Another What If... Using "Scripture" to "Teach" "Ethics"... and a whole lot more

I saw an interesting item a week or so ago in the Fairfax press; an opinion piece by David Hill titled "Churches don't have monopoly on the good life" and tagged 'Ethics Courses as Alternative to Scripture Classes in Schools'. It seems there's been an experiment in the NSW education system, a trial providing weekly ethics courses for school students in the government education system who don't attend the weekly religious instruction classes provided by the churches. These RI classes are called scripture classes.

It seems that the trial was a success and the participating students really enjoyed the ethics classes. It went down so well that the churches, especially the Roman Catholic and Anglican denominations want the ethics classes to made available to all and not as an alternative to their scripture classes. In fact there seems to be a fear that the ethics classes might prove so popular that they even draw students away from the scripture classes so the churches have mounted a campaign called, very tellingly, Save Our Scripture.

Now I have no idea how these so-called scripture classes are run or what they're like. It's been a long time since my school days and I'd like to think things have changed a bit since then. What's more I was taught in the Catholic system, in my childhood by the Josephite nuns at the local convent school. Back in those days the entire education system, government and non-government, seemed designed to bore students so much that they would never get interested in anything to do with thinking and reflection. Religion was much the same. We had our penny catechism which we learnt off by heart - I've pretty much forgotten all of it now. We also had something called a Bible history which was an illustrated collection of stories from Old and New Testaments. It wasn't the actual text, however, just a retold version in the long tradition of children's bible story anthologies. As we got older the penny catechism was replaced by a more complex hard cover catechism and the bible history by a copy of Knox's Four Gospels translated from the Latin Vulgate. But we really didn't read that much scripture and what we read was embedded in a tight doctrinal matrix underpinned by the catechisms.

I'd assume that scripture classes wouldn't operate like that any more, at least for Catholics, and presumably Uniting Church and Anglicans. But then the Sydney Archdiocese is very conservative and then there are all those very conservative Protestant denominations (presumably the Orthodox and Jews and Muslims and other religions have their own 'scripture' classes too). So I wondered just how and how much scripture might actually be taught in these so-called 'scripture' classes; were they actually doing a very good job of turning the students off scripture altogether?

Maybe because I was Catholic and we Catholics didn't read Bibles in those days, and coming to biblical studies later in life, I have a much greater appreciation of these anthologies of texts called imperially The Bible and I realise just how important these stories, these collections of narrative and poetry and polemic, actually are, not least in cultural terms. And so I began entertaining another what if...

What if 'scripture' was used in schools as a basis to teach ethics and a range of other stuff too. I'm not talking about religious instruction, mind. Far from it. No, what I imagine is something like a regular reading group where students from the start of their schooldays would read the text in an atmosphere where they would be encouraged, according to what I understand (from a rabbi I used to know) is the best of Jewish tradition, that is to always ask why, what is going on here whenever they see something odd, puzzling, shocking or even boring in the text. Because lets face it, there's some pretty wild and puzzling and quite outrageous stories in these scriptures (and some boring bits too) and I think stories like these are the best for ethical reflection not to mention stretching the imagination.

English is the main language of Australia and so I would make the King James Bible, the text for this enterprise. That way students can be introduced to the rich cadences of the language, but which, being some four centuries old, will contain words and usages that are alien. It would also have to be the King James with the so-called Apocrypha, so as to cross over most of the various biblical canons, not just the standard Protestant one. What I envisage is not a denominational exercise. Furthermore I would want the students to read a good English translation of the Qur'an alongside the Bible. That way they can learn how the biblical stories have been retold and live on in Islamic cultures, too, making the stories and characters central to the imaginative life of a plethora of cultures, Christian and Islamic as well as Jewish, over time and space.

My childhood was in the days before Vatican 2 and so I lived then in the world of the Latin Mass. While I don't necessarily miss it as such, I am grateful for spending my childhood in a religious culture with another language to English. As kids we weren't taught Latin but we were schooled in the Latin Mass; we learnt the Latin responses and we could see what they meant in the English translation in our missals. I think that, albeit limited, bi-lingual environment was enriching. Jews and Muslims read their scriptures in Hebrew or Arabic putting them in a similarly enriching bi-lingual environment (even for Arabs - the classical Arabic of the Qur'an is different to the modern Arabics spoken today). Studying the Bible can also create an enriching multi-lingual environment, not just because the King James uses an older form of English but because the stories were composed and transmitted in several different ancient languages. So when the students read Genesis 1.1 in the King James - In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth - they can also be introduced to the older Hebrew, Greek, Latin forms of the text

Bereshit bara elohim eth hashamayim w'eth ha-arets

En arche epoieisen ho theos ton ouranon kai tein gein
('ei' pronounced as in vein or neigh)

In principio creavit deus caelam et terram

They can also be introduced to the Arabic opening - In the name of God/Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful - of the Qur'an too

Bismillahi r-rahman r-rahim

Both the Hebrew scriptures and the Qur'an are sung or chanted texts and so in the first couple of years the students can both read in English and sing or chant in Hebrew and Arabic or at least listen to these texts sung and chanted (and chanted in Latin and Greek too). And so they become exposed to other languages, their linguistic repertoire is expanded. And there is indeed a whole rich world of music around these texts that they can be introduced to, as well as a world of art, film and literature. The biblical world on the internet is vast as is the Qur'an's internet world. Scripture classes can also become great vehicles to teach young people how to work the world of the internet.

As for ethics, well lets start with the Genesis creation stories. Read together with their versions in the Qur'an opens up the world of plurality already but if the school's students are multi-ethnic and multi-faith then it enables the opportunity to share stories from outside the biblical/quranic matrix, Hindu stories, Buddhist stories, Chinese and Japanese stories, and, most importantly in Australia, indigenous stories. If the school is more 'mono' in its faith and ethnic profile then there remain the stories from Greek and Roman and Egyptian and other related mythology too. I remember learning about the Greek myths in the local convent school; for the life of me I can't remember why we learned those stories but we did. What I'm getting at here is cultivating an ethics of listening and sharing and appreciating difference. The Jewish tradition of the midrashim can further reinforce how the biblical stories have been retold and reworked, added to, enhanced, to thus foster an ethics of creativity and, again, appreciation of plurality.

