God and King

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Bible01

The King James Version of the Bible is in the public domain. (Except in Britain, where it is still royal prerogative to print the King James, and it has be licensed to Oxford and Cambridge University Presses.) In any case, that means that just about anywhere in the world, anyone can take the text of the King James, reproduce it, and sell it. In this day of electronic books, that means many King James Bibles are available online, as well as in print. Just look on Amazon. The other day, I was looking for King James editions when I noted a dilemma. When you’re listing your Bible on Amazon, who do you cite as the author? Seems pretty bold to list yourself as the either author or editor of the KJV, so there have appeared a number of improbable authors of late. The first one I noticed listed the author as El Shaddai. Either an Amy Grant fan or an educated reader, this editor chose the phrase generally translated as “God Almighty” as the author. A good, strong name. It may derive from the phrase “god of the mountains,” or a bit more racily, “god of the breasts.” El Shaddai was likely a pre-biblical god that eventually got merged with Yahweh.

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The second version (which looks the same to my untrained eye) lists a trinity of authors: Holy God, King James, and Joy Mayers. What a triumvirate! I’m not sure who Joy Mayers is, but I would certainly blush in the presence of gods and kings. Particularly Holy God. Interestingly, this is not exactly a biblical title for the deity. We do get the encomium “holy” applied to God, but I’m not sure that it ever appears as a name. Well, at least we can look up King James and Joy Mayers. The next edition I found listed the author as the safely hedged “God-inspired” (hyphen and all). The problem is that God-inspired might be taken a couple of ways. One, and likely the intended way, is to see the author, whomever it may have been, as divinely inspired. Another option, and one which sounds more exciting to me, is to think of a coffee-fueled deity scribbling away under the heat of inspiration. The inspired god, writing under a nom de plume, gave us the King James (if that was his real name).

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The last one I found was the most parsimonious. The author was listed as Anonymous. This comes the closest to the historical truth of the matter. We know very little about the writers of the Bible. Probably the best attested is Paul, along with his companion Pseudo-Paul. We know this historical person wrote a number of letters. There’s little reason to doubt that people named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote some gospels. Who these people are, we don’t rightly know. Once we get back to the Hebrew Bible we find authors writing about their own deaths, and events that take place thereafter with embarrassing frequency. It could be that people saw further back then, not having to strain their eyes at a computer daily. Of course, if it weren’t for computers, we couldn’t sell our own Bibles on Amazon. I’m just waiting until I learn the actual author’s name before I post mine for sale.

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Stealing God Blind

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Photo credit: Raul 654, Wiki Commons

Photo credit: Raul 654, Wiki Commons

A friend who also works in the book trade recently revealed that the section in one of the few remaining brick-and-mortar book stores most liable to theft is Bibles. I’m not really surprised, I guess. Faith can do strange things to people, giving them justifications for thievery in the name of a higher authority. What it really doesn’t reflect, however, is just what a financial liability a Bible can be. My friend speculated that people believe that the Bible should be free, and, in a sense they have a point. If it is the word of God, as they likely believe, then it should be in the public domain. The problem is, the Bible’s not as simple as all that. The problem begins with the fact that “the Bible” does not exist in any definitive form. Every single one of the original manuscripts has long been lost and we have copies of copies of copies, etc., of those putative manuscripts. And they are in foreign languages—technically dead languages, at that. (Although Greek and Hebrew are still spoken, the biblical forms of those languages died out long ago.) So, are the Hebrew and Greek texts in the public domain?

Maybe, but. The texts from which translators make English (or other modern language) Bibles are based on compilations of various documents that have come to represent the accepted, textually correct ancient language versions of the Bible. These are protected by copyright since they are relatively modern editions. Some of the older ones are available in the public domain, but they are outdated. Even skipping all that, when we get to English Bibles, such as the King James Version (but not the New King James Version, where the “new” modifies “version,” presumably, and not “King James”), the text is in the public domain but the printed book still costs money to manufacture. One of the problems with Bible mythology is that some think this implies that Bibles just drop down from God. In actuality, they have to be edited, typeset, printed, shipped, and stocked, and the people who do this work have to be paid. In short, free text is not free.

