Bible Passages That Seem Immoral By Today's Standards

I was being sarcastic. I wrote my Master's thesis on Shakespeare.

[QUOTE=Drkshadow03;1325330]And there is nothing wrong with lacking those credentials. QUOTE]

You're missing the point. These books of the Bible that I'm concerned with here --- 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings and 1st & 2nd Chronicles --- are supposed to be a historical chronicle of events that happened in Israel. When I read a historical account of American history, for instance, I do not look at the historical record from a literary point of view or see the texts as allegorical or symbolic or through any other literary point of view.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

I employed close-reading, which was a part of the training I received in graduate school earning my Masters in English and is a technique all literary critic use to carefully analyze and understand a text.

This may involve:

1) closely looking at details and how specific words are being used: such as my pointing out that the text shows God is inciting David to perform a census out of anger with Israel. It says so explicitly.

2) Considering how a character is being portrayed and their motivation from those details: God leads David to perform a census out of anger. God's motivation is anger.

3) Identifying patterns:

a) God incites David to perform a census from anger

b) Joab's response to David suggests that he is doing something wrong or highly unusual ("but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?" - KJV, "But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?” - NIV)

c) after the census, David's conscience leads him to explicitly declare that he sinned by having performed the census ("And David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the people. And David said unto the LORD, I have sinned greatly in having done this; but now, I beseech thee, O LORD, take away the iniquity of thy slave, for I have done very foolishly." - KJV)

d) Chronicles reassigns the blame for this census from God to Satan (literally from the good guy to the bad guy, at least from a Christian perspective).

Conclusion: If you look at each element of the pattern, the text is implying that census taking of this sort is a sin.

4) Situate an analysis in previous scholarship and larger themes of a writer: The Documentary Hypothesis is a well accepted scholarly theory in Biblical and literary studies. It suggests the bible had multiple writers. The evidence for this tends to be linguistic and thematic. One of those writers was the Deuteronomist. The Deuteronomist style is didactic and moralistic. They are the writers behind the semi-"historical" narratives (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). Their authorial standpoint is to look back on history and try to explain disastrous events in terms of Israel or the leaderships' failure to follow God's rules. So this gives us some context of what the writers might be thinking in terms of why a King-ordered census is a sin. It seems that it is a sin because the Deuteronomist perceives something secular and disobedient to God's covenant in this census taking of military men. This reading is supported by the textual detail where David claims after repenting for taking the census and having to decide on his punishment that he'd rather put his faith in God for his punishment than the hands of men. So we see the writer emphasizing putting one's faith in God over humanity, pretty typical for the Deuteronomist.

Interestingly, Exodus 30:11-12 states - "Then the Lord said to Moses, “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the Lord a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them." So another possibility is as simple as them not paying the ransom money required during a census.

If there was something that didn't make sense to you, I would be happy to explain further. No need for the ad hominem attacks if you disagree. I just assumed you wanted to have a literary discussion as we're on a literature forum, which implies that we ought to use literary methods.

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Originally Posted by Red Terror

Tertullian once stated: "I believe because it is absurd." (not a paraphrase but a direct quotation) ---- meaning the tenets of Christianity and the Bible to boot.

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I know, Red. Unfortunately it has nothing whatever to do with my argument. It's impressive that you've read Turtullian, though. You have read him, right? Because I'm fairly sure you didn't read much of my post.

And to everyone else, I apologize for the double post, but I did not expect our friend to turn the page quite so quickly so I'll try it again:

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

I don't necessarily interpret texts literally and neither did most Christian commentators prior to the Reformation.

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That's a gross simplification. The modern politico-religious divide has led many to assume that Biblical exegetes were historically as polarized as we are (that is, as either literalists or interpreters). But a reading of Patristic authors such as Tertullian and Origen will show ancient Christian authors employing interpretive techniques similar to those MT associates with Gregory (allegorical, typological, etc.) yet they never question the literality of the text. These Christians had no problem deriving literal and interpretive truths from the same verses.

