Inspiration and Incarnation: Wisdom Literature

Image text: Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Image source.

I've been reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns. Chapter 3 is called "The Old Testament and Theological Diversity." There are diverse viewpoints within the Old Testament- one passage says one thing, and another passage says another thing which is inconsistent with the first passage. 

There's a lot of fascinating stuff in this chapter, so I'm breaking it down into several blog posts. This post will cover the part about the wisdom literature in the bible. Specifically, the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job.

---

Proverbs

Proverbs is a book of wise sayings. These are useful guidelines for how to live your life, but it doesn't mean you're *guaranteed* to have good results if you follow them. That's why I never really liked the book of Proverbs when I was evangelical- it's a bunch of generalizations, all of which have exceptions so you can't take them too seriously. Unlike the rest of the bible, which was Absolute Truth [so I thought].

Blogaround

Image source.

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Capitalism vs. Socialism? Get Serious. (July 6) "We’re not in a Manichean struggle between two monolithic systems. We’re just deciding where to draw the line between the private and public sectors of our economy."

2. JK Rowling deadnamed and posted 'upskirt' photo of trans woman on X (July 17, via) "It was true that Rowling posted a photo that could reasonably be considered an "upskirt" photo, meaning a voyeuristic image intended to show the crotch area of a person wearing a dress or skirt."

3.  "The Millipede March!" Bug Dance 🐛🐞 Insect Brain Break | Danny Go! Songs for Kids (2024) I have small children that like to watch these videos from Danny Go. They're high-energy music videos to get kids to dance and exercise. After watching a million Danny Go videos, I've been brainwashed into kinda liking them.

4. In Turn Each Woman Thrust Her Head (2018, via) [content note: misogynistic violence] "At the university, in my literary-nonfiction class, female students bring me their stories. They are eighteen, nineteen, twenty and should be writing about gathering friends, stocking a ship with provisions, going out to seek adventure. But too often, one will hand me an essay about being raped. I realize the ability for women to articulate these stories is new and should be celebrated, but they carry Odysseus’s judgments, Homer’s lens. The students wonder: Did they somehow give permission? Did they obediently mop up the blood? Did they put their own heads through the noose? And the male students described are clearly rehearsing instructions for what they think makes a man. I am overwhelmed by the tales of the maids."

5. It’s not ‘pick and choose.’ It’s pick a side. (July 24) So, the point that Fred Clark is making here, that the bible is a collection of arguments and as readers we choose which side we agree with- yes, I basically believe that, BUT I think this doesn't quite answer the "picking and choosing" accusation. 

When conservative Christians say progressive Christians are not legit because we are "picking and choosing" which biblical texts we agree with, that comes from a perspective where the whole bible is correct, the whole bible is in charge of us, the whole bible teaches 1 consistent thing, and where there appear to be differences of opinion in the bible, that's just because we need to work harder to understand it- it *does* teach 1 consistent thing, if understood correctly. You can't just believe that parts you like and ignore the parts you don't like. You have to believe and obey the whole thing.

But the "progressive" view that Clark is talking about here is different from that. He's saying, the bible presents different voices talking about these topics (inclusion vs exclusion is one of the big topics), responding to each other, and some of them are wrong. The bible is not in charge of us; instead, we read the bible and judge which arguments make sense. 

So in order for this "it's about picking a side" idea to make sense, we have to take a step back and talk about what the bible is. Is it just simply true? Is it teaching 1 thing? Is it in charge of us? No, no, and no.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. These Are the Headlines That Elon Musk Says Don’t Exist (June 23) "Children are starving and people around the world are going without medical care that was being provided by USAID. People are dying as result of Musk’s action. And to deny this fact is to deny reality."

Inspiration and Incarnation: An Aside About Apologetics

Noah and the dove. Image source.

I'm been reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns, and blogging about it. I already wrote my post about chapter 2, but here's another fun little paragraph I want to talk about, from that same chapter.

This is in the section discussing the creation story and flood story from Genesis. They are very similar to myths from other ancient cultures. And the myths from other cultures are older. So, what do we do with that? It looks like the bible stories are just borrowed from other myths, rather than being directly from God, but that can't be right, can it? Page 41 talks about what you would do if you're a Christian in an apologetics argument:

If pressed, one could attempt to mount the argument that the Israelite stories were actually older than all the ancient Near Eastern stories but were only recorded later in Hebrew. Such a theory-- for that is what it is, a theory-- assumes that the biblical stories are the pristine originals and that all the other stories are parodies and perversions of the Israelite original, even though the available evidence would be very difficult to square with such a conclusion. But could it have happened this way? Yes, I suppose one could insist on such a thing, but it would be very difficult for someone holding to such a view to have a meaningful conversation with linguists and historians of the ancient world. To argue in such hypothetical terms can sometimes become an excuse for maintaining a way of thinking that is otherwise unsupportable. It is just such explanations that some readers might find problematic, for these explanations seem motivated by a desire to protect dogmatic commitments rather than to engage the available evidence.

!!! This is so real! This is exactly what it's like, to believe in biblical inerrancy, and to do apologetics. 

It's like... you start with the idea that if you're a Christian, you have to believe all these things about the bible. You have to believe it's inerrant. You have to believe there are no mistakes or contradictions- that it's telling 1 consistent story throughout. You have to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. And that basically every book in the bible was written very close to the time of the events that happened, by whoever seems like the author when you do a very superficial reading of it. Yeah, any talk of "the book of Isaiah was pulled together from multiple authors" or "this was written hundreds of years after these events happened" is bad- you can't even consider that. It would be going against God.

You start with an idea of what the bible is, and then when someone brings up evidence that seems to contradict that, you have to come up with an explanation for why we can totally ignore that evidence and it doesn't matter.

Someone says "other cultures also have flood stories which are similar to the Noah's ark story." You have to say, well, yes, there really *was* a global flood, so that's why there are stories about it. But the Noah's ark story is the truth about it, and all the others are inaccurate. See? Easy. So we can just ignore all those other flood stories, because they're wrong and our version is right. No need to read them or care about what they say.