I work for a major (but by no means the biggest) producer of Bibles. Even in my short time at the press, I have come to realize that Bible publishing is complex and expensive. Sure, you can print cheap editions and give them away like the Gideons do, but they have financial backing to buy and distribute cheap words of the Lord. There’s a sense of entitlement here: if God spoke, wasn’t it to all people? What about the Quran? The Book of Mormon? Science and Health? Some may castigate the Bible, but it is a genre-defining true original. And although one of the ten commandments declares stealing is wrong, some wonder how this can possibly apply to Bibles. It’s the middle-men and women. Stealing a Bible is cheating someone from a bit of their livelihood. Even if the Almighty turns a blind eye.

Isaiah Thwarted

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Back in January, out of a sense of curiosity on a number of points, I began tweeting the Bible. I wondered how long it would take, at 140 characters a day, to type the King James Bible into Twitter. Since that time, I have not missed a day. Until this week. International travel and business travel with uncertain Internet access have been overcome as I flew with Bible in hand to keep it going. On Monday I was just wrapping up the flood story. Clearly this was going to take a long-term commitment. Then early this week a message popped up on my Twitter account stating, “You cannot send messages to users who are not following you. Learn more,” so naturally, I learned more. Unfortunately I am not now, nor have I ever been, a techie. Just a sentence in and words I don’t understand begin to flummox me, building confusion on confusion. What it appears to be telling me, in layman’s language, is that I can no longer post to Twitter.

Apart from the personal rejection such impersonal messages inevitably engender, this development brought to mind the famous verse from Isaiah 40.8, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” Hath the Lord been stopped by Twitter? Technology changes rapidly, and those of us who’ve never had any formal training in it sometimes feel like we’re driving a car on a dark country road at night with no headlights. I’m not really sure how this all works, but I try to send daily thoughts out into cyberspace and, yes, what you say can and will be used against you. And I wonder about old Deutero-Isaiah sitting there in Babylon peering into an indefinite future.

Our abject dependence on the Internet has changed us as a species. I’ve recently read about how technological innovations have become the evolution of the human species. This collective brain we refer to as the Internet has revolutionized the way we do business, but it has also introduced a component of fragility into the equation. Electronic information is untested in the long term. Some of my earliest writing projects now exist only on three-and-a-half inch floppies, most of which are tucked away in some musty corner of the attic. And what if the earth passes through a comet’s tail or a nasty solar flare jets out our way? Doomsday scenarios have been based on such things (just remember Y2K and smile). So maybe Second Isaiah was onto something after all. Printed books have been known to survive for at least half a millennium, and in rare instances, a couple thousand years. And the pagan sources on which parts of the Bible are based, written in clay, last even longer. And one of the earliest stories recorded was that of a worldwide flood.

Gods Will Be Gods

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“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Genesis 6 begins with one of the most unusual stories in the entire Bible. And that’s saying something! The sons of God mating with the daughters of men? A couple verses on we hear about giants roaming the earth in those days, presumably the children of this divine-human miscegenation. What is this stuff straight from pagan mythology doing in the pages of Holy Writ? Over the centuries, translators have tried to tidy up the boldly direct language of the King James here, making the sons of God into angels or some lesser beings. It is too hard to accept that sacred scripture admits of polytheism.

Monotheism, it is clear, came to the Israelites somewhat late in their history. The Bible is full of bold clues that other gods exist, and, worse yet, they are sometimes as powerful as Yahweh. In the light of later theological development, translators often bow to popular pressure and clean up the Bible’s language a bit. Fact is, Israelites, like most ancients, lived in a world populated with mythical creatures. Gods galore, monsters, demons, angels, witches, giants—they all haunt the pages of the western world’s sacred book. But that’s not what we expect the Good Book to say. The Hebrew text here is unequivocal, these are the “sons of God” we are talking about. Either that, or worse, “the sons of the gods.” More and more deities.

We can’t be sure why the ancient believed in monsters and giants, but it seems likely that such creatures had explanatory value for their world. Lacking science—paleontology was millennia in the future—they had to explain the huge bones found in the earth. We do know that dinosaur bones had been discovered in the Mediterranean basin in antiquity. These big bones often look human to a non-specialist. Heads are frequently missing. It has been suggested that these give rise to our biblical giants. Yet another response has been the recent trend of fundamentalists with Photoshop skills to post photos of archaeologists actually discovering giants on the Internet. Some of these doctored images are very impressive. It is an effort to save the Bible from the truth. A Bible that requires saving, however, should give even the most fervent believer pause for thought. Isn’t it just easier to suggest the sons of God were typical guys and that little has changed since the world was young?