As the students get older then the ethical questions get more interesting, more challenging. In Genesis 1, the text repeats the refrain 'and God saw that it was good' as the great tone poem of creation unfolds. Can we say that the universe is good? What does it mean to say that? Is the universe bad? or indifferent? What then are the implications? There are other ethical questions in Genesis 1 too. How do humans relate to, engage with the rest of the earth? Is it just there for us to exploit any way we like? Related to that is the fact that the vision of human life in Genesis 1 is a vegetarian one - 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat' (1.29). So what are the ethics of our treatment of animals? The Genesis text already provides a means for opening up discussion of some pretty weighty ethical issues. And then there is also 'God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them' and 'Be fruitful, and multiply' - how do we go about the ethics of gender and sexuality. And that's just in the first chapter!

These themes get reprised again in the Eden stories along with another biggie, truth and falsehood. Who's telling the truth and who's lying in these stories? God? the serpent? Eve? Adam? And we're still only three chapters in. The rest of the biblical world is bursting with stories that raise a suite of further ethical issues. Power is a big one, not just with David and Solomon and the kings, there's also Joshua and Ezra and then the whole deployment of power in the Gospel narratives. David Hill gives as reasons why parents don't want their children to attend scripture classes 'Others complain that little children should not be traumatised by stories of the crucifixion or the threat of spending eternity ''burning in hell''.' The crucifixion is ugly, terrible, vile, that's the whole point. The story in its various forms raises a suite of ethical issues about power, its deployment, how to respond to it. As a child I was horrified by Herod's massacre of the infants of Bethlehem. Power continues to be used every day to destroy people in brutal ways - and these stories remind us of that fact. And, as with the case of the Hebrew midwives in Exodus, they remind us that people can resist such power too. As for hell, well that's an interesting ethical conundrum in itself, one which I've discussed elsewhere on this blog. While there's little or no hell in the Old Testament and not that much in the New either, an allied question is the ethics of divinity in the scriptures. God is a character in these stories and therefore should not be exempt from criticism or ethical evaluation. Does God's behavior through the Flood, at Sodom and Gomorrah, does such behavior give warrant for genocide? And what about holy war and the ban, the massacre of Canaanite and Amalekite?

And then there is the whole tangled web of gender and sexuality. The love lives (or more appropriately sex lives) of Abraham and Jacob and Samson and David and Solomon, and the poetics of rape and abuse in the prophets, just to name some. What can be made of Jephthah's daughter or the concubine at Gibeah? This is not a Brady Bunch world of sugar and schmaltz (let alone Father Knows Best) but a bizarre and frightening and ethically problematic world, the perfect space to exercise and cultivate ethical reflection. And this world does not exist in a vacuum either. There is more than two thousand years of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other ethical debate and reflection around these stories. Was Lot right to offer his daughters to the mob? Jewish tradition offers an unequivocal 'no' but Christians and Muslims, are not so clear cut. Augustine's discussion of whether Lot was right or wrong to do so is a text that should be studied and evaluated in developing an ethical framework. Was Augustine right or wrong in his conclusions? And was Augustine uncomfortable with them? I think Augustine was wrong but I also think he wasn't happy with the conclusion he had reached or, at least, understood it was problematic.

Now I'm not proposing that students in grade 1 read Augustine. He, along with other Christian theologians and mystics and heretics, Gnostics, rabbis and kabbalists, sheikhs and imams and sufis, philosophers and the odd few Marxists, Freudians, feminists and other ratbags would come later as the students got older. They would be progressively introduced to these people throughout their school lives, along with the novelists, poets, dramatists, artists, composers and film-makers via the Bible and the Qur'an (which would be read beside the biblical texts in every class on scripture). Through the study of scripture students would be put in conversation with a wide variety of people, thinkers/artists, not just within the English language tradition but from a broad spectrum of cultures around the world and from across the last two to three thousand years.

To highlight the global and pluralist dimensions of these scriptures I had considered banning the adherents of the religions based on them - Christians, Jews, Muslims, Bahais, Druze, modern-day Gnostics, (and where do the Sikhs fit? [1]) - from having any role in teaching them. I would also include all those vigorous atheists of the Dawkins and Hitchens variety who by so striving to discredit these texts, in their very rejection make themselves as uncritically captive to these texts and hidebound as any fundamentalist Baptist or Salafi. So the teachers would have to be indigenous Australians or members of other primal indigenous traditions, Hindus, Parsis/Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Daoists, Shintoists, Jains, Cao Dai, etc, (and where do the Sikhs fit? [1]). I must admit I rather like that idea (even if it precludes such as myself). But then I felt that perhaps Jews should be excepted in honour of the rabbi who stressed to me that you must never be reluctant to ask why when you read these texts. So I have changed my mind. Instead I think the classes should be taught by a team of at least two, of whom at least one must come from a religio-cultural tradition not shaped by this Middle Eastern scriptural/religious matrix. Thus the cross-cultural dialogic framework can be reinforced. The other guideline then that I would place on these teaching teams is that it is okay for the teachers to disagree, even strongly disagree on any reading or evaluation of the stories and characters. Such disagreement could even be encouraged, so long as it was respectful. Here I'm mindful of the old saw 'put two Jews together and you will have three opinions'. And I guess I can't help but think of the yeshiva practice where young Jews argue and debate scripture as they study it and where in these debates if one party exhausts an argument the other party will help them to resume it by working out a critique of their own opposing position.

Obviously such secular teaching of scripture in every year of school could not then be the preserve only of the government school system. No, such teaching of scripture would have to become an integral part of the entire schooling system, public and private, secular and faith-based, school based and distance and somehow as part of home-schooling operations too. Indeed it would provide an essential corrective in schools run by more fundamentalist faith communities, Christian and otherwise.

