A number of you wrote in to me to let me know that Hong Kong was considering labeling the Christian bible as indecent—it is full of violence and kinky-freaky sexual behavior, after all. It was also amusing how some people rationalized it.
“If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” said Reverend Wu Chi-wai. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public,” he added.
How strange…hasn’t the good Reverend read his bible? In Deuteronomy, for instance, some quite explicit instructions are given:
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
So when God orders you to rape, it’s OK. And if God orders you to rape, and in some curious fit of conscience you decide not to, he will get very angry with you.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
Despite the rather nasty content, though, I don’t favor banning the bible at all — it’s an important recruiting tool for atheists. It’s irrelevant anyway, since the Hong Kong censors decided that they would not label the book as indecent. It would have been most amusing and appropriate if the sale of bibles had been restricted to adults over 18, but I’m thinking it might be even more effective as a kind of inoculation. Read it and gag and develop a good, strong reaction against it, I say.
Not to endorse blatant censorship or anything, but that would’ve been really funny if it went through. All the faithful getting their kinckers in a twist over it would have been quite an entertaining spectacle.
And why were these Bronze Age guys so determined to kill the non-virgins? Were they worried that girls who have seen one-eyed monsters before would then have a frame of reference?
Hmmm… maybe all of that crap God and Moses were always doing with that staff was some kind of compensation for something.
Hmm, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but now whenever someone asks me why I don’t read the Bible, go to Church, or whatever, I’m just going to say “The Bible reads like a snuff film, and I’m not into that. I only have a balloon fetish”.
For good measure, I could keep a bag of balloons near the door and pull them out before inviting the God-botherers inside.
I reckon Mel Gibson should make a movie of Samson, showing us how he killed a thousand people with a donkey’s jawbone. That would be fantastic. It could include a first-person perspective, like medieaval counterstrike.. There must be a lot of different ways you can kill someone with a jawbone..
Unlike many others on this forum, I don’t find it funny and don’t think it would have been amusing. Censorship – regardless of if it’s porn, religious claptrap, or political screed – is abhorrent.
Dude, 3 people have posted so far. 1 said it would be kind-of funny. By any standard, 1 is not “many”.
The bible has been censored and banned a lot already…
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jyanosko/forbidden/title.html#B
Also:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html
oh man – I love Deuteronomy. A couple of weeks ago i read it just for kicks – there are some crazy passages in that book. Funny how they only ever mention it as evidence that God hates gays, when it’s pretty clear from the book that their God hated everyone and everything.
For some other fun reading, try Lamentations.
One time I had to choose a bible story to read in front of my old congregation. I wanted to read a horrific story from Judges, but my pastor told me that some bible stories are not meant to be read to the masses.
Tyndale was late on the scene. Back in the 14th century, John Wycliffe translated the bible into English and was branded a heretic for making this “jewel of the clergy” into a “toy for the laity”.
Fortunately he died before they could lay their hands on him, but with Jesus-like love and tolerance, 45 years after his death “at the command of Pope Martin V [his body] was dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the river Swift.”
I always had a soft spot for Wycliffe because his portrait used to hang in my college library and I spent many an hour staring at him while trying to write a half-way decent essay.
Oli
God clearly didn’t want his Chosen People (or rather, his Chosen Men) to feel embarrassed about their endowment.
Ah, but if man is created in God’s image, then…….
Makes you wonder if all that killing, damning and such was him compesating for something.
The article about this says, ‘”If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” said Reverend Wu Chi-wai. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public,” he added.”‘ In one book of the bible, a young woman is raped on the steps of her home. To spread the news, her father cuts her into several pieces and sends the pieces to different places. Nothing is said disapproving of his action; presumably it is a godly one that we should all emulate. I wonder if it would be good for other victims of crimes, too.
Oliver said @#4
For instance, George Dubya just has to flap his in the right way and poof! Thousands dead…
Well, yes… but is this kind of restriction censorship in the way that you mean?
Do you think an R or NC-17 rating on a film is “censorship?”
To Oliver @#4:
I think that’s an awesome idea for a movie. I’d LOVE to see the scene where Samson catches 300 foxes and ties them to burning sticks (Judges 15:14).
To Kat @#8:
Deuteronomy is the best! Lots of people like to reference Leviticus for examples of Biblical intolorance, but if you’re really serious about stoning people, Deuteronomy is where it’s at. But my all-time favorite is Deuteronomy 23:13: And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee. The Biblical equivalent of mom’s ‘clean underwear’ advice, God tells us to always carry a shovel so that we can bury our poop. Another example of the Bible’s timeless infallibility…
My take on Deuteronomy’s account of raping virgins, after having made them orphans, and killing their brothers, is that the God’s Chosen knew all of the ensuing offspring would be theirs and not of the enemy’s blood.