Genesis Gender-Bender

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“Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam,” so reads Genesis 5.2 (5.2a, for those sticklers among the crowd). Long ago I lost track of how many times I’d read Genesis. It has a privileged place in the Bible partially because of our modern method of reading books. We assume that the beginning should be read first and that it should lay the groundwork for what follows. The Bible, however, was compiled over centuries and the story may begin at Genesis, but not all that follows is in agreement with it. “Called their name Adam” sent me scurrying back to dust off my Hebrew of the Bible. The King James Version, after all, was translated from manuscripts that are sometimes inferior to many that have been discovered since then, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Maybe this was one of those strange Elizabethan passages, for after all, Queen Elizabeth I did have a bit of a reputation. To my surprise, however, “their name” remains plainly in the Hebrew, suggesting that the first couple were both Adam.

Since just a verse later Adam and Adam have a son called Seth (and since the genealogies seldom mention their women at all), presumably Adam here means Eve. Literalists beware! The creation story in Genesis 1, as opposed to Genesis 2.4b, pictures the genders created simultaneously. Women and men together are humanity. The second creation story offers Adam a generous dollop of primacy; he gets to be first and even gets to name the animals and the wife; he is the lord and master of his domain. And people refer to eating the fruit as a fall! Now at Genesis 5 we have humanity reunited in the person of Adam, the bi-gendered representation of humanity.

Of course Adam is a play on words. The Bible begins with humanity as a joke. Adam is just one syllable short of the word for “ground” (adamah), and so Adam is the original groundling, or earthling. Yet Adam is never given as a proper name until Eve appears. It is only with the creation of woman that man becomes man. I suspect that may be the underlying of logic (if it is even right to call it such) of the plural, “their name Adam.” It might be easier just to recognize that the Bible doesn’t give us the endpoint of the discussion of human nature, but the starting point. There are those who insist that the Bible has all the answers. In my experience it is primarily full of questions. And the questions require both female and male to answer them. Otherwise, humanity is indeed a joke.

“Adam, I’m Adam”

The Afterthought

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This week I finished Genesis 2 on my venture to tweet the Bible, and even before reaching the famous snake scene in Genesis 3, I blushed. Not in a good way. Reading each word of the text in King James English (ironically, technically Elizabethan English), it becomes clear just how androcentric the text is. As a reader with sensitivity to historical eras, it is important not to judge the past by present standards. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to be offended at the assumed male primacy that had begun to be dismantled, only to be propped up again by sacred writ. As soon as people began to realize that sexual dimorphism did not equate to sexual dominance, the Bible came into the hands of the laity and there, beginning in Genesis 2, became the prooftext that women were made for men. Note: “for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

One of these things is not like the others...

This passage is, of course, very familiar. Too familiar. Accompanying the ready availability of the Bible was the concept of divine writing. To a society of chamber pots and horse manure in the streets, the idea that God could write a book was sensible enough. The problem is, as our sophistication grew, our biblical sense couldn’t keep pace. Centuries later with probes soaring beyond our solar system, rovers on the moon, and space stations circling the planet, we still believe God wrote a book. And since God is male, the man’s point of view is normative. Of course, no one knows the reason for the story of Adam’s rib, but there is no doubt that ancient society, at least in this instance, was hopelessly patriarchal. It is society that determined which words would be considered sacred. The tale they chose matched their worldview.

The problem is that worldview gave an excuse to a patriarchal tour de force that has lasted for dozens of generations leaving women in their biblically predetermined place. There may be no sin as insidious as literalism. Those who cling to the King James do so only with special pleading, for anyone who has studied Hebrew (or any foreign language) knows that translation is an inexact science. Even Genesis 1 with man and woman created the same day, both in the image of God, still lists man first. Ironically the literalists miss the humor of a God who thinks man will be satisfied with the animals. Presumably all the animals were guys at this point, although the Bible literally doesn’t say. No religion that claims victims has the right to declare itself universally true.