Of course I realise this is a utopian vision and given the timorous and blinkered petit bourgeois mindset that dominates the politics of this country, as evidenced by the current election, these utopian imaginings have as much chance of success as a snowflake's in Hell (the old-fashioned traditional variety of Hell anyway). But given the singular importance of these scriptures in world history and imagination, not to mention our own Anglo cultural-linguistic trajectory, I don't think they deserve anything less. What's more I don't think children, young people deserve anything less either. These are the stories of their ancestors, of our ancestors, even much moreso now that we are a multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-lingual society. These stories bring contemporary young people into conversation with those ancestors across two to three thousand years. These stories reveal to them the imaginary framework of their culture/s and language/s. And these stories give them the opportunity to enrich, explore and expand both their imaginative horizon and their ethical framework. Thus, I would suggest, they may become more fully human, surely the prime goal of any meaningful education.

[1] Not to mention Mandaeans and Yezidis.

Jim West and Homophobia revisited

The other night my sister asked me if Jim West had actually put up his reasons as to why he condemned homosexuality as a species of depravity. She was referring to an inter-blog discussion earlier this month between Jim, Roland Boer and myself on homosexuality and the bible stemming from Jim's very public and often averred homophobia. You can read my previous post on the discussion here.

Well, Jim finally did put up his reason and one that was rather surprising given that he seems such a minimalist otherwise on matters biblical. Here it is

διότι γνόντες τὸν θεὸν οὐχ ὡς θεὸν ἐδόξασαν ἢ ηὐχαρίστησαν, ἀλλʼ ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν καὶ ἐσκοτίσθη ἡ ἀσύνετος αὐτῶν καρδία. φάσκοντες εἶναι σοφοὶ ἐμωράνθησαν καὶ ἤλλαξαν τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἀφθάρτου θεοῦ ἐν ὁμοιώματι εἰκόνος φθαρτοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πετεινῶν καὶ τετραπόδων καὶ ἑρπετῶν. Διὸ παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῶν καρδιῶν αὐτῶν εἰς ἀκαθαρσίαν τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι τὰ σώματα αὐτῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς· 25 οἵτινες μετήλλαξαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν τῷ ψεύδει καὶ ἐσεβάσθησαν καὶ ἐλάτρευσαν τῇ κτίσει παρὰ τὸν κτίσαντα, ὅς ἐστιν εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν. (Paul, to the Romans 1)

My reason is purely theological and has everything in the world to do with the setting aside of God’s revealed purpose for human life and the usurpation of his will by mere human desire. In sum, your desires are not more important than his purpose. In sum, it is idolatry- the worship of an object (whether it be self or other) that is not God.

For those of you who can't read Greek, here is an English version of the Greek text that Jim has quoted from Romans 1:24-25

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.

Now there is no reference to homosexuality in these two verses unless Jim reads it as meant by 'impurity' or 'dishonouring of their bodies' so I found it odd that Jim quoted this passage and not the verses following it

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, ²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. ²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.

Now I wish Jim had quoted this passage and not the generic condemnation preceding it because this is substantial and provides grounds for a discussion. But I don't think Jim wanted that, he wanted certainty as a way of closing down discussion. Because these verses in Romans are not quite as cut and dried as people think. I plan to come back to them later in this post but first off I want to deal with verse 26 which is regarded by most people as the one explicit reference to lesbianism anywhere in (Christian) Bibles. I used to think that myself until I discovered about 5 years ago that early Christians did not think so and that reading it as a reference to lesbianism only happened about 3 - 4 centuries after Paul. In the East, John Chrysostom has the dubious honour of pioneeering that reading. (He is also, in my research, the pioneer of the Christian homophobic reading of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah). At about the same time, Ambrosiaster (Pseudo-Ambrose) launches that reading in the West. And it took several centuries for the reading to stick as the dominant one. Other readings of verse 26 included women engaging in adultery, prostitution or even adopting the wrong sexual position with their husbands (being on top rather than on the bottom).

So in other words, in the centuries after Paul, there was no automatically recognisable reference to female homo-eroticism in verse 26. Indeed the verse had no clear explicit reference to any specific female sexual behaviour without such being read in for many centuries of the first millennium of Christianity. James Alison puts it nicely:

irrespective of who is closer to the mark as to what St Paul was referring to, one thing is irrefutable: what modern readers claim to be ‘the obvious meaning of the text’ was not obvious to Saint Augustine, who has for many centuries enjoyed the status of being a particularly authoritative reader of Scripture. Therefore there can be no claim that there has been an uninterrupted witness to the text being read as having to do with lesbianism. There hasn’t. It has been perfectly normal for long stretches of time to read this passage in the Catholic Church without seeing St Paul as saying anything to do with lesbianism.

James then continues:

This means that no Catholic is under any obligation to read this passage as having something to do with lesbianism. Furthermore, it is a perfectly respectable position for a Catholic to take that there is no reference to lesbianism in Holy Scripture, given that the only candidate for a reference is one whose ‘obvious meaning’ was taken, for several hundred years, to be something quite else.

This point is a negative one. It clearly demonstrates that there is no obligation on a Catholic to agree that what St Paul is saying is obvious, or to read those words as referring to lesbianism

James then goes on to cite the contemporary Catholic position on biblical interpretation which warns against "‘actualization’ of the texts, ... reading ancient texts as referring in a straightforward way to modern realities" as spelt out in the 1993 document Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, which says:

Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity, such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation, anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women. Particular attention is necessary ... to avoid absolutely any actualization of certain texts of the New Testament which could provoke or reinforce unfavourable attitudes to the Jewish people

James concludes:

if we are urged to avoid absolutely any actualization of the text, then the following statement must, a fortiori, be at the very least perfectly reasonable, if not actually highly recommended, as a guide to a properly Catholic reading of a passage dealing with something rather less important. Here it is: given the possibility of a restricted ancient meaning in a text which does not transfer readily into modern categories, or the possibility of one which leaps straight and expansively into modern categories and has had effects contrary to charity on the modern people so categorized, one should prefer the ancient reading to the actualized one.

