News Intelligence Analysis
Why Paul Ryan's 'Personhood' Campaign is Anti-Biblical
The name of the game was “Bible Roulette,” and it was the greatest religious political gamble of all time
Forward to the Past—
An Explanation of How We Became
What We Are (Which includes, ‘The Arrest of Professor Christian
Mostly’)
By Katherine Yurica
June 5, 2009
Updated June 10, 2009 with additional links
Updated August 18, 2012
My dear reader, I readily confess that my name is Ethel Gulliver and I am a descendant of the famous Lemuel Gulliver of Nottinghamshire. In spite of the fact that I am shy and of an introverted personality, I couldn’t resist the influence of his illustrious career and travels. The truth is, I have been quite content with traveling back and forth in time, and happy to make little points of corrections in our understanding of the past. My job title is therefore classified under the heading: “Time-traveling, historian.” The job is a bit tedious but not altogether without rewards. Nevertheless, I am still among the multitudinous unknowns of this earth, notwithstanding anything else you may have heard about me. (Of course since I am unknown, it follows necessarily that known facts about me do not exist!) However, my unknown status does give me an increased and blessed advantage. For if I were known, I would not be able to so boldly put forth the case against my formidable opponents, the Proprietary Political Controllers of Biblical Interpretation and International Church Businesses or the PPCOBIICB (which became, “PP Cobic B.”) If origins interest you at all, I should point out that the shortening was originally intended to be a humorous slight, but surprisingly the agency came to love it—for to them it meant they were looked upon as “a bit of uric acid containing the sting of a bee—which of course implied they were not to be fooled around with!”
The problem is that COBIC (which is my preferred abreviation) had become the most powerful national and international governing agency in the world as long ago as the twenty-second century. Presently, all local, state and national laws—not to mention the international governing bodies, are required to conform to biblical laws as approved by the agency. It works much like the old Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. Instead of approving new drugs, however, the COBIC tests laws for authenticity, conformity to biblical standards and for possible negative side effects and either rejects or grants the appropriate license. All new legislation must have the COBIC seal of approval as both biblically and legally correct before it can be enacted. Thus no seal of approval—no law! (Notwithstanding, John Milton the great Puritan poet of 1608-1674, wrestled with similar licensing problems when he wrote the Areopagitica in 1644, which was nothing less than a plea for unlicensed printing that rang with the noblest eloquence and remains one of the greatest documents in the history of free speech. In my opinion, his reasoning should and ought to be applied on this latter day question of licensing laws!)
Lest you misunderstand my intent, I must point out that boldness is no longer an accepted demeanor for serious scholars. And so it is best to proceed in a mindless fashion, since mindlessness is now the current condition of evangelicals, which was verified by Professor Mark A. Noll, in his now historic book: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,[1] a truly valuable relic from the twentieth century (which I discovered on one of my time-travel trips.)
Notwithstanding, my natural tendency to remain humbly silent, I should like to point out that adventures are for the adventurous, or so they say. Therefore, it is my intention to tell the story of my long time friend and associate, Christian Mostly, the honorable Professor of Natural Conditions at the Moneytree & Buckett School of Theology in Orange County, California. (There is no point in keeping the school’s name out of it, since it is known worldwide and is, in fact, the largest theological seminary on the planet. Its reputation, therefore, cannot be sullied by my humble words.)
One night, when his three children were safely slumbering he—that is, Professor Christian Mostly, was occupied preparing a fairly lengthy dissertation on the topic of “Celestial Journeys and Other Vacation Destinies,” when the phone rang. It was of course an interruption; someone was calling to get him to donate to the Pat Robertson Memorial Fund for Christian Power. It was no good trying to explain that he wasn’t really involved in the quest for political power, since everyone assumed that because Prof. Mostly’s Christian name was “Christian,” he was necessarily a card-carrying member of the dominant CPA (or Christian Party Alliance), which remarkably had over 80,000 members who changed their Christian names to “Christian” as concrete evidence of their political allegiance. (However, to be honest and in practical terms, the name changes have caused no end of problems and confusion, not the least of which is the fact that some people believe that one ought not to be able to buy or sell unless one’s Christian name is Christian—which has led others to claim that if that is so “Christian” as a name—is really the Mark of the Beast!)
