventy-three days, humidity is so high that it's making a walk to the subway feel like a scuba dive, and I don't feel like doing my usual Tuesday Bible entry.

But a weekly post is a weekly post, and I am a man of habit. Hence, in place of more rumination on the complexities of Judeo-Christian scripture, I'd like to propose a thoroughly mindless contest. It goes like this ...

College football season is nearly upon us. (Okay, not "nearly," but it's just a couple months off, and fans like me are chomping at the proverbial bit.) And followers of the game know that one of last year's shining stars--Florida QB Tim Tebow--was not only an expert hurler but also a bit of a Bible thumper. Every game that he played, Tebow would write a Bible verse in silver marker on the black stickers he pasted under his eyes to fight off the sun's glare. Some favorites?

Hebrews 12: 1-2: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God."

Ephesians 2: 8-10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."

And that old chestnut, John 3:16. Here's a full listing of the 2009 season's verses.

Just a while back, EA Sports released its newest college football video game, "NCAA Football 11," and Tebow was once again put on the cover. However, in place of Bible verses, game designers put Florida Gator logos on the eye blacks--for what may or may not be obvious reasons.

However, this is a wrong that I'd like to see righted. I demand historical and cultural accuracy in the photoshopped images that adorn my Playstation 3 games ... thus the contest.

I'd like you, fair readers, football fans, and Bible fanatics, to propose appropriate, funny, or thematically relevant Bible verses for EA Tebow's scripture-less eye stickers. Contest winners will receive the undying adoration of the two other regular "Eat the Bible" readers--and the love and respect of yours truly. Just go ahead and post your ideas in the comment box below.

And just to prove I'm not a spoil sport, I'll lead off. Are you listening, EA Sports?

Isaiah 22: 17-18: "The Lord is about to hurl you away violently, my man. He will seize firm hold of you, whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land."

Bibles, Belief, and iPhone Apps

2010-07-06T16:38:00.006-04:00

A few months ago, I noticed that a hard drive-full of Bible-related programs had sprung up on the iPhone App Store. Some were expected: for example, a free, searchable version of the King James Bible. (It's awesome, and other translations are available for small fees.) Others were not, such as BibleThumper--an app that delivers weird, off-key, or random scriptures out of context. Kinda cool.

Now, I thought that this flurry of iBible content was unworthy of serious analysis when I first stumbled upon it. But then the New York Times put it on their front page last Saturday. To think: I could have scooped 'em.

In the article, Paul Vitello notes a variety of apps that provide ammunition to those arguing for or against Bible-based belief systems. Thus "Fast Facts, Challenges, and Tactics" gives strategies for Christians "reasoning with an unbeliever." And "The Atheist Pocket Debater," promises to provide Nietzsche bombs to throw at the devout.

But what is most startling (if unsurprising) about this tit-for-tat is that it seems to be occurring in the very shallow end of the intellectual pool. One app for believers is entitled "One-Minute Answers to Skeptics"--as if a minute suffices to illuminate the complexities of a spiritual tradition thousands of years old. A piece of advice to believers everywhere: if it takes less than sixty seconds to justify your faith in God, you should stop eating the crayons from your favorite Italian restaurant and open Aquinas.

But stupidity isn't confined to the camps of the devout. The aforementioned "Pocket Debater" lists the following as a compelling rationale for unbelief; Vitello summarizes, "because miracles like Moses’ parting of the waters are not occurring in modern times, 'it is unreasonable to accept that the events happened' at all. 'If you take any miracle from the Bible' it explains, 'and tell your co-workers at your job that this recently happened to someone, you will undoubtedly be laughed at'."

Atheists who believe that "I've never seen the East River parted" is a solid argument against religious faith should take a running dive into said body of water... the really dirty part.

But this latter argument is especially irksome to me and anyone else who takes the Bible seriously. Does the "Pocket Debater" truly believe that Hebrew scripture stands or falls based on whether or not Moses actually cut a body of water in half?

Devout and skeptical readers of the Bible--from Augustine to David Friedrich Strauss--have long acknowledged that the text can be read on a variety of levels--that it is polysemantic. The historical reality or unreality of the Red Sea story has nothing to do with its figural, moral, ethical, social, or religious meanings--all of which are of crucial importance to Christians and Jews everywhere.

Whether or not God helped Moses split the Red Sea so the Israelites could stream out of Egypt, the tale illustrates the miraculous willingness of Yahweh to liberate his people. Said differently, the story delivers hope whether or not it is historically real.

As I tell my Bible students all the time, just because a story isn't true doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Besides, "Pocket Debater," you can't prove to me that Moses didn't do miraculous things, so shut your trap. I saw Elijah in a piece of toast last week.

The Bible, the Supreme Court, and the Second Amendment

2010-06-28T21:19:00.011-04:00

"Wisdom is better than weapons of war," says the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 9:18. Today's Supreme Court ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago, however, gives an important victory to the weapons of war.

The decision expands upon the precedent set two years ago in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when the Roberts Court ruled that the second amendment--involving the right to bear arms--applies both to groups and to individuals. Though the point is hotly debated in Constitutional and legal circles, today's verdict assures that the individual's right to bear arms will hold on both the federal and the state and local levels. (The Tim es can probably do a better job of summarizing than I can.)

Now, while neither the Bible nor any other scripture should influence the Court's rulings, it is worth noting that the Roberts Court's general movement on the issue of gun ownership--toward a more permissive stance--is counter to that of Biblical wisdom, which acknowledges the dire need of the "weapons of war" in the bloody present but envisions an ideal, sword-less future.

In the Bible, the nation of Israel is constantly surrounded by real military threats, and weapons are often necessary for self-defense. A famous example comes in Nehemiah 4, when the Israelites take twice as long as they might in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem because every worker holds a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.

But the sword in the Bible is not only a defensive tool but also an offensive weapon. In Leviticus, God says that he will reward the Israelites with military victories "by the sword" if they keep His covenant: "If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully [...] You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword" (Leviticus 26:1, 7).

That having been said, the Bible often characterizes "the sword" as a necessary evil that will someday fall by the wayside. Also in Leviticus, God suggests that if the first reward of obedience is military victory, the final prize is the end of weaponized strife; he continues, "And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land" (26:6).

This in moving toward the famous, peaceful utopia of Isaiah 2:4: "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, / and their spears into pruning-hooks; / nation shall not lift up sword against nation, / neither shall they learn war any more."

In this pacific future, "weapons of war" are turned into instruments of agricultural production--tools of death are transformed into tools of life. The motion is away from sword ownership, not toward it. And away, it seems, from today's Court decision.

Genesis 3: Is the Fall Eve's Fault?

2010-06-22T10:07:00.004-04:00

Last week, I dedicated a blog post to Lilith, Adam's "first wife" according to tradition. This week, I address his "other" wife Eve to deal with a pressing question: whose fault is the Fall?

Most of us are familiar with some version of the opening of Genesis: Adam and Eve live peacefully in the Garden, free to eat of all fruit except that of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (2:17). Eve, however, is tempted by a serpent to transgress God's only command; she eats the fruit, convinces her husband to do the same, and brings an everlasting curse on humanity.

Though both man and woman eat the forbidden food, early Christian writers agree that Eve is the arch-sinner. The author of 1 Timothy puts it succinctly: "Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor" (1 Timothy 2:14). For this writer, Eve's superior sin casts a pall over all female-dom, and scores of early Christian authors take his lead in excoriating women for Eve's misstep.

However, I always encourage readers to treat the opening chapters of Genesis as a whodunnit--to examine the text closely and assign blame more fairly. Yes, Eve trips up. But many modern readers of Genesis argue that she is not so guilty as the Timothy author would have us believe. In fact, she may just be the victim of bad intelligence.

There are a number of ways that modern scholars use Genesis to defend Eve's action, but their work usually starts with 3:3. At this point in the text, the serpent--who is, by the by, never identified as Satan--has already approached Eve and delivered an awkward pick-up line: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (3:2) (If this were a bar, the serpent would get shot down.)

Eve replies, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die'." (3:2-3). Eve's got the gist, but she's off on the details. God delivers his famous dietary restriction to Adam in 2:17: it reads, simply, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat."

There are two differences between Eve's understanding of God's command and His articulation of it. First, Eve believes that she can neither eat of the tree nor touch it. In reality, God only forbids tasting the fruit. Second, Eve identifies the tree not by its function--as giving the knowledge of good and evil--but by its location: it is the "tree in the middle of the garden."

How are we to explain these discrepancies? Some suggest that Eve is just playing fast and loose with the divine word; her changes indicate her moral lassitude. But this is an anti-Eve reading likely generated by later, anti-feminist attitudes.

Many instead attribute these small alterations, ironically, to Adam. Indeed, Eve is not present when Adam receives God's no-fruit interdiction--she has yet to be created. The text, then, allows for the possibility that Adam passes along the command with small but devastating changes.

This line of reasoning goes as follows: perhaps Adam does not trust Eve to understand the severity of God's request, so he beefs it up: she may neither eat nor touch the fruit.

Further, he may not respect her moral intelligence, so he changes the tree of knowledge of good and evil to the tree in the middle of the garden--that one, over there.

Thus, when Eve reaches the crucial moment, she has faulty information. For philosophers, moral decision-making relies on correct knowledge--a correct knowledge Eve does not have in Genesis 3. For example, if Eve were told that arsenic is an artificial sweetener--and not a poison--she could not be blamed for putting it in Adam's drink. Similarly, if she does not know the true nature of the fruited tree, we cannot blame her if she makes bad choices about eating it.