Someone points out that the 4 gospels don't exactly agree on who saw Jesus and when after the Resurrection. So you have to come up with some convoluted timeline that fits everything in, such that nothing the bible says is *technically* wrong. Even though, if your timeline is the truth, then the biblical writers wrote in a very misleading way, giving their readers an incorrect impression of what actually happened. But, no need to think about that! The important thing is that every isolated statement in the bible is true in some sense. Move along, nothing to see here!

Or any of the other little inconsistencies in the bible. Someone points them out- ugh, probably some internet atheist just looking to cause trouble. You go through and explain why each of these supposed contradictions is actually fine, nothing to see here. You make up all kinds of fan theories for how 2 seemingly-contradictory statements from the bible can both be true at the same time. That's what being a Christian is about, right? (It often goes so far, with Christians taking these fan theories so seriously because they're necessary to uphold the idea of inerrancy, that we don't even realize that they're fan theories and we actually think they are taught by the bible itself.)

And all of your explanations are like... well, it's not *impossible* that it could have happened that way. But if you just look at the evidence we have, other explanations seem far more likely. You're not really engaging with the evidence- you're viewing the evidence as a nuisance, and your task as a good Christian is to find excuses so we can ignore all that evidence.

If you're able to make a case that "it's not impossible" that your beliefs about the bible are right- well, that's good enough! That's what we're going for - "not impossible." You became a Christian for other reasons totally unrelated to biblical inerrancy and apologetics, and then you found out that one of the requirements to be a Christian is to believe certain things about the bible, so you hack a path through the jungle to show it's "not impossible" that those beliefs about the bible are true. There, all done!

But as Enns says, if that's what you're doing, you're not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with the experts who are actually studying these things. With people who look at the actual evidence and explore the implications of it. People who really take the bible seriously, and spend their careers working to learn more about it. People who ask questions about *why* the biblical writers wrote things which are inconsistencies or mistakes- these are fascinating questions, but of course good Christians who believe in inerrancy are not allowed to ask them.

---

Posts about "Inspiration and Incarnation":

Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction
Inspiration and Incarnation: Other Ancient Near East Literature
Inspiration and Incarnation: An Aside About Apologetics
Inspiration and Incarnation: Wisdom Literature

Related

The Bible and the Pixar Theory 

My mind is blown by how cool the Synoptic Problem is

"The Wise Men Came 2 Years After the Shepherds" Is Just a Fan Theory

Adding Incest to the Story of Cain

The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible

Who Cut Samson's Hair? (a post about reading the bible for what it is)

Children's Bibles and the 2 Creation Stories

Inspiration and Incarnation: Other Ancient Near East Literature

By User:Daderot - File:Tablet in Akkadian language recording court proceedings with seal impressed envelope, Yorgan Tepe, Kingdom of Mittani, 1450-1350 BC, clay - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07088.JPG, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115709323 / Image source.

I've been reading Peter Enns's book, "Inspiration and Incarnation," which is about how the bible was written in the context of ancient Near East culture, and truly fits into that world, and Christians should not view this as a problem, as if it means the bible is not the word of God. Instead, we should view it as God speaking to people in their own culture, in ways they could understand.

In this post, I'll talk about chapter 2, "The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature." 

This chapter goes through a bunch of examples of archeological discoveries from ancient Near Eastern cultures similar to ancient Israel. We see that these texts that were discovered are very similar to passages from the bible- so, what does that mean? How should we view those similarities? 

This chapter brings up a lot of really fascinating ancient Near East texts that I had never heard of. I can't fit them all in this blog post, so if you're interested in this topic, you should just go buy the book.

Remember when I said that I don't necessarily care what the bible originally meant in its ancient context? Okay I was wrong, I do care. All the examples from this chapter were incredibly fascinating.

The texts are grouped into 3 categories:

---

"Group 1-- Creation and the Flood: Is Genesis Myth or History?"

Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction

Book cover for "Inspiration and Incarnation"

I started reading Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns, and it's so good, I decided to write a blog series on it. This post will cover the preface and chapter 1.

Enns is a biblical scholar. I've read and reviewed 2 of his books before: The Bible Tells Me So (published 2014) and Genesis for Normal People (published 2019). I really enjoyed those and I want to read all of his books. This one, "Inspiration and Incarnation," was originally published in 2005, but I have the 10th-anniversary edition, published in 2015. The writing style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" is more formal and academic than "The Bible Tells Me So" and "Genesis for Normal People"- those two had a lot of [in my opinion] unnecessary pop culture references- I know some readers like that, so, that's fine, but I definitely like the style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" better.

Here's the overall idea of this book: In the past 150 or so years, there has been new evidence uncovered about the civilizations and cultures of the ancient Near East. Archaeologists have found writings from people groups who lived near the ancient Israelites- and these writings have many similarities to what we see in the bible. This is something of a problem for evangelical Christian ideology, because evangelicals believe the bible is inerrant and inspired by God, and so they don't want to believe that it's similar to other ancient writings, that it was influenced by them and it borrowed ideas from them, that it has mistakes and anachronisms, that it follows the genre conventions of ancient Near East writing rather than being absolute truth as we would view it from a modern scientific perspective.

The conservative bible scholars respond to this problem by downplaying the similarities between the bible and other ancient writing. The liberal bible scholars respond to this problem by saying the bible is the same as other ancient writing, and therefore it isn't special or inspired by God. Enns claims that both sides are making an incorrect assumption: that if the bible is similar to other ancient writing, that means it's not really from God. He says that, on the contrary, God gave us a bible which is fully human and also fully divine- just like Jesus was fully human and fully God. God speaks to humans within their own cultures.

The Rich Man and Lazarus (and Atheism)

Artwork showing the rich man enjoying a feast in his home, with Lazarus outside his door. Image source. 

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells this parable:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Reading this parable now, I'm astounded at how the meaning of it is so completely different from how I understood it when I was evangelical.

Here's how I interpret this story now: Jesus introduces us to 2 characters, a rich man and a very poor man. The poor man, Lazarus, begs outside of the rich man's house, for years, but the rich man does not do anything to help him. In the afterlife, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell- Lazarus goes to heaven because he suffered so much on earth, so he deserves to have a better life, and the rich man goes to hell because he had a good life on earth but didn't help the poor. Jesus doesn't directly state that these are the reasons they went to heaven/hell; it's treated like it's just obvious. Also, these reasons are emphasized by what Abraham tells the rich man- that in his earthly life, the rich man had good things, while Lazarus suffered.