Professor Mostly’s alleged membership of course is now and was always false. Mostly was just an ordinary believer and voter. (After all, the two terms, “believer and voter,” had become inseparable over the last twenty years since only “believers” or approved church members could vote!) So he was just struggling to make a living as they used to say. In fact, his best friend, Grimly Certain, Esquire, who is a lawyer in the Department of Justice, was always trying to convince him of the extraordinary benefits biblical law bestowed upon the nation. In fact, Prof. Mostly recalled that Grimly Certain had reeled off all the benefits several times: “1) Universal morality, 2) universal discipline, 3) universal well-being, and 4) universal control.”
Regardless of Certain’s impressive benefit’s list, Mostly just wasn’t able to get his mind narrowed down enough to accept his argument as valid—he kept thinking of problems that insisted on popping up every time he thought of over zealous enforcement of biblical law. For example Mostly was greatly troubled by the fact that he had accidentally heard his neighbor’s teenage son shout what he took to be a blasphemous expression when the boy dropped a cup of hot coffee in his lap!
Worried about his own responsibility to report the incident, but not wanting to be the instrument of the boy’s death, Mostly conceived what he thought was a clever way to broach the subject with Grimly Certain—who was after all—a prosecuting lawyer. So he presented the problem as a hypothetical and asked, “Should such a boy be put to death? I know that according to Leviticus 24:15-16, there is no squirming out of it, and ordinarily the blasphemer should be stoned to death, but couldn’t there be mitigating circumstances?”
Grimly Certain was too smart for a hypothetical, so he asked straight out, “Did you hear a boy actually curse—in a way that constitutes irreverence toward God?”
Mostly thought for a moment, “Well I was most interested in getting your opinion on a hypothetical situation because I’m not really sure what constitutes blasphemy.”
“Oh, that’s easy enough to define.” Grimly Certain said, “Blasphemy is being irreverent toward God; cursing or reviling God or blurting out an indignity against God in speech or writing.”
Mostly then asked innocently, “So saying, ‘God damn it!’ isn’t really blaspheming—isn’t it only a curse?”
Grimly jumped to his feet, “Now you’ve done it! You can’t order God to damn anything without blaspheming His dignity! And what’s even worse, whenever you use that phrase you are ordering God to do something, which automatically places God beneath you—making God your servant! Now that’s blaspheming in my book!”
So it was that Grimly Certain reported Mostly to the police and he was dutifully taken in for “questioning,” that is, he was chained and hung and incarcerated until he admitted that he had heard his neighbor’s son (Timothy Misspeaks) committing three counts of blaspheming the dignity of God, which of course carried the death penalty, which was unfortunately expedited. (Professor Mostly was afterward ashamed that he gave in so quickly, for the boy was executed within hours of Mostly’s confession.)
Mostly was then arrested for repeating the blasphemy, concealing the crime, and failure to report it to the authorities. He was told, “You should have reported the incident of blasphemy and you should have let the authorities determine whether the circumstances caused an ‘involuntary outburst,’ which the law allows if the outburst meets the five points of exclusionary behavior.” (Apparently, scalding coffee poured on one’s lap was deemed not to be among the five points of exculpatory circumstances—unless of course—the prosecutorial team simply forgot to check that out.)
At the same time, Christian Mostly was incarcerated in the state prison, awaiting trial for what became a period of seven years. It was quite legal and properly done, for he was incarcerated by order of the Governor, who stands in for Moses in such cases, (in accordance with Leviticus 24:12), which in turn both aids and facilitates the trial court’s prosecutorial needs, not only giving the prosecutors adequate time to prepare their case for prosecution—which was considered a merciful extension of a defendant’s life—as well as giving defendants the opportunity to die in prison while awaiting their trial. Considering that in the Bible, good citizens executed defendants by stoning them to death, almost as soon as the authorities were notified, (as was the case with Mostly’s young neighbor, Timothy Misspeaks), it was felt to be a most humane and progressive solution. (See Leviticus 24:13 and 23 for the biblical precedents). Of course there had to be the requisite number of witnesses (usually two) and a proper trial—but in biblical days there was no apparent waiting around as there is today; however imprisonment before a trial was sanctioned in Leviticus 24: 11-16 in order to ascertain “the mind of the Lord” on the matter, which could take years in our modern times.
Understandably, today’s prisons create problems not anticipated in Leviticus; for one thing today’s prisons are huge and are widely overcrowded, which in turn causes the trial dockets to be backed up for years, simply because there are so many offenses nowadays and there are so many defendants! In fact, it was well known that because the judges exerted themselves to the point of exhaustion under their heavy workloads, new laws were ordained and passed that granted them sabbaticals every two years instead of seven!