To drive home the point, many artists (see Albrecht Durer's painting above) show the serpent wrapped around the tree. Eve, looking on, sees a living being touching the tree and not perishing--an impossibility given her understanding of God's law.

So when she takes that fateful bite, she may not be succumbing to ethical weakness. She may just be working with bad intelligence.

Isaiah 34: Who Is Lilith?

2010-06-15T10:29:00.004-04:00

Much like the book of Obadiah, the 34th chapter of Isaiah is a condemnation of Edom, a neighbor nation of Israel that earns God's wrath after years of overt and covert military harassment. The chapter is a prophecy suggesting that the enemy nation will one day be annihilated as punishment for its sins against God's people.

"For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
a year of vindication by Zion's cause.
And the streams of Edom shall be turned to pitch,
and her soil into sulfur;
her land shall become burning pitch [...]
For generation to generation it shall lie waste;
no one shall pass through it forever and ever." (34:8-10)

The rest of the chapter is filled with similar punishments: fire and brimstone, hell and high-water, drought and famine, death and destruction, cats and dogs living together. It's pandemonium.

But the punishments get to sound a little strange in verse 14: "Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, / goat-demons shall call to each other; / there too Lilith shall repose, / and find a place to rest." Wildcats, hyenas, goat-demons, and ... um, Lilith?

Modern readers may wonder what this poor girl did to deserve such bad company. Is the Isaiah author picking on the single ladies of Edom? Jackals and coyotes shall bathe in the blood of children; lions and vultures will scream across the sky; and Carol will be their next door neighbor?

Kidding ... but unlike Carol, Lilith is not tormented by the hellish landscape of post-apocalyptic Edom; she is part of it. For ancient Israelites, Lilith (or sometimes simply the lilit, in Hebrew) is an evil lady-demon who torments infants and young mothers. She is a succubus who, according to legend, kills babies and ruins pregnancies. And she is right at home in this God-forsaken wasteland.

But some know of Lilith as something different: Adam's first wife.

There are lots of stories floating around about Adam's wife before Eve, named Lilith. The nineties women's-empowerment rock spectacular "The Lilith Fair" took its name from her. But many do not know that she is never mentioned in Genesis. (The word "Lilith" appears only in Isaiah 34.)

Adam's Lilith is actually part of Jewish midrash--later rabbinic stories inspired by Biblical narratives. Louis Ginzberg, a famous 20th-century compiler of midrashim, tells the story of Lilith in his book, Legends of the Bible:

"To banish [Adam's] loneliness, Lilith was first given to Adam as wife. Like him she had been created out of the dust of the ground. But she remained with him only a short time, because she insisted upon enjoying full equality with her husband. She derived her rights from their identical origin [...] Lilith flew away from Adam, and vanished in the air. Adam complained before God that the wife He had given him had deserted him, and God sent forth three angels to capture her. They found her in the Red Sea, and they sought to make her go back with the threat that, unless she went, she would lose a hundred of her demon children daily by death. But Lilith preferred this punishment to living with Adam. She takes her revenge by injuring babies [...]"

Thus Lilith is banished, and God gives Adam Eve--a more submissive partner. And his first wife is free to harass toddlers ... and haunt Edom.

Sharron Angle, the Bible, and Deborah

2010-06-10T09:41:00.004-04:00

People outside Nevada are just getting to know Sharron Angle.

But if the political winds continue to blow in her favor, Angle might just unseat the most powerful man in the U.S. Senate this fall. On Tuesday, Angle bested a field of better-known, better-funded Republicans in the Nevada primary, winning the chance to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in November. (Here's today's story from the Times.)

Angle gained momentum when she wrested the valuable "Tea Party" mantle from her opponents. During her career as a state legislator, she became famous (or infamous) for her far-right positions on Social Security (phase it out), Medicare (privatize it), the Department of Education (abolish it), guns (more!), and abortion (publicize its links to breast cancer). (!!?!) (The Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life non-profit, has unsurprisingly endorsed her.)

Angle's web site is remarkably uninformative, but her facebook page gives a decent summary of her platform. Time will tell if her extreme positions will energize or alienate voters, but for the moment, Angle is enjoying a moment in the sun.

Angle, a longtime educator who began her teaching career in a one-room Christian school, was inspired to go into politics by the Bible. In 1977, Angle barely survived an operation to remove a tumor from her spine. During recovery, a friend came to her claiming to have had a vision of Deborah. Said Angle to the Las Vegas Review Journal, "Deborah was really the first woman politician."

Angle took her friend's vision as a sign that she should get into politics: "When you see God move in these kinds of ways, you see God is real [...] All of a sudden I was changed. My life had a purpose."

Deborah is arguably the most powerful woman in the Bible. She is a "prophetess" or judge whose story is told in (surprise) Judges 4. In early Israelite history, judges aren't simply jurists--they are potent secular leaders who guide the nation in the years before the establishment of the monarchy. Deborah is the only female judge; however, she not only legislates but helps lead the Israelite army against an enemy invader named Sisera.

Now, I don't agree with most of Angle's political views; they actually seem pretty crazy. But I absolutely love her choice of Deborah as a Biblical role model. It's spicy and literate.

Isaiah 21: The Fall of Babylon

2010-06-08T13:35:00.007-04:00

In the Bible, prophecy is a thankless task. Though we generally think of prophets as sweet-ass Dumbledores who can tell the future, Biblical prophets have a less flashy role to play. Most often, their job is to rain on the Israelites' parade.

Prophets are like the ref who calls back the game-winning touchdown on a holding penalty. When things seem to be going well, they step in and point out that no matter how much fun we're having, we're also breaking the rules.

Therefore, it's not surprising that prophets are chastised (almost all of them), thrown to the lions (Daniel), threatened with death (Jeremiah), hunted (Elijah), and occasionally killed (John the Baptist) just for doing their jobs.

But every once in a while, a prophet gets to deliver a message that the Israelites want to hear. Like in Isaiah 21.

From the eighth to the sixth century B.C.E., the nation of Israel is a small raft buffeted by big winds. Imperial world powers amass at its doorstep, besieging the tiny nation and occasionally lopping off pieces of the state. First the Assyrians then the Babylonians relentlessly attack Canaan, and in 586 B.C.E., the capital city of Jerusalem falls, along with the Temple of the Lord.

That year marks the beginning of the Babylonian Exile, a nearly five-decade span during which time the remnant of Israel is forced to live away from the Promised Land. But as time passes, rumors spread that the Babylonian empire is weak; the Persians are rising and the enemy of Israel is itself in danger.

And the author of Isaiah is eager to forecast Babylon's fall:

"Then the watcher called out:
'Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord, continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed throughout the night.
Look, there they come, riders, horsemen in pairs'.
Then he responded, 'Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the images of her gods lie shadowed on the ground'.
O my threshed and winnowed one,
what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel, I announce to you" (21:8-10).

Finally, God gives the prophet news for which the people yearn. The Babylonians will be defeated, and the exile will end. And the Isaiah author tells truth. For Babylon does fall in 539 B.C.E., and by the end of the century, many Israelites will return to the land they thought they had lost forever.

Now, most contemporary scholars do not believe that this is a "true" prophecy--that it is written before 539 and actually tells the future. The chapter was likely written after the event, a celebration of the accomplished fact.

But the Isaiah author probably doesn't care; he finally gets to speak some good news.

LeBron to New York? The Bible Commands It, Says Bloomberg.

2010-06-04T18:04:00.004-04:00

New York City is mounting a promotional campaign of Biblical proportions in an effort to woo LeBron James--the best player in the NBA, and a soon-to-be free agent--to the City that Never Sleeps. Or to New Jersey. Either one would be fine. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recorded the following video message to make his case:

Bloomberg ends his plea with a campy Bible reference: "As the good book says, lead us to the promised land. And that's a quote from the King James version!" (For those of you who've been living under rocks since the Jordan era, "King James" is LeBron's nickname.)

Watching Bloomberg, the elvish king, slavishly pander to a 25 year-old phenom from Cleveland is funny enough, but what's funnier? "Lead us to the promised land" is not a quote from the King James Bible. It's merely a rough paraphrase of the Exodus narrative, in which Moses leads the Israelites to Canaan, the "place which the Lord hath promised" (Numbers 14:40). I hope Bloomberg's PR guys are better than his Bible scholars, or else LeBron's heading to Chicago.

John 1: Nancy Pelosi and "the Word"

2010-06-02T18:20:00.005-04:00

The blogosphere is aghast today that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told the Catholic Community Conference that her favorite word is "Word." Here's the clip:

Pelosi's getting religious here, but she sounds a little ridiculous to me--in no small part because she says "word" twelve times in less than a minute and keeps looking at her (silent) audience expecting them to acknowledge just how clever she is.

But Pelosi has a Biblical point to make. Her "Word" is the Greek logos, which appears most prominently in the opening verses--or prologue--of the Gospel of John:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it [...] And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-5;14).

For the John author, the "Word" is Jesus. (And for the record, John writes "Word" only four times to the Speaker's dozen.) Pelosi's point--it seems--is that she takes Jesus as her inspiration and her model.

But John's vision of Jesus is special--it is what theologians sometimes call a "high Christology" because it depicts Jesus as very powerful, eternal, and immutable. Said differently, if Luke's Jesus is born in a stable in Bethlehem, humbly and lowly, John's Jesus is never "born"; he is always already present. He is the creative principle of the universe. And he floats over the face of the deep when God, through him, builds the cosmos. He is extremely high.

Pelosi's critics take issue with her pontificating because it implies that she creates policies that Jesus would support. Critics on the right believe that her positions are not at all Jesus-like; critics on the left argue that in a secular state, Jesus (or Moses, or Muhammed, or Lao Tzu) should not be a model for legislation.