In which case then, as a Catholic, not only am I not under any obligation to read Romans 1:26 as a reference to lesbians but I should actually RESIST such readings because of the effects they have "contrary to charity", as James puts it, on modern women so categorised.

Jim West is not a Catholic, of course, so he might not feel such an obligation. But even so, Jim has no secure grounds for claiming that female homoeroticism is singled out or even specified in this passage or indeed anywhere in any Bible, Christian let alone Jewish.

If I seem to have laboured this point it is because the received wisdom is that here in this passage we have the one scriptural condemnation of female homoeroticism. It has been a certainty that has sustained generations of Christian homophobia but one which on closer examination disappears as the smoke and mirror trick of over determined reading that it is.

So what about the other part, what about us guys? Well, here I would agree with Jim that this text clearly refers to male homoeroticism. I would go so far as to say that it is the only text in the New Testament that actually does so, and I might go into that topic in a subsequent post. So does that mean that Jim can rightly refer to male homosexuality, homoeroticism, and love as depraved? Well no, not at all. As I responded to Jim "Paul is wrong. I accept he’s referring to male homoeroticism of some form here – it’s not clear what though, presumably he and his audience had a shared suite of references that we don’t possess, even if it’s just a prejudice based on the Levitical proscriptions." And that's the point I want to develop here.

Now according to Roland, while Jim is a maximalist on Paul and the New Testament, he is, it seems, a minimalist when it comes to the Old Testament. In which case, I gather he's not someone who puts very much weight on Leviticus. Now I don't know that for sure so I'm not going to make assumptions on Jim's attitudes let alone make my case dependent on them.

But I first want to make it quite clear that I have no doubt that ancient Judaism in most of its pluriforms, at least, did not endorse male homoeroticism. The reasons why can only be conjectural but textually it all goes back to Leviticus, the two proscriptions in Leviticus 18 and 20. I also agree with those who argue that these two passages condemn anal sex between men only. They do not condemn or refer to other sexual activity between males at all. That's why many observant gay Orthodox Jews abstain from anal sex so as to maintain loving and sexual relationships that conform to Torah.

Now interestingly, read in that light Leviticus seems to fit a pattern of proscriptions on male male anal sex found in ancient Middle Eastern cultures. A very similar set of proscriptions are found in the Zoroastrian scripture, the Zend Avesta:

The man that lies with mankind as man lies with womankind, or as woman lies with mankind, is the man that is a Daeva [demon]; this one is the man that is a worshipper of the Daevas, that is a male paramour of the Daevas (Vendidad, Fargard 8:26-32)

Now I don't think the Zend Avesta borrowed off Leviticus although I would be inclined to think that perhaps this passage may even lie behind, so to speak, the Levitical proscriptions. It doesn't bother me either way because both are representative of a broader cultural tabu underpinning them. The tabu was specifically on the penetrated, the feminised male. Prisoners of war were subjected to anal rape before being sent off into slavery. Anal sex was not seen as anything other than an assault on male integrity of the person who was the bottom. As penetrator, the top was performing the masculine role and so there was no opprobrium attached. These attitudes are not just part of the ancient cultures but have continued through to the present in Western cultures and others including the modern Middle East (where I suspect they are fueling a postcolonial homophobia).

I was reminded of the currency of such attitudes by a beautiful essay in today's Age by Christos Tsiolkas reviewing a documentary on aboriginal actor, Jack Charles. Charles' life has been a representative horror story of what life is like for an indigenous Australian, particularly for one who has had a momentary escape into fame and acclamation in the dominant white society. Tsiolkas, a gay man, addresses the question of Charles' loves and sexuality:

Jack Charles is possibly a homosexual. That word is never used; what we hear instead are reminiscences and regrets about a man he loved, the one man who he believes showed him love.

They never f---ed, did "that act", not Jack to him, not him to Jack, because that act is the violence that occurs in the institutions meant to protect him, meant to reform him. "That act" is not about love.

In a different world perhaps Jack Charles and and the man he loved would have expressed that love with anal sex, or any form of sex, but not in the world in which he's lived. Tsiolkas understands that and so can I. And for all my studies of the ancient Middle Eastern world it becomes pretty clear that anal sex between men in that world functioned pretty much the way it has done in Jack Charles' world. That's not to say that there weren't men in that world for whom that construction didn't apply although in the ancient world there were third sex options sacral and 'secular' by which they were not covered by the tabu because they were no longer counted as men.

So I think Leviticus should be read with those worlds in mind. Read that way, Leviticus seems to be promoting a form of male bonding and respect by precluding sexual power games in which anal sex, anal rape, play such a strong part. I don't say this to justify Leviticus or let it off the hook but rather to to understand it and thus to avoid actualisation. I would also accept the consensus whereby Leviticus is dated to some time in the Persian period. It could be later, I don't think it's much earlier. But the thing is after Leviticus is written comes Alexander and the supremacy of Greek culture in the Levant. Now I don't subscribe to the notion that ancient Greece was a homosexual paradise or Eden but the Greek/Hellenistic attitudes are different to the Jewish on what we might term homosexuality. Given the globalist, colonial and multi-cultural dynamics of both the Hellenistic and subsequently the Roman worlds, and the minority colonial and diasporic realities of ancient Jewish life, I can also understand how the Levitical proscriptions can be redetermined to fuel minoritised prejudices against the ruling Gentile cultural groups especially after the successful Maccabean revolt against Seleucid rule. in the 2nd century BCE. Add to that mix good old fashioned patriarchy shared by Jew and Gentile alike with the fear of the feminised and you have a nice brew of Jewish homophobia at the turn of the era. And while I have to read more details about it it appears that there may well have been growing Gentile homophobias at that time too.