It was of course in the twentieth century when the legal system began to change due to something they called “court packing” by powerful religious oriented presidents with the help of several famous senators sitting on the Judiciary Committee (not the least of which was Orin Hatch of Utah). During that same period, our modern prison system was inaugurated, through the work of pioneers like Mike Huckabee, the Governor of Arkansas along with the labors of evangelist Bill Gothard, who not only developed a prison program for Arkansas and other states but also built juvenile detention facilities and developed prisoner indoctrination systems that showed an amazingly low recidivism rate—all of which contributed to the movement that privatized every prison in America. These prisons were zealously run by private religious groups, which began intensive programs that focused on biblical, moral, behavioral and religious training and indoctrination. All prisoners, of course, were required to attend these indoctrination classes for four hours a day—where they were required to repeat the ideas and basic principles, such as: “I am to obey all authorities because they have been placed in their positions by God,” “I am to submit to my boss because he has been selected by God to oversee what I do,” and “I will never support a popular movement to overthrow our elected officials because God placed them in their positions of authority.”
However, by our more modern times, prisoners were given a greater degree of latitude; and they are now permitted to study more advanced biblical principles. So it is true that by Christian Mostly’s fifth year of imprisonment, he had acquired an expertise in biblical law, which enabled him to prepare his own defense. (The state no longer assigned Public Defenders to cases and Mostly could not afford to pay for legal advice.) Meanwhile, his friend, Grimly Certain was granted the honor of conducting the prosecutorial duties against Mostly, in Judge Militant Throwstones’ courtroom, a singular honor. Professor Mostly of course objected that Grimly Certain could not be both the prosecutor and an important witness for the defense in the case, but Judge Throwstones overruled Mostly’s objection. There the matter stood for another two years.
In the meantime, Professor Mostly began helping his fellow prisoners, for his expertise in biblical law and criminal defense became known among the 13,000 prisoners at the Guilty Inmate’s Prison Help Center.
One case especially touched Mostly’s heart. A young and brilliant computer programmer, by the name of Thomas Doubter, the same Doubter who invented the One-Touch Web Advertising System, was facing the death penalty for having sex with his wife during her menstrual period. (A violation of Leviticus 20:18), which reads:
“And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness, he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.” KJV
This particular biblical crime seemed unreasonably harsh to Mostly. (Of course I had been providing him with historical information so he was completely aware that the reinstitution of this prohibition started in the twentieth century with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony, who considered the deliberate act of copulating with a menstruating woman a perverse act that “pollutes the land” and is a sin equivalent to having sexual relations with a stepmother, which, if true, incurs the death penalty, according to Leviticus 20:11)[2] Professor Mostly also underlined and memorized Rushdoony’s assertions that “both the man and the woman are alike guilty” as well as Rushdoony’s important summation: “Clearly, we are dealing with a serious and significant offense. It is one of the offenses which lead to a ‘sickened land’ and a ‘revolted nature.’ This is not only an offense against God, but one of the offenses which leads the earth itself to spue out a people (Lev. 20:22).”
Professor Mostly also read about the afore mentioned Bill Gothard, who in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries also tried to reintroduce the woman-is-unclean doctrine at his Institute in Basic Life Principles. Gothard, however, used much less severe terminology, and as a result won over more converts, for he asserted abstinence for the seven days of the wife’s menstrual cycle was necessary to “solve health problems.”
In the end, these early pioneers managed to not only reinstate what became known as the “Women Are Unclean” doctrine, but as time went on—actually about a hundred years—followers were able to expand the teaching into a full-blown criminal offense, which by the year 2224 culminated in the legal requirement that all girls and women were required to wear a specially designed warning badge, that automatically detected the start of each female’s menstruation and flashed a bright red signal warning anyone who came near the female that she was “Unclean” for the duration of her menses. This was done in order to prevent others from even touching an unclean female, as Leviticus 15:19-23, made clear, touching an unclean woman or girl contaminated the person who touched her and in turn made the formerly touchable person unclean, whether male or female, which then required the formerly touchable individual to wash his or her clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until the evening, and in the interim wear a warning badge that emitted the bright red light, which certainly satisfied the rules prescribed in Leviticus 15.
But back to Professor Mostly and his attempt to aid Thomas Doubter: The prosecution’s case against the young computer programmer was based on the Ministry of Surveillance’s “Bedroom Alert Camera Evidence.” In other words, surveillance cameras had been secretly set up in all newly constructed housing as a matter of law for the last thirty-five years—which of course, was not revealed to homebuyers or homeowners. (It is estimated, by the way, that within five years, every bedroom will be equipped with surveillance devices, which will be activated and operational within that time frame. These devices send visual evidence to the authorities, plus detectors signal any indication of blood which activates a special alarm at the Ministry and at the Unclean Contamination Unit Division, which automatically sends Riot Squads to the address in minutes.)