I personally believe that Jesus would like quite a few of Pelosi's signature bills--most notably a health-care overhaul that will eventually give 30 million more people insurance. But I take issue with her implication that the Word serves as her inspiration.

Indeed for John, Jesus as Word is wildly beyond comprehension and imitation; it is only when Word becomes flesh that we can draw near. Thus, Pelosi can pass very good bills based on her understanding of Jesus's example. But she can as soon lobby for Word-based legislation as she can fly.

And that's the Word.

1 John 2: The Antichrist?

2010-05-26T10:12:00.008-04:00

Pop quiz, kids: Who is the antichrist? And don't say Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko--that's a copout. Okay, time's up. Did your answer look something like this?

Not bad. Christian tradition delivers us a vision of the antichrist very similar to the one given in Richard Donner's 1976 horror classic The Omen. The antichrist is a diabolical, often secular leader who appears right before the end of the world to gather the forces of evil for battle against divine good.

Pop quiz question 2: from which Biblical book do we get the term "antichrist"? If your answer is "Revelation," you may be surprised to hear that you're wrong. For the term "antichrist" appears elsewhere, and only in 1 and 2 John. And its technical meaning is, frankly, a little banal.

The author of 1 John--I'll just refer to him as "John" from here on out--introduces the antichrist in his second chapter:

"Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also" (2: 22-23).

At a very basic level, an antichrist is just someone who "denies that Jesus is the Christ." Thus Muslims and Jews are antichrists, as are secular humanists and Taoists and African Yoruba practitioners. In simple terms, antichrists are unbelievers, so at any given moment, the world is filled with tens of millions of them.

But given the fact that "Christ" is a messianic term--a divine title, not a name--one may reject Christ and still accept Jesus. Said differently, one may be an antichrist without being anti-Jesus.

And indeed, most scholars believe that John's message reaches this level of nuance. Many argue that in deriding antichrists, John is not criticizing non-believers. His targets are instead those who teach different interpretations of Jesus. Thus, the "one who denies the Father and the Son" is not a Jesus-hater; he's just someone who, perhaps, denies that Jesus is God's divine child.

John elaborates earlier in the chapter: "now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us" (1 John 2: 18-19).

Here, John makes a startling admission: the antichrists "went out from us," and they could "have remained with us." Though John disowns them now, it seems as if he knows them. Many argue that "antichrists" are those who no longer teach John's version of Christianity. They are not devils; they are schismatics.

Because of passages like this, many assume that John writes to a Christian community in crisis. Missionaries teaching orthodox Christianity have promulgated a particular interpretation of Jesus to believers. But other early Christians have left that community and begun to teach a competing message. John, then, writes his letter in defense of his version of Christian orthodoxy.

So at the end of the day, antichrists are really just anti-Johns. And they certainly aren't murderous six-year-old's with "666" mysteriously tattooed on their scalps. At least not yet ...

The Bible and the "Lost" Finale: Wrap-Up

2010-05-24T10:39:00.007-04:00

I've had a night to digest the Lost finale, and as fun as it was to Bible-blog the two-and-a-half-hour marathon, I must admit that the series's conclusion is decided un-Biblical. Yes, we have Christ figures galore--Jack, Hurley, Locke, Aaron, Christian Shephard, and, um, a big statue of Jesus. Yes, we have sacrifice and redemption and a vision of heaven. But even though the last scene takes place in a church, the producers leave us with a decidedly ecumenical message.

So far as I can tell, Lost ends in the afterlife. But it is not a Judeo-Christian afterlife, or a Biblical one. The Hebrew Bible usually suggests that the dead just die--they simply cease to exist. Or they descend to "Sheol," an amoral gray area where perished ancestors live on in a shady half-life. And Christianity gives us either a new Jerusalem, a lake of fire, or a "mansion with many rooms."

Lost's afterlife is not really any of these things. It seems to be, rather, an idealized space where people go to reunite with the ones they love. Though this heavenly family reunion often gets unintentionally promulgated by certain Christian sects, it is not Biblical.

And as I mentioned last night, the stained-glass window over Christian Shepherd's coffin--a virtual spiritual smorgasbord--features symbols from most of the major world religions: a star of David for Judaism, a crescent and star for Islam, a dharma wheel for Buddhism, interlocking yin and yang symbols for Taoism, the Sanskrit word for aum for Hinduism (thank you, Cara), and a cross for Christianity. Thus, we are left in an inter-religious--or post-religious?--happy place where all our beautiful friends get dressed up and hold hands. I wouldn't have been surprised had the cast members started singing, "I believe the children are our future ..."

Now, I'm not a television critic; I'm a fly-by-night, tongue-in-cheek Bible commentator. But the Lost finale seems to drop us into a big pile of wishy-washy, spiritual-but-not-religious hooey. There was definite hard-edged religious content in the finale, and in the show. Why not end with a more decisive eschaton? Even if it weren't Judeo-Christian, or even Biblical, I would have appreciated a less vague wrap-up.

Yes, the beckoning white light and the community of dead friends give us hopeful images of a pretty afterlife--they make us feel better. But do they make for the type of innovative television that the best moments of Lost led us to expect? I don't think so.

The Bible and the "Lost" Finale: Final Live Blog

2010-05-23T23:38:00.003-04:00

Whew! The Christian shepherd leads all the dead into a bright light. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! I'm exhausted. But I'll leave you with what now seems a pertinent parable--the one about the shepherd and the lost sheep:

"Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost'" (Luke 15: 4-6)

The Bible and the "Lost" Finale: Live Blog

2010-05-23T21:18:00.005-04:00

Much has been said and written about the Biblical references in Lost. I thought I'd test the theory tonight by live-blogging the finale. I'll note any explicit or implicit references I see--feel free to chime in if I'm missing any! ...

Entry 1

When Sawyer asks Jack to come down from the mountaintop and tell him what the burning bush said, he's actually making two Biblical references to the Torah, both of which involve Moses. The first comes from Exodus 3, when Moses hears God speak to him from a burning bush on Mount Horeb.

However, when Biblical scholars speak of Moses "on the mountaintop"--as Martin Luther King once did--they are more frequently speaking of Moses's dealings with God on Mount Sinai, where the divine presence rests throughout much of the early Torah narrative.

Entry 2

Of course, Jacob is a Biblical name as well. Jacob is Isaac's second son and the heir who inherits the blessing. Jacob is known for many things in Genesis: he wrestles with an angel; he sees a vision of a stairway to heaven; he cheats his brother Esau; and he has twelve sons. He also sees his family sent to Egypt--the nation that will eventually host the Israelites' exile.

Entry 3

Kate is incredulous to hear Jack's father's name: Christian Shephard. Two-thirds of the Christian Trinity--both Jesus and God--are likened to shepherds in the Bible. The metaphor appears most famously in Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil,
for you are with me--your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord my whole life long.

Entry 4

That golden water--of which both Jacob and Jack drink--is a "water of life" that seems to grant some level of immortality. Revelation 22, another finale of sorts, also mentions a river of the "water of life" that flows through the new Jerusalem:

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city" (22:1).

A pretty snappy description of that shiny waterfall, right? And then later in Revelation ...

"The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift" (22:17).

Entry 5

All these revelations in the sideways universe remind me of a passage from 1 Corinthians: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face" (13:12). The Greeks called such a moment of revelation an anagnorisis.

Entry 6

Tons of names in the Lost universe are Biblical, including the name of Claire's baby, Aaron, now born for the second time. Aaron is Moses's brother and right-hand man. He is also the first high priest of the Israelite people.

Entry 7

Revelation 20 speaks of a "second death," which may or may not leave one suffering eternally on a lake of fire. (And did you see that fiery, diabolical keyhole at the bottom of the waterfall?) All these old faces brought back to life in the sideways universe--most prominently, Charlie's--make me fear that they might suffer a "second death" if the resolution of the two timelines sends that alternative universe back to oblivion.

Entry 8

Jack's knife wound recalls Jesus's, mentioned in John 19:34: "Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out." Jesus, of course, suffers the blow after his death. Jack, at least for the moment, is still alive ...

Entry 9

There's no way we're done with the smoke monster, right? It's always reminded me of two of the plagues that God set upon the Egyptians in Exodus. The first is darkness:

"So Moses stretched out his hand towards heaven, and there was dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days they could not move from where they were; but all the Israelites had light where they lived" (10:22-23).

The second is the angel of death, or sometimes simply "the Lord," who strikes down the Egyptians' first-born:

"At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock" (Exodus 12:29).

Entry 10

When Kate repeats to Jack "It's over" in front of the concert tent, she's echoing Jesus too ... "When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" (John 19:30). These are Jesus's last words in the gospel of John.

Entry 11

Down at the bottom of the well, there's a plug that seems to keep evil corked underneath the ground. It's at the middle of concentric circles. It's worth noting that Satan serves a similar purpose in the final cantos of Dante's Inferno. He sits at the bottom of hell, his nether-regions encased in ice, his feet below the surface of the hellish ground.

(Okay, this isn't Biblical, but it's close enough.)

Entry 12

And here, as the final moments arrive, we see a white statue of Jesus, his arms spread wide. And we bring everyone together at a church. Coincidence?

And shortly after we see Jesus, John Locke, the lame man, walks. For fun, see Matthew 9, when Jesus enacts a similar miracle: "he then said to the paralytic—‘Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.’ And he stood up and went to his home."

Entry 13

As we near the end, we prepare to put Christian Shephard--the Christian shepherd? Jesus?--into the ground at last. Is Lost, then, an anti-religious, or an anti-Christian parable?