Now that the rich man understands how serious it is that rich people need to help poor people, otherwise they will go to hell and be in agony forever, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers about this. But Abraham says, no, they should already know, because they have access to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. The rich man knows that his brothers won't take Moses and the prophets seriously, because he didn't either during his life, but surely if someone comes back from the dead, that will convince them.

And Abraham says, no, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

The main point of this story is our obligation to help others. And also, that someday there will be justice- God will help people who suffered on earth, and send rich people to hell for not doing anything to help.

The secondary point is, rich people should know this. They have the teachings of Moses and the prophets, or other religions, or moral philosophies. Of course they are able to realize that they have a moral obligation to help others. But they don't want to. They will make excuses. The rich man in the story says his brothers will definitely believe if they see someone come back from the dead, but Abraham tells him, no, they'll still make excuses.

You shouldn't need a miracle, or a religion, or anything like that. It's obvious that people who have enough money for their own life should give to help others. And if you don't accept that basic obvious fact of morality, then even if you did see a miracle, you would still come up with reasons to ignore the people in need around you.

Just reading the parable by itself, without bringing in any of one's own beliefs about heaven and hell, it seems pretty clear that this is what it's saying. If you are rich, you need to use your money to help others, otherwise you will go to hell.

But of course, for evangelicals, Jesus can't possibly be saying that.

Evangelicals "know" the criteria for getting into heaven or hell: It's not about what you do, it's only about your faith in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, and you "prayed the prayer" to commit your life to him, you will go to heaven. If you didn't do that, then by default you go to hell, because everyone is a sinner and deserves to go to hell. 

Evangelicals strongly disagree with the idea that people go to heaven just because they had a bad life and God feels bad for them. No! God has actual standards! You have to have the correct faith; God's not going to let you in just because They feel bad for you. And as for the rich man going to hell because he didn't help Lazarus- evangelicals would say, there totally are rich people that go to heaven, don't worry if you're a rich person- but maybe it's a little more difficult for rich people because they tend to rely on their money rather than realizing they need Jesus. And of course God *wants* you to use your money to help others, so if you *truly* believe in Jesus (at the level required to go to heaven) then you would do that, but let's be clear, going to heaven does not hinge on whether you helped others, it hinges on your faith in Jesus.

So we have this situation where evangelicals are totally sure this parable cannot mean what it obviously means. (Similar thing for the parable of the sheep and the goats.) Lazarus must have gone to heaven because he believed in Jesus- yeah that's not mentioned at all in the story, but that was definitely the actual reason, despite Abraham's words, "in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." And the rich man went to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus- and if he had believed in Jesus, then his faith would have inspired him to help Lazarus. And when he talks about sending Lazarus to warn his brothers, he means sending Lazarus to tell them about the necessity of believing in Jesus. And the rich man says that his brothers won't believe just based on Moses and the prophets- I mean, yeah, when you're trying to convince someone of a particular religious doctrine, and your argument is "here are some ancient religious writings" this usually fails to convince them to convert to your religion. The rich man says it would convince them to give up their atheism if they saw an actual resurrection, but that's actually not true either. Atheists are really stubborn and unreasonable like that.

Wait, what? Why are we suddenly criticizing atheists...?

Yes, seriously, this is the interpretation of the parable I had when I was evangelical: There *is* enough evidence, from the bible, from "Moses and the Prophets," that people should *know* they are supposed to believe in Jesus and commit their lives to him. But when you talk to actual atheists, they tell you that's not enough evidence. They may give you examples of what kind of miracles they would have to see, that *would* count as evidence of the supernatural- but they're actually lying about that. Like Jesus says here, even if they saw someone come back from the dead, they would still not believe. So don't feel bad about how your apologetics arguments fail to convince those atheists. It's a *them* problem!

Yes, really. Evangelicals take this parable about how rich people need to help poor people, or else the rich people will go to hell, and turn it into this bizarre cheap shot at atheists. It's such a weird feeling for me, reading this now when I'm so far removed from evangelical ideology, realizing how obviously Jesus' point is that rich people need to help others (or else they will go to hell!) and somehow evangelicals managed to make it not about that at all- because evangelicals already know that the way to get into heaven is believing in Jesus- and then take this line at the end and turn it into a claim that "you know how your atheist friends say they would believe in God if you had better evidence? Well actually they're lying about that."

The rich man in hell wants to send Lazarus to tell his brothers how to avoid going to hell- and so evangelicals know that obviously means he wants Lazarus to tell them to believe in Jesus. That's how you avoid going to hell. Like we're so committed to this idea that faith in Jesus is the be-all-end-all, *the* answer for how to go to heaven, that we don't even read Jesus' actual words in front of us. (Even if we saw someone rise from the dead, we still wouldn't read Jesus' actual words in front of us.)

Try this on for size: This is a parable about rich Christians who don't use their money to help others. They should know that they're supposed to do that. They have Moses and the prophets. They have the bible. They even believe that Someone rose from the dead, and this still fails to convince them that they need to give money to help others.

How many Christians do we see right now, who are sure that Christianity is about political power and making rules to control other people, rather than helping the poor? Jesus was right. His followers believe He rose from the dead, but we still won't do what he said.

---

Related

The Parable of the Living Wage

Sheep and Goats

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

What kind of God will judge how we treat immigrants?

White Privilege and the Rich Young Ruler

Marriage

 

"Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source.

[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]

Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.

Jonah, the Whale, Inerrancy, and Children's Bibles

Kids' craft featuring a whale made out of a paper plate, with Jonah stuck to its tongue. Image source.

[spoiler warning for the biblical story of Jonah]

The other day, my son asked me to tell him a story, so I told him the story of Jonah, and right in the middle of it, I realized "this is clearly not a true story." And no, it wasn't the part about the whale that tipped me off.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Pagoda Puzzle: What Can Save China’s Oldest Wooden Tower? (April 21) "First, the pagoda’s unique structure and scale make the risk of disassembling and replacing original components extremely high. It is a spatial high-rise framework, not a conventional single-beam structure. It would be extremely difficult to reset tens of thousands of rotted, cracked, and deformed components, restore the structural logic of the hidden layers, and avoid secondary damage during disassembly and reassembly."