A Strange Confirmation

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I’ve been tweeting the Bible. Many years ago I lost track of how many times I had read it, but tweeting seems to be a way to examine the text carefully, 140 characters at a time. As a college student who’d recently learned about textual criticism (many years ago), I approached my local pastor and asked him if we could try something at church. I had a big, old, black leather Bible set up in the vestibule and made announcements—and even had it printed in the bulletin—that we were going to copy the Bible. I placed a three-ring binder and a pen next to the Bible, and I asked the parishioners to write down a verse in the notebook on their way in or out of church. I wanted to see how long it would take, and to give the laity an idea of how difficult it was to copy accurately. (Hey, I was young and idealistic!) The Bible sat there many months, perhaps a couple of years. I would occasionally check on progress, and was surprised to see we were still in Genesis. We hadn’t even reached the flood yet. And mistakes? Ye gods! It was like the Bible had been written on another planet. I now see the many problems with the way the experiment was set up, but copying the Bible is a revealing exercise nonetheless.

My tweets are with the King James Version of the Bible, and over the weekend I discovered something. According to the KJV, seed-bearing plants are male. Note Genesis 1.11 “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.” This corresponds to a post I wrote late last year about the notion of distorted masculinity in the biblical worldview. The operating assumption seems to be that male and seediness go together. Since the Bible is literally right, somebody better get out there and explain the facts of life to the female plants that constitute roughly half the flora on this planet. Herein lies the rub: ancient assumptions no longer hold sway. Trees are not all “hes,” and yet many treat the surrounding context of a literal seven days (only one day in Genesis 2) as worthy to take down science itself.

Once in a while I have my own gripe with science—or at least its cousin technology. I was looking forward, many years down the road, to putting all my Bible tweets together into a seamless whole. The tweet I twittered on Sunday, however, never appeared. I can’t go back and add the missing 140 characters now, because that would throw the order off. And those ancient scribes thought they had it hard! Maybe there is an object lesson at play here. Maybe the utter devotion to a text has the potential to lead the righteous astray. As a society we’ve built a tremendous world of luxury around ourselves (well, most of us), and isolated ourselves from the wild animals and masculine fruits of biblical times. And yet, when we look at the text up close, we often find things we might not expect. Or even support. I will dutifully carry on my Bible tweeting, but like any human venture, my Bible will never be perfect.

Tweeting the Bible

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I have an underused Twitter account. My life isn’t so interesting that I need to give my few followers (fewer even than those who read this blog) updates throughout the day. In fact, I mainly use it to let my Tweethearts know what I’m blogging about on any given day. While reading a book on the influence of technology on religion (more anon) it struck me that one of the more interesting aspects of biblical studies is the fact that the well never goes dry. For those who read sacred texts, there is no end of interpretation. I’ve addressed this before on this blog—religion is as individual as each believer. The more I read biblical interpretations, however, the more I see the subtle textures and layers that readers find in the text, despite what most religious leaders desire. And I don’t restrict this to the Bible—any sacred text can be read in multiple ways. The Bible, however, has been foundational for this person that I’ve become, and so I’ve decided to do some close reading.

I’m going to tweet the Bible. (If you are one of my rare followers, don’t worry—read on.) I’m going to tweet the maximum 140 characters per message once a day. For this task I will be using the King James Version, arguably the most influential book ever written in the western world. Doubt me? Watch a presidential candidate debate. Or google Girl Scout cookies. Why am I doing this? Well, I wonder what the Bible says when it is broken down into byte-sized nuggets. At character 140 I will stop, and the next day I will begin where I left off the day before. This exercise will be a way of looking at the Bible from a fresh angle. Besides, it’s been a few years since I’ve read the entire KJV. I don’t pretend that nobody else has thought of this—I’m sure there are many Bible tweets out there. I’m curious, however, at 140 characters a day how long it will take, and what will emerge. Yes, I know that there are mathematical whizzes out there who could calculate the answer in a matter of seconds, but I just have to see for myself. The doubting tweeter.

A new look at an old book.

There may be occasions when I fail—isn’t the Bible about forgiveness anyway? In my job I travel quite a bit, and sometimes Internet access is dicey. Most hotels, however, still sport a Gideon Bible, so resources should be no problem. It will be an adventure, and the Bible could stand some adventure these days. Besides, interesting pericopes will give me something to blog about occasionally. For those who haven’t been subjected to years of higher education on the Bible (or other texts), a pericope is a passage cut out from its surroundings. It is the favorite of televangelists and other proof-texters who prefer to not to face the larger implications of reading the whole Bible in its context. I like to think of this exercise as Internet hermeneutics. So let the adventure begin. If you are really bored and want to follow a glacially paced Bible reading, my Twitter name is stawiggins. When interesting observations emerge, however, I will let my blog readers know as well. In the technical age, life is tweet.