Entry 14

The stained-glass window over Christian Shephard's coffin is decidedly ecumenical; it features symbols from six major world religions.

Entry 15

And at last, an empty tomb! (Er, coffin.) Here's the end of John:

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him'" (20:1-2).

"30 Rock" and Scripture: "Come on, Bible, Help a Lady Out"

2010-05-21T09:55:00.006-04:00

I'm behind on my 30 Rock, but when I finally got around to watching last week's episode, "Emanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land," I was reminded once again that Tina Fey is the funniest television writer alive.

Near the end of the episode, Fey's character Liz Lemon attends an ex-boyfriend's wedding, at which she is asked to deliver a Bible reading. Halfway through, her boss Jack (Alec Baldwin) sends her a text asking her to stall the ceremony; she panics and starts reading random Bible quotes, each of which is more embarrassing than the last. Here's the video--just skip ahead to the last two minutes for the money shot ...

The clip's hilarious as it stands, but a little funnier if you know the Biblical context.

Liz's first reading is the chestnut of Bible wedding passages, Paul's long disquisition on love in 1 Corinthians 13.

The second, ad hoc reading references the story of Onan, from Genesis 38. Onan gives us "onanism," an archaic term for masturbation, and God kills Onan for "spilling his seed" on the ground and failing to impregnate his wife.

The third is from Exodus 4, in which Moses's wife Zipporah hastily circumcises her son to stop God from killing her husband. Why circumcision works? Nobody really knows. But Tina Fey does love penis jokes.

Last, I'll admit that even I had to look up the fourth quote: "For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money." This is a shared quote by Leah and Rachel--wives of the third patriarch, Jacob--speaking in Genesis 31:15. (Yes, polygamy is fine in Genesis.) They are giving their husband permission to take them away from their father, Laban. I have no idea what Fey's trying to do here. But it's hilariously random.

The scene fades to black with Liz Lemon, frustrated: "Come on, Bible, help a lady out!" I couldn't agree more.

1 Peter 3: The Harrowing of Hell

2010-05-20T09:37:00.005-04:00

Three days.

Three days is the time Netflix needs to turn around my DVD rental. (And this is a good business model?) Three days is how long it takes for an electronic payment to post to my credit card company. (How is it that a mail truck could deliver it more quickly?) Three days is the maximum length of a pleasant visit to Canada. (Have you ever tried to spend a fourth day in Toronto?)

And three days is also the time that passes between Jesus's death and resurrection, according to Christian tradition.

But an interesting question has long plagued believers: what does Jesus do during those three days? Work on the Times crossword? Ponder the merits of Keynesian economic models? Think of funny costumes to wear when seeing his disciples again?

I like to picture the risen Jesus dressing up as a bear and sneaking up on Peter: "Aaaargh!" [Jesus takes off bear mask.] "Settle down, Peter. It's just me, Jesus, back from the dead. Aaaargh!" [Peter runs screaming.]

Well, early Christians actually have a better answer to this question: they call it the "harrowing of hell."

We get an important early reference to this creative doctrine in the Apostles' Creed; its authors suggest that Jesus, after he died, "descended into hell" before rising again. (If I were Jesus, I would have chosen Boca over Hades, but, well, I'm not Jesus.)

Early church fathers like Origen, Tertullian, and Hippolytus expand upon this cryptic phrase. They argue that Christ, after dying, goes down to hell, kicks Satan's ass a bit, and frees all those righteous men and women who lived before his ministry. The rationale is simple: people must believe in Jesus to gain salvation. But we need some way to save all those good Hebrew Biblical types--Adam, Isaiah, Joseph, David, etc.--who don't have an opportunity to get in on this new grace.

The harrowing of hell is hence a fantastic midrashic answer to two questions: Where is Jesus between death and resurrection? (Hell.) And are the Jewish heroes of the Old Testament damned forever? (No.)

But while the harrowing is a great idea, it's not a particularly Biblical one. Early and contemporary Christian scholars have to root around in the New Testament to come up with any good supporting evidence. The best they can do is two passages in 1 Peter:

The first comes in chapter 3: Jesus "was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey" (3:18-20). This is vague language. "Prison" is only figuratively hell, and it's hard to imagine Abraham as a hero who "does not obey," but it's a start.

The second passage comes just a chapter later, in 4:6: "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does." Most scholars believe that the author of 1 Peter is here discussing the "dead" in a metaphorical sense--as those deaf to the Christian message. But a literal reading does help the harrowers' cause.

And it's a cause worth fighting for, because we need creative answers to the questions that the Bible asks, even if they're as fantastical as the "harrowing of hell."

Alabama Pol Under Fire for Sane Stance on Bible

2010-05-13T10:00:00.004-04:00

To run for state-wide office in Alabama, you have to believe that every word in the Bible is literal truth. Or at least that's what a new attack ad on gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne argues. Watch the carnage unfold:

Byrne, a former Democrat now running for governor as a Republican, said in an interview in November, "I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not." Of course! However, in Alabama, such statements put a candidate on defense.

By January of this year, Byrne was already backtracking. As Lee Roop reports in the Huntsville Times, he repented for his sanity in a January 6 speech, saying, "I believe the Bible is true. Every word of it."

Every word, candidate Byrne? What about the words that order mouthy children stoned to death? (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) What about the words that describe King Saul using a witch to raise his friend from the dead? (1 Samuel 28) What about the words that command women never to speak in church? (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) What about the words--contradicting all of modern science--that describe God's creation of the world in seven days, around 6000 years ago? (Genesis 1-2)

Well, it turns out Byrne's going to stick with Genesis at least. He continues his flight from "heresy" in a statement on his campaign web site: "As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books."

Yup. Genesis-based creationism in school textbooks. And you thought that battle ended with the Scopes trial. Well, you were wrong. And the battle rages on in Alabama.

Sea of Galilee Fishing Ban Enforced

2010-05-12T11:46:00.004-04:00

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus's first words to his disciples are a little odd: "Follow me and I will make you fish for people" (1:17). Time and repetition have sapped this line of its strangeness, but even centuries later, it retains some of its original power to startle. Fish for people?

Jesus, of course, is talking to a pair of fishermen, Simon and Andrew, so his metaphor makes some sense in context. Nonetheless, I always wonder what Jesus would have said had he been addressing disciples with other jobs ...

Shepherd: "Follow me and I will make you herd people."

Carpenter: "Follow me and I will make you hammer people."

Hunter: "Follow me and I will make you throw spears at people."

Usurer: "Follow me and I will make you charge interest on loans for people."

Alright, so my joke is quickly falling apart, so I'll get to my point. If I Jesus returned today looking for contemporary Simon's and Andrew's, he wouldn't find them, because as the BBC reports today, Israel is enforcing a fishing ban on the Sea of Galilee.

For centuries, the Sea of Galilee--which is actually a freshwater lake--has been fertile fishing water. In recent years, however, fish numbers have hit all-time lows. The government cites over-fishing, but those who sail Galilee blame predatory birds like the cormorant.

Whichever is the case, the ban will remain in effect through the first months of 2012. In the meantime, perhaps Galilean fishermen may take Jesus's advice and fish for people instead ... though I don't want to imagine what kind of government ban such a trend might produce.

James 2: Justification by Works

2010-05-11T09:58:00.005-04:00

Alright, dear readers: today, we're doing some New Testament basics, so if you feel you've got the whole Jesus thing down, feel free to skip this post and check out my recent entries on gay prostitute rental and blaspheming Polish pop stars. Or check out this video of a kitten sneezing.

As I've previously mentioned, Saint Paul is the first great interpreter of the Christian message. In a series of widely influential letters to the early church, he develops a theology that centers on a doctrine later called "justification by faith."

This doctrine can be explained in the following terms: at Sinai, the Jewish people are given the law of God--basically, an expanded version of the Ten Commandments. By following this law, they can theoretically be righteous, good, and just. According to Paul, however, the Jews fail to do so because humans are imperfect; they cannot be justified by their works.

When Jesus arrives, the whole game changes. Given the fact that humans can never be righteous on their own (as the Jews prove), all humans err. Jesus's death on the cross, then, serves as a sacrifice for human error. To escape sin, humans must simply have faith that the sacrifice is real and efficacious. This faith justifies humanity in a way that works cannot. Cool, huh? (The preceding is a review of Paul's letter to the Romans; for more of my take on Romans, go here.)

Paul summarizes in Galatians 2:16: "a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ." Justification by faith proves to be a very tidy interpretation of Jesus's death and resurrection, and many early Christians adopt it whole-heartedly.

But not the author of the New Testament book of James. James, it seems, is unimpressed, and in his writings, he throws Paul under the bus and tries to explain just how troublesome his ideas can be.

Justification by faith is an extremely useful notion for Paul. It has the double purpose of de-emphasizing Jewish law and rendering Christian salvation simple and accessible. Its main weakness, however, is that it makes the establishment of a Christian ethic more difficult: if faith, not works, makes a person righteous, how can one claim that ethical action is necessary, or even important?

Perhaps sensing this weakness, James enters the fray and turns Paul on his head. Reversing the language of Galatians 2:16, James writes, "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24).

This after earlier, similar statements: "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?" James is not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater; he understands the importance of Pauline faith, but he rejects the notion that after Christ, ethical action is no longer important.

One of James's main problems with justification by faith involves the difficulty of identifying true faith on the basis of spoken testimony. "Show me your faith apart from your works," he writes sardonically. "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder" (2:18-19). His point is clear. Anyone, even devils, can claim faith in Jesus. The true Christian backs up his or her faith with good deeds.

What kind of good deeds, you ask? "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27). (I got your social justice right here, Glenn Beck.)