Directed to MT: I have read Moralia, though not since the octopus ink was wet. My memory is that while Gregory happens to treat certain Biblical verses "in the lessons of moral teaching alone, allegorically conveyed" (among the various interpretive quivers in his bow), he takes for granted the literality of the Biblical text he is interpreting. But if you have read Moralia more recently, perhaps you could remind me. Does he ever actually express skepticism about the literal truth of the Bible?

Back to JR: So no. Biblical literalism cannot be blamed on that nasty Reformation. Even Luther's Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church an allegorical interpretation in which Judah's exile was equated with the withholding of Sacramental wine from laity. (Of course that did not the historical exile never happened). A good deal of Biblical literalism as it exists today (that is, in polarity with Biblical interpretation) can be laid at the feet of the various Great Awakening movements of the 18th through 20th centuries. Those indeed were led by (pietistic) Protestants, some of whom eschewed emerging liberal interpretations of the Bible. But tarring the enormous and far from homogeneous Reformation with their brush is neither historically nor theologically valid

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I am not a Biblical literalist in a modern (or even ancient) sense.

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Originally Posted by Red Terror

You're missing the point. These books of the Bible that I'm concerned with here --- 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings and 1st & 2nd Chronicles --- are supposed to be a historical chronicle of events that happened in Israel. When I read a historical account of American history, for instance, I do not look at the historical record from a literary point of view or see the texts as allegorical or symbolic or through any other literary point of view.

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You wouldn't read the American History work that way, assuming we're talking about a secondary source, because it is meant to be read as a secular presentation of historical events and facts. Works like Kings certainly have the veneer of an historical chronicle, but are probably better described as Historical Chronicle meets moralistic fables.

If you want to challenge those fundamentalists who read the work like a history textbook I have no problem with that. However, you specifically wrote in your original post:

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It is difficult to understand why God would consider it a sin to take a census that he had ordered.

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So I attempted to answer that question from a literary standpoint as we're on a literary forum. It seems we're having two related, but slightly different conversations.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Back to JR: So no. Biblical literalism cannot be blamed on that nasty Reformation.

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I didn't say that on this thread. The iffy bits of scripture should be taken in the context of the picture of God provided by scripture as a whole and for Christians particularly the gospels.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

I didn't say that on this thread.

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So just to be clear, JR, is it your position that Biblical literalism was normative in Christian Europe prior to the Reformation, and that it was not mutually exclusive from interpretive analysis? If not, could you refer me to the specific doctrine that establishes the orthodoxy of the point?

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Originally Posted by Red Terror

You're missing the point. These books of the Bible that I'm concerned with here --- 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings and 1st & 2nd Chronicles --- are supposed to be a historical chronicle of events that happened in Israel. When I read a historical account of American history, for instance, I do not look at the historical record from a literary point of view or see the texts as allegorical or symbolic or through any other literary point of view.

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When you read an account about the weapons of mass destruction claim made against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the early part of this century do you take everything you read as literally true because it is part of the historical record? Since there weren't any weapons of mass destruction the question of whether that history was fabricated to justify a war has to be considered.

The same thing with 2 Samuel and 1 Kings. The issue here is whether Solomon was David's son or Uriah's son. The winner of that power struggle was Solomon and his mother Bathsheba. The winners write the history to justify their success.

Historical sacred texts add complexity to the literalness of the story. Potentially some of it could be a fabrication of the literal truth to achieve a political aim at the time. Does the possibility that a sacred text could be in error or an example of deliberate lying imply that theism is false? No. It just says that these texts have to be vetted by our own subjectivity. Ultimately we will take from a sacred text only what we personally find valuable, nothing more.

Does it matter if we get things wrong? Probably not in the long run. All of us will likely get many things wrong before we are done.

I have nothing substantive to add to the conversation except my firm conviction that some participants should be either burned at the stake or excommunicated, whichever they prefer.

if I remember right, Brian Moynahan mentioned in "God's Bestseller" that it could take over half an hour to lose consciousness if one is burnt alive outside so the smoke can escape. I don't know how he found this out. Perhaps observers of those burnings reported how long the victims looked conscious to them. Some of them were garroted in advance so they would be dead during the burning process, but some weren't.