Seedless

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“And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother” (Genesis 38.9). During the conference last week the Routledge booth stood across from that of an evangelical publisher. One of the realities of conference life from the point-of-view of an exhibitor is over-exposure to what is fresh, clever, or cute upon first blush. Harper One’s continuous loop video, however, demonstrated that N. T. Wright, Desmond Tutu, and Bart Ehrman can sound repetitive, and even Colbert loses his punch when you hear the jokes for the twelfth time. The evangelical publisher across the way, however, had a large cartoon drawing that mapped out the believer’s life, book-by-book through the Bible. As probably anticipated, I can’t get that silly cartoon out of my head. After four days of exposure, I finally succumbed to asking for a flier. It was the usual evangelical fare, and the warning against adultery on back used the traditional term “seed” for “semen.” I found myself pondering the implications.

Since the King James Version shares the pre-scientific worldview of the ancients, the term “seed” has been preserved in the literalist mind. Even Alice Cooper uses it in his lyrics (his father was, after all, a preacher). Well, since the Bible is Holy Writ, it seems that semen has been transubstantiated into seed. The seed, as biologists tell us, contains all the genetic material to grow a new plant. Just add water, warmth, and a little light. Presto! Life sprouts. Since evangelicals tend to be fluent in biblicalese, even today men—the default, fully equipped model of humanity—come complete with abundant seeds. Agway should be so lucky. It feels, however, as if half of the equation is missing. If the Bible-writers had raised chickens, perhaps men would be full of eggs.

Thinking life cannot exist without metaphors. Metaphors are very dangerous in the hands of religion where they get taken literally. Too easily imagery slips into facticity. The male seed demonstrates a diabolical gospel truth: men alone provide the next generation. Women, as usual, are largely superfluous. The biblical male dominates the biblical female. The man owns the wife and must be enticed to share his precious seed. If conception fails, it is inevitably her fault. The metaphor has become a thumb-sized rod. Let us speak plainly here. The Bible has betrayed womankind. Judas Immaculate. In ancient times this was accepted fact. The microscope and biology should have buried this seedy metaphor centuries ago. But once again, the unthinking promulgation of a biblical trope survives at the expense of women. I have no seeds. No man since Adam has.

An obscene photograph?

I Left my Bible in San Francisco

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Gideon prays for a Bible

I’m staying at the Hilton, Union Square in San Francisco. Surrounding me are over 10,000 (is that a proper myriad?) religion and Bible scholars gathered for the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting. I travel light. Having left my Bible behind I went to look up something in the Gideon general issue. It is not here. The world’s largest academic conference focusing on the Bible, four hundred years after the King James Version hit the shelves, and I am Bible-less in my hotel room. Of course, once I get to work I will be surrounded by Bibles, some of them walking, talking resources who have the whole book memorized. Yes, the Society is that kind of place. The Gideon hotel Bible is an American institution. It feels like a constitutional right. When my daughter was very young and we stayed in a hotel, she found the Gideon Bible and asked what it was. We explained that the Gideons leave a Bible in hotel rooms all across the country. “That’s just weird,” she said with all the conviction of a pre-teen.

There are current movements to remove Gideon Bibles from hotels. They do, after all, represent a privileged position to Christianity in a nation founded on religious freedom. No one is forcing you to read that Bible, but it is there, like a tell-tale heart, in your bedside table drawer. Thumping incessantly. To read or not to read? What’s on the TV?

My favorite discussions at conferences like this are with scholars who find the privileging of one religion distressing. Our culture is so grown up in so many ways; we are more enlightened about sexuality and gender and race, and yet, and yet… We still like to have that Gideon Bible nearby. We like our political candidates Christian. Preferably Protestant, although a Catholic will do if he (inevitably he) is on the right side of the right issues. We are vaguely and implicitly afraid of those who don’t share our convictions.

In a moment of levity near closing time yesterday, a customer stopped by to say Routledge should have more gimmicks. Many publishers have giveaways, and some have little games that bearded, bespectacled professors sometimes even play. The customer suggest darts, or even a little shooting range. I said, “Guns and theology are sure to lead to trouble.” Although he laughed, I was serious. Few things in this world can be justified as easily as religiously motivated slayings, at least in the minds of the perpetrators. And to borrow a phrase from a budding genius, “That’s just weird.”