The surveillance network is justified by two facts: First, the offense—if not caught—will cause the entire nation “to be spit up out of the mouth of the earth and be destroyed,” which is known as Rushdoony’s Law, and secondly, it is justified by the fact that the prosecution of sexually based offenses usually incurred the death penalty and therefore the offense must be proven—the crimes cannot be simply asserted. Bedroom surveillance therefore was instituted not only to catch violations of the Unclean Contamination Act, but also to catch every sort of sexual misconduct, including incest, (Leviticus 20:11-12, 17, 19, 20, and 21); adultery (Leviticus 20:10); male masturbation, often referred to as onanism (Genesis 38:9); male homosexual acts (Leviticus 20:13); and male and female bestial sexual acts (Leviticus 20:15 and 16). (Incidentally, our current bestial sex act law of 2575 also prohibits any pet from sleeping in its owner’s bed on penalty of death to both the animal and the owner, which unfortunately caused a huge worldwide decline in household pet ownership and also wreaked economic havoc in the pet food industry.) Unfortunately, the background for all these legalities brings us directly back to Thomas Doubter’s case.
Significantly, Professor Mostly discovered some information that created new hope for Doubter, centering on Leviticus 20:18, which doesn’t actually assert that a couple who had sex during the female’s menstruation period must be stoned to death but only that the guilty couple must be “cut off” from “among their people.” This seemed to Mostly to be a genuine opening for young Doubter. However, the prosecutor would have none of it: he argued in briefs that the Hebrew word karath or “cut off” was the same word used to order the death of “wizards,” or those with “familiar spirits,” in Leviticus 19:31 and 20:6. “Therefore,” the prosecuting attorney wrote, “the Bible makes it abundantly clear in Lev. 20:27 that the word karath, which is translated as ‘cut off’ is synonymous with the death penalty, in as much as it requires that those witches and wizards caught ‘shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones.’”
In any case, by then Professor Mostly discovered that COBIC had already officially taken that position and ruled that cut off means “to be put to death.” Notwithstanding the COBIC ruling, the young prosecutor in Doubter’s case wasn’t taking any chances and was arguing in a memorandum sent to the court that he intended to show that the Septuagint Version (the Old Testament in Greek, which is the earliest version of the Old Testament Scriptures extant), reads that the guilty couple “…shall both be destroyed from among their generation.”
The prosecutor’s memorandum had in fact shaken Mostly, and he gently advised Thomas Doubter to attack the prosecutor’s interpretation of the words “cut off” and to argue that it merely means to be excommunicated from the nation. “You see,” Mostly urged, “that could mean that you and your wife would simply lose your U.S. citizenship but you might be able to migrate to another nation—if you change your names!” But Mostly knew in his heart that the legal dance was over for Doubter and his wife, and he could not keep the tears from showing in his eyes.
The whole thing began to depress Professor Mostly. He felt the great weight of legal authority pressing against him in a most personal way. It took the form of a heavy burden on his shoulders and appeared every time he looked into the face of one of his fellow prisoners who asked for help.
So he began to do extensive research by concentrating on the origins of a doctrine called “Biblical Inerrancy”—which he had come to believe might represent the heart-stone of the biblical law movement. That doctrine, as it is written in our century, affirms:
“The entire Bible is free from any contradiction, error, fallacy or inaccuracy, including historical, legal and scientific facts.”
As Mostly thought about those words, he noticed something for the first time: he saw that the definition does not make a distinction between the laws of Judaism and the teachings of Christianity, in fact, it blends the two. Nor does it recognize the effect that time has on all knowledge and all laws, antiquating some, highlighting others. As professor Mostly thought about it, he concluded that a modern nation surely should recognize that laws made before condoms and diaphragms existed in a time when venereal disease wiped out whole civilizations—ought not to be applied in an age of modern medicines and protections!
Yet he groaned again at the subtle blending and merger of the Old Testament with the New Testament that had taken place. For up until the blending of the two, the biblical literature had not created a problem, largely because Christians had not only respected the Jewish Scriptures but they had also perceived them through the eyes of Jesus who said the entire law was fulfilled in two commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…and…Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22: 36-40).
