 |
| Book cover for "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper. |
If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I have a lot of criticism for the way that bible stories are usually presented to children. The bible is, let's be honest, extremely weird- it was written thousands of years ago, by many different authors, each with their own motivations, it includes genres of literature which are unfamiliar to us now, it's full of slavery and circumcision and genocide and women being told whom they would marry, like nobody's ever heard of consent... It's weird, okay? And there's a lot of good stuff in there- I love the bible- but also a lot of bad stuff. Many bible stories portray God as violent, cruel, racist- let's be honest about this, and let's all agree that a god like that is not worthy of worship. On top of that, the bible has mistakes, contradictions, places where multiple versions of the same story were combined together and they don't exactly fit.
But if you read a children's bible, it cleans all that up. In the universe of children's bibles, the bible is a nice story about God's love, and how we should live our lives as good people. The bible makes sense to us, as 21st-century Americans. Many bible characters are heroes we should emulate- Abraham teaches us about faith, Joseph teaches us about forgiveness, Esther teaches us about courage, and so on. Every bible story has a nice little lesson.
This is not what the bible is, and I hate it.
I've blogged about this before. I've written reviews of most of the VeggieTales movies. I've written reviews of bible story books for children. But it felt like I was the only one taking this so seriously. And I've heard people say it doesn't make sense to criticize the way we tell bible stories to kids- they're kids, they're limited in what they're able to understand, so you have to simplify the stories a bit.
Am I the only one so worked up about this?
Well. Turns out I'm not. I recently got my hands on the book Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What Is in the Picture?, a collection of academic papers, put together by editors Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper, published in 2012, and OH MY GOODNESS YOU GUYS, this book is saying everything I've been saying. And more. I am so happy to have this book. I can't even describe it. I regret living for so many years without this book.
This book contains academic papers that discuss children's bible story books, focusing in particular on the way text and images are used to convey the story, and on themes of "otherness."
Here, let me show you a few quotes:
The answer is simple: children's Bibles serve a function very different from what is assumed, namely, the accessibility granted by translation of the biblical text from one language into another, from one culture into another, and from an adult register into a child register. Rather, children's Bibles offer the opportunity for a religious community to canonize, repackage, and transfer their rendition of what they consider normative to the next generation in the guise of translation of the adult source text with its implied adherence to accuracy, faithfulness, and truth.
- Jacqueline S. du Toit, "'All God's Children': Authority Figures, Places of Learning, and Society as the Other in Creationist Children's Bibles" (p36)
!!!!!!
Children's bibles aren't simply a children's version of the bible. They're not simply a translation of the text that is easier for children to understand. No, children's bibles use the bible as a way for adults to teach children what they think children need to learn.
The book also points out that many people are taught bible stories as children, and they remember those stories throughout their life. This view of the bible stays with them.
They never find out that the bible isn't like that at all. The bible is far more weird and ****ed-up than most people realize.
And there's this quote, from a section on the biblical story of Daniel in the lions' den:
Children make only one fleeting appearance in this chapter of Daniel; indeed, that is the only time they are mentioned in the entire book. Daniel 6:24 tells us that, after Daniel's rescue, King Darius has his accusers "with their children and their wives" thrown into the lions' den: "and before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones to pieces." That is how children appear in this story: torn apart by lions as innocent accomplices in their fathers' crimes, apparently with the approval of the king, the narrator, and God.
I have yet to find a version of Daniel for children that includes this detail. Indeed, many versions omit the demise of the plotters against Daniel altogether, ending the story with the happy reconciliation of Daniel with the king. Others, for interesting reasons, make a feature of the plotters' death. No illustrations are known to me, however, where children and women appear in this final scene, let alone being included in the grisly feast. If children's literature is, as some have defined it, "literature with something left out," rather counterintuitively what is left out on this occasion are the children. This makes it all the more intriguing to ask what is going on, consciously and unconsciously, in the composition of children's versions of Daniel and what makes it so popular. At the least, the suggestion that the appeal to children has to be made by suppressing the mention of children raises a question.
- Hugh S. Pyper, "Looking into the Lions' Den: Otherness, Ideology, and Illustration in Children's Versions of Daniel 6" (p52)
!!!!! This is an excellent point! In the actual biblical story of Daniel in the lions' den, children are mentioned 1 time. But in children's books about Daniel in the lions' den, this mention of children is always omitted. Why? Well it's because it's about the children of Daniel's enemies being killed by the lions. And how do you explain to children that that's what happened, and that apparently, from the bible's point of view, it was right for those children to be killed? Better to just not mention it, right? So children's bibles aren't really the bible, they are a cleaned-up version of the bible.
One more quote I'll show you:
The scholarly disinterest in children's Bible films is only topped by the absolute dearth of children's Bible films written from explicitly feminist, womanist, mujerista, or other theopolitically progressive perspectives. The fact is that most currently available children's Bible films are written, produced, and distributed by religiously conservative organizations. They advance notions about biblical literature that seemingly disconnect religion from politics, economics, and "empire," as if biblical storytelling were detached from the economic, political, and social infrastructures of the world, past or present. Disguising biblical storytelling as an ahistorical and apolitical activity, they claim to serve as educational entertainment that tells what the Bible says (Gearon 2001, 292-93).
- Susanne Scholz, "Veggies, Women, and Other Strangers in Children's Bible DVDs: Toward the Creation of Feminist Bible Films" (p 100)
!!!!!!! Bible books and movies for children are overwhelmingly produced by conservative religious groups. How have I never identified this as a problem? They really had me fooled into thinking they were just telling the stories straight out of the bible (leaving out some of the ****ed-up parts, obviously) and that if I wanted to read the bible in a feminist way, that's a weird extra political thing we shouldn't bring into the way we tell these stories to children.
If you're the specific sub-category of bible nerd that I am, YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK. I plan to post more quotes from it on my blog in the future, so stay tuned for that.
---
Related:
Reviews of Christian Children's Books
Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible
2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids
No comments:
Post a Comment