P*ss Says Elijah

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As celebrations of the four-hundredth year of the King James Version continue this month, it is time to reflect on how its language has influenced modern-day English. I recently finished my course on the Prophets, and as I was reading the wonderful stories of Elijah, I remembered the shock I first experienced when reading 1 Kings 21.21 as a child. In the words of Elijah: “Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel.” I had been raised with the certain knowledge that the “p-word” was cussing, if not downright swearing. What was it doing in the mouth of a righteous prophet? Then I realized even Saint Peter, according to Mark 14.71, “began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak” just before the cock crowed.

The Bible defies expectations. Today it has become a highly politicized document. The “Family Values” camp loves to cite select passages of the Bible but tends to ignore those juicy bits that contradict their 1950’s outlook. The Bible is a book of surprises. It suffers at the hands of its own apotheosis. I know biblical scholars who argue that the Bible should no longer be singled out as a special book, but we do owe it a debt of gratitude. If modern-day people want to revere the Bible, they should do so with an awareness of its context.

Recently a friend posted a comment on Revelation online, wondering why people found it so scary. In the many replies, several worried commenters noted how signs for the apocalypse are beyond ripe and the fruit is ready to fall from the tree. When I interjected that Revelation was a response to first-century Christian persecution couched in the language of apocalyptic literature, I was quickly corrected by others who noted that since Revelation is coming true right now, it must, ipso facto, be a future prediction. We revere the Bible without hearing it. Until we learn to actually read and appreciate the Bible in its context, I’ll have to take my side with the prophets of old. After all, p*ss says Elijah.

Be careful little mouth what you say...

That’s All, Folks

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As May is now upon us, in keeping with the spirit of Beltane, we are being warned to make ourselves ready for the end of the world. At Rutgers Day on Saturday, the eBible Fellowship was out in force, handing out tracts declaring in no uncertain terms that this month will see the dissolution of all things. Now is the time to buy things on credit, apparently, but make sure the payments aren’t due at least until next month! I’ve written a few posts on this particular prediction before, but the flyers I received have helped clarify a few things for me. I wondered why the god of eBible Fellowship had chosen this year to end it all. It turns out that this is the 7000th year after the flood! Things have been going swimmingly for seven millennia, so it is time to call it all to a halt.

Reading further, I was amazed at how accurate the reading of the cosmic timeclock has become. According to the pamphlet, the Church Age ended May 21, 1988. At that time I was too busy trying to get into doctoral programs in Bible to notice, I guess. According to eBible, the Bible states that the tribulation began then and would last for 23 years. That does explain my career history. Reading the passages they cite, however, I just don’t see the numbers adding up. eBible claims that God stopped using churches in 1988, so if you’ve been spending your Sundays there, I guess the joke’s on you. It kind of makes me glad that I was never ordained.

Samuel de Champlain does not endorse eBible Fellowship

Intrigued, I decided to look at their website. For a temporary site there do seem to be a number of incomplete pages announcing that more is coming. There are podcasts about what to do in case you are not raptured on the twenty-first, as well as proof that the world is 13,000 years old, unlike the traditional Ussher date (his name is misspelled on the website). The group, which is based in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, states: “We are living at a time when the Bible is being highly exalted by God.” A classic statement of bibliolatry – I was not surprised to note that the King James Version is the one the Fellowship approves. I didn’t see that they calculated the fact that 19 days before the end of the world the KJV would become 400 years old. The only significant event I could find for May 21 of 1611 is that Samuel de Champlain returned to Québec from France. I sure I am missing the hidden meaning of that event, since crossing the sea is almost certainly a metaphor for the flood and Samuel is a prophet in the Hebrew Bible.

Happy Birthday King James

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Four centuries ago a literary landmark was published. Today marks the birthday of the King James Version of the Bible, arguably the most influential book ever published in the English language. Those active in scholarly circles at bibliocentric institutions are popping the cork on their sparkling grape juice today, since for many the King James Bible represents the real liberation of God’s message. In some sense, the KJV also represents the origins of Protestant movement. Liberating the Bible from the clutches of scholarly Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the King James Bible made the book accessible to the English-speaking world. As direct access to the Bible grew, the pontifical power of Rome (with apologies to besainted John Paul II) came increasingly under question. Inquiring minds wanted to know what God himself said. Of course, the Bible soon enough would evolve into a lash in the able hands of power-hungry theocrats.