2. Falling Leaves and Failing Arguments: Why Autumn Adaptation Doesn’t Prove Irreducible Complexity (April 21) "This is the kind of question that sounds simple but turns out to be remarkably difficult for young-earth creationists to answer consistently. Either the pre-Fall world had deadly winters and needed deciduous trees, or it didn’t and the whole system was purposeless until after the Fall."

3. Gene therapy for a rare type of deafness shows lasting results (April 22) "The results indicate that this could be a one-and-done treatment that lasts a lifetime, profoundly transforming patients' lives, Chen says."

4. Journal Club: Sexual pain in Christian Women (April 22) "In the lit review, the paper says that sexual pain may affect up to 46% of women, and that 6.2% of White Christian women report lifetime sexual pain with obstructed penetration."

5. Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS (April 23) "Despite the fact that he had an alibi and bore no resemblance to the witness’s sketch, the police were sure Flores was the second man and they arrested him. So they brought Barganier back in and an officer “hypnotized” her in order to improve her recollection, telling her that hypnosis allows her to tap into the “tape recorder” in her brain."

6. The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars (April 20) "Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They're still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgment they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones' followers to harass and threaten the families for years."

7. We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI (March 6, via) "A student praised for years for being an exceptional writer now feels like a cheater because she had to learn how AI detection works in order to protect herself from being falsely accused. The surveillance apparatus has turned writing talent into a liability."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. The tariff refund process has begun for businesses. What about customers? (April 22) "That's because a product, like a TV, often has parts from multiple countries, and each was hit with different tariff rates. Those rates changed over time by presidential decree, which makes calculating a customer's actual cost even more difficult. Plus, the retailer likely absorbed some of that tariff expense. The tariff burden was also shared up and down the supply chain, between vendors, distributors and finally customers."

2. More immigrants are being held in detention for over a year. NPR followed one family's ordeal. (April 22) "This isn't legal. According to a decades-old federal settlement, children can't be detained for more than 20 days. But data from the non-profit newsroom The Marshall Project shows, since the start of Trump's second term, more than 1,600 children have been detained for longer than that."

And update on that: Alleged Colorado attacker's family released after nearly a year in detention (April 27) "Back home in Colorado on Saturday, two days after their release, El Gamal and her children reported to an ICE office for a required check-in. There, ICE detained them again, told them they were being deported to Egypt, and rushed them onto a plane, their lawyers said."

3. They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things (April 22) "They were taught 2 Timothy 3:16 as a promise and a contract. They were told what they could and should expect to gain from reading every word of every scripture and they were told what others would expect them to gain from it, and so what they learn — not just from this single passage, but from the entire experience of cover-to-cover reading — is to cultivate those expectations while ignoring the often-boring or confusing or unexpected aspects of the actual text itself."

This! This is exactly what it's like, being evangelical and really taking seriously the "read the entire bible" task that evangelicals are always saying we should do. You have an idea of what the bible is, and what the experience of reading it is supposed to be, and then when the actual bible itself doesn't match those expectations at all, you learn to subconsciously ignore what the actual bible is saying.

Also from the Slacktivist: Text and contexts: More Bible in the news (April 23) "That gets very antisemitic and very blasphemous very quickly, and it’s particularly dumb and dim as a reading of this passage, which involves God making a promise. See, the whole basis of supercessionism is that God’s promises are not worth diddly squat and can be revoked at any time because God is a capricious liar."

4. A chaotic White House Correspondents' Dinner, as told by NPR reporters in the room (April 26) "Just minutes into the dinner, guests heard muffled popping sounds as a gunman attempted to charge past a security checkpoint."

5. Justice Department makes it easier to deport those with DACA status (April 25) "DACA, created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation, now covers around half a million people. Starting last year, DHS officials began urging DACA recipients to self- deport, arguing that the program itself does not equate to automatically providing legal status."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Make It Myself (April 15) From xkcd.

2. Why cheap waste management is key to stopping plastic pollution (March 16, via) "In many low- and middle-income countries, people find themselves in a very different situation: less than half of solid household waste is collected. People often have little choice but to burn or dump it. But even the waste that is collected is often left in open dumps, where it’s at risk of leaking into the environment."

3. He won a major school prayer case. It took years to get a proper obituary. (April 16) "Despite all the backlash and threats his family received, Jaffree told an audience at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s convention in 1985 that he would do it all over again because he was 'absolutely committed to the idea of separation of church and state. There’s no question that my religious view is a minority, and unless people like me are willing to challenge these cases, then we don’t have a chance.'"

4. Trolleyology bad (April 20) "Do we believe this stipulation? To state the obvious, it’s ludicrous."

5. Here's some good news: Despite Apocalyptic Warnings, California Fast Food Wage Hike Didn’t Kill Jobs (April 9, via) 

6. Chinese humanoid robot beats world record for fastest human half-marathon | ABC NEWS (April 20) This is really cool, and also you have to watch the video of the robot running- it looks very funny.

---

Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Democrats file articles of impeachment against Hegseth for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ (April 15) He absolutely should be impeached. This particular attempt isn't going to get anywhere, because the Republican Congress members have all sold their souls, but it's good that Democrats are at least trying.

2. Businesses race to apply for tariff refunds (April 20) "In fact, many retailers find themselves in a similar quandary because tariff refunds will go to whoever paid the actual customs bill. It's unclear how, or if, the refunds might trickle down to store owners who paid tariff surcharges to their suppliers."

3. Logjam of U.S. immigration applications puts millions at greater risk of deportation (April 17) "The 11.6 million pending applications in the "backlog" include forms to become a citizen, acquire a green card, work or seek asylum. There are also 247,974 applications in what USCIS calls the "frontlog," which is tracked separately. Those are applications, likely sent by mail, that have been submitted but that the agency has not physically opened and assigned a category."

These are people who are following the rules, jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops, and the government is making it harder for them. I know a lot of average Americans say the problem is just *illegal* immigration, and want a system that works for people who are doing it the *legal* way- but the MAGAs in the government *never* wanted that.

4. Epstein survivors have mixed feelings on Melania Trump's call for hearing in Congress (April 10) "'You want to retraumatize us and ask us to go in front of Congress and tell them our story, which we have told some of them already,' Lacerda said. 'And then do absolutely nothing.'"

