Speaking of being punked, Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen faced tough questions about Leviticus from what I suspect are atheist pranksters. (Possibly even of the sodomitic gay homo variety!)
The problem is, eventually he catches on, and becomes evasive, and he gets away without answering why he considers only some parts of Leviticus to be binding law, while others aren't.
I hate it when they do that.
The problem is that it would have taken a lot of time for the Archbishop to explain his views, which he does here. He thinks the Bible has to be seen in its entirety (which would put him at odds with the literalists, but which will not satisfy the anti-literalists, including yours truly).
Not to be confused with the literal Obama Messiah Watch, by the way. There's more than one variety. There are these, which would accessorize beautifully with the leftie Brooks Brothers look:
And there's this:
I found the above at what can only be called an Obama Watch Watch, which features a series of pictures watching all watches that The One wears, or has worn, since childhood.
Like this:
Unfortunately that picture has managed to do it for me. My love of surrealism and my paranoid conspiracy thinking have been simultaneously activated.
Now I'm afraid. Perhaps it's a symptom of the Obama End Times, but the conflation in my mind of surrealism and conspiracy thinking have forced me to consider an awful possibility. And because I have probably already offended nearly everyone with this useless post that trivializes All Things Sacred, I will share my theory with mankind for the first and hopefully only time.
Let me start by saying again that much as I think the Birthers have not proved their assertion that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than in Hawaii, there is something that strikes me as odd about his father. Perhaps I should say alleged father, for no one has ever applied the same DNA testing standard to him that the Trig Palin Birthers want applied to Sarah Palin's child. So we have only his mother's word for it that the father of her baby was Barack Obama Sr. Hospitals and governments take the mother's word in these cases as a matter of routine, and in fact, DNA testing is never done unless legal disputes arise. For example, my birth certificate states that I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to my mom, and while I am pretty confident that this is true, can I really claim with 100% absolute scientific certainty that I know there wasn't a switcheroo of some sort? And even if I believe my mom, how do I really know my dad was my dad? Again, DNA testing was never done. But I'm not running for office, so no one cares.
But enough about me. The real issue here is the Messiahship of Barack Obama. I have scrutinized pictures of him and his family, and I see distinct resemblances between him and his mother, and even between him and his grandfather, but -- and this is a highly significant but --
The man simply does not resemble his "father."
Now why might that be?
If we allow for the possibility that he is the Messiah (since we must, for many people believe he is, and religious views must always be accorded respect, right?), then his father would be God, and he would not look like any earthly man, would he? Seen this way, his father becomes a sort of Joseph-like figure, cuckolded by God and going along with cosmic events for reasons best known to him. (This might explain his subsequent drinking problem, but who knows?) No one knows what God looks like, but a number of congregations assert that Jesus was -- and probably still is -- black. And if Jesus was black, then there's already a precedent for messiahs being black, and it would mean that God is black. And why not? Surely no one can assert with any confidence that God is white, and as to the painting in the Sistine Chapel, I don't think it is reasonable to believe that Michelangelo painted God from life. Furthermore, we have to remember that the man was painting to please his benefactors, who were for the most part white Medici guys who probably would not have taken kindly to a painting of a black Yahweh in their chapel.
I'm glad they're not, because I'd never be able to keep up. As it is, there are too many serious things to take seriously at one time.
posted by Eric on 09.17.09 at 11:54 AM
Comments
If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, there are problems. Because the Bible is full of contradictions, missing verses, doubled verses and stories, garbled unintelligible verses etc. There's a whole bunch of killing and smiting of whole peoples, too. "The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord" Rightly so, Jehovah has a short temper.
Orthodox Jews and Orthodox and Catholic Christians insist that the Bible requires learned interpretation to clean up all the nonsense, but they differ on what the nonsensical parts are. Protestants reject learned interpretation and find themselves mired in all the textual problems. Of course, many moderns like Jensen just ignore unpleasant passages and say we have to read the "whole Bible." Whatever that might be. There are 30,000 Protestant sects, each with its own reading.
As to Leviticus, this is Paul's doing. I am surprised the Bishop doesn't know this. His understanding of the Bible seems to be negligible. Paul's critique of the Law is quite extensive and authoritative. He was trained as a Pharisee. Paul denied that the Law was binding on Gentiles, especially the food, ritual and clothing laws and circumcision. He believes the Law has been superceded for Jews, too, by Jesus. Notably, he retains the ban on homosexuality.
