Month: December 2020

In “The Dispute about Slavery in America,” Caroline Shanks said “The vast majority still firmly that all parts of scripture were equally channels of truth. To them, “The Bible says,” was synonymous with “God saith.” They regarded the authors of the Bible as only the agents of the Holy Spirit.” I really identified with this statement. When I used to go to church every Sunday, this was exactly how I felt and how I was taught to feel. It seemed strange to me to think of the authors as actual people who had their own sets of feelings, ideas and beliefs. It still does. That’s why it was hard for me to know how to believe because I was taught that every word was truth, but some of them- especially pertaining to slavery- felt so wrong. I had no idea how to interpret texts especially one of such cultural significance of the Bible. I feel like most of us are like this, therefore we are impressionable to those who wish to use the Bible to further their own agenda.

In our viewing of “Audience of the Ten Commandments,” I was confronted by some things that I hadn’t thought about. Specifically, I had always believed the “Decalogue” was meant for everyone men, women, and children alike. However, Cheryl Anderson says that you can tell a lot by the language of the Decalogue. It is more addressed to adults and specifically adult men who have households. It isn’t addressed to women at all which surprised me. The Decalogue was always presented to me as a universal blanket of general rules for everyone. However, upon further consideration it seems to be leaving out many groups of people. Basically only privileged or somewhat wealthy individuals were addressed in this text.

Another viewing of “Law and the Bible,” gave me some things to consider as well. I never knew that the law about adultery only matters if the woman is the married one. It doesn’t apply or intend consequences to any married man going outside his marriage. This seems pretty strange for me because I hadn’t thought a lot about gender inequalities in the Bible. Actual laws that are used to outline moral codes of today aren’t actually being represented as what they were truly meant to say when they were written. It’s pretty upsetting to realize this about a text that used to play such a huge role in my life.

I have heard that some of the most common arguments condemning homosexuals find their origins in Leviticus. In our assigned chapter “It’s the Purity, Stupid: Reading Leviticus in Context,” Jay Michaelson says that verses used to condemn are often taken out of context. In reading the chapters around Leviticus 18 “reveals an agenda entirely different from those usually proffered today.” I know this is a huge problem and has been for a very long time. People pick and choose verses out of context to meet their agenda. They make these verses seem to mean one thing, while in their original context they can mean something entirely different. Sometimes these verses are eluding to a larger plot and an idea that gets missed and overlooked when you look at pieces independently instead of looking for what their role might be in the bigger picture.

There is also the issue of what we tend to do to make the Bible seem more relevant to us. In some areas we ignore or brush over things that seem to be emphasized and in some we prioritize and highlight others that we think should be more important in today’s climate. Michaelson says “Yet when we clumsily attempt to make the Torah “relevant” to our times, we often import our own biases and agendas into a text that, like it or not, is about ancient cultic purity and the prohibition of foreign actions and mixtures that contaminated it.” This is the reason that so many controversies can be argued from both sides using the Bible. It seems that in the Bible you can always find evidence for what you choose to believe.

I had never thought in depth about Hagar’s role in the Bible. I knew surface elements of her role, but I know for sure that I never envisioned her as black. Brown perhaps, but it had never been suggested to me that she was black. That was the first thing that caught my eye in our reading of “Reimagining Hagar: Blackness and Bible.”

The other thing that caught my attention was our discussion in class about how the conception of Hagar and Abraham’s son was likely not consensual. I have heard the story of Hagar being the slave of Sarah and Abraham and taking the role of surrogate for their son, but I never thought that Abraham likely raped Hagar to conceive this son. Thinking through it it makes sense to me now because Hagar was Abraham’s slave, and it has really made me reevaluate how I view women in the Bible. Sarah and Abraham viewed Hagar’s body as just a vessel to carry a son.

I found our assigned reading of the flood stories very interesting. It showed both the Yahwist Version and also the Priestly Writers Version. I was surprised at how short the Yahwist version was. It seemed in the other version there were much more details. Between the two there were also significant differences.

One difference I found interesting was the nature of the flood. In the Yahwist version, the flood is presented as more like heavy rain that after a while was able to lift the ark off the ground. In the Priestly Writer’s version, however, the flood is portrayed as a “cosmic upheaval.” This is a big difference for me. I think that the cosmic upheaval version perhaps seems more like a myth because of this element of a more cosmic destruction. In the summary it says “the cosmic waters above the heavens and the waters of the cosmic deep below the earth effect a return to chaos.” This is something that will really affect how I view and read the bible in the future.