5. ICE deported 174 Daca recipients through most of last year, agency head says in letter (April 18, via) 

6. The white evangelical Bible in the news (April 16) "And so it was darkly hilarious to watch white American evangelical leaders rushed to Twitter and in front of the cameras to proudly reveal that they cannot recognize the Bible when someone quotes it back to them." This whole entire post is spot-on.

7. Montana Supreme Court Rules Its Constitution Entirely Protects Trans Citizens In Landmark Ruling (April 17) "Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Federal Judge Vacates Kennedy Declaration, Permanently Blocks Trump's Trans Youth Care Hospital Threats (April 21) "On the government’s core argument—that the Kennedy Declaration was merely Kennedy’s personal, non-binding opinion—the judge was withering: 'Defendants’ jurisdictional arguments are based on the bald-faced lie that the Kennedy Declaration amounts to nothing more than one man’s musings on gender-affirming care. This Court is not persuaded by Defendants’ attempts to gaslight it into believing that the Kennedy Declaration does anything other than what it says.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Hand-Waving at the Fall: YEC Explanations of the Origins of Defense Structures (March 23) "If God “pre-programmed” organisms with hidden venom systems, parasitic capabilities, and predatory anatomies—knowing they would be activated by the Fall—then the distinction between a “very good” creation and a creation designed for predation and suffering becomes vanishingly thin. This is not a creation that was corrupted by sin; it is a creation that was engineered from the beginning to produce suffering upon activation of a divine trigger."

Also, I was struck by the part about "different use" (ie, young-earth creationists claiming that maybe predatory and/or defensive features of organisms' biology were adapted from some other purpose), because seriously, most creationist arguments are along the lines of "look at this complex system that this creature uses! So many different parts, and they all have to interact just right, and it if only worked partly, that would be totally useless and natural selection would not favor it- there's no natural explanation for this, it must have been God designing it! Wow!" but now that they've noticed the awkward theological implications of claiming that animals' abilities to kill other animals are specifically designed that way by God, it's "oh, well this was probably *not* originally designed that way by God, probably just adapted from a system that had some other purpose NOTHING TO SEE HERE!" 

So KIND OF THE EXACT OPPOSITE.

2. "I am Jesus Christ" and Other Games About Jews (February 21, via) I laughed so hard at "But as a popup tutorial informs us, you can turn water into wine by first pressing right click and then holding left click." Also, I hadn't heard of the "Bible Adventures" video game before, but I am 0% surprised that Christians made a not-very-good video game with extremely shallow representations of bible stories and then marketed it as a godly alternative to mainstream video games.

This video is about what it means for a video game to be Jewish, what it means to play a video game in a Jewish way, and the search for video games which reflect what it's like to be Jewish.

3. A series of posts from the Slacktivist:

Texts of terror? Terrific! (March 25) "This is such a non-liturgical white evangelical idea. The rest of American Christianity gets to watch them awkwardly attempt to rediscover and reinvent the lectionary without realizing that’s what they’re doing."

You have heard it said, but I say this instead (March 26) "But the real obstacle for Olson here is not any notion of inerrancy or infallibility. It’s the dogma of univocalism — the idea that all of the Bible is a single text that speaks with a single voice without internal debate or contradiction or contention."

Team Everybody sliding into our DMs (March 28) "This is what we find, too, when we turn to “the Bible.” It affords and accommodates different and opposite meanings, depending on how we choose to read it. We can choose to view it as a text assuring us that we are the special ones who will get to “possess” every last remnant of the lands and legacies of “Edom” and of all the excluded whose birthright we have taken for our own. Or we can choose to read it as a text that calls us to call in “the rest of humanity,” so that Everybody may seek the Lord."

And from Paul Davidson: Why Scholars Date the Book of Daniel to the Second Century BCE (March 5) "You know how in movies based on true events, multiple historical individuals are often combined into a single movie character for simplicity’s sake? That seems to be the case here, with the historical Nabonidus subsumed into the literary character of Nebuchadnezzar."

4. Satellite Pollution (March 27) 

Also from xkcd: Creation

5. Under New Olympic Sex Testing Policy, A Cis Woman Who Gives Birth Could Be Considered Male (March 31) "And it is not the first time the Olympics has subjected women to mass sex testing—the last time it did, from 1992 to 1999, the results were disastrous, with cisgender women discovering they had intersex conditions they never knew about, leading to public humiliation, career destruction, and at least one suicide before such testing was abolished."

And more on that from Skepchick: Olympics Committee Punishes Trans & Cis Women (March 31) "Because as a reminder, girls as young as 11 compete in the Olympics, and now those children, too, will be put under the microscope to determine if they’re truly “woman” enough. It’s disgusting, and the Olympics staff should be ashamed."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Supreme Court Rules Against Conversion Therapy Bans On Transgender Day Of Visibility (April 1) This quote from Justice Jackson: "A state license used to mean something to the patients who entrust their care to licensed professionals—i.e., that the person is certified to be one who provides treatments that are consistent with the standard of care. That stops today."

6. The Final Word (Michael Card) - I've probably posted this before. I like this song about Jesus.

7. Liftoff! NASA astronauts have launched on a historic journey to the moon (April 1) "The crew members will first orbit Earth so that they can check out key systems on their spacecraft, including life support, communication, and navigation. Then they'll fire their vehicle's propulsion system to send themselves on a looping figure-eight path around the moon and back, ending with a splashdown into the Pacific Ocean."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Lebanon faces ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ under Israeli assault: UN (March 27, via) "The families are … living in constant fear, and the psychological toll, particularly on children, will last far beyond this current escalation."

2. Photos: 'No Kings' protests across the country (March 28)

Millions turn out for "No Kings" rallies held worldwide to protest against Trump (March 28)

No Kings Protests Failed To End Fascism on Saturday. Curious. (March 30) "They watched 200,000 people gather in Minneapolis, a city that was terrorized by the president's secret police for a solid month, and they were not impressed, not in the least."

3. Trump Must Resign (March 24) "It’s true that Trump is very unlikely to willingly step down. But calls for resignation can be powerful in themselves if repeated consistently and forcefully."