Today the New International Version outsells the venerated King James. Some very conservative groups still hold to the King James Version as an “inspired translation” that no others can touch. The New International Version was hailed by evangelicals as a more up-to-date, safe translation of the Bible when it first appeared. The fact remains, however, that translations can never fully replicate the original. This is a major problem of bibliolatry. Languages are systems of thought and direct translation never fully captures the “meaning” of the original. Few who adore the Bible have the time to truly learn Hebrew and Greek, so guardianship of the truth must be passed to a reliable translation. The King James, in turn, also became the basis for some shaky theological ideas that are challenged by more accurate translations.

As the Internet rings with stories of the death of Osama bin Laden, the dangers of absolute religious adherence to any book of faith should become clear. Bibles, Qurans, Talmuds – these may be guideposts along the way, but they are often mistaken for the end of the journey. Written texts are subject to interpretation and even the KJV is read different ways by different believers. Instead of worshipping books, we would be better advised to read them. And if from that reading we learn to think then the time of the original composers of sacred writ will not have been wasted. That would be cause for celebration indeed.

Bible, Bible, Who’s Got the Bible?

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Rutgers University boasts a truly diverse population. In my fourth year as an adjunct in the Religion Department at the New Brunswick campus, I am continually reminded of the religious and cultural mix of the human race. As I began my twelfth section of Introduction to the Hebrew Bible last night, it occurred to me just how tight a grip Christian-based publishers have on the Bible. I generally spend my first class session on defining the Bible since many students enter such a course (and it is always full) with notions of what the Bible is. In fact, “the Bible” is a difficult document to define.

Binding a book together indicates that what is between the covers belongs together. This is almost a subconscious fact that we pretty much take for granted. If a publisher put all of this in the same place, it must belong together. For the general consumer market, that translates into Bibles that contain the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures. This mix of 66 books satisfies most customers in the United States and Canada, but the Catholic reader expects some 13 additional or expanded books in her or his Bible. Jewish customers expect somewhat less, with 27 books normally in “the Bible” being specifically placed there by a later, revisionist sect. Orthodox Christian Bibles may add or leave out a book or two, depending on the tradition.

The irony of this situation strikes me as we have Bible-thumpers constantly appearing in the news. Their well worn, black leather King James Versions are “the Bible.” For them. Their message to the American public: we must get our lives back in line according to (my interpretation of) this book. What of those in this country who have fewer or more books in their Bibles, or, Yahweh forbid, completely different scriptures? Is there no room in a nation of religious liberty for them? I have a modest proposal. For the politicians who want their Bible to drive our society, stop by my class at Rutgers sometime. I am always glad to see the diversity. And it shouldn’t be too hard to find a section to fit in your schedule – I teach four sections of the class throughout the year, including summer and winter terms.

Bible Myths

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The Bible is the most quoted book never read. That is, many people love to quote it without actually reading it all – yes, even Chronicles and Leviticus! The result is that the Bible itself has become a thing of mystery, a magical source of divine power with which the strong may subdue the weak, or by which politicians might win the most powerful office in the free world. The Bible is more dangerous than any weapon its believers may construct, for it is the source of the mandate, the writing that is so much more than ink and paper.

Over the years so many myths have grown about the Bible that it has become a mythical creature. Students often approach those of us who teach the Bible with amazing stories that defy explanation, or sometimes, that are just fun. This past week a student paper waxed eloquent on how the Bible physically describes Satan. It does not. The Bible tells us very little about what anyone looked like! One Bible myth that I have tried unsuccessfully to substantiate or debunk over the years, however, continues to elude me. It is the story of Psalm 46 in the incomprehensibly influential King James Version.

The KJV was completed in 1611, and William Shakespeare died in 1616. There is no evidence that Shakespeare was among those with any responsibility for translating the Bible, but his influence in England in his own lifetime was enormous. Many years ago a student informed me that Shakespeare made his way into Psalm 46. The forty-sixth word of the KJV translation is “shake.” Counting from the end of the psalm to the forty-sixth word from the end, one finds the word “spear.” So the gematria of the psalm give us the name of the putative translator. This story has all the signs of an apocryphal account of a Bible reader with too much time on his or her hands. If the story is true, I would love to see documentation. Otherwise it is one more monument of the power of book that few dare to read.

More than the sum of its parts