I had never heard that there are any sorts of doublets and contradictions in the flood story. In her lecture on Doublets and Contradictions, Christine Hays talks about some of these things. She talks about how it is said that the amount of time where rain was present isn’t consistent. Some passages say 40 days and others say 150. It seems strange to me that I would not have known about or noticed this before.

She also says there is a lot of repetition and contradiction in the Bible whether they are in the same passage or not. Some parts of books are basically repeated again in another book later on. There are two creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It seems as though the image of God is different in Genesis 1 and 2 as well. This leads us to believe there could be different authors and a lot of revisions. Growing up, I never learned about these kinds of propositions and ideas. I had never been introduced real studies of the bible and what religious scholars actually were saying about the text that was a big part of my life.

I had heard the creation story growing up in Sunday school at my church. I remember coloring pictures of Adam and Eve eating an apple off an apple tree with a little snake on the ground. Even though it was never actually said in the Bible that the fruit was an apple, I had always grown up picturing that as what it was. Being confronted with the question of what kind of fruit was on the tree, I would have immediately said it was an apple. It just makes me wonder how many other things in the Bible I have consciously or subconsciously gotten mixed up or made assumptions about.

In our class discussion, we talked about how translations and their original language can have very big differences. We also talked about idioms and how difficult it can be to translate them because we have to have an understanding of cultural references. I hadn’t thought a lot about how things are translated and how the text that we are reading in English of the Bible can have a different meaning than the original language of the Bible. For example when I read “slept with” in the Bible I assume that the text is making a sexual metaphor. But we talked about how this phrase is also used to say that two people were buried together. It just serves to show us that we can make incorrect assumptions and interpretations of our own that aren’t what the text is actually saying.

Though many people might regard Christmas as nothing but a cash-grabbing holiday in order for consumers to buy and producers to get richer, there has always been a magic to it. Because of the popularity of the holiday and the evolution of mankind, people might forget from time to time that the holiday is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

The term “Christmas” is supposed to represent the mass of Christ. Even before all the presents and Hallmark movies, Christmas was used to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Jesus was the savior of humanity, and his birth marked the a great change. Though his birthday is not exactly know, people chose December 25th to celebrate the birth of a savior and the miracles to come after.

Although Christmas has mainly become materialistic since the birth of Christ, it is important to remember the inherent importance of the holiday. If Christ wasn’t born, it is hard to tell where we would be now.

Pontius Pilate ordered the death of Jesus on a cross. This crucifixion was due to Jesus’ affect on the people. The Romans did not like how Jesus was basically getting in their way. However, it doesn’t seem like this was the only reason for Jesus’ crucifixion. When he was made to carry the cross, Jesus was not rejecting the cross, but embracing it. Why would this be? Jesus stated: “O Cross, My soul’s beloved, now made ready to fulfill my desires – come to Me, so that I may be embraced in your arms, and so that, laid upon them on an altar, I may be acceptable to the eternal Father as the sacrifice for his reconciliation with humanity.” This statement helps form the common idea that Jesus knew that his sacrifice was part of God’s plan.

Yes, the Romans did want Jesus dead, but that was all in God’s will. God wanted Jesus to die, not because he wanted to see him fall, but for him to rise and come be seated in Heaven. The sacrifice of Jesus was for God to reconcile with humanity. Pontius Pilate did, in fact, order the death of Jesus and an unfair trial was formed, but it was all in God’s favor in the end.

It is a normal belief that women did not play a role in the Church because they weren’t at the forefront. However, I believe they were the backbone and foundation of the Church. As the saying goes, “behind every great man is a great woman.” I’ll be honest that it does make me a little mad the low amount of women that are named in the Bible. There are stories in the Bible that surround women, but we run out of names before running out of the stories. I take this as the women weren’t important enough to name. Some of the women in the Bible that are named include Mary Magdalene, Elization (Mary’s cousin), Anna (Mary’s mother possibly?), and another Anna (the Prophet in the Temple). The Bible limits women to certain roles like prostitute, mother, daughter, and housewife. I believe this is because of the internalized misogyny that women have always experienced.

One new insight I learned about women in the Bible surrounds Genesis and Adam and Eve. Eve, a woman, is usually blamed for sin and eating the fruit from the tree. However, a new viewpoint I learned is that it was Adam’s fault. Eve wasn’t created yet when Adam was told not to eat from the tree. Adam’s teacher was Jesus. Eve was stuck with Adam has her teacher who did a bad job (clearly). Eve ate from the tree because she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to because Adam was responsible for telling her and failed to. (A typical man, I might add).