I greatly appreciate Dan McLellan’s work — he’s a serious scholar of the Bible and he often addresses the shallow assumptions some people make about their religion, and delves into the complicated history of Christianity. Sometimes, though, I think his focus on Biblical scholarship can lead him to miss the big, glaring horror behind belief.
This video begins with an arrogant Christian prick reading triumphantly from the Bible. It confirms his prejudice that women are less important, and that their purpose is to bear children.
I was surprised at McLellan’s criticism. The guy is quoting this verse of the Bible, 1 Timothy 2:11:
Women are to learn in silence with complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to hold authority over a man. She should keep silent. For Adam was formed first, and Eve afterward. Furthermore, Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and fell into sin. However, women will be saved through the bearing of children, provided that they continue to persevere in faith, love, and holiness, marked by modesty.
McLellan rightly points out that this book of the Bible is presented as the work of the apostle Paul, but it isn’t — it’s regarded by scholars as the work of someone else altogether. Fine. So? Those words and ideas are ugly and do harm, no matter which ancient evangelist wrote them, and those words are canonically in the Christian Bible. Are the words of Paul generally regarded as true and accurate representations of Christian belief? That’s one implication of McLellan’s criticism, that the only valid source of information is Paul’s writings.
My objection is to the blatant misogyny — the actual empirical evidence is that women are just as intelligent and just as worthy as men, and that there was no Adam & Eve & an apple, and therefore reality contradicts the literal stories told in the Bible. I don’t give a damn who wrote it. It’s just another example of how the wickedness in their holy book inspires the wickedness of smug young men, like the one in the video.
That’s the better argument, not quibbling over authorship, but simply talking to women and recognizing their personhood and autonomy and equal worth to men. It’s so weird to see a kid who doesn’t care about scholarship being rebuked for his lack of scholarship, when he’s treating the Bible in the same way he would an Andrew Tate podcast.
Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and fell into sin.
Actually, according to Genesis, both of them were deceived. They both ate that apple, remember? Yet another internal contradiction showing what a perfect inerrant document the Bible isn’t.
Even McLellan makes the case that applying ancient perspectives on the modern world is a misuse of the literature. He’s quite clear, for example, that Bible says nothing about abortion, and that the role of women in the older parts is “property” first of their father and then their husbands. He frequently makes the case that “the Bible” is neither univocal nor inerrant. As for Paul’s position on women with respect to 1st Timothy, he has noted that in one of the letters,”Paul” cites a woman as an apostle so in that case that writer is giving serious props to a woman in the community.
I’ll also give him a round of applause for laying into Trump as a serial sexual abuser, and saying that Trump’s re-election does harm to all the victims of sexual abuse.
I’m not sure that I agree with everything McLellan says about the Bible, but mostly that’s just academic debate. He’s much more knowledgeable than me about the source materials and the languages. And then there’s the question of whether these debates really matter. Despite my long standing interest in it, I don’t think so.
On the bright side, recently women have started leaving the fundie xian churches in high numbers.
Why go to a church that claims you are subhuman and property.
Actually actually, YHWH deceived Adam (Gen 2:16-17) when he told him that eating the forbidden fruit would result in death that very day.
The serpent told the truth to Eve (Gen 3:4-5) when it told Eve: “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
According to Genesis, that is exactly what happened. Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they came to know good and evil, and they lived for literally hundreds of years more.
If you belong to the fact-based community you realise the ones with two Y chromisomes are humans of equal worth as the XY* variants.
But he is talking to the bible-thumpers who think those scribblings mean everything.
This is where textual criticism (done mostly by sincere believers) becomes important.
If misogynic persons hide behind passages that quite obviously are apochrypal in nature their arguments are shattered. They will of course not change their minds but it gets harder for them to convert others to their point of view.
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*People with a few Alien genes -like Ripley in her last film- are clearly superior but that is another matter.
“Women are to learn in silence with complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to hold authority over a man. She should keep silent.”
Good God! 50% 0f humankind should not contribute to its progress. That is equivalent to using only half of your brain. Diversity makes life dynamic. To limit it is to limit oneself. No resource should go without consideration.
FROM: Greater Good Magazine – Science based insights for a meaningful life.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_diversity_makes_us_smarter
The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult.
The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think.
This is not just wishful thinking: It is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and demographers.