Blue Cord

No, this is not a post about Scriptural underwear.

I am pleased to announce that a small booklet I wrote for the Bible Briefs series is out today. The series, which is published by Forward Movement Publications in partnership with Virginia Theological Seminary, is intended to provide short introductions to books of the Bible. My contribution to the series is Leviticus. The booklet is available free of charge as a PDF file at the Virginia Theological Seminary website. I am also scheduled to write the “volume” on  Numbers.

Steve Cook of Biblische Ausbildung is the editor for the series. Here are his gracious comments on the new booklet:

Recent scholarship is revitalizing interest in priestly literature of the Hebrew Bible such as Leviticus, rediscovering it as life-giving tradition that informed and complimented the prophetic word. To read Dr. Wilson’s new introduction to Leviticus is to appreciate anew God’s gifts of holiness, ritual, and wholeness. Wilson’s booklet gives the church an easy entree into scholars’ new regard for the Bible’s priestly theologies.

Just think – in one small booklet that takes about ten minutes to read you will learn more than most people ever want to know about Leviticus.

Scott Langston has an interesting article in this month’s SBL Forum entitled “What Makes the Bible Meaningful/Useful: The Ten Commandments and American Ideals.” Langston focuses on the reception history of the Ten Commandments and their use in politics during the Gilded Age of America.

Langston’s essay is well worth a read, particularly for those interested in how the Bible is used in politics. He notes that prior to the Civil War, the Ten Commandments were usually applied individually to address particular issues. In the Gilded Age, however, politicians began to refer to them as a whole as a text that expressed what it meant to be American. It is interesting to note that many of the uses of the Ten Commandments during that era were by progressives, which contrasts with the current situation where the Ten Commandments are more likely to be evoked by conservatives.

One of my favorite uses was by William Jennings Bryant, who accused the Republican’s of wanting to rewrite the Ten Commandments to say, “Thou shalt not steal on a small scale.” This sounds a lot like contemporary Republican rhetoric about revisionist history¹ and Democrats wanting to remove the Ten Commandments from public life.

Langston begins his essay by talking about recent controversies surrounding the use of the Ten Commandments, in particular their placement in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building by Justice Roy Moore. Moore had done this to call America back to its moral foundation.

One of the arguments that is sometimes made by those who are advocating a return to biblical law is that the Ten Commandments are the basis for American law. While I would agree that American morality has traditionally been based in part on the Ten Commandments, the idea that the Ten Commandments underlie American law is demonstrably false. Nevertheless, it continues to be believed by a fidimplicitary portion of the voting public.

When I teach the Ten Commandments in my intro classes, I always have my students put this assertion to the test. We write the Ten Commandments on the board and then mark out the ones that are not American laws. Here is how it comes out:

1. No other Gods before Yahweh - Article I of the U.S. Constitution prohibits this from being an American law.
2. No idols - American law does not ban the making of graven images.
3. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain - The use of God’s name as profanity is not illegal, even on television. The FCC has ruled that while it may be offensive to some, it is not a violation of indecency laws.
4. Observe the Sabbath - We used to have Blue Laws on the books that prohibited some work on Sunday (if we pretend Sunday is the Sabbath for a second), but most of those laws are no longer in effect.
5. Honor your father and mother - There is no requirement in American law that we must honor our parents.
6. Do not murder - This is a part of American law.
7. Do not commit adultery - While not a federal law, some states do have laws against adultery. In Maryland, for instance, adultery is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $10. Such laws are rarely enforced.
8. Do not steal - This is a part of American law.
9. Do not bear false witness - This is a part of American law.
10. Do not covet - American law does not forbid this. If it did, most commercials would suddenly be illegal.

In other words, only the prohibitions against murder, theft, and perjury are unquestionably a part of American law. Of course, you would be hard pressed to find a legal system anywhere in the world that doesn’t include laws against these three things, even in societies that have never heard of the Ten Commandments. And even if we add ##3, 4, and 7 (which were the basis for laws in times past), that still means that only six out of ten of the Commandments are a part of American law.

Those are hardly grounds for claiming that the Ten Commandments are the basis for the U.S. legal system.