Now Paul was a Jew, there's no doubt about that. He was most likely Pharisee, for whom Torah observance was central in a way that was not for other more Temple focused Jewish groups. So I have no doubt that Paul had his own share of homophobia. Did he ever get over it? I'd like to think so, not least because I think his Master can be counted in the category of the Not Straight. But that's not a question I'm going to address here. More importantly I want to return to this passage in Romans on which a lot of homophobic scaffolding has been built. As I said before I think Paul is wrong in what he says here. I don't have a problem saying it, I'm not a Bibliolater. Scripture is not always right and when it's wrong there is no need for us to be complicit in such errors. I would regard that as also consistent with a practice seeking to avoid actualisation.

But I also agree with Roland Boer when he says:

On the terms of this debate, both Jim and Michael opt for that well-tried canon within the canon approach, preferring some texts over others. Obviously, any position one wants to take on the Bible has to follow such an approach since the Bible is such a various and contradictory collection of texts.... The same applies to politics. We don’t even have to go outside Paul’s letters, since he was a thoroughly contradictory thinker, writing letters on the run, making things up as he went along, never quite clear where he stood. (I’ve argued in my Irreligious Criticism that Paul’s contradictions are actually a desperate effort to make sense of thoroughly contradictory and tension-ridden social and economic situation, but that’s another argument.)

Paul is a contradictory thinker and his letters are shaped by the circumstances generating them. I would argue that no one can maintain a strictly coherent stance in that situation. Now Romans appears addressed to a Jewish/Hebrew community in Rome. James Alison argues that what Paul is doing in the opening chapter is setting up his audience to take the fall by way of arguing against any sort of complacency on their part because they are followers of the Mosaic Law. As part of his strategy Paul plays on their anti-Gentile prejudices before puncturing their balloon. It's probably best if I let James speak:

At this point, please notice something quite subtle: Paul is shading towards puncturing the pride of those he has been building up for a fall. After the graphic depiction of a set of practises which were self-evidently pagan, and would allow the Jewish listeners to feel very much a ‘we’ against the silly ‘they’ being described (and the words Paul uses are those concerning purity and shamefulness rather than morals and evil which is why I use words like ‘silly’ and ‘idiotic’ rather than ‘wicked’), Paul moves on – still talking about ‘they’ – to a list of much more serious things: deep internal attitudes of heart. And of course he would still have his listeners absolutely on side:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice.

You can imagine that we are still in the realm where the listeners will have been able to say ‘Right on, Brother!’ – this was still the sort of thing they were used to hearing. But Paul sweeps on, moving on from those deep attitudes of heart which the silly ‘they’ are full of, to what one might call a list of rather more banal, domestic, common-or-garden forms of wickedness:

Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

You can see why those who divided the chapters divided the argument here: it sounds like the end of a breath – and it is. It is the end of a breath, but not the end of the argument, because the sting is still to come, and without the sting the argument is not complete:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

Now you can see what the effect of this phrase is on the preceding argument. The effect is rather similar to what would have happened if Paul had said ‘We all know that the gentiles do idiotic things, get involved in bizarre rites and frenzies, and guess what terrible consequences this leads to: they become gossips, disobedient to their parents! Behave foolishly! How unlike anyone we know!’ and then paused for the first giggles of self-recognition to break out.

Now of course this rhetorical device of building up his listeners for a fall, and then puncturing their balloon, wouldn’t work at all if Paul were claiming that his listeners had been doing the same things as the pagans – that is the bizarre cults and frenzied sexualised rites leading to castration. His point is not that his listeners have been doing these things, but that even though they haven’t, and wouldn’t dream of doing them, they share in exactly the same pattern of desire, and the ordinary banal wickedness which flows from that pattern, the really serious stuff, which they have in common with the pagans who do indeed do those silly things.

Paul confirms what he has been doing all along by moving, at last, from ‘they’ to ‘we’, and his use of ‘we’ is interesting:

We know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things.

Paul appears to repeat the anti-pagan charge – that ‘they know God’s decree, and still do these things’. His repetition of it here, but in the form of ‘we’ sounds awfully like; ‘Whether or not they know about God’s judgment, we certainly do’. And then he goes on to address ‘you’ – not just a Jewish you, nor just a Christian you, but the human ‘you’ that is any of us.

Do you suppose, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

From here Paul will go on to develop his understanding of how the human problem is fundamentally one of desire, and it is at the level of a change in the pattern of desire that we are saved by and through Christ, a change in the pattern of desire which even the Law, which was good in itself, could not effect.

I like James Alison's argument, even if he's rather ready to identify the specifics of what sort of homosexuality Paul is referring to, i.e. transgender sacral homosexuality. But apart from providing an example of how to avoid interpretation that actualises to modern day realities, I think James also raises the very important question of whether those who, like Jim West, take Romans 1:24-28 as a model for denoting and identifying DEPRAVITY are most likely missing the point that Paul wants to make altogether, not to mention sinning against charity. Indeed I think it was Augustine himself who said that any interpretation of scripture is okay provided it advances the cause of charity, by which he and James Alison and I mean care and concern , love, for our fellow human beings (although I'm pretty sure Augustine would not feel very charitable towards the likes of James and I).

Homophobia and the Biblioblogosphere

It all began at Stalin's Moustache. Roland Boer quoted from Jim West

in a culture where one distortion of human sexuality is lauded and applauded, why aren’t all?

The reason is as plain as the nose on your face: beastiality is a grotesque distortion of human sexuality and everyone but the most depraved recognize it as such… Distortion is distortion is distortion. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man and a horse or a woman and two men or two men or two women.

Roland then went on to challenge Jim as to what other medieval views he had. So I posted the following comment

the ‘problem’ with the confusion with sodomy is something that develops over time. Looking at the old penitentials ‘behaving as the sodomites’ is a term prmarily used to denote anal sex between men, other forms of sex between men are not grouped with sodomite behaviour. Peter Damian who invents the word sodomy expands the sodom reference to include all same sex behaviour amongst men, including aolo masturbation which a there is only one sex involved (as there’s only one person) could be considered a form of same sex sexual behavour

The confusion arises when sodomy gets entangled with the category of the unnatural. Aquinas is pretty clear that there are several categories of the unnatural, Sodomy, same sex eroticism, is one, bestiality is another, non-vaginal sex between men and women is another and masturbation yet another

By the Reformation we find a blurring and hence confusion of unnatural and sodomy. Bullinger terms bestiality vilest sodomy in a sexual sins list which curiously does not include same sex eroticism. Homosexuality’s unspeakability is thus used to abject bestiality.