Well, the Bible is good literature and good reading. It's full of great stories, some with moral implications. It is thoroughly tendentious re history.
Everyone should read the Bible. No one should take it seriously as God's inspired Word.
Bob Sykes · September 17, 2009 1:39 PM
To be fair to Jensen, if he's an Anglican, he probably has no idea what he's supposed to believe.
Thanks Bob, now I have Alexander DeLarge's voice in my head, "I didn't so much like the latter part of the book which is like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out." :)
guy · September 17, 2009 5:11 PM
Valerie Jarrett is perhaps Obama's most trusted advisor.Her father-in-law,Vernon Jarrett, served in the 1940s with Frank Marshall Davis on the Publicity Committee of the red-dominated Citizens Committee to Aid Packing House Workers. Frank Marshall Davis moved to Hawaii and was later a “mentor” for Barack Obama when he was a teenager.
Small world. Makes one’s head spin.Learning that about the Jarrett/Davis connection made me wonder if perhaps the Manchurian candidate folks had a point. Really strange coincidence. It made me wonder if Davis had corresponded to Jarrett about a potential young find. I wonder if somewhere there are any copies of Jarrett/Davis correspondence post 1970- or if they corresponded at all post 1970 ( i.e., after Davis met young Barack Obama.)
But presumably there are five or six degrees of connection between any two people in the world. When I was working in Venezuela I met by coincidence a Venezuelan who knew an acquaintance from my high school days in the US. So that Jarrett/Davis/Obama connection may have just been one of those strange coincidences. Moreover, Valerie may have been divorced from her husband by the time she met Obama, making the Jarrett/Davis/Obama connection even more coincidence.
Bob Sykes: You know, for someone who makes such absolute pronoucements on the Bible and its rightness or lack thereof, your quotation skills are somewhat lacking.
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom";
The Law of Moses indicates what God considers to be illegal, immoral and possibly fattening; it prescribes earthly consequences (punishments) as well as the final judgement of eternal death.
Note that by the time Acts rolls around, the apostles begin to understand that no one has ever been able to keep the Law perfectly except Jesus. Jesus having already kept the Law perfectly, He was able to take upon Himself the full punishment we deserve. It is in that context that Peter and Paul both contend that the Judaisers should not be putting a yoke on the Gentile Christians their Jewish forefathers couldn't bear anyway.
This does not take away the fact that it's still sinful to do certain things, though. And Scripture interprets Scripture, so the Bible has to be examined as a whole, and the books exegeted in context.
Bob, I fail to see any problems with the Bible being God-breathed. Recall that we do only say that the full plaintext of the Bible as originally written (or compiled, or whatever you want to call it) is infallible. Insofar as the text we now have is accurate to the original, that is as far as it is infallible. And we know from the thousands of different copies, both full and incomplete, the text we have is very close to the original.
I also fail to see what's wrong with the smiting and killing people. It's what humans do, after all. It's also what you would expect from your God if your race was in mortal danger.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
If the Bible is the inspired Word of God, there are problems. Because the Bible is full of contradictions, missing verses, doubled verses and stories, garbled unintelligible verses etc. There's a whole bunch of killing and smiting of whole peoples, too. "The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord" Rightly so, Jehovah has a short temper.
Orthodox Jews and Orthodox and Catholic Christians insist that the Bible requires learned interpretation to clean up all the nonsense, but they differ on what the nonsensical parts are. Protestants reject learned interpretation and find themselves mired in all the textual problems. Of course, many moderns like Jensen just ignore unpleasant passages and say we have to read the "whole Bible." Whatever that might be. There are 30,000 Protestant sects, each with its own reading.
As to Leviticus, this is Paul's doing. I am surprised the Bishop doesn't know this. His understanding of the Bible seems to be negligible. Paul's critique of the Law is quite extensive and authoritative. He was trained as a Pharisee. Paul denied that the Law was binding on Gentiles, especially the food, ritual and clothing laws and circumcision. He believes the Law has been superceded for Jews, too, by Jesus. Notably, he retains the ban on homosexuality.
Well, the Bible is good literature and good reading. It's full of great stories, some with moral implications. It is thoroughly tendentious re history.
Everyone should read the Bible. No one should take it seriously as God's inspired Word.