violet’s bible interpretations part 1
This is a new series designed to celebrate some of the words to be found in the religious book of Christianity followers. They believe their book, the Bible, has been inspired by an all-powerful and lovely deity, the god God. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to have high expectations when it comes to timeless common sense, measureless wisdom and top-notch ideas.
Numbers 5, 11-31
This part of the Bible tells us how the god God helped men in the olden days (before private investigators and webcams) check up on their dirty, cheating wives. If a married man had a fit of jealousy and suspected his wife had been cheating on him, the god God concocted a surefire way to check if the suspicions were justified. And here it is: a priest mixed some dirt from the floor with some magic water and made the woman drink it. The woman, by the way, was pregnant. If she had a miscarriage, it meant that she had cheated on her husband. If she didn’t, it meant that she had actually remained faithful and the husband was wrong.
And there we have it. More evidence to set apart Christianity from other silly, superstitious religions with fake, misogynistic gods and holy men performing magic tricks that everyone knows can’t be true. As I am not a Christian, I am open to receiving any additional information from religious folks who wish to explain to me why their logical and believable god set these rules and wanted them put in his eternal holy book.
What most people miss is that the god of the Old Testament is not God (as in the Prime Creator).
LikeLike
Who is he and where I can I find this information?
LikeLike
The god(s) of the Old Testament were an advanced race of beings who came to Earth and created homo sapiens sapiens (the missing link in evolution, so to speak). Plenty of places to research this topic not the least of which are The Pyramid Texts, The Book of Enoch, ancient records of Mesopotamia and gnostic writings; or if you prefer the short version, you can just read my previous posts which cover this topic extensively.
LikeLike
I’ve read some of your posts. They’re interesting but I find it difficult to believe you’re serious …
LikeLike
I am serious and your perspective is understandable (I used to be there myself). If you have an open mind, you might try reading some of the resources that I cited. That will inevitably lead you to many others.
LikeLike
What are you blabbering on about?
LikeLike
Sounds like a sketch from Monty Python
LikeLike
Was going to say exactly the same.
LikeLike
If you did it as a comedy sketch, no-one would believe it’s actually in the Bible. It actually adds some interesting fuel to the abortion debate. God provides magic abortion juice to women who conceive out of wedlock.
LikeLike
Ha! Great pick up. I’m going to use that in future debates!
LikeLike
I have to give the credit for that to my usually disinterested other half. I read it out to him and he instantly made the link.
LikeLike
John – you’re killing me. Reminds me of a Monty Python sketch where they they concluded “the gentleman’s problem is a brain cell stuck in his head” 🙂
LikeLike
I was thinking more along the lines of determining whether she’s a witch or not (stone floats, stone sinks), but i think i like your sketch better 😉
LikeLike
I knew where you were going yet the mention of Monty python cemented the image of this poor sod with a brain cell lodged in his head.It seemed an appropriate analogy for the “church”
LikeLike
🙂
LikeLike
So … eating mud is NOT a valid test for infidelity?
LikeLike
I’m not sure. I guess if it’s magic mud that causes miscarriages they might be on to something.
LikeLike
You are asking a difficult question of Christians. It is highly probable at a majority of them haven’t read that part
LikeLike
It makes me feel angry and rather distressed that anyone could believe this species of god exists. Utterly ridiculous. I hope some Christians do have to balls to try and explain how on earth they can read this kind of trash and conclude their deity is real. I might go poke PeW, he’s the only one who will attempt a sensible answer. (In spite of the fact that a sensible answer is impossible …)
LikeLike
Most evangelicals would have.
LikeLike
PeW, when you’ve got a minute, I’d love your take on how the god God may have thought this was a good idea, and also how you would have defended it in your fundamentalist days. I can’t get my head round anybody being a Christian with this kind of thing floating around.
LikeLike
On it.
LikeLike
The problem isn’t in the Holy Scriptures at all.
It’s in your own good selves, unless ye have faith the Truth will pass ye by. Just read the Good Book (cover to cover, no time off for good behaviour) and ye shall be SAVED! Remember, you must have faith—without Faith none of it makes sense.