James concludes in 2:26: "faith without works is [...] dead."

All James's ranting seems a damning critique of Paul. Martin Luther, himself a great admirer of Paul, famously called James an "epistle of straw" and wished it excised from the Bible. However, James is likely less concerned with Paul himself than with those who would misuse his descriptions of faith to justify hedonism, greed, or antinomianism. Paul never advocates unethical behavior--indeed, he's thoroughly prudish. But in focusing on faith at the expense of works, Paul opens a door to the possibility of unethical behavior.

James just slams it shut.

Palin: Ten Commandments Should Be American Law

2010-05-09T13:24:00.006-04:00

What would we bloggers do if we didn't have poor Sarah Palin to kick around? Last Thursday evening, during an appearance on Fox News's O'Reilly Factor, Palin continued to hone her argument that the United States is a "Christian nation."

Pressed (or encouraged) by O'Reilly, she said, "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it’s pretty simple.” Here's the video:

The funniest part of the interview comes when O'Reilly asks Palin what she would say to non-Christians--specifically, Chinese religionists--who don't believe in the Bible. Her response? "Yay. Welcome to America."

But the most chilling part deserves re-emphasis: Palin believes we should create law on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments. The suggestion is "simple"--even if the former governor's syntax is not.

So there you have it--add a plank to the Palin '12 platform:

1) Drill, baby, drill. (Just make sure you have lots of 100-ton metal domes to cover any stray leaks.)

2) Abolish death panels. (They are everywhere since health care reform passed.)

3) Make the Bible American law. (It's just what the founders ordered.)

Now, I won't even address the merits of Palin's "proposal" here. (The Atlantic Monthly's Jake Simpson has already provided a nice cross-section of online responses.) However, I will remind her that at least one group of Americans--Orthodox Jewry--already tries to live in perfect accordance with Biblical law. So perhaps I can offer Ms. Palin some unique advice: visit your local synagogue and see if they're accepting converts. Perhaps you'll find out that America is really a Hasidic nation!

God and Gays, Rekers and "rentboys"

2010-05-06T16:36:00.008-04:00

Two items on the Bible and homosexuality have come across the Eat the Bible news desk in the past few hours.

The heavily contested Biblical argument against homosexuality boils down to about six verses (out of more than 31,000 total). At random, one comes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers--none of these will inherit the kingdom of God" (6:9). Here, sodomite = homosexual. It's been a rough couple of days for two men who take Paul at his word:

London's Daily Telegraph reports that this past weekend, a Christian street preacher was arrested and held for seven hours after publicly professing that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin. Holding forth on a thoroughfare in the city of Workington, the man was arrested and charged under the Public Order Act. That legislation--enacted in 1986--was originally conceived to rein in drunken soccer hooligans, though it does curb some forms of hate speech. Christian leaders in the U.K. worry that the arrest sets a frightening precedent.

On a related note, it was recently revealed that Christian anti-gay activist George Rekers just returned from a ten-day European vacation during which he was accompanied by a male prostitute he ordered through rentboy.com. (I wish I could make this stuff up.) Rekers, who co-founded a "gay cure" organization with Focus on the Family's James Dobson, claims on his Facebook page that he was just spending time with sinners--a la Jesus--and that the "rentboy" only came along to help him carry heavy luggage. Wow.

I'm in the Bible business, not in the anti-gay-activist satire business, so I'll let Stephen Colbert do my heavy lifting.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Alpha Dog of the Week - George Rekers

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

Polish Pop Star Insults Bible, Faces Blasphemy Charges

2010-05-05T11:43:00.005-04:00

At the risk of turning Eat the Bible into a tabloid, today I’m going to turn Eat the Bible into a tabloid. Alas, principles are made to be trampled.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports that Polish pop star Doda--or Dorota Rabczewska, if brevity’s not your thing—may face two years of jail time for violating her home country’s blasphemy laws.

To begin, let me say what most of you are thinking: you can go to jail for blasphemy in Poland???! Remind me to watch my mouth the next time I visit Bialystock.

But I digress … in a recent interview, Ms. Rabczewska—whose debut album is entitled, and I'm not lying here, Diamond Bitch--waxed elegiac on her skepticism about the Bible: "It is hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked herbal cigarettes."

I’m not sure what evidence the “Diamond Bitch” can produce for her claim, but after watching one of her videos, I’m guessing that she hasn't spent her life immersed in the study of scripture. So without further adieu, here she is in her all her blaspheming glory, DODA:

Gordon Brown vs. the Bible

2010-05-03T22:54:00.007-04:00

In gaffe rankings, this one falls well below "Bigotgate." Nonetheless, it turns out that even prime ministers fighting for re-election need to know the Bible well .... or at least not poorly.

Bloomberg Business reports that British P.M. Gordon Brown--whose flagging campaign is all but dead--misidentified a Bible quote during a church appearance over the weekend: "You know the great story in Micah in the Gospel. It talks about justice rolling down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." As Bloomberg notes, the passage (famously cited by MLK in his "I Have a Dream" speech) comes from Amos, not Micah. In the original, it reads, "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24).

I only add that Micah is not "in the Gospel." Gospels are mini-biographies of Jesus found in the New Testament. Both Micah and Amos are minor prophets from the Hebrew Bible. So in one light, the P.M.--himself the son of a minister--is doubly wrong.

But we all mix up our minor prophets, and we could forgive the slip. Unfortunately for Brown, however, he didn't stop talking: "But before these words in that verse it says: 'Have done with people who are just presenting images. Have done with people who are just talking, or singing songs that don’t mean anything. Have done with the irrelevancies. Get to the center point'."

Brown might as well be making stuff up--his "paraphrase" is little more than a bad free-associative riff. The three verses that precede Amos 5:24 run as follows:

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

Have done with people who are just talking? Get to the center point? Right, Gordon. I think you might have been speaking in tongues.

New Poll: Surprise! Young People Don't Read the Bible

2010-04-30T11:29:00.008-04:00

A poll of 1200 18- to 29-year-olds released earlier this week finds that while 65% of respondents consider themselves Christian, 67% do not read the Bible. USA Today--that venerable old rag--covers the story here. (Full disclosure: I can't swear by the poll; it was conducted not by Pew or even Rasmussen, but by LifeWay Christian Resources, which sounds to me like a group that makes both devotional materials and canned food for school lunches.)

For me, it's a sad thought that fully 2/3 of American millennials--as the media has lamely dubbed the most recent generation--have little or no Biblical literacy. Not because I have any vested interest in mass conversions--I don't give a fig--but because the Bible remains a vital part of American religious and secular culture. We ignore it at our peril.

According to a 2008 ARIS (American Religious Identity Survey) poll, 76% of Americans describe themselves as Christian; include Jews and Mormons, and we can push the number of Bible-based believers up toward 80%. Put bluntly, four out of five Americans should read the Bible as part of their devotional practice.

But we all know, from polling and personal experience, that they do not. Maybe they should start. Literate religion is better religion. It is deeper; it is complex; it is more nuanced. It asks tougher questions and delivers subtler answers. And it is based on something better than a vague notion of faithiness. (And yes, I'm stealing from Stephen Colbert here.) The definition of faithiness? The firm conviction that Jesus loves you just as much as he loves fluffy bunnies. Faithiness is a nice idea, but it's not a particularly Biblical one.

But even if you don't count yourself among that 80%, you still can't get off the Biblical literacy hook, because you're in the minority--and hence regularly dealing with Bible-based religionists. Isn't it better to know something of the rituals, myths, and traditions that inform the lives of the vast majority of your countrymen and women?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. American religion informs our politics, our literature, our cinema, and our culture, and the Bible informs American religion. It's our national myth--and "myth" here is not a pejorative term.

So you should know it better, jerks! And you should read my blog. Okay? Or maybe just read the Bible. I'd be fine with that too.

Noah's Ark Found?!!?

2010-04-27T22:41:00.005-04:00

Extra, extra! A late item just came across the "Eat the Bible" news desk. (Okay, there's no news desk--just the Ikea kitchen table my girlfriend bought last fall.) Word arrived earlier today from Mount Ararat (in Turkey) that a portion of Noah's ark has been found! Alan Boyle over at MSNBC reports on the "discovery" here.

Why do I put "discovery" in quotes? Because I can debunk this story tonight, from the aforementioned Ikea kitchen table: this is not Noah's ark. Why?

First, the find was made by an evangelical Christian group--and obviously they don't have any vested interest in unearthing material proof of the story of Noah. (The group is called Noah's Ark Ministries International--they've apparently got a wide-reaching platform.)

Second, the "find" amounts is little more than a wooden structure of unknown age. Others have argued that the wood pile is little more than--and let me make sure I get my scientific terminology right--an "old hut."

Third, groups have been claiming to find pieces of the ark on Ararat about every decade or so for literally the last two millennia. Every other "ark" has proven to be either an "old hut" or a fraud.

Fourth--and this one's important--there is absolutely no geological evidence to support the claim that a worldwide flood covered the entire earth and wiped out all human and animal life nearly 5000 years ago!

So let's stop searching Ararat for musty wood and turn our attention back to Genesis 6. It's a gorgeous story gorgeously told, and it's got real moral and religious weight. Isn't that enough?

Colossians 1: What Is Lacking in Christ's Afflictions?

2010-04-27T12:24:00.005-04:00

I want to write today about a New Testament passage that makes some theologians and Biblical scholars very nervous: Colossians 1:24.

Colossians is one of the "deutero-Pauline" letters. These letters are purportedly written by Paul, Christianity's first great missionary and theologian; however, a majority of modern scholars argue that because of notable linguistic, stylistic, and theological differences, it is more likely that they were composed by followers of Paul in his name. (Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians are the other deutero-Paulines.)