1. As if there were such a thing as a non-revisionist history. [back]

We concluded our trip today. After 2,800 miles through sixteen states, we arrived back in northeast Massachusetts this evening.

I haven’t blogged on the trip since day 5 when we were in Chattanooga, so here is a brief overview of the last five days.

Wednesday we headed up to Jonesborough, TN, where my mother and step-father live. We stayed with them until Saturday. The highlight was Friday evening, when my parents threw a surprise party for my son, who had turned ten back on April 13. Since he was not with me then, it was nice to be able to celebrate his birthday.

On Saturday we drove as far as Washington, DC, where we stayed with a friend of mine from seminary. Today, we got up bright and early and got on the road for the final day of travel. As I was driving trough Philadelphia, it occurred to me that it would be nice for the kids to have a chance to stretch their legs. So, I got off the interstate long enough for us to stop by the Liberty Bell. The kids had never seen it before, and the last time I saw it it was in a different building. The new pavilion, built in 2003, is about three times as large and has a nice exhibit about the history of the bell.

For those who don’t recall, the bell has an inscription around its top. The first line reads, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The quote is taken from Leviticus 25:10, which refers to the Jubilee Year that Israel was to observe every fifty years. It is thought that one of the reasons this inscription was chosen was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of Philadelphia. Of course, the liberty that is intended by Leviticus 25:10 is not political liberty. Instead, it is freedom from slavery and debt. Every fifty years, slaves were to be allowed to go free and land was to be returned to its original owner. Given that slavery was accepted in the colonial period and the Founding Fathers believed strongly in private property, it is somewhat ironic that they used this verse.

Most people have heard of the Phelps cult, a group that has become notorious for picketing the funerals of gay men, funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pretty much any other event which they can somehow connect (no matter how weakly) to homosexuality. Today they picketed the University of Wisconsin, where three students were killed in a fire. The announcement on their website said

Thank God for three more dead students! God sent the Fires! These brats are the fruit of america [sic], and God is punishing you by cutting them off. You were blessed by God with those children, and you raised them to be bastards and whores. You taught them that God is a liar, that it is okay to be gay and He loves you anyway. You failed to teach them about the Wrath of God.

If you don’t know them, you can either (a) consider yourself lucky, or (b) check them out on their website at www.godhatesfags.com. I am not going to link to their website, lest the link increase their rating on search engines.

I first encountered the Phelps group when they were trolling on a Baptist discussion list back in 1994. When they picketed the Episcopal convention in Philadelphia a few years later, I managed to sneak through the police line that had been set up to protect them. While they were holding up their reprehensible signs, I held up mine that said, “God Loves Gays.” Unfortunately, the picture at the right is the only shot available of the event. It was taken back when digital cameras took pictures at 64 kilopixels.

A friend of my sent me a link to a site that is taking a different approach. It is similar to something I do whenever I teach Leviticus, but they have taken it to a new level. They are staging counter-protests with signs that announce God’s judgment against that other abomination: shellfish. After all, we can’t afford to pick and choose the verses we apply, and a much larger percentage of Americans eat shrimp than engage in homosexual activities (such as nude shuffleboard). These counter-protesters hold up signs that say “Stop the Shrimp-Eater’s Agenda” and “Love the Shrimper — Hate the Shrimp”. Check out their site at www.godhatesshrimp.com.

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Calum Carmichael’s book Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives. I had not heard of this book, but the blurb in the RBL (presumably taken from the publisher’s description) states:

The origin of law in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Until recently, the historico-critical methodologies [sic] of the academy have yielded unsatisfactory conclusions concerning the source of these laws which are woven through biblical narratives. In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael — a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric — suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings. Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus — addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves — Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation’s history and identity.

While I would not say that historical-critical methods (not “methodologies”!) have yielded unsatisfactory results, I am always open to a new theory. But just on the basis of this blurb, the theory sounds highly implausible. I didn’t have time to read Reinhard Achenbach’s entire review (which is in German), but the concluding paragraph is rather scathing. He states in one place that “in the entire book, there is not one philological or literary-historical proof to convince one of the position put forth.” Not exactly high praise.

Although I am usually glad to see a new book on Leviticus come out, I think I will have to pass on this one.