Since Thomas More was responsible for burning people at the stake I've been puzzled why a Catholic pope would have ever considered canonizing him. Maybe Catholics needed to have saints in hell as well as heaven? But just because More was an ahole and just because some Catholic pope canonized him does that mean that theism is false? No, it doesn't. It doesn't even mean that Catholicism is a religion that people should abandon. One can always ignore or reconstruct the narratives of those hellish saints and, who knows, by now More may have been forgiven.

However, there is one general religious form that I think should be abandoned because its idolatry is self-destructively dehumanistic. That religious form is atheism. As an extreme it is a denial of subjectivity itself. The only things that exist for this atheism are objective idols best portrayed, in the visions of some of them, of a fanciful computer into which they could download their subjectivity and gain a form of objective immortality. I can't think of any more literal and fundamentalist text than such a computer holding their subjectivity in its dead objectivity. Atheism is the most violent religion out there both in the physical damage it has caused to other human beings (Khmer Rouge, Maoism, Naziism) and in the bedeviling trance state in which it leaves its adherents.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

I have nothing substantive to add to the conversation except my firm conviction that some participants should be either burned at the stake or excommunicated, whichever they prefer.

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Excommunication, please.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

However, there is one general religious form that I think should be abandoned because its idolatry is self-destructively dehumanistic. That religious form is atheism. As an extreme it is a denial of subjectivity itself. The only things that exist for this atheism are objective idols best portrayed, in the visions of some of them, of a fanciful computer into which they could download their subjectivity and gain a form of objective immortality. I can't think of any more literal and fundamentalist text than such a computer holding their subjectivity in its dead objectivity. Atheism is the most violent religion out there both in the physical damage it has caused to other human beings (Khmer Rouge, Maoism, Naziism) and in the bedeviling trance state in which it leaves its adherents.

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Except atheism isn't a religion.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Since Thomas More was responsible for burning people at the stake I've been puzzled why a Catholic pope would have ever considered canonizing him.

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Well, don't over think it. More was beheaded for refusing to sign the Oath of Supremacy that acknowledged Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England. As Chancellor, he persecuted Protestants and advocates of an English translation of the Bible, torturing and burning some, imprisoning or inflicting mortification (public humiliation) on others. But Rome wouldn't have objected to the all heretic whacking. At the time the Catholic Church was losing control over huge swathes of Europe. More was a major intellectual, an international celebrity, and (to Rome) a hero and a martyr for his faith. Why would it surprise you that he was (eventually) made a Catholic Saint?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

However, there is one general religious form that I think should be abandoned because its idolatry is self-destructively dehumanistic. That religious form is atheism. As an extreme it is a denial of subjectivity itself. The only things that exist for this atheism are objective idols best portrayed, in the visions of some of them, of a fanciful computer into which they could download their subjectivity and gain a form of objective immortality. I can't think of any more literal and fundamentalist text than such a computer holding their subjectivity in its dead objectivity.

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How could you possibly get rid of atheism? You can't control people's convictions. And they have every right to them. Isn't it Bigfoot the real menace? :)

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Atheism is the most violent religion out there both in the physical damage it has caused to other human beings (Khmer Rouge, Maoism, Naziism) and in the bedeviling trance state in which it leaves its adherents.

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Not to mention 20th century Soviet Communism. But the fact that most of those political movements were intrinsically atheistic (the Nazis should probably be taken off the list) doesn't mean that atheism is inherently totalitarian or genocidal. There are plenty of moral atheists, many of whom choose atheism because they believe it to be a more moral than theism. Bertrand Russell blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And "bedeviling trance state" or notwithstanding, anyone dumb enough to wear a Che Guevara tee shirt probably isn't much of a threat in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Well, don't over think it. More was beheaded for refusing to sign the Oath of Supremacy that acknowledged Henry VIII as Supreme of the Church of England. As Chancellor, he persecuted Protestants and advocates of an English translation of the Bible, torturing and burning some, imprisoning or inflicting mortification (public humiliation) on others. But Rome wouldn't have objected to the all heretic whacking. At the time the Catholic Church was losing control over huge swathes of Europe. More was a major intellectual, an international celebrity, and (to Rome) a hero and a martyr for his faith. Why would it surprise you that he was (eventually) made a Catholic Saint?

