Blue Cord

As I have mentioned a couple of times before, one of my guilty pleasures is listening to talk radio. I love arriving at work feeling like my head is going to explode because of these guys’ willingness to lie, slander, and commit logical fallacies in order to score political points.

Yesterday I was listening to Denis Prager mention something about the Bible. I went on the web to find what it was, but found an article he wrote last December instead. It is on Townhall.com, a site whose main purpose seems to be to provide an outlet for people who like to think of the weirdest thing they can say about liberals and then write something even more outrageous.

Prager wrote an essay entitled “The culture war is about the authority of a book,” that book being the Bible. Now in my opinion, the “culture war” is mostly an idea invented by conservative pundits. It has no more reality that the imaginary “Red State / Blue State” divide that both liberals and conservatives like to tout. Both are merely ways to get the base fired up. But Prager begins by saying,

If you want to predict on which side an American will line up in the Culture War wracking America, virtually all you have to do is get an answer to this question: Does the person believe in the divinity and authority of the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah?

While it would be easy to criticize him for his questionable use of the term “divinity” in this context, I want to stick to his main point. He goes on to say,

Name the issue: same-sex marriage; the morality of medically unnecessary abortions; capital punishment for murder; the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people “evil”; skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court; strong support for Israel. While there are exceptions — there are, for example, secular conservatives who share the Bible-believers’ social views — belief in a God-based authority of the Torah is as close to a predictable dividing line as exists.

This nothing more than another example of the “liberals don’t believe the Bible” argument that gets trotted out all the time. Prager shows that he knows this, because he points out that there are some secular conservatives who don’t believe the Bible but agree with his stance on these issues. In other words, the determining factor is not whether one believes the Bible. Instead, it is your political philosophy.

I am an example that disproves what Prager asserts.¹ I fully accept the authority of the Bible (or more precisely, the authority of God as exercised through the Bible), but I disagree with him on a number of these issues. Our difference come about not because of a disagreement in authority but because of a disagreement in interpretation. I hold positions counter to him on five out of six of these issues, but I do so because of how I read the Bible.

It is ironic that this argument is coming from Prager, who is Jewish. Similar arguments have been used against Jews in the past, saying that their problem is that they do not accept the authority of the entire Bible and the divinity of Jesus. Although Prager and other talk show host decry the idea of tolerance as a liberal notion that is destroying America, that tolerance is what enables him to be accepted as a conservative.

Prager includes the term “Judeo-Christian” in his article.² The term “Judeo-Christian” was first used at the beginning of the 20th century and only gained popularity during World War II, when the west was trying to distance itself from Hilter’s “Christians only” policy. In other words, fewer than 100 years ago the same argument would have been used as a way to attack people like Prager.

Prager’s sardonic use of this tactic also happens to violate one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Unless I am mistaken, that commandment is found in the same Torah whose authority he claims to support.

1. Technically, I am a moderate, but Prager and other talk show host of his ilk would consider me a liberal. [back]
2. Although I have never met a Judeo-Christian, I am told they are very nice people. [back]

I started a new job this week.  It is a temporary position (3 months) doing library cataloging for a chemical company.  Because I will be there for more than just a week or two, I had to go through orientation today, which included a section on ergonomics.  One of the repetitive stress injuries that they covered was what is known as Bible bumps.

This is not a term I had heard before.  I first assumed that “Bible bumps” were the cutis anserina that formed when your new copy of the Oxford Annotated Bible arrived.  But it turns out that “Bible bumps” is the common name for ganglion cysts that can form on the hands, particularly the wrist area.  It is associated with repetitive stressing of the tendons and joints.

The reason they are called “Bible bumps” is because of the traditional way people treated them.  In order to get rid of the cyst, people would smash it with something large, flat, and heavy.  Often it was the spine of a book, and usually the biggest book people had was a Bible.  Hence, the term.  This form of treatment is not recommended, by the way.¹

I guess we can take this as just further proof of the healing power of the word of God.

1. And if you take medical advice from someone who writes a biblioblog, you deserve what you get anyway. [back]

Chris Brady at Targuman made a reference to Frazz on Sunday.  Frazz happens to be one of my favorite comic strips as well.  I thought a comment made by Frazz in the strip today was especially wonderful.  He said, “An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.”  Although it is not a particularly original idea, it is one that bears repeating, especially given what passes for public discourse these days.

Brandon Wason has put the Sixteenth Biblical Studies Blog Carnival up at his blog Novum Testamentum.  Be sure to check out what biblioblogospherians had to say in March.

As they have done in previous years, Eisenbrauns publishers has a good page of April Fools offers up. This year there is a do-it-yourself ossuary kit, so you can be the latest to get in on the media action surrounding biblical finds. I was disappointed, however, to find that the 483 page commentary on the first verse of Obadiah was not, in fact, a real product.