4. Franklin Graham told Trump he can still get into Heaven. That’s the problem. (March 30) "On a side note, it’s wild that Graham is explaining Christianity 101 to Trump more than a decade after conservative Christians tried to convince people Trump was already one of them. (James Dobson said of Trump in 2016, 'He did accept a relationship with Christ.')"

5. The Largest Physician Organization In The US Reaffirms Gender-Affirming Care Is Medically Necessary (March 27) "The American Medical Association (AMA) has reaffirmed that gender-affirming care for trans minors, including surgeries, is medically sound—and that access to this life-saving care should not be impeded."

6. Federal judge rules DHS illegally stripped immigration status from thousands who entered through CBP One App (April 1) "'Our clients followed the law: they waited, registered, were inspected, and were granted parole under the law,' Perryman said in a statement. 'The Trump-Vance administration's effort to tear this status away overnight was unlawful and cruel.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. If AI’s Native Language Is English, Where Does That Leave China? (March 12) "Many non-English languages are often what researchers call low-resource (e.g., Swahili) or medium-resource (e.g., Vietnamese) languages. This means there might not be enough diverse and high-quality digital texts — such as scientific papers, business case studies, or legal documents — available in those languages to train AI models on."

2. Conquest Narrative // Good Relation (March 16) A Jewish take on the biblical story of Joshua. "We could stop here, read the Conquest Narrative as both warning and foreshadowing, and move on. But there’s something that sits wrong with me about this solution."

3. Apples, Oranges, and Genomes: A Critique of Dr. Carter’s Claims about Human-Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity (March 12) "Christians deserve better than to be told that the latest Nature paper confirms their faith when in reality that paper’s authors see nothing in their data that challenges the standard evolutionary framework, and when the data actually strengthen the evidence for common ancestry by providing a more complete picture of genomic evolution across the ape lineage."

4. Why Complementarianism Isn’t Actually About Men Really Leading (March 18) "Male leadership in complementarianism is not about men leading, but instead about men being free from accountability and responsibility." Yeah this is what happens when you have an ideology that says the husband is the leader because he's a *man*, so he just *is*, regardless of whether he actually has any qualities that fit any normal definitions of "leadership."

5. The structure of ideological abuse (March 9) "You must never require someone to share their inner life with you without their free, full, informed consent."

6. Cesar Chavez abused and raped women and girls, NYT investigation says (March 18) [content note: rape] "In a statement posted to Medium on Wednesday, Huerta wrote: 'I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.'"

7. Chuck Norris, martial arts master and actor whose toughness became internet lore, dies at 86 (March 21)

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony (March 13, via) "In the hearing, an ICE agent identified as JB testified that his team was given a verbal order to target eight arrests a day."

2. Hypothetical Legal Advice to SecDef Hegseth on “No Quarter” Statement (from Office of General Counsel) (March 14, via) Hegseth keeps talking about how enthusiastically he wants to commit war crimes. WTF? Can we impeach him or something?

3. FCC chair threatens TV networks amid Iran war coverage — but his warning rings hollow (March 16) 

4. Top US counterterrorism official resigns over Iran war, urging Trump to 'reverse course' (March 18, via) "'This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,' the letter continued. 'This was a lie.'"

5. One Year Later: The Effect of US ‘Chainsaw’ on Global Health (January 20, via) "To date, 757,314 people – the majority children – have died from the funding cuts, according to ImpactCounter, which tracks the effect of USAID cuts via sophisticated modelling tools."

6. Zionist Institutions Spread Antisemitic Propaganda (March 15) "Israel and Zionist orgs in the US have effectively been releasing huge amounts of antisemitic propaganda, linking Jews to the action of a violent nation state and its policies of sweeping censorship, apartheid, genocide, and war."

Also from Everything is Horrible: Dems’ No Tax Proposals Are Reactionary Garbage (March 17) "When people say that US society is not affordable, they are saying they’d like to pay less for groceries. But they are also very much saying that US society is constructed in a way that is inhuman, cruel, and un-navigable for everyone but the ultra-rich."

7. Judge ends asylum claims for Liam Conejo Ramos and his family, orders family's removal (March 18) "Attorney Danielle Molliver, with Nwokocha & Operana Law Offices, told MPR News on Wednesday that the firm is appealing the decision handed down by U.S. Immigration Judge John Burns. Molliver said an appeal could take months or years."

8. Trump is dismantling democracy at 'unprecedented' speed, global report finds (March 20)

9. ICE officers are taking DNA samples from protesters they've arrested (March 19) "'What you worry about is an officer making a decision in the field that a person committed a crime when they might not have. Maybe they were doing something protected under the First Amendment,' Kerr says. 'The officer says, 'I think you crossed the line, I'm going to arrest you.' It turns out the officer was wrong, but the DNA test has been conducted, and the information has been entered into the database. What then?'"

On Rebekah, Virginity, and how to Read the Bible

Rebekah gives water to Abraham's servant. Image source.

So I recently shared this link: Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good. And I have another thing to say about it. 

One of the bibles mentioned in that article is the "True Images Teen Bible For Girls":

Take a gloss on Genesis 24:15-18, for example, a passage introducing Rebekah, wife of Isaac, one of the most fascinating and complex women in Hebrew Scripture (image below). The verses read “Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder… The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again. The servant hurried to meet her and said “Please give me a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord, she said.”

The marginal note (pictured above) in a Bible explicitly designed for teen girls explains that Rebekah’s virginity is a key element of the passage:

“Okay, so we know that Rebekah was ‘very beautiful.’ But that’s not all we learn about her. The next two words tell us she was a virgin. Obviously this was important, or we wouldn’t have been told that little fact.”

Virginity and purity are where Rebekah’s elusive “stunning inner beauty” comes from, because: “after all, good-looking girls are everywhere.” God, like the perfect boyfriend, is looking for something more.

I've been thinking a lot about how marriage and sex are modelled in the bible, and the way misogyny is baked into it, and how completely different it is from how we view those things now, so... 