In Colossians, "Paul" (and I'll drop the quotes from here on out) is writing from captivity in Rome to a new church in the city of Colossae--located in what would now be Turkey. In one of the letter's movements, he describes to the Colossians the pain of imprisonment--but with a positive cast: "I am rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (1:24).

Though it seems masochistic to some, the notion that sufferings are an occasion for "rejoicing" is nothing new--in Pauline literature or the gospels. Both Jesus and Paul argue that suffering, and especially suffering for Christ, is a blessed trial.

What is surprising is Paul's suggestion that his sufferings complete "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." This is striking language, for what could be "lacking" in Jesus's sufferings, described elsewhere as the ideal vehicle for forgiveness? How can Paul characterize the afflictions of Jesus as anything less than perfect?

The editors of my Oxford Bible beat a hasty retreat in their footnote to this verse: "not a denigration of Christ's death, but a reflection of the apocalyptic belief that God's people must suffer before the culmination of history." Okay, but this smacks more of hasty assertion than reasoned argument.

Even worse, the makers of the Bible's King James Version totally drop the ball with 1:24, delivering a mangled, barely readable translation: "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." They say that Shakespeare may have helped out with the King James Bible; if he had anything to do with this verse, I'm glad he mainly stuck to plays.

And neither the Oxford editors nor the KJV translators can get away from the Greek original, which clearly uses the word husterema to describe Christ's pains. Husterema has only negative connotations in most Greek dictionaries: lack, destitution, poverty, deficiency, want. And many orthodox readers want to keep any such words away from Jesus's sacrifice.

But for the moment, I'd like to embrace this notion of lack--not to "denigrate" the atoning sacrifice of Jesus or to suggest, heretically, that his death means less than it should. By contrast, I want to emphasize the other side of the formula. If Christ's afflictions are "lacking," then our sufferings must make up the difference.

In making this bold statement, Paul greatly re-values human suffering--and perhaps, human action. Elsewhere, Paul suggests that human suffering is not worthless because it mimics or mirrors Christ's. If Jesus suffers, our suffering then is ennobled.

In Colossians, Paul steps further, arguing that our affliction not only resembles Christ's; it fulfills or completes it. The Greek is antanapleroo--"to fill up." Thus, Colossians renders human suffering not only noble, but necessary.

Again, some orthodox scholars may run from 1:24. Me? I embrace it.

Leviticus 19: The Bible, Immigration, and "the Alien"

2010-04-25T11:06:00.004-04:00

On Friday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed into law the nation's most restrictive immigration legislation. (The New York Times's coverage begins here.) Under the new law, immigrants must always carry correct documentation, and law enforcement agents will have broad powers to detain those suspected of being in the country illegally (those who look Mexican?). It also allows citizens to sue government agencies if they feel immigration laws are not being enforced.

While illegal immigration is a pressing challenge for the nation, the potential ramifications of the Arizona law are frightening. Though Brewer promises scrupulous new training for Arizona police, it is hard to believe that the legislation won't result in widespread profiling and new brands of harassment.

Now, I don't mean to get too political in this blog--this is primarily a space for thinking about the Bible. That being said, I feel it necessary to remind anyone who will listen what the Torah says about immigrants:

"When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God" (Leviticus 19:33-34).

We have all been immigrants and strangers, write the authors of Leviticus. We should then treat new immigrants and strangers not just with tolerance, but with "love." (Rabbi Denise Eger expands on the notion very effectively in a recent post to her blog.) Here, the Torah urges basic adherence to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. By contrast, Arizona's new legislation treats immigrants as if they are and always will be "others." A sad precedent.

Leviticus 18: The Day After Earth Day

2010-04-23T10:37:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I resisted the temptation to do an Earth Day blog post--it seemed too obvious. So today, I've decided to do a day a day-after-Earth-Day blog post that is neither obvious nor timely.

In recent years, environmentalists both in and outside faith communities have striven to point out the Bible's earth-friendly pieces. This endeavor came to a head in 2008, when Harper Collins released a Green Bible; it highlights "environmental" passages (in green, I hope!) and prints on recycled paper. A couple years back, beliefnet.org put some of the best together in a nifty little slide show. But today, I'll give you just one:

"The land will vomit you out for defiling it" (Leviticus 18:28).

Take that, defilers!

Romans 6: Cheating God, Gaming Grace

2010-04-20T09:59:00.008-04:00

In his beautiful short story "The Immortal," Jorge Luis Borges tells of a deathless race who discover that good and evil exist in perfect balance. They further realize that in a world characterized by such balance, good works are not entirely good because they must be matched by evil works. Conversely, acts of evil--even horrors like assault, rape, or murder--are not entirely bad because they will someday effect equivalent goods. These immortals, then, resolve to remove themselves from the equation, opting for a life of complete inaction. (If you haven't read Borges, start with just about any story in the Collected Fictions and thank me later.)

Like Borges's immortals, the Bible's Paul lives in a cosmos that works in morally predictable ways. For Paul, sin and righteousness are part of a moral world system over which God presides. However, though Paul is confident he knows how that world functions, he does not want early Christians to game the system.

Let me explain ...

In Romans, Paul develops a unique view of Biblical history that recasts the Jews as a people chosen to demonstrate the moral function of the universe to the rest of humanity.

According to Paul, sin exists from the beginning of the world, but humans cannot recognize it. Only with the introduction of Torah law--with Moses at Sinai--do humans become cognizant of sin. The law's primary purpose is not to dictate human action but to show that people--or in this case, the Jews--cannot completely avoid sin, despite both legal guidance and good intention. Hence Paul's famous phrase in Romans 3, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (v. 23).

Paul goes on to explain that the sin we cannot help but commit eventually calls down the free gift of grace. Through this grace, God offers his son Jesus as an atoning sacrifice that allows the Lord to show "forbearance" (3:25) and pass over human sin.

The equation is simple: Sin exists. The law indicates sin. Sin calls down grace. Grace compels sacrifice. Sacrifice atones for sin.

But like a nervous pit boss in Vegas, Paul does not want readers who understand the system to then exploit it: "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more [...] What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!" (Romans 5:20-6:2)

Apparently, some of Paul's early followers (or detractors?) think they've found a loophole in his system. If sin calls down grace, and grace leads to atonement, shouldn't we just sin a lot? These people are like criminals let loose in Borges's fiction, free to commit violent atrocities knowing that equivalent goods will someday spring forth.

Obviously, such a loophole would prove disastrous for Paul's argument, so he closes it quickly. He continues, "How can we who died to sin go on living in it?" (Romans 6:2) And later, "We know that our old self was crucified with [Jesus] so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin" (6:6-7).

As I understand him, Paul argues that the game is already over. Jesus's sacrificial death closes the cycle and allows for sin's redemption. The next step for early believers is not to keep sinning to draw more grace but to accept the atoning power of Christ's death and resurrection and be redeemed.

Nonetheless, in raising this objection, Paul seems to indicate that members of his audience are tempted to cheat at grace. And in introducing the notion that human evils may compel divine good, he lets out a tiger that is not easily put back in its cage.

A Note on Mark 14

2010-04-19T11:27:00.005-04:00

Paul Ford, an associate editor at Harper's, writes the following in the "Readings" section of the May issue:

"There are moments that come to me in the shower. Emotions combine in certain alchemical ways and bring upon me a desire to fall to my knees, heart pregnant with celestial fire. I am ready to subjugate myself to the sky sprites, prepared to say, 'Not my will, but Thine'. But, sadly, I am apostate."

This in a cunning response to a question, posed online, "Is there an afterlife?"

Alas, if only all apostates could quote the Bible so well as Ford ... or all the devout, for that matter. Ford channels Jesus here, from either Mark 14 or Luke 22. I'll give you the King James translation of Luke 22, in which Christ nearly despairs on the night before his crucifixion: "And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done."

Acts 28: The Pope in Malta

2010-04-18T10:51:00.002-04:00

This weekend, the Pope is enjoying a brief sojourn in Malta, a tiny island off the southern coast of Italy. I check myself: given the seething anger over the Catholic sex abuse scandal, it's unlikely that the Pope is enjoying much of anything these days. But a few days away from the Vatican are likely a welcome respite for Benedict.

As the Times reports, the Pope's visit coincides with the 1950th anniversary of Saint Paul's shipwreck on the Mediterranean isle. (An international trip to celebrate the 1950th anniversary of a boat sinking ... really? What's next? A trip to Nazareth to mark 1997 years since Jesus got his learner's permit?)

The story of Paul's unexpected arrival is told in the 28th chapter of Acts:

"After we had reached safety, we then learned that the island was called Malta. The natives showed us unusual kindness. Since it had begun to rain and was cold, they kindled a fire and welcomed all of us round it. Paul had gathered a bundle of brushwood and was putting it on the fire, when a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, ‘This man must be a murderer; though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.’ He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god" (28: 1-6).

Today, Malta is home to many Catholics, and its "natives" have indeed welcomed Benedict with kindness (though some have suggested that the pontiff seems to be fleeing "justice"). However, in the wake of a spate of recent missteps, it is unlikely that many are mistaking the him a god.

1 Corinthians 11: Should Christian Women Veil Themselves?

2010-04-13T11:47:00.005-04:00

Across the Atlantic in the City of Lights, l'affaire du voile simmers on. Last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a highly publicized speech, proposed a national ban on the headscarves traditionally worn by conservative Muslim women. Al Jazeera's English-language news broadcast has been following the story from the Muslim perspective:

For Sarkozy, women who wear the veil threaten laicite, an ideal of French secularism enshrined in the nation's constitution. For his opponents, such a ban would infringe upon Muslims' right to free religious expression. Peter Berkowitz lists some of the difficulties involved in justifying a full veil ban in an op-ed published last week in the Wall Street Journal. (Coincidentally, the Quebecois government is debating similar legislation.)