And this blurring of sodomy and the unnatural to abject a range of other behaviours is what makes for the very confused nature of the term in the early modern period.

As for Jim’s homophobia, well that’s another story entirely. I just hope he recovers soon because it’s really not a pretty sight

To which Jim posted this reply:

michael im not afraid of homosexuals- and hence i am not homophobic.

i even have some homosexual friends. and though they are scary, its not because of that.

I answered:

Jim, you have a fear of and resulting prejudice against the homo-erotic, hence homophobia. It’s not pretty because it leads you to say odious things that sustain hatred and prejudice against a class of people to which I belong, a do most of my friends and so I am always conscious of the hurt and malice that goes with such prejudice even if you aren’t. I live with the consequence of your prejudice every day and in my long life I have seen the very great cost in lives traumatised and wounded as a result of the prejudices you promote.

I know what homophobia is even if you don’t. And it’s not a pretty sight. But the good news is that it’s not something indelible. You can educate yourself and get over it and become a more human being as a result,

Roland then put up the two statements in a separate post, The Challenge to Jim West, and asked Jim "Now Jim, what have you got to say for yourself?"

So Jim went and put up a new post on his own blog, What do I have to Say? This

First, I reject Michael’s definition of homophobia. I have neither fear of nor prejudice against any class of persons. I have now, and have always determined what I thought of persons on a case by case basis. I don’t deem all Church of Christ members shotgun toting lunatics because Mary the Murderess Winkler shot her husband in the back.

I don’t deem all Blacks murderous thugs because Lemaricus Davidson and his crew brutalized Channon and Chris.

I don’t imagine all homosexuals child molesters and murderers simply because Jeffrey Dahmer was.

In point of fact, it is Michael who prejudges and distorts- by assuming that my viewpoints deem me worthy of being lumped together with people whom he disdains merely because he disagrees with them. His hetero-phobia shines through more brightly than any presumed ‘homo-phobia’ he attributes to me.

Second, I reject his false assertion that I promote prejudice. Rather than spewing such generalities I challenge him to provide even one example of my inequality or unfairness. I am no respecter of persons. For him to accuse me of such behavior clearly displays for all to see the fact that he neither knows me, nor has he bothered to read what I’ve written on a whole range of topics. No one in all biblioblogdom is as forthright in what they say as I. And that without hiding behind the veil of anonymity or pseudonymity. So, then, Michael, show us one point where I have dealt an unfair hand.

Third, and finally, I reject Michael’s assertion that his viewpoint makes him more human than I, and that until I agree with him I am less than human. What is his attitude but hetero-phobia taken to it’s logical conclusion: the heterosexual person is less than human. And isn’t that exactly what he would ascribe to me, without merit or evidence I must add?

To which I replied:

Jim, I do not call heterosexual love, relationships, and eros distorted or depraved so I’m not heterophobic. You however call ALL homosexual love, relationships and eros a distortion and depraved. Clearly you are here not determinng what you think of “persons on a case by case basis.” I regard that as prejudice of the first order and what’s more it’s part of a history of prejudice that has wounded countless lives not to mention the loss of life that has resulted on top of that. If you want to stand in that tradition so be it, but it is a tradition hateful and odious in its history and its effects.

But it is possible for you to get out of it. Other people have, and what’s more they remain both heterosexual and even Christian. I would say better ones.

And, as one of the people who suffer as a result of the prejudices that declare my love depraved and a distortion, I have the right to call you on your prejudices and name them for what they are.

At this stage my comment is waiting in moderation. No doubt time zone differences mean Jim is still to wake up to Sunday morning.

Good News from Sheffield

This morning I found this message waiting for me from the Facebook site "Don't Shut Down Biblical Studies at Sheffield":

Subject: GREAT NEWS!!!!

Well I said in my last message that I hoped to be in contact soon and with good news and I have to say that we have got massive news to tell you! I'll let the University tell you itself.

Here's an official quote from the University (thanks to our wonderful receptionist Alison!). Read and rejoice!

" University of Sheffield Statement on the Department of Biblical Studies
The University of Sheffield has today confirmed its position with regard to the future of the Department of Biblical Studies. In the light of concerns regarding inadequate consultation, as well as feedback from staff and students, the Department of Biblical Studies is no longer under review and a proposal that it should be reconfigured as a Postgraduate Centre has been withdrawn.
Instead the University has asked the Faculty of Arts and Humanities to consider, as a matter of urgency, a short, medium and longer term plan for the Department. With regard to the undergraduate intake for 2010, the University can confirm that it will recruit students for this year onto single and dual honours degrees in Biblical Studies. The Faculty of Arts and Humanities are working with colleagues to ensure that these students are appropriately supported, including through the recruitment of additional staff.
Looking to the future, the University recognises the outstanding reputation of the Department of Biblical Studies in Sheffield for scholarship and a superb student experience, and has confidence that all concerned will work together to enhance this for future students.

Professor Mike Braddick
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities "


The Biblical Studies Department is essentially back from the dead, well... it spent a few days in the belly of the Uni at least, and it did feel like we had gone down to Sheol at points too!

We are really pleased! Thank you everyone for your support, action and prayers. We have saved the Univeristy an embarassing and awful decision, which would not have done its reputation good in the long run.

Long live Biblical Studies!

Ben Hinks (on behalf of the current students)
--------------------

Wonderful news! Congratulations to the students and staff at Sheffield's Dept of Biblical Studies!

Some More on Biblical Studies at Sheffield

Jim West has provided more on the crisis at U of Sheffield in particular a statement from Cheryl Exum, one of the Professors in the Bib Studies Dept there (for those of you who don't live and breathe biblical studies). It's being spread around the biblioblogosphere and I'll put it up here too.