If that were insufficient, Professor Mostly recollected that St. Paul had also clarified the issue when he wrote to the Romans: “For ye are not under the law but under grace,” (Romans 6:14). And he reiterated, “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” (Romans 13.10).
Suddenly Professor Mostly realized that the Inerrancy doctrine had perhaps unwittingly become an instrument that lassoed Christians into a wholly binding new legal and religious order. He released a whistle of shocked understanding and shouted, “They created a brand new religion—that’s neither Jewish nor Christian!”
(Professor Mostly, however, wasn’t relying solely on his own reasoning; it should be understood that he had discovered confirmation acknowledging that this new religion was in play as early as the twenty-first century. In fact, he had access to a whole series of normally restricted books because of his doctorate and because he was acting as a U.S. attorney on behalf of indigent or unduly poor inmates—which meant that by this time, all but three of the 13,000 prisoners were seeking his assistance in their legal defense.)
Notwithstanding his status, Professor Mostly secretly found historical evidence in David Klinghoffer’s carefully guarded book, How Would God Vote? in a chapter significantly titled, “With God, or Against Him.” There, Klinghoffer had asserted in the early twenty-first century, “True Jewish and true Christian politics are almost identical!”[3] Mostly, quietly gasped as he discovered that to Klinghoffer, the Bible was nothing less than a voting guide and political primer, revealing what Klinghoffer called, “the politics of the Bible,” which of course turned out to match the politics of Klinghoffer on every issue!
It’s important to know something else, however, even if it doesn’t quite appear to be germane at this point: In another chapter of the same book titled, “Theocracy on Main Street?” Klinghoffer conclusively demonstrated his historic importance as one of the Blenders-In-Chief of the biblical law movement. For in those early days there were still two political parties to choose between. They were called “Liberal Democrats” and “Conservative Republicans,” this latter party also had a nickname of “GOP,” which historians suggested meant “God On Politics,” but which was hotly disputed in a later century by the renowned historian Clement W. Washdown, who asserted the phrase meant, “God’s Own Party.” In fact, Washdown’s argument prevailed.
Klinghoffer, of course, knew nothing of this later controversy, since it occurred centuries after his time, but nonetheless, he had brilliantly anticipated the row by writing this:
“It may be too much to suggest that God himself is a Republican. In fact, a truly Bible-centered politics will put believers at odds with both parties. Far less so with the GOP, however, but certainly at some points. If the Bible is to be allowed the full range of its deserved influence over the democratic process, one question that’s bound to arise is how the religious American should evaluate individual candidates who may get some of their views ‘right’ as the Bible would define them, while getting others wrong. Should you vote for the man or woman who gets seventeen right over the candidate who gets only fifteen? Is there a litmus test issue? I would argue that there are a couple…”[4]
But I’m getting a little ahead of my story. As Professor Mostly poured over the histories, data and articles I sent him, he soon discovered traditional Christians originally wanted only to defend the Bible from a damning attack as they saw a number of theologians and biblical scholars were decimating the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection—by arguing that the miracles never happened.
Thus Professor Mostly began piecing the beginnings of the Inerrancy War together, noting that it arose as early as the twentieth century, largely because certain biblical scholars, but more particularly, the famous German theologian, Professor Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) had essentially (if not knowingly) bonded with Thomas Jefferson’s aversion to the gospel miracles. (Jefferson, the third president of the U.S., you may recall, actually picked up a pair of scissors and cut out all of the “miraculous” passages in the New Testament and published the emasculated remains as The Jefferson Bible.)
Significantly, Bultmann also believed the accounts of Jesus in the New Testament were contaminated or just embellished and he believed they would have to be recast to say something else. Then if that were not sufficiently offensive to the Old-Time Religion believers, Bultmann proceeded to extend his correcting mission in the form of a blunt assertion that certain biblical passages were inconsistent with other passages. For example, he wrote: “It is impossible to square the belief that the law was given by God with the theory that it comes from the angels.” (Here he was referencing St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians at 3:19 and contrasting it with the account in Exodus 20.)
In the end, in the process of “recasting” the biblical narratives, Bultmann cut out very nearly fifty percent of the New Testament in order to eliminate those “contaminated” and diseased portions—all in an effort to make the literature conform to his sense of consistency and his personal sense of literary merit.
Though as Professor Mostly observed in comments to me, Bultmann was studiously sincere, but his efforts started a fierce religious war. Mostly wrote that it “swept through the church pews like poison gas in World War I trenches; it seeped into the classrooms at seminaries; it attacked professors, missionaries, and officials in leading denominations centered in the American south. All biblical