The Bible is just as bad as the Quran
People make a lot of assumptions about Islam compared with Christianity and Judaism — particularly that it’s more inherently violent, indeed, that the holy scripture of the Quran is more violent, or calls for more violence, than the Bible.
The team at Dit Is Normaal decided to put this to the test in the Netherlands, where they’re based (hence the speaking of the Dutch or German (I can’t tell which) in the video above, so make sure your English subtitles are turned on). They disguised a Bible as a Quran, read verses from the Bible (such as “You will have to cut off her hand”), and asked people for their thoughts. People by and large reacted with a lot of “othering” of Muslims — making remarks like, “If you’ve been raised with this book and these kinds of thoughts, it’s going to influence the way you think.”
Then they found out the verses came from the Bible, not the Quran. They were shocked. “It’s all just prejudice, really. I always try not to be prejudiced myself, but apparently I already am,” one person said. Another person added, “Of course I’ve heard Bible stories when I was young, and I went to a Christian school, but I really had no idea this was in there.”
Indeed.
I’m fond of reading David Plotz’s (spelling probably wrong) series (and later book) Blogging the Bible that Slate ran about 5 years ago. He pointed out all of the really archaic punishments, etc in the Old Testament
Nice find.
I have observed that the persons who are most vocally justify their actions by the Christian Bible seem to know the least about what it actually says, both what it says for good and what it says for ill.
(Google Translate tells me that the language is Dutch.)
The problem is that the majority of the “Christian” Bible — what we call the Old Testament — is actually just Jewish thought, history and law. And, not to put too fine a point on it, while those Jews were herding sheep and telling stories about miracles, the Greeks were laying the foundations for rational thought.
Lewis Black has noted that whenever the turns on a TV preacher, the invariably Christian preacher is almost invariably preaching from the Old Testament — or, as Black calls it, “our book.”
I loved that Lewis Black bit. Here it is in full:
“Lewis Black has noted that whenever the turns on a TV preacher, the invariably Christian preacher is almost invariably preaching from the Old Testament”
The folks who really turn my crank are the literalists–those folks who interpret the verses they like literally (usually verses about violence and retribution), but ignore the ones they don’t like (almost the entire content of the Gospels).
On the rare occasion in which I encounter one in the act of being a literalist, I am always tempted to ask whether, at his daughter’s/sister’s/own wedding, the elders stayed around so as to see the tokens of virginity. (Deut. 20)
@geezer But we should also recall that the Hebrew Testament is the book of 2nd Temple Judaism, and that the Rabbinic Judaism that emerged contemporaneous with the early Christians is based far more on the Talmuds, which to a very large extent made a practice of deconstructing the older stories and converting them into a very different set of ethics.
@Steve: True dat. Your point being, I think, that the people who adopted these codes as nomads reworked them for civilized, agrarian-based society. The only people who haven’t moved on are the evangelicals of various sects.
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