Just now, when I read those verses from Genesis 24, which mention Rebekah being a "virgin", my thoughts were along these lines: Ah, yeah this is coming from a culture which made a big deal about whether or not a woman was a "virgin." It's rooted in the idea that every woman is either a "virgin" or a "whore"- which was really more about whether a woman was viewed by society as properly staying in her place and following gender roles, rather than her choice to have penetrative sex. (For example, it was seen as okay to rape slaves, because they're not part of the class of women who are "good" "pure" "virgins" deserving of men's protection.) This obsession with virginity says more about men's jealousy and possessiveness, the way they viewed women as objects to be owned, than about women's virtues. I don't agree with this view, but I don't really want to get sidetracked into it when reading this bible story about Rebekah. The overall plot of the story is about Abraham's servant going to choose a wife for Abraham's son Isaac, and the role God played in that, and I'm also interested in how Rebekah felt about leaving her home to marry a man she had never met. 

(Also, virginity is not even a real thing- by which I mean, the idea that you are a completely different type of person if you've ever had a penis in your vagina, vs if you haven't. Very much not true!)

And then reading the little note that "True Images Teen Bible For Girls" included about this passage, that just takes it at face value- this bible passage portrays Rebekah's "virginity" as a positive thing, therefore it is a positive thing, and *you*, modern teenage girl reading this, also need to be a virgin.

It feels extremely jarring to me, reading this take on this bible verse. It's like... it's like it's coming from a perspective where we believe the bible is just a trustworthy, true source, written to us. That it's just uncomplicatedly True. That it's "God's love letter to you."

I'm reading this bible verse about Rebekah, thinking about the layers of misogyny and how cultural views on sex have changed throughout history and how that is intertwined with the advances in women's rights, and apparently the editors of this teen bible just... aren't. 

But this is how the bible is viewed in evangelical culture, isn't it? The bible is good and true, and reading the bible is good, and memorizing the bible is good. And Christians are supposed to read the bible every day. The primary emphasis is on how Christians all need to read the bible, and God speaks to us through the bible. 

When I was a teenager, I had an "NIV Study Bible." This means a bible with little boxes of text added here and there, to give some background information about some aspects of the bible which might be hard for modern readers to understand because of cultural differences. And yes, we need that- it's better to have a study bible than to just read the bible without any awareness that it came from an ancient culture completely different than ours. But what strikes me as so bizarre now is the idea that that's enough- that I'm gonna read this ancient document, translated from Hebrew and Greek, but don't worry, occasionally there's a little sidebar next to the text to explain something that might be confusing. 

As if overall we can just read it straightforwardly, and the strange things which merit additional explanation are exceptions. No, oh my goodness. The whole thing is weird, the whole bible is weird, you guys. 

Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying it- there are plenty of bible stories which come across as good stories, emotionally gripping stories, even if we don't know anything about the background. There are abstract moral principles which continue to inspire people to do good, like "love your neighbor as yourself," without requiring an understanding of the whole cultural context where those bible verses came from. Still, those passages are deeper and richer when we have a better idea of that context.

My point is, evangelical ideology really downplays the weirdness, and views the bible as something nice and spiritually uplifting, that we are able to understand.

It feels really shallow to me, actually. That there is 0 distance between us and the bible because it's just plain true, inerrant, unlike any other text you might read. I don't even know how to interface with a source that's just objectively true, free of any context, because I'm a specific person with my own cultural background and expectations for how to view the world- if someone is trying to communicate with me, and I don't know any of that background where they are coming from, how can we even understand each other? It doesn't make sense to me- now that I'm not evangelical- to read the bible without thinking about "who wrote this, and why?" Evangelicals aren't allowed to ask those questions because if we believe the bible came from somewhere concrete, historical, a product of human decision-making, then how can it be the word of God?

And now I'm interested in reading more about the bible from an academic perspective. Recently I started reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns, and there will be blog posts on that. What's striking to me is how this kind of "academic" take on the bible will often take just 1 verse and write a whole essay on it, explaining the cultural background of something that's just an offhand mention in the bible verse. It's like, the overall aim is to understand the big picture, the cultural context, the ancient Near East, and then to situate a bible verse into that context. This is such a different approach than what Christians usually do, which is to primarily read the bible, and pause for a second to read a little explanation of some cultural aspect, and then keep going. (Similarly, in the book "Womanist Midrash", author Wilda Gafney does her own translations of the bible passages she discusses, and each word is carefully translated, carefully considering the nuances of the language and cultural setting.)

Or I could describe it as, the difference between "we're going to read the bible" and "we're going to understand the big picture of where the bible comes from." 

But also... if you read the bible, there's no obvious way to know which parts can just be taken at face value, and which ones are "weird" artifacts of the ancient culture they came from. If you're a teenager immersed in purity culture, everyone has always told you that "God's plan for marriage and sex" all along was that everyone must be a virgin until marriage, which ensures that your married sex life will be amazing and you'll be totally emotionally connected to your spouse, and that this is the timeless ideal which is just obviously how it's supposed to be. (My post The Bible and "Purity" points out that the bible doesn't even teach this.) So if you read the bible verse that says Rebekah was a virgin, and that that's important, why wouldn't you just take it at face value?

I guess my view now is... I don't really take anything from the bible "at face value", like it's speaking directly to me, and it just means whatever my first impression is upon reading it. Even the verses that I do think are timeless moral truths, I view as a line running through thousands of years of history, connecting people across different cultures and time periods... Being human, being made in the image of God, means having a conscience, and there have always been people who envisioned a better world, based on principles like love and justice and liberation, even though they and their society didn't live up to that. 

Holding the ideas "this was written thousands of years ago" and "this speaks to me." Which feels even more profound than believing that the bible was written directly to us, like it just fell out of heaven onto a shelf at a Christian bookstore, with neatly-typed English words and a pretty pastel cover. Maybe what I'm saying is, I want to be connected to people, to history, to a culture, rather than just connected to an objective, context-free God.

---

Related:

The Bible and "Purity" 

The Bible and Polygamy 

"Genesis for Normal People": Separating "what the writer meant" from "what is true" and "what it means for us"

My Ex-Evangelical Take on "The Year of Living Biblically"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cleft Lip: The Long Road to Repairing a Smile (March 5) "When I saw other children like me for the first time at the hospital, I began to feel less alone."

2. The Gender Politics of Abandoning Your Girlfriend on a Mountain (March 3) "For that reason, there’s a warning sign posted that tells climbers 'If it took you more than 3 hours to get here, turn back! Your life depends on it. Expect major difficulties from here on!' It took them nearly SEVEN hours to get there, but they decided to continue, as Plamberger stated they still felt fresh."