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As a political attempt to gain power, it makes sense to canonize him. The problem is he did burn people at the stake.

Now, I am actually glad they did canonize him, because it nicely discredits any infallibility argument one might cling to regarding these authority figures. And for what it's worth, Protestants aren't any better with their "paper pope" as I've heard one Catholic describe the perhaps idolatrous approach to the Bible that some Protestants have.

In general one has to avoid idolatry. Popes and texts are valuable aids, but they are no complete substitution for our subjectivity.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

How could you possibly get rid of atheism? You can't control people's convictions. And they have every right to them. Isn't it Bigfoot the real menace? :)

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There is an 19th century text by Charles MacKay called "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" that I just heard quoted this morning in some other context. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrao...ness_of_Crowds) I haven't read it, but I did read in the Wikipedia article that MacKay wasn't any better at avoiding economic bubbles than those he thought should have known better. One of this sayings, quoted from the same article, is the following:

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

This statement is not quite true. We don't come back "one by one". We come back in surviving herds and those herds are created by language that we pick up sometimes without even hearing the words explicitly spoken.

I have no interest in getting rid of atheism. There is no need to. It will fall over of its own accord. I am more interested in finding the words to describe an alternative and use atheist trance ideology to make sure I don't make the same mistakes they did.

As far as the power of words go, I keep thinking about Florence Scovel Shinn's "Your Word Is Your Wand" (http://florencescovelshinn.weebly.co...your-wand.html) It is where I am getting the idea of an atheist trance, but we are all under a trance of some sort, all part of a herd we create with our choice of words.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Not to mention 20th century Soviet Communism. But the fact that most of those political movements were intrinsically atheistic (the Nazis should probably be taken off the list) doesn't mean that atheism is inherently totalitarian or genocidal. There are plenty of moral atheists, many of whom choose atheism because they believe it to be a more moral than theism. Bertrand Russell blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And "bedeviling trance state" or notwithstanding, anyone dumb enough to wear a Che Guevara tee shirt probably isn't much of a threat in the first place.

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Atheists are moral because they are human beings, not because they are atheists. Atheism is a misunderstanding of their basic humanity.

We are all in some collective trance state that we are ultimately responsible for since the words we use reinforce whatever our preferred trance happens to be. What makes the atheist trance state bedeviling is that those outside that particular trance cannot snap their fingers by referencing reason or science because atheists think they own those concepts. When confronted with cognitive dissonance they start babbling stuff about logical fallacies and pseudoscience. That just keeps their trance state intact.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

Except atheism isn't a religion.

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I used to think the same until I wrote that post yesterday. Then it occurred to me that atheism is a pure form of idolatry.

Idolatry reduces living subjectivity to dead objectivity. The text becomes literal. The pope becomes infallible. The computer becomes the vision of a grave in which our subjectivity can be immortalized.

When I connected those kinds of dots I saw atheism as a religion of idolatry.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

As a political attempt to gain power, it makes sense to canonize him. The problem is he did burn people at the stake.

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Yes, he sure did, didn't he?

I don't think the Popes who made More a saint were doing it to gain new power, by the way. He was beatified in the late 19th century and canonized (I think) in the 1930s. My knowledge of Papal history gets a little thin by then, but in general terms those were very conservative times for Catholics. As I said, More was seen as a heroic martyr, and his admirers probably didn't spend much time thinking about how much it would have hurt his victims to be racked and/or burned alive.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Now, I am actually glad they did canonize him, because it nicely discredits any infallibility argument one might cling to regarding these authority figures.

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Not necessarily. Papal infallibility has to be invoked (you have to call it). To misquote John Cleese, he could have been being fallible in his spare time. What's really weird is that the Church of England (you know, the guys who chopped his head off) made More a saint back in the 1980s. In the immortal words of Jimmy Durante: EVERYBODY wants to get in on the act."

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Originally Posted by YesNo

And for what it's worth, Protestants aren't any better with their "paper pope" as I've heard one Catholic describe the perhaps idolatrous approach to the Bible that some Protestants have.

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We agree on this, YesNo. Making a fetish of the Bible (or Mother Church for that matter) is a kind of idolatry.