John Banks does it again

He has a glowing resume in the world of Kiwi politics.  Well, glowing may overstate it; his reputation has been well and truly tarnished by controversy over the years.  John Banks was a minister in a previous National government and then, for a time, mayor of Auckland.  These days he's the sole representative in New Zealand's parliament for the far right Act Party, and in a formal coalition with his former National Party buddies.

Life just keeps turning up roses for John.  The man who was turfed out of parliament once before by voters, then lost the mayoralty, was thrown a sop for his single one-man-band vote, a juicy cabinet position.  Described (jokingly?) as "barely literate" by a radio commentator, Mr Banks once again pulls in a handsome salary, this time not as a fringe radio talk-back host, but as associate Education Minister.

Nice.

Now Mr Banks has come out in favour of the dumbest form of creationism on offer.  Being a politician, an expert on weasel words, he doesn't quite give his explicit endorsement to the YEC (Young Earth Creationism) fantasies... a point made on the Dunedin School blog (which has a transcript)... but it's pretty much implied.

Not for him the subtleties of ID (Intelligent Design).  It's doubtful he'd even know what that was.  Banks is reported in the NZ Herald as declaring "he believes the Genesis account of the start of life on Earth," telling Radio Rhema he has "no doubts the first chapters of Genesis are true."  "God made the world in six days, with Adam and Eve his last act of creation."

Evidence?  Oh come, why bother one's silly little head with evidence.  'True' for John presumably means as factual scientific accounts.  No messing around with namby-pamby ideas of metaphorical truth here!

Which is fine, I suppose.  It's a free country and you can believe any thing you please, and the facts - let alone the scientific method - can go hang.

But for heaven's sake:  this man is associate Minister of Education!

And in secular New Zealand, not Uganda.

The political cartoonists should have a field day.

One particularly shallow press report states:  "Bible scholars are divided over whether this is a literal description or an allegory to help people understand how the world came into being."

I guess it depends what you mean by "Bible scholars," but the overwhelming majority of those qualified in the field of biblical studies know full well what the Genesis stories are - and aren't.

The well-heeled voters of Epsom, one of Auckland's wealthiest and most highly educated electorates, must be having palpitations.  They actually voted for this man because it seemed expedient, even if they had to hold their noses in the process.

My helpful suggestion is that they now settle back with a nice cup of Earl Grey and peruse the latest issue of New Scientist.  With a bit of luck, come the next election, they'll think twice before making the same mistake again.

Jesus and the Centurion's boy

There's been a great deal of huff and puff over a story in the Huffington Post about the healing of the centurion's servant by Jesus.

The story of the faithful centurion, told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, is about a Roman centurion who comes to Jesus and begs that Jesus heal his pais, a word sometimes translated as "servant." Jesus agrees and says he will come to the centurion's home, but the centurion says that he does not deserve to have Jesus under his roof, and he has faith that if Jesus even utters a word of healing, the healing will be accomplished. Jesus praises the faith of the centurion, and the pais is healed. This tale illustrates the power and importance of faith, and how anyone can possess it. The centurion is not a Jew, yet he has faith in Jesus and is rewarded. But pais does not mean "servant." It means "lover."

In Thucydides, in Plutarch, in countless Greek sources, and according to leading Greek scholar Kenneth Dover, pais refers to the junior partner in a same-sex relationship. Now, this is not exactly a marriage of equals. An erastes-pais relationship generally consisted of a somewhat older man, usually a soldier between the ages of 18 and 30, and a younger adolescent, usually between the ages of 13 and 18. Sometimes that adolescent was a slave, as seems to be the case here.

The article continues: "And what is Jesus's response? Does he spit in the centurion's face for daring to suggest that he heal the soldier's lover? Hardly. He recognizes the relationship and performs an act of grace."

After the predictable gasps of disbelief, it seems that even some more conservative academic bibliobloggers have agreed that this is indeed the most likely meaning.  Who'd have thought this old Sunday School stand-by could be so controversial?

But then, the Bible comes to us from a "far country," both in terms of time and culture.  Mores vary from society to society, and we are fools to project our own assumptions onto an ancient text in an unthinking way (which is, of course, exactly what most Christians delight in doing!)  What should outrage us more; that the centurion's servant was his bed warmer, or that he was forced into that role through the institution of slavery?

What is just as surprising is that this explanation of the passage has apparently come as a blast out of the blue to some working in the field of biblical studies.  Feeling somewhat smug, I dusted off a copy of The Bible Tells Me So (Hill and Cheadle, Anchor Books, 1996) and found this quote which left me stunned a full decade ago.