(Actually, even with all the faith in the world not a great deal makes any sense …)
LikeLike
Bits like this, that were never covered in the Bible studies I attended in my youth, have to at least demonstrates to the fundamentalists that the inerrant word belief is painfully stupid.
LikeLike
Is it not interresting, that what one hears in apologetics is mainly about a primal cause, as if the establishment of such a cause would somehow prove, or even provide evidence for their particular personal relationship with a “benevolent” deity. In the case of Christians and Jews, a particular god that came up with this kind of silly stuff.
The best I have ever run in apologetics for these obviously superstitious beliefs in the Bible is, that the ancient folks used to be such nubskulls, that it was better for them to have these moralistic magic tricks and arbitrary commands, than to have any even slightly reasonable sounding advice. To me this is terribly patronizing and self important. Besides, how should the modern believer know wich of the ancient rules from a god are OK from the ones, that are not?
LikeLike
Exactly! All Christians have to at least agree it’s a pick and choose book because this kind of thing is simply embarrassing for them. Even faced with the stupidest of people, a ridiculous superstitious magic trick like this cannot be justified. I’d never come across this one before, so I’m genuinely shocked by it.
LikeLike
The more I read about ancient technology and craftsmanship—coupled with the fact that if you brought a caveman into today, gave him a shave, shower, brush up and a good suit … he’d be indistinguishable from any of the other oafs slouching along Main Street (possibly a lot fitter, but needing dental care?).
No—I’m not an ‘ancient astronaut’ nut—but if you read the literature it makes you think.
And wonder, how many other Antikythera Mechanisms are out there undiscovered?
Those ancients were every bit as intelligent as us. They just didn’t know quite as much (yet) about the universe as we do. But they certainly knew a hell of a lot more than we give them credit for; I say again, no different.
LikeLike
The existence of a trial by ordeal in the Bible is highly irregular. Though the concept of a trial by ordeal is quite common in antiquity (it was standard in many cultures, like ancient Britain and even in the American colonies), this is the only mention of one in the Bible.
One quick note: I’m not sure what you’re quoting in the original post, but there’s nothing in the passage to imply that the woman in question was pregnant. The NIV states, “her womb will miscarry,” but this would at most reference a curse of barrenness. Most other translations state “her thigh will rot,” a euphemistic Hebrew reference to venereal disease.
In my fundamentalist days, I heard arguments that this whole business depended on the psychosomatic effect: that a guilty person would react negatively to the otherwise harmless concoction. Naturally, I’m skeptical….but I’m not a fundamentalist any more, so that’s that.
As I’ve pointed out before, treating the Bible as a collection of infallible propositions may be the general practice of fundamentalists, but it’s not a valid approach for any rational reader. Passages like these are the legal codes of the ancient Hebrews; they don’t necessarily contain Universal Truth For Today. I’m most interested in whether such laws move positively or negatively with respect to the background culture. Do they strengthen the powerful, or do they protect the weak? That sort of thing.
So there’s no inherent contradiction in the Old Testament God accomodating some prescientific ideas like trial by ordeal. I’m interested in whether this particular example differs from its cultural context.
The typical trial by ordeal featured some particularly dangerous activity — like reaching into boiling water or walking over hot coals — with the presumption that an innocent person would be supernaturally protected. Invariably, this led to a pretty high conviction rate for ancient prosecutors.
And that’s what makes this example interesting. The “curse” is not inherently dangerous; drink a little dust in water and you’re done. Instead of depending on divine action to save the innocent, it depends on divine action to ferret out the guilty.
If anything, this protected women in the patristic culture. A man couldn’t simply accuse his wife of adultery and punish her or kick her out on a whim; such accusations required that the couple go before the court.
In the Talmud, this sort of thing was treated as a lie detector test. Someone who was nervous about completing an otherwise harmless act would be more likely to just confess, while an innocent person would go ahead and drink the water and be fine. It’s an interesting look at how YHWH accomodated prescientific belief while chipping away at prejudice and slavery.