But scholars, politicians, and pundits who get bent out of shape over the veil in Islam often forget that early Christianity had its own affaire du voile. In a vexing chapter in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul urges women to veil themselves in church--and perhaps even all the time. President Sarkozy would not have been amused.

1 Corinthians 11 opens with progressive Christian women's least favorite line from the Bible: "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife" (11:3). This passages introduces a concept that comes to be known in some religious circles as "headship"--the not-so-vaguely misogynistic notion that men are the superior partners in Christian marriage.

Sorry ladies, but it doesn't get any better going forward. Paul continues, "any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head--it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil" (11:5-6).

This is a complex passage, and it gets no easier in the Greek, as Paul uses certain words in unprecedented ways. (The discussion of head-shaving may pertain to widows who would remove their hair to mourn; it may also pertain to cult prostitutes.) However, the message is relatively clear: Paul urges women to cover themselves when they are engaged in religious activity. And given the fact that Paul elsewhere calls believers to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17), some argue that the last phrase--"she should wear a veil"--applies to women at all times.

Paul cites the second creation story in Genesis as support: "a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man. Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man" (11:7-9).

This passage recalls Genesis 2, in which woman is created from man's rib. Because woman does not come directly from God, Paul contends, she must cover herself when coming into the divine presence. Some scholars argue that Paul makes a strategic choice here in referring to the second creation story--in which man precedes woman--instead of the first--in which man and woman are created simultaneously, and both "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:27). This other story undermines Paul's veiling argument, so he ignores it.

In verse 13, Paul asks a rhetorical question that serves to drive his point home: "Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?" From the preceding, it seems the answer is "no," though the final verse of the passage has Paul backtracking: "But if anyone is disposed to be contentious--we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God" (11:16). Some contemporary apologists for Paul argue that this "custom" is veiling itself, and that verse 16 turns the difficult paragraphs that precede it into a clumsy send-up of Corinthian discussions of gender.

However, to cast Paul in this light--as a satirizing crusader against gender inequalities--is to ignore other sexist passages in his letters. Take, as just one example, lines from later on in 1 Corinthians: "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church" (14:33-36).

You heard Paul, women: pipe down! Your husband can explain all that hard stuff to you later on. And put your veil back on--we're going to church.

Mark 16: Resurrection Is Scary

2010-04-06T13:27:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I was reading the New York Times's coverage of Pope Benedict's Easter address, in which the pontiff stealthily avoided addressing a revived sex-abuse crisis. In the article, reporter David Wakin describes Easter as "the day Christians celebrate the joy of Jesus’ resurrection."

It's difficult to gainsay his definition, but there is something in that word "joy" that strikes me as editorializing. Not to say that, for Christians, the resurrection isn't a joyous event. Indeed, it is the image that proves beyond a doubt that Jesus's death was not in vain--that it was a death whose sacrificial worth saves believers from the oppressive power of sin.

However, it took many years for early Christians to recast the bloody execution of their savior on a cross as a cause for celebration. Jesus's immediate followers, on the other hand, seem to meet the news of Jesus's return with a much different emotion: terror.

I'm referring, of course, to the last chapter of Mark, the earliest gospel narrative. Mark's gospel is the most unsparing in its portrait of Jesus's last days, and it delivers troubling insights into the mind of Christ as he slouches toward the cross.

On the night of his betrayal, Jesus is "deeply grieved, even to death" (14:34) and begs God twice that He "remove this cup from me" (14:36). Further, Jesus's last words on the cross suggest that in his final moments, Jesus does not feel joy but abandonment: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (15:34). Shortly thereafter, he breathes his last breath. These words are a far cry from Christ's self-satisfied utterance at the end of John: "It is finished" (19:30).

Mark continues his narrative with the entombment of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea. And good Christians know what comes next: two nights of waiting followed by a Sunday-morning surprise. However, in Mark, the resurrection comes as a frightening shock to the disciples who first witness it.

As in Matthew, Luke, and John, women experience the miracle first. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come to the grave in the morning so that they might anoint the body of Jesus. They arrive to find that the great stone blocking the entrance has been removed; a "young man" inside tells them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here" (16:5-6).

Especially for modern Christians, I think, the women's response is alarming: "They went out and fled the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (16:8). This is not "joy." This is flat-out fear.

And this is where the earliest versions of the gospel of Mark end. Later redactors, uncomfortable with this ambiguous conclusion, add two alternate endings: a short one in which Jesus appears promising "eternal salvation" and a longer one in which the resurrection is called "good news," and in which those who spread it gain supernatural powers like snake-handling and resistance to poison. (Seriously!)

But in the earliest Mark, these heartening appendices are absent, and Jesus's return inspires only gasping and fearful silence. It will take decades--and the hard interpretive work of Paul--before this silence can be replaced by "joy."

Take a Parable Quiz

2010-03-31T13:53:00.002-04:00

Good afternoon, fair readers. The very nice people over at Beliefnet.com--a really fantastic ecumenical religion web site--were so kind as to ask me to write a quiz for them on the parables of Jesus. If you'd like to take it, you can go here.

Luke 22: Christian Terrorism

2010-03-30T11:04:00.003-04:00

Every time I have my New York friends convinced that Michigan isn't such a bad place to live, a bunch of people from my home state are arrested for plotting to kill police officers and bomb funeral processions.

Today, the New York Times reports that a Saturday night raid in Clayton, MI led to the arrest of eight individuals who were planning to assassinate a local police officer and then use insurgency-inspired IED's to wreak havoc on the officer's funeral procession. If the strategy had succeeded, they were going to retreat to defensive positions in the woods and fight a to-the-death battle with local law enforcement. Classy, huh? Here's a video posted on the group's web site:

Of course, my friends only think I'm crazier after they read first quote from the Times's coverage: "'In Michigan, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to be in a militia', said Tom McDormett, a neighbor. He added: 'They would practice shooting, but that’s not a big deal. People do that all the time out here'."

For the record, it is a big deal if you are militia member in Michigan. I have hundreds of friends from home, and not one of them has joined an ad hoc paramilitary strike force with designs on bringing down the federal government. Well, except for my buddy Ralph ... and he's a really sweet guy. He volunteers at the local children's hospital between automatic weaponry classes.

However, the fearsome eightsome from Clayton is unique, as militias go. Though it calls police officers "foot soldiers" of an oppressive federal government, its members are apocalyptic Christians. They call themselves the "Hutaree," a neologism meaning "Christian warrior."

The Times reports that the Hutaree are inspired by events described in Revelation, the Biblical book that plays out a bloody end-times scenario in which righteous believers battle minions of the Antichrist before the apocalypse.

However, I checked out the Hutaree site this morning and was surprised to find that their philosophy is less inspired by Revelation than it is by the words of Jesus himself.

Of course, Jesus is best known as a proponent of non-violence, or perhaps more specifically, non-retaliation. Verses like Mattew 5:39--"if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also"--are said to have inspired the passive resistance strategies of Gandhi and, later, Martin Luther King.

However, as I tell my New Testament students time and again, this Christ is a hard character to pin down, and it seems as if the Hutaree are motivated by someone other than MLK's Jesus.

Just like the sites of Starbucks, the World Bank, and Wikipedia, the Hutaree web site features an "About Us" link--how thoughtful. (Apparently, the Michigan educational system taught them basic web design but neglected to teach them not to blow up hearses.) It reads, in part, "Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword."

Reading this, I immediately think not of Revelation, but of a later chapter in Matthew, when Jesus ominously intones, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father [...] and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household" (10:45). Here, Jesus seems to promise a frightening strife similar to the funeral attack planned by the Hutaree.

However, the Hutaree themselves have another passage in mind, Luke 22:35-38: "He said to them, ‘But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless”; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled'. They said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords'. He replied, ‘It is enough'."

Here, Jesus seems to preach not only (self-defensive?) violence--buy a sword, or two--but "criminal" action against law enforcement agents. Indeed, to be "lawless" is to directly fulfill scriptural prophecy. Thus, in planning to take up arms against police agents, the Hutaree perhaps thought that they were preparing to carry out the divine command.

Once again, we arrive at the dangers of interpretive literalism--and at the perils of Biblical ignorance. Context, as always, is absolutely crucial. For Luke 22 does not demand that modern believers follow in the footsteps of the Hutaree.

The Luke author wrote his gospel to audiences living around 80 C.E., when Roman violence against Christians was on the rise. Indeed, those who first read Luke in the second half of the first century may have been considered "lawless." Thus Luke's Jesus is not advocating terrorist action against the government--in the first century, such action would have been suicidal. He may, however, be advising Christians of the dangers of active belief--and of the necessity for savvy self-defense. Remember, Jesus was crucified as an insurgent and a revolutionary, and his followers risked similar fates in treading his path.

At least in the United States, Christians face no such danger; indeed, our last three presidents have been remarkably open in professing their faith. Nonetheless, the Hutaree see the world differently, and they can find in the Bible words that support their skewed view.

Matthew 2: A Counterfeit Prophecy?

2010-03-23T11:44:00.007-04:00

Having closely followed a year of wrangling on the health care debate, I've grown very used to representatives from both parties inventing evidence to support their claims--from Sarah Palin producing a photo-shopped image of a gun-toting "death panel" chasing down her grandmother ... to Nancy Pelosi producing a photo-shopped image of a gun-toting health insurance agent chasing down her grandmother.

