The Bible TI251 Fall 2020

On the premise of creating a set of laws for a new society, I would base the society on the equality of all people on the sense of treatment of other people. It would be a welcoming society for all people. So, with this mindset in place, I would like to add my opinion to the controversy about adding the first commandment to a new society that would be hypothetically made. I don’t think that this commandment should be added to the laws because there should be freedom of religion. Therefore, if this were to be added to the laws, there would be consequences for not following the law as with the other laws. If anyone would want to be part of this society, they would have to accept God and be fully committed to this religion. It would push people to the sidelines and bar them from being part of the society, which would ultimately be the opposite of the society’s founding principles. Then there is the fact of enforcing the law; how would there be a way of finding who is not following this specific law? I recognize that this could set a higher being of connection and precedence for people to pay attention to the laws and not break them. However, if people are in a society together, those who set the laws up in conjunction with the people they will draw their power for obeying the laws from the head of the society. The motivation to obey the laws would be derived from the desire to not be punished for breaking the laws. There would be no need for a uniting religious figure if there is a uniting desire to not face the consequences of breaking the law and respecting the governing body.

I had several interesting thoughts when looking into Sodom and Gomorrah. Within the past year at my church at home we had explored this story and other stories that some biblical scholars have interpreted to have a stance on homosexuality. This deep dive put to rest any uncertainties I’ve had regarding the issues. I think that groups that denounce homosexuality, specifically in a biblical sense, are really only looking at the scripture at face value. When we look at the organizations described in the article about Sodom and Gomorrah and the internet I see a lot of problems with them. The biggest of these problems is that they seem to be looking for something in the Bible that agrees with the formulations that they have come up with, generally speaking the opinion that they straight out don’t like gay people whether it’s blatant or not, rather than truly trying to interpret what the text means. With all the parables and proverbs in the Bible we know that the authors were not strangers to figurative and sometimes vague writing and it seems to me that these people really don’t want to know the true word of God but rather back their own opinions using his text.

I was fascinated reading these stories in the Bible. I have barely touched a Bible in my life so I have been doing the readings for this class with a very fresh set of eyes and an open mind. Reading these stories made me feel like I was reading something that was part of a folklore collection; a story that would have been passed down orally with a lesson at the end. While I am reading this for the first time, it was made very clear in the supplemental readings that other people have spent a lot of time picking apart every single aspect of these stories and have many different points of view based on how literally they are reading from the text and how they interpret the text. I’ve always known that many opinions of controversial topics stem from the Bible, but it was interesting to see the origin of those arguments and how some of those arguments have been formed.

This reading was an interesting one. This is the first time I read it, or from what I can remember. I only attended Sunday school up to 4th grade, and I can imagine that they were not telling stories like this to 4th graders (or at least I hope not. I guess if they did it didn’t traumatize me enough to remember, which is a good sign). I am brutally disturbed that a man would take a stranger into his home and protect him by volunteering his daughter (adding in that she is a virgin) basically as a sacrifice or distraction? I can’t imagine doing this to anyone, let alone my own family or children for a complete stranger. It is disgusting that she died from her injuries. And since that wasn’t enough, they had to cut her up and send parts of her body to Isreal!

Getting past the horrific details of this story, I agree that the points of the story have been lost. Readers have gotten caught up in the genders of the human beings performing these acts of violence, instead of the violence itself. I agree with Dr. McGrath when he says that this was not a sexual act or display of sexual orientation, but purely an act of mob violence.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was definitely a shock to read. Growing up in Catholic school, I was never taught that this kind of stuff was in the Bible. My last blog post was about this story and how it shocked me, but after discussing it in class a little bit and reading up on it more, I have a better understanding of it now. After I initially read the story, I wasn’t sure if the men’s sin was homosexuality, or just gang rape. In my opinion, their violence towards outsiders who weren’t a part of their city was the real sin that caused God to destroy their city. This shows that discussing and reading up on things rather than just reading the original story offers much more clarity and understanding of the actual meaning.

This week, I was introduced to two very similar stories that I had no idea existed. In my childhood, I was told all about Sodom and Gomorrah and how Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt–but never the lead-up to their demise. Who knew that there was such a controversy about gang rape in Genesis, AND that they taught it in Sunday school?