They certainly didn’t want any males growing up to avenge their people’s annihilation.
(Plus it’s a bonus when your God says raping young girls is ok)
Anyone here ever read Mark Twain’s “Letters From the Earth”? Twain takes this story in Deuteronomy and shreds it, comparing this God to a psychopath.
He wonders at a “Father” who’d order one child to rape and murder his other child because he was angry with them.
>>God tells us to always carry a shovel so that we can bury our poop. Another example of the Bible’s timeless infallibility…
Posted by: Austin | May 21, 2007 01:43 AM
Some people just have to be told these things….
“And why were these Bronze Age guys so determined to kill the non-virgins?”
It’s a racial purity thing. Non-virgins might be pregnant by someone other than your group. If you kill everyone but the virgins, take over the town, and rape/impregnate the virgins, all the future offspring will be yours.
Nice.
I still say it’s because Yahweh has a small St. Peter.
Does this mean that YHWH was the first eugenicist?
20 posts in on the X-rated Bible and no one’s mentioned the “Song of Solomon” yet. Eight chapters of wall to wall overheated erotic love poetry, with no mention of God at all as far as I can see. It’s a miniature Harlequin romance novel jammed into the middle of the Bible for reasons which are not altogether clear.
The best thing you could say about the Bible is that it’s the weirdest book in the world.
Censorship: Boooo!
Unexpectedly funny and ironic pronouncements from Hong Kong govt: Yay!
Labelling the bible indecent: Amusingly consistent but major own goal, think what “Parental Advisory” stickers have done for record sales.
All in all the right outcome: no censorship, lots of hilarity.
Oh lord, make my enemies ridiculous!
Louis
“You SHOULD read the Bible; we need more atheists, and nothing will get you there faster than reading the Damn Bible.” Penn Jillete in “Bullshit”
I thought that line was just classic; I am often amazed by people who through random Bible versus at me as though they were something other than disgusting or just plain meaningless.
Hong Kong was returned to one of the two Chinas several years ago. The one that got it is the “evil commie” one blah blah blah…. Hence, I can easily imagine the magic mushrooms in the sky believers as claiming this attempted censorship to be another reason to “nuke Asia for the baby mushrooms” (or whatever horrible thing is done to non-believers these days).
I wondered at first why they needed to kill the post-menopausal women, but obviously, in the Old Testament world there were no guarantees against 90-year-olds being pregnant. ;)
I remember reading that these kind of tactics were very common in the Middle East in that period. The primary reason seemed to be of expanding the tribal lands and numbers, whilst completely eliminating any opposition. The fact that the Bible says that “God” told them to do it has always read to me as justification after the event, searching around for reasons why they did these hideous things. And they came up with the “We were only obeying orders” line.
Unfortunately I can’t cite any sources for the above, as all of my history books are currently in storage, and will be for some time.
Ah, found one of them here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Siege-Warfare-Paul-Bentley/dp/0253335469
Could you give the citation for the “Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp.” one? I couldn’t find it on my skim through Deuteronomy.
Nolwe, try Numbers 31:13.
There is a rationale why the catholic church never encouraged reading the bible, expecially the old testament, focusing instead in the new and what they call “sacred history”, which is a nice re-telling of some parts of the bible without the gore and the ethnic cleasing.
My father (devout catholic) use to say “if you read the bible, you might loose your faith”
That’s also why they had to wait a month before raping them; menstruation means you aren’t pregnant.
Except…Jewishness is through the maternal line. Though who knows if that rule was in place at the time this particular story was written.
One of your newer posts inspired me to privately type up the following comparisons just a few minutes ago:
——–
Percentage of the increase in our power over Nature since ancient times that religion has given us: 0%
Percentage of this power that science has given us: 100%
Correlation of what science tells us with what we want to hear: 0%
Correlation of what religion tells us: 100%
——–
And now in this post I find that first quotation from Deuteronomy exemplifying my last statistic in lurid detail.
We might say that the only scientific thing about this sort of theology is the scientific precision with which that LORD character tells us whatever we want to hear.
Oliver:
Don’t forget the explosive finale, in which Samson kills himself and takes out 3000 of his enemies, with God’s blessing.
Don’t forget the explosive finale, in which Samson kills himself and takes out 3000 of his enemies, with God’s blessing.
Bible’s own suicide pillar pusher.
I get some weird looks when I point this out in response to someone saying that muslims are worse “because they suicide bomb”.
Ian: Actually, the weirdest book in the world is the Boomer Bible. But then, it was just riffing off the original, so maybe you are right …
secularizer: of course. Most believers, particularly strong ones, don’t know their own text.
(Fun passages to tie people in knots: Isaiah 45:7, Hebrews 8, first few verses.)