But politicians aren't the only ones who trump up evidence to make a point. Gospel writers sometimes do too. And no evangelist is so guilty as Matthew.

Matthew is the New Testament writer most interested in proving that Jesus is the fulfillment of Hebrew Biblical messianic prophecy. He repeats some version of the phrase "This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet" as often as Roman Polanski pleads, "It was the seventies. Thirteen was the new twenty-one!"

Why does Matthew care? Well, for first-century Jews, it was not at all clear that Jesus was the messiah--literally "anointed one"--they were hoping for. The messiah was supposed to be a military leader and a righteous king, a descendant of David who would be a new David--who would throw off Roman tyranny and re-establish Israel's rightful place among the nations.

When Jesus does not claim for himself earthly rule--and then dies at the hands of imperial power--he proves to be something other than the messiah that the Jews expect. And it is the evangelists' task to argue otherwise.

None takes this job so seriously as Matthew, who calls Jesus "messiah" four times in just the first eighteen verses of his gospel. To support his counter-intuitive claim, he produces numerous passages of Messianic/prophetic speech from the Hebrew Bible and then argues that Jesus is their fulfillment.

Therefore, Matthew cites Isaiah's claim that the messiah will be born of a virgin (1:23). Who else is born of a virgin? Jesus. Boom.

Then, he quotes Micah, who decrees that the messiah will come from Bethlehem (2:5). Who else comes from Bethlehem? Jesus. Boom.

Later, he recalls Hosea's prophecy that the messiah must sojourn in Egypt (2:15). Who else sojourns in Egypt? Jesus. Boom.

Just a little further on, Matthew reminds us of a prophecy that women will cry for their dead children (2:18). Whose birth leads to a slaughter of children? Jesus's. Boom.

I could go on and on.

However, at one point during his prophecy binge, Matthew may overstep himself. After Jesus returns from Egypt, his parents are ordered in a dream to settle in Galilee, in the town of Nazareth. Matthew writes, "There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He will be called a Nazorean'" (2:23). Boom, right? Well, maybe not.

As the footnote in my NRSV Bible quietly states, "This citation has no known source." Matthew is breaking his pattern here. In earlier and later verses, he cleaves very closely to Tanakh. Yet this prophecy does not appear in the Hebrew Bible.

Some scholars suggest that Matthew is merely citing a lost document. There are likely many ancient scriptures that are unknown to us, and it is possible that Matthew uses an extra-Biblical prophecy to bolster his case.

On the other hand, the Tanakh as we now know it was a relatively stable entity by the time that Matthew was writing--around 75 or 80 C.E. Authoritative Jewish scripture was pretty much set, and he likely knew which texts were in and which texts were out. The rest of his gospel suggests as much.

Many scholars, then, argue that Matthew invents a prophecy here to fill in the last gap in the infancy narrative of Jesus. Birth, birthplace, babyhood, politics ... all seem perfectly predicted by Jewish scripture. Why not hometown too? Matthew, it seems, just cannot help himself, so he fabricates the last piece of the puzzle and slams it home.

Acts 2: This Church Is Communist

2010-03-16T10:23:00.006-04:00

In my last two posts, I dealt with the still-raging debate over Glenn Beck's suggestion that his viewers leave churches that advocate "social justice." For Beck, the term is code for Communism (and to a lesser extent, I hope, Nazism). And Beck--true patriot that he is--hates those damn Reds.

However, the kerfuffle over "social justice" obscures a basic fact about the early church: it was a communist entity.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here. I'm not suggesting that first-century Christian mission work was organized by a bunch of aspiring Lenin's, walking around Palestine with the Mark gospel in one hand and Mao's Little Red Book in the other. Nor am I suggesting that enemies of the early church were sent to Syrian gulags. I am suggesting, however, that early church leaders encourage shared ownership of property--the most basic tenet of communist economics.

Two chapters in Acts explain; first, "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need" (2:44-46).

This trend is likely inspired by Jesus's repeated request that some new followers sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds to the poor (see Luke 18:22; Matthew 19:21). Further, the second half of this passage prefigures Marx's famous dictum from "The Critique of the Gotha Program," "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

A second section of Acts reiterates and strengthens the initial call: "Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" (4:32).

From this passage, it seems as if early believers come very near the abolition of private property. Goods are owned by the group, not by individual members of the group. The rationale is simple: the men and women of the early church consider themselves "one heart and soul"; to acknowledge individual ownership is to break that sense of unity, and the group spirit is paramount.

Of course, group ownership demands fair distribution of goods. Soviet Communism did not fail because its basic principle was wrong: it failed--as do most experiments with communism--because those in charge of fair distribution exploited their power.

The early church faces similar challenges. Acts 6 opens with tension in the new commune: "Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists [Greek speakers] complained against the Hebrews [Aramaic speakers] because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food" (6:1).

Thus, the church's communist experiment seems ready to run aground. However, the twelve disciples save the day by doing what Moses does in Exodus and Jesus does in the gospels: they delegate. They select seven "men of good standing" (v. 3) to oversee the equitable distribution of property to those in need. One of these men in Stephen, a righteous man who is also the fledgling movement's first martyr (after Jesus, of course). For later Christians, Stephen and his cohorts are "deacons"--from the Greek diakonos (cf. 1 Timothy 8:13)--lay leaders assigned to do the church's administrative work; many modern churches still appoint deacons to fill similar roles.

The early church's experiment with communism doesn't really extend past the opening chapters of Acts, and early believers' decision to give up private property seems both voluntary and confined to the community around Jerusalem.

That being said, the church begins with a utopian economics, inspired by Jesus himself, that envisions a community without ravening greed or financial competition--a community of "one heart and soul." And what's so bad about that?

Don't Go to Nazi Church: Follow-Up

2010-03-12T09:56:00.005-05:00

Just in case you're wondering if I'm the only one angered by Glenn Beck's call for a mass exodus from "social justice" churches (see my earlier post), here's a spot from today's New York Times listing the crowd of religious groups lining up to castigate him. The Rev. Jim Wallis is calling for Christians to boycott Glenn Beck, and he's not alone. Leaders from liberal Protestant churches, conservative Catholic churches, ultra-conservative evangelical churches, and even Mormon temples are calling Glenn Beck's comments insensitive, uninformed, ignorant, and damaging.

Just remember, though ... you heard it here first.

Don't Go to Nazi Church: Glenn Beck and "Social Justice"

2010-03-09T12:44:00.009-05:00

The ever-inflammatory Glenn Beck raised a lot of eyebrows last week when he encouraged his viewers to leave churches that preach "social justice." Politics Daily quotes Beck: "I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Holy buckets, right? But I know what you're about to ask ... code words for what? Three guesses ...

Homosexuality? No! Strike one.

MSNBC? High and on the outside .... the batter swings--no! Strike two.

Nazism and Communism? It's a hit! Back, back, back, back ... gone!

Here's Beck to explain:

What gets opportunistic media hounds like Beck riled up about the term "social justice" is that it sounds like "socialism." Here's Beck's logic: for some of its most progressive theorists, social justice means a top-down, hands-on approach to social reorganization that often involves federally sponsored programs like strengthening unions, implementing welfare aid, and increasing the minimum wage. And who else took a hands-on approach to social reorganization? The Communists and the Nazis! And who wants to go to Nazi Church? Not me!

Now, Beck is bringing us on an all-expenses-paid tour of la-la land here, but he's not totally off his rocker. Others offer saner critiques of the term "social justice." Nobel prize-winner Friedrich von Hayek was one. In a lecture reprinted in First Things, Michael Novak explains von Hayek's position: "Most who use the term, however, ascribe it not to individuals but to social systems. They use 'social justice' to denote a regulative principle of order; again, their focus is not virtue but power."

Novak and von Hayek make a defensible point: those who implement systems of social justice--and Nazis and Soviet Communists are irresponsible examples--could be tempted to abuse their power. But Novak pushes this argument too far: "most" people do not understand social justice as a "regulative principle of order" that focuses on the acquisition of "power." And Beck--in calling for a ban on "social justice" churches--shoves this line of reasoning into crazyland.

Von Hayek himself "recognized that at the end of the nineteenth century, when the term 'social justice' came to prominence, it was first used as an appeal to the ruling classes to attend to the needs of the new masses of uprooted peasants who had become urban workers."

The first people to use the phrase "social justice" understood it as coequal with charity--it was rich people helping peasants. Pope Benedict makes a similar claim in his first encyclical: "Charity is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace." (You can read the rest here.)

To repeat, for "most" social justice is just charity--aiding the poor and feeding the homeless. And you know who was a proponent of aiding the poor and feeding the homeless? Jesus. Here's the Christ himself in Matthew 5:42: "Give to everyone who begs from you." And Luke 18:22: "Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven."

Put simply, many good-hearted churchgoers believe they are doing "social justice" when they give to the needy. Or donate to relief efforts in Haiti. Or sew clothes for children in Africa. Or build houses in New Orleans.

So when Beck urges churchgoers to avoid parishes that promote "social justice," he's quibbling in the most dangerous way. He's taking von Hayek's academic critique and blowing it way out of proportion for a popular audience--with potentially deadly results.

In the process, he may be scaring a lot of charitable individuals away from churches that need help right now. After all, Christian parishes--progressive and conservative alike--continue to be some of our most generous institutions, and the Nigeria's, Haiti's and Sudan's of the world aren't going away any time soon. Hence, charity--under any name--is direly needed.

So Glenn Beck should shut the hell up. Or at lest send a big fat check to Habitat for Humanity. I promise--I won't call it social justice.