3.  The Mundane Misery of MAGA's Bluey Copycat (January 19, 1-hour-59-minute video) "No one in their right mind is going to be like, you know what I want my kids to watch? Something associated with political commentary. Conservative political commentary."

4. Why people fail at learning languages (January 3) "The goal in learning a language is to acquire so much of this tacit knowledge that the illusion becomes so strong that you can’t encounter these sounds or these symbols without associating them with a meaning."

I speak Mandarin Chinese as a second language, and I have some opinions about language learning and how American culture views language learning. Maybe I'll write about that some time. Basically the strategy I used was, talk to actual Chinese people, make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. If your goal is to be able to talk to people, you need to learn by talking to people. 

Contrast this with the French classes I took in high school, where I thought the point was to get everything correct and never make mistakes. Sure, you do well in class with that approach, but then the moment you encounter native speakers or a French movie or whatever, you feel like "they're talking too fast" and you understand nothing and have no confidence.

5. Here's a fun little game about how well you can remember colors (via)

6. We Know What’s Killing Loons and How to Stop It. So Why Are They Still Dying? (January 2, via) "In nearly every place—from the Maritimes to Minnesota to Washington State—lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for adult loons in freshwater habitat."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. How to Resist Like Minneapolis (February 6, via) "These will be the people in the encrypted chat."

2. Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Noem after mounting criticism (March 6)

3. She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. (March 3) "Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee."

4. Caught in the Middle East, Chinese Tourists Scramble for Way Out (March 6) 

5. A Courthouse Arrest, a Surprise Pregnancy, and One Family’s Shattered Dreams (January 7, via) "The other family members were determined to keep fighting for their asylum, but they’d already accepted that Daniela wasn’t coming back, and Andres’ little family would be separated before it could even begin."

6. Jan. 6 plaque honoring police officers is now displayed at the Capitol after a 3-year delay (March 7) "The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because that chamber voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had delayed putting it up."

7. U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows (March 8, via) "A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed."

8. Bodycam video contradicts ICE claims in fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas (March 7)

9. Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good (January 15, via) "Flipping through roughly 1,300 pages of pink-accented ancient Near Eastern religious literature reveals numerous quizzes, including one (image below) to help determine whether you’re a 'Diva, Doormat, or Dream Date.'"

This is so real- bible publishers make all these little niche bibles, targeted at different groups, usually gendered. It's the entire text of the actual bible, plus little text boxes inserted all throughout, to tell readers from that specific subgroup what the bible is supposed to mean for them. 

I've always interpreted the message of these bibles as, 'We don't read the actual text of the bible. That's boring. We have to print it all here, because Christians are supposed to own a bible, but we don't expect people to actually read it and notice how jarringly different it is from the cutesy little messages we've stuck in here.'

Like, take whatever message you want, and tack it onto the text of the bible. Nobody will notice it has nothing to do with the bible- Christians treat owning a bible as an identity marker, but it's not like they're actually going to spend time reading it.

Retconning the Old Testament

Text written in Hebrew. Image source.

The Christian bible is divided into 2 parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament is the part about Jesus- but, you know Christians, we try to make everything about Jesus. We try to make the Old Testament about Jesus too.

In this post, I'm going to call it the Hebrew bible, instead of calling it the Old Testament, because I want to make the point that it belonged to Jewish people first. It was already a thing, even before Jesus was born. It already meant something and could stand on its own- it wasn't incomplete, waiting for Jesus to come along so it could finally make sense.

The way Christians tell the story, though, is that the Jewish people were waiting for so long, looking forward to when the messiah would come. There were prophecies, there were signs that pointed forward to Jesus. And finally Jesus came, and lived and died and rose again, and this ties the whole story together. Now it finally makes sense, and the whole bible is about Jesus.

This is a retcon. As originally written, the Hebrew bible is not about Jesus. Christians read it through the lens of Jesus' life- and yes, I'm a Christian and I do this- but that's putting our own spin on it, and we shouldn't forget that. Our Christian take on the Hebrew bible is not its "real meaning."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Can Complementarians Please Stop Using the “You’re Equal to Your Boss” Analogy? (March 2) "When complementarians say, 'Well, that’s what the Bible says' it is fair to answer them back, 'Well, either you are wrong in your interpretation or God is sexist.'"

2. on the other trafficked girls in Esther (February 26) "All of them are captured by agents of the State— "deputies" – to take these girls from their families and get them to travel sometimes exceedingly far distances so that the king can decide if they "please" him."

3. Created to Die? Exploding Termites and the “Very Good” Creation (February 8) "It’s a familiar strategy: describe complexity, express incredulity, declare design."

4. The market for marriage (February 19) "The usual pattern is that pastoralists are inegalitarian, inequality drives polygyny, and polygyny drives male control of women."

---

As a reminder, you don't have to read all the news links. But, *do* something. Check on your trans friends, protest, call your congress people, get connected to local groups, donate to groups that help immigrants.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Kansas Trans Drivers License Revocations, Bathroom Bounty Hunter Law (February 27) "The lawsuit is being brought by two anonymous plaintiffs, both transgender men. Both hold driver's licenses with male gender markers. SB 244 retroactively invalidates those licenses, which will 'forcibly out Plaintiffs as transgender.'"

2. Trump administration drops suits against law firms after judges find president's orders unconstitutional (March 3) "'This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing,' Gupta said in a statement Monday. 'Let’s hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed.'"

Oh but wait, DOJ is [not?] dropping its appeals of losses in the law firm order cases. What is going on? (March 3) 

3. Who attacked a girls' school in Iran, and will there be accountability? (March 3) "As the death toll in the conflict passes 175, calls rise for an investigation into potential human rights violations and war crimes."

4. Before you share that story about how troops were told the Iran War is for "Armageddon," read this (March 4) Yes, we should fact-check and not believe everything!

5. Why supporting a shelter for women is now 'kind of radioactive' (March 4) "A global survey by U.N. Women published in October 2025 found that more than 40% of organizations working to end violence against women and girls had to scale back life-saving services or shut down completely in the past year because of funding cuts."

These MAGAs talk about how they're the ones "protecting women" by discriminating against trans people, and at the same time they're massively cutting funding for women's shelters. It's another example of the ideology I talked about in my post about being right vs doing good.