End of Biblical Studies at Sheffield

I am writing you, in a personal capacity, to ask for your support in preventing the destruction of the Department …of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield.In its meeting on 7 October, the Senate of the University of Sheffield was asked to approve the following (copied from the Senate papers):

(a) that the 2009-10 entry to undergraduate programmes involving Biblical Studies should be the last and that the Department should cease to function as a single entity: (b) that undergraduate programmes involve Biblical Studies should be maintained for existing students, and that measures should be taken to ensure that they receive the high quality education and student experience which they have been promised; (c) that the Department’s academic staff should be transferred to the departments in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities most suited to supporting their longer term careers; (d) that the development of a Biblical Studies research centre be progressed with a view to providing a focus for postgraduate study and research and a continued point of contact and collaboration for academic staff irrespective of their new home departments, thus ensuring the continuation of scholarship in this area.

These proposals were made in the light of a review of the Department, conducted in the spring and summer of this year, for which I would like to give you a brief background. The Department had lost two members of staff (Loveday Alexander to early retirement and Jorunn Økland to a post in Norway), but had been given permission to fill a post with a senior New Testament scholar in 2009-10. Although this meant a change in staffing from 8 to 6, this kind of fluctuation in staffing has been typical in the Department over the years, and we had hopes of additional staff in future years. Difficulties began when the University decided, at the beginning of the 2008-9 academic year, not to make any appointments in the Faculty of Arts until reconsideration of the University’s financial position in the light of the national Research Assessment Exercise. So we were not allowed to proceed with the New Testament appointment. Then, in the second semester, the University decided to review the Department, citing the reduction in staff and the Department’s fluctuating undergraduate numbers and as major concerns (at the same time, deciding to cap the number of new students we could accept at 20). In fact, undergraduate numbers in the Department have always fluctuated, but Level 3 (i.e. final year) classes in the last two years have had the highest numbers ever.

Another problem for the Department arose when the University, in June of 2009, introduced a Voluntary Severance Scheme as a means of coping with the current economic downturn. Three members of staff are leaving. As someone within only two years of retirement, I am one of them; the others are Keith Whitelam and Barry Matlock. This leaves the Department with three permanent members of staff: Hugh Pyper, and Diana Edelman in Hebrew Bible and James Crossley in New Testament. We have also been given a two-year appointment in New Testament, Mark Finney.

These are the events that led to the proposals above. I did not know until today that the transferal of staff to other departments was being proposed, since I have been excluded from any formal discussions of the future of the Department. At the meeting of Senate, the vote on these proposals was postponed thanks to the intervention of the Sheffield University and College Union and the Union of Students. Our students are currently mounting a strong protest and you can find information about this on a number of sites on the web ( try, for example, http://savebiblicalstudies.weebly.com/). As I understand it, the decision has already been made to suspend undergraduate admissions for the coming academic year while the above proposals are being reconsidered. But suspension of the undergraduate programme, in effect, means the end of it. And the notion that there can be any postgraduate ‘centre’ or programme without the existence of an independent Department of Biblical Studies is not wishful thinking, it is a way of subtly dismantling the Department, since the Department and its reputation depends on its distinct identity and its vibrant research culture based on its outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

I am writing to ask you to support the efforts of our students, alumni/ae, colleagues and friends to reverse what could be the end of an outstanding department by writing to the Vice-Chancellor to urge him not to dismantle the Department (1) by destroying an excellent undergraduate programme, which will inevitably be the effect of a suspension of admissions for the 20010-11 academic year and (2) by setting up a Biblical Studies ‘research centre’ that cannot succeed without an undergraduate programme and its contribution to the Department’s research culture, when one appointment of a senior scholar would enable the Department to maintain its strength in attracting postgraduates.

The Vice-Chancellor is Professor Keith Burnett and his email address is vc@sheffield.ac.uk. Please copy your message to Professor Paul White (P.White@Sheffield.ac.uk), who, I understand, will be in charge of the ongoing review. For those of you who are willing to write on our behalf, I would be grateful if, in order for us to have a record of the level of response to our plight, you could either send me a blind copy of your message (bcc) or simply reply to this email that you have written to the Vice-Chancellor. Please also consider sending a copy of your letter to the website listed above.

If might be helpful for you to know that the Department ranked 6th in the national Research Assessment Exercise (higher, depending on how one reads the figures), quite an achievement for a small department. We achieved the highest mark in the national Teaching Quality Assessment, and our rating in the national Student Satisfaction Survey was, to my knowledge, the highest in the University, well above that of the Faculty of Arts and the University as a whole. We were at the time the review was undertaken (and may still be) also one of the few departments in the Faculty of Arts not in deficit.

I apologise for any cross-listings. I have combined and split various email lists I have in the interest of reaching as many colleagues as possible. Please feel free to forward this letter to anyone you know who might be willing to help.

Thank you for any support you can offer us,

Cheryl

J Cheryl Exum
Professor of Biblical Studies
Director, Sheffield Phoenix Press
www.shef.ac.uk/bibs
www.sheffieldphoenix.com http://www.shef.ac.uk/bibs

Cheryl Exum's email address is j.c.exum@sheffield.ac.uk if any of you are planning to send an email of support.

From reading her statement it appears that there may be the usual management skulduggery involved, the kind which we've seen too often in universities in this country. Roland Boer has some worthwhile comments to make. First off re the University's crying poor:

This is bullshit, since state-funded institutions are recession proof: they keep doing their thing largely irrespective of what is happening in the economy. Governments run up deficits during recessions and pay them off during booms. So the university must have other reasons for cutting staff, as they periodically do - new programs, petty political battles, bigger pay for executives, or what have you.