LikeLike
Actually the Christian culture had in it for centuries the idea of trial by combat, wich is a form of trial by ordeal. It was widely accepted, that the god of the Christians would help the one who was right to win the combat to death. In cases where the other side was somehow disabled, like a woman fighting a man, the woman (and god obviously if she happened to be right) was aided by some technicalities, like for example, that the man fighting a woman would have to stand in a hole in the ground.
Even if the idea of this trial by ordeal would have saved some women, there is nothing to indicate that the idea came from some higher intelligence. Nor that it represents some logical set of universal fairness. On the contrary, it seems the entire business led to the situation in wich a barren woman could be selected and ousted from the community. No wonder, that a tribal nation, that is all the time counting it’s numbers and military strength, is perfectly OK in effectively punishing a woman for being barren. On the other hand, if the woman was pregnant (as in, why the hubbie suspected her of infidelity in the first place) then a miscarriage would have been fatal to her.
The problem here is, that no matter how one turns this law, it is stupid, superstitious, and harmfull to people. If we think it should be compared to other contemporary cultures, we will find a lot of cultures wich had no such problems.
If a god wanted to protect the women, the easiest way would have been to order the ancient Hebrew men not to be misogynists. As the same god was able to order men to cut their foreskins and not eat pigs, and as they followed those rules, then surely they would have been as likely to be able to cope with yet a nother arbitrary command. One that would have made sense and would have made them a stronger people. Including women into military service did much good to the modern state of Israel, did it not? But instead we have a number of rules that restrict the woman to the state of property of the man. Yes, we could argue, that this was a common set of values in them days in those parts, but why would a benevolent god give support to this kind of social violence? And to the fundies, it seems this sort of shite still applies, because who are they to be skeptical about the holy scriptures? The fact that neigbouring contemporary tribes and many other primitive nations around the world had some similar rules, only goes to show how it is more likely, that these sort of rules were not from any divine source, but cultural constructs of the tribal Hebrews.
There is this problem about the Bible, that it has a lot of these arbitrary orders from the alledged creator entity of the entire universe, but a great many of them are in fact rather horrible to our modern sensibilities. But the book does not very clearly indicate at wich point we should abandon these moronic and vile rules from a god, as our understanding grows. Any more, than it indicates wich stories of the creation should be treated as mere myth and metaphors.
Yet a nother problem is, that if this rule did not come directly from the alledged creator of the universe, but was just something the contemporary priests came up with, then what else in the Bible about the supernatural is just stuff that was invented by men? Everything, if you ask me.
LikeLike
As usual, Raut says it all! To your question: “Do they strengthen the powerful, or do they protect the weak?” I’m disturbed by your ‘could be worse’ analysis. Men are allowed to have rational or irrational fits of jealousy, the woman is forced to drink dirt as a result of this and the random outcome is taken as the judgement of an all-powerful god. It’s disgusting. As Raut points out, any woman that is barren or has a miscarriage is fucked. Is that protecting the weak? How can you even start to defend this kind of nonsense?
Apart from all that, your lie detector idea is ridiculous – an innocent person wouldn’t be ‘fine’. Not even just because they could be barren or have a miscarriage, but because most people panic when they are accused of ‘crimes’ that can ruin or end their lives. That very fact would make most people who were guilty as charged shut up and hope for the best. You’d have to live in a cartoon world to think your point of view has any validity.
It’s not interesting to look at how YHWH accommodated prescientific belief – it’s horrifying to think that intelligent people look to justify clearly superstitious and damaging practices. There was no chipping away at prejudice and slavery – there was movement to make a religion more popular with the masses that only served to harden and entrench seriously harmful prejudicial attitudes for centuries to come. Open your eyes PeW!
LikeLike
I need to do more research on this passage and read the Bible myself to obtain a more knowledgeable view, but your sarcasm is humorous! Great post.
LikeLike
Thanks Thomas, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
LikeLike
It sounds like a way to scare people into being moral.
LikeLike
Does that sound like the sensible strategy of an omniscient superbeing?
LikeLike
I don’t know. But it sounds practical. 🙂
LikeLike