Matthew 8:5, in which Jesus healed the centurion's "servant" (the original Greek reads "beloved boy"), suggests a homosexual relationship... (p.74)

And that's in the Bible?

Yup.  No wonder the standard translations and commentaries massage it into something safe and innocuous for the folk in the pews. 

I'm not sure the story actually has much value in terms of current debates on homosexuality.  The Hellenistic world is obviously (and thankfully!) not ours, slavery has disappeared from Western consciousness, and youngsters are protected from abuse and exploitation by the laws of our lands.  In that sense our post-modern societies are better places than anything the Bible writers envisioned as remotely possible, short of the magical millennium.

The point here is that the Bible can still surprise us, once the devotional veneer is peeled away, even when the surprise comes in less than edifying form. 

The sound of distant canons

Donna's 1st Ark Search... no sign here!

The nature of the biblical canon has been a matter of debate in some Christian circles lately.  Last night I picked up my copy of volume 2 of Nicholas King's LXX translation, so the subject was freshly in mind when I then came across a posting on the subject by James McGrath.

McGrath makes some good points.  There is no one canon of Christian scripture.  The core is pretty solid, but there's a great deal of fuzziness around the edges.

"Canons of Scripture, which bring together diverse works from diverse authors in a wide range of time periods inevitably – as well as by intention – reflect the diversity within a tradition and not a monolithic unity. And so to treat a canonical text dogmatically is in essence to undermine and/or deny their canonical status, by pretending that what that one text says is what they all say, and thus flattening – indeed, riding roughshod with a steamroller over – the plurality of voices contained in that collection."

Link that with former Buttwatch... (or was it Baywatch?) star Donna D'Errico's accident-prone hunt for Noah's Ark on Mt Ararat, and it's a posting well worth the energy of a click across to.

Ain't that the truth

Human Bible XII

The twelfth episode of The Human Bible is available, hosted by that nemesis of historicists, Dr. Bob Price.

This week we first get up to speed on something very fundamental: Who was Jesus, according to orthodox belief?  We delve into the multiple—and conflicting—genealogies of Jesus in this episode's "Apologetics is Never Having to Say You're Sorry."  We answer some great listener questions, including: What does the Bible say about marriage? Does it really make a big deal about it being between one man and one woman? While we're at it, what does it have to say about polygamy? Unsurprisingly, the answers may surprise you.  Finally, what did Jesus himself have to say about being the messiah? Did he ever actually make that claim? Is that really in the Bible?!

 Now really, how could you resist?

Tom Brodie - Jesus Undiscovered?

Soon to be unleashed from Sheffield Phoenix Press. 

Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus
A Memoir of a Discovery
Thomas L. Brodie

In the past forty years, while historical-critical studies were seeking with renewed intensity to reconstruct events behind the biblical texts, not least the life of Jesus, two branches of literary studies were finally reaching maturity. First, researchers were recognizing that many biblical texts are rewritings or transformations of older texts that still exist, thus giving a clearer sense of where the biblical texts came from; and second, studies in the ancient art of composition clarified the biblical texts’ unity and purpose, that is to say, where biblical texts were headed.

The primary literary model behind the gospels, Brodie argues, is the biblical account of Elijah and Elisha, as R.E. Brown already saw in 1971. In this fascinating memoir of his life journey, Tom Brodie, Irishman, Dominican priest, and biblical scholar, recounts the steps he has taken, in an eventful life in many countries, to his conclusion that the New Testament account of Jesus is essentially a rewriting of the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, or, in some cases, of earlier New Testament texts. Jesus’ challenge to would-be disciples (Luke 9.57-62), for example, is a transformation of the challenge to Elijah at Horeb (1 Kings 19), while his journey from Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria and beyond (John 2.23–4.54) is deeply indebted to the account of the journey of God’s Word in Acts 1–8.

The work of tracing literary indebtedness and art is far from finished but it is already possible and necessary to draw a conclusion: it is that, bluntly, Jesus did not exist as a historical individual. This is not as negative as may at first appear. In a deeply personal coda, Brodie begins to develop a new vision of Jesus as an icon of God’s presence in the world and in human history.

Thomas L. Brodie is Director, Dominican Biblical Centre, Limerick, Ireland.

978-1-907534-58-4 paperback
Publication September 2012 (not yet published)

At last! A Bible everyone can (ab)use.

Okay, I know it's a spoof, but just think of all the evangelists, televangelists, backwoods preachers, frontwoods preachers and "Bible student" hobbyists who'd love to get their greasy mitts on one of these.  Bible colleges would order them in bulk and they'd be number one best sellers at your local Christian bookshop (the one that features Joel Osteen books in the window display). 

The image surfaced on Facebook, but arrives here via James McGrath's blog.