All too often here in Australia, we've seen universities cry poor and sack people and close down disciplines and departments. I suspect in part it might be due to the new managerialism in universities, which never sees very far into the future and in response to any apparent problem always resorts to chopping - they call it, perversely, saving - staff. It's the sort of shortsighted management that led to the Global Financial Crisis. The other thing about crying poor is that, as a very good friend of mine repeatedly says ( and used to teach this stuff too) all budgets are human constructs. There is nothing inevitable or immutable about a budget and to try and hide behind budgetary constraints to justify decisions like this, more often than not show a want of imagination (and when they don't it's more likely to be corrupt self-interest at play). As Roland says

I've learned never to trust institutions - whether university, church or whatever - or give my soul to them, since they'll just trample on it when they see fit.

Roland also notes that:

3 of the existing 6 staff took the money and ran. That is, they accepted golden handshakes and left three staff in the lurch. It is difficult to maintain a department of three. The three who went did so for various and probably good reasons, but they do not find themselves part of what is now called the 'precariat'.

Cheryl is doing her best to raise awareness of the situation, and it's clear that the University has acted very shamefully indeed, but he has a point, nonetheless. It does not take away from the fact that this decision sucks big time and should be reversed.

An Outrage

No, I'm not referring to Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, although giving a Peace Prize to the Warmaker in Chief is a bloody rude slap in the face to all the people around the world bearing the brunt of US military shock and awe or just plain meddling.

No, I'm referring to the news I received this morning via Facebook that the University of Sheffield in the UK is planning to close undergraduate programs in the Department of Biblical Studies there. As Jim West says, "The Department is one of the finest in the UK with a fantastic reputation around the world- staffed, as it is, by many of the leading scholars of the field" It also appears that this is being done on the sly with everyone being kept in the dark by the University. However, the students have been organising. There's a Facebook group here and people are being urged to email the Vice Chancellor at vc@sheffield.ac.uk to protest this disgraceful injustice.

The decision is incomprehensible because, again to quote Jim, "The Department is one of the finest in the UK with a fantastic reputation around the world- staffed, as it is, by many of the leading scholars of the field." Such secrecy and willingness to axe a whole undergraduate area seem too much part and parcel of Universities these days. No longer a community of scholars, unversities are all managerialised and corporatised these days.

Here's some more from the Facebook group:

This Facebook group has three main concerns:

1) We have not yet been officially informed, and would not have been until it was too late if it wasn't for the Union of Students. We do not consider the University's 'consultation process' regarding the closure to have been sufficiently thorough, and will are urging the University to choose 'no' at the deciding vote until this process has been properly carried out.

2) Regardless of the promises of the University, the quality of teaching WILL suffer. Take, for example, first-year dual honours students doing four-year degrees. Does the University seriously expect a department catering to one or two students to offer the necessary expertise and teaching? Postgraduate research, which is to continue in the department, will also suffer with staff cuts and the lack of research environment.

3) We are shocked that the University wants to close such a prestigious and internationally recognised department, also home to the JSNT and JSOT journals and Sheffield Phoenix Press. Sheffield offers the only Biblical Studies undergraduate course in the UK, and we believe the department to be a great asset to the University and to the wider field of biblical research.

A lot came up at the meeting today so if there's something you'd like me to put up on this group send me a message and I'll do it. Thanks to the Student Union for their help so far, and also to Alison and the rest of the Bibs staff for being generally awesome (and somewhat caught in the middle of all this)."

There's more at Sans Blogue here and at Baptist Bookworm here.

FURTHER UPDATE You can also check out this site that has been set up in support of the Dept. It gives some more background and you can cast your vote in support of the Dept's undegraduate progreams continuing.

Teaching Bible in English Lit

The last couple of weeks I've been caught up with stuff that has kept me away form here. Last week I was without broadband access as I was catsitting at a place with rather clunky dial-up. This week I've been meaning to put up something but things have been getting in the way, not least reading a fascinating new book belonging to my flatmate by Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient history and mythology (I think everyone should be actually).

But then today I was sent a story from the BBC by my friend Linda from the Crux (LGBT etc Christian) email list that I've been on for so many years now almost since it started back in the mid/late 90s.

Students 'do not know the Bible'

The Poet Laureate says it is becoming increasingly difficult to teach English Literature because students do not know the Bible or classical mythology.

Andrew Motion told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the lack of knowledge made it "difficult to even get beyond go" when teaching some of his recent students.

John Mullan, professor of English at University College London, said it was up to academics to solve the problem.

Mullan goes on to say:

"I've always been concerned about the levels of not-knowing since I started teaching, but quite recently I had a very bad experience of trying to teach some of my, in other respects, extremely good students about Paradise Lost.

"They knew so little about the context in which the poem was written and about the references that the poem itself makes that it was very difficult even to get beyond go in talking about it."

What's been done at Mullan's university is the introduction of a module in the English Literature course through which students are brought up to speed with the classical texts. I think that's a great idea although I'd like to see something like that in schools too, get kids reading the biblical stories together with classical Greek and Roman mythology. I have a friend teaching sessionally at Bond Uni a course on bible and literature. I'd love to see courses on Bible and Film, Bible and Art, Bible and Sci Fi the possibilities are many. But I also rather like the idea of teaching Bible together with classical mythology, maybe at university level, expand out into Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian and Persian mythology to boot.

Biblical studies should be liberated from the confines of Religious and Theological Studies (although I think there is defintely a place for both disciplines in modern universities, and maybe even moreso in postmodern universities. But the impact of the biblical literature goes much further than a theological dimension, it's social, cultural, artistic even linguistic. I also like the idea of reading biblical litgerature beside the mythology of its matrix in the ancient Mediterranean world. Of course understanding anything of Engish or other European culture without knowing something of classical mythology does as the Poet Laureate says make it "difficult to even get beyond go". I have a great love of Russian poetry and many of the great poets such as Osip Mandelstam pepper their work with references to Homer and Greek mythology, as well as the biblical literature. As the Poet Laureate says: "these stories achieve archetypal status because they tell us recurring truths about human nature that is a pleasure and an important thing in and of itself."

So lets have Bible taught in English Lit, in European Lit, in philosophy, in Gender Studies, in Peace and Conflict Studies, in History, in Queer Studies, in Cultural Studies, throughout the Humanities and beyond.