Reading the story of Sodom and Gomorrah at face-value is much different than the other interpretations out there, especially on the internet. Homosexuality in the Bible is a hot topic, one that I never knew was referenced much outside of Leviticus’ long-winded, fire and brimstone law book. Turns out, there are lots of discussions out there that made me wonder–was this really about the men wanting to “know” the other men?

No, it wasn’t. During class, it hit me more clearly that it didn’t even matter what sexuality these men were, or if that specifically is what made the city evil. It was a story of violence and rape, and total lawlessness that garnered the interference of God. The argument surrounding the nature of “abomination” that the Sodomites had committed was much more black and white to me than it had been after a few Google searches. I was reassured that indeed someone else thinks the gang rape of a woman is more pressing than the exact sexuality of an entire town.

After reading Genesis 19 and Judges 19, I was surprised. I had heard this story before in Sunday school, However I was only told the prettier version. Many if not all sacred texts have some type of violence and gruesome details. Typically those stores are sugar coated. However after reading the stories and going over it in class it was very interesting to see these things. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah really is a great example of the brutality that a part of the bible entails. I was in disbelief as I noticed a multitude of things.  Lot had just met these men and while the other men of the city are outside requesting Lot let them go so they can do things to them he offers up his “virgin daughters”. It was concerning to see Lot offer up his own blood, his own kin to help two strangers. But after you see the wrath that God took out on these people and it puts you in a little bit of disbelief. God punished these people not for their hospitality but because of stuff that Lot had heard and seen been done over time. I don’t believe it was just directly related to the attempted rape or current savagery but the decay of the people over time.

After reading Genesis 19 and Judges 19, I was shocked. I never knew the Bible had such gruesome and graphic stories in it. It was interesting to read very explicit acts occurring in something as sacred as the Bible. I always thought of the Bible being a happy book with stories and tales of good deeds and other similar things. After reading the brutal gang rape and murder of an innocent woman, I was in shock and disbelief. I also noticed how much sexism is in the Bible as well. They want to protect the men in these stories so badly, they sacrifice their “virgin daughters”. While I am not necessarily shocked that there is obvious objectification of women in the Bible, it is still disappointing. There are so many people that have read the Bible, it is no wonder the objectification of women still exists today.

Growing up in church, I have gone through several different Sunday school classes each of them teaching the students how to be a good person and how the Bible gave us an example of this. So, I was taught the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but in a much more PG-rated way. It was based on the lesson of how people were not leading virtuous lives as God wanted and basically being inhumane, and that we could learn from their behavior that we should be kinder to others and act in a way that was helpful to all. They cut out the part of death and destruction to not scare us when we were kids, but as we got older and progressed through the higher classes more of the controversial topics were explained to us and the violence was discussed. Not until high school was these stories fully read through and explained and discussed in our weekly Sunday school classes.

One of the more thought-provoking questions that were posed in the class today that really hit me was that if you edit out all of the violence in some of the stories of the Bible, what is really left, and does it change the story as a whole? I think that to some point you are going to have to read through the hard stories that are more violent, especially the way that religion is taught and even how you proceed with your life. You take on the task of learning and deducing meaning from things that you take in and using it for your own experiences. By teaching the moral of the stories from the Bible to younger children is a place to start because as a child you really could care less about what a big old book has written in it and what directions it gives you for life. Then incorporating in the stories from the Bible later when we start to understand more. To the point of if editing the story, yes, I do think it could change the meaning if you have the full context because there are more factors to consider when analyzing and understanding the text for what it is. Sometimes when taking little snippets of stories there is only one way to understand the story, but when the whole thing is put together it is much more complex than you would have realized when just reading the small part. The small parts lead to a lack of analyzation and creativity for the reader, they are told one way and that is it.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was much more violent and disturbing than my preconceived exposure to this story. In class we talked about a few strange sentences that are in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: these were that Lot would give up his daughters to save his guests, several men of Sodom came to Lot’s house with the intent of gang-rape, and that Abraham appeared to be more merciful than God. Abraham pleas with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find at least 10 righteous men. The Lord told Abraham the purpose of his journey to Sodom and Gomorrah was, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous.” To me, this implies that others have witnessed the crimes that we read about later in Genesis 19, which also means that there are righteous men within or around Sodom and Gomorrah crying out to spiritual authority. This story is something that I didn’t expect to find in the Bible, nor did I expect there to be a similar story in Judges 19. The second half of Judges 19 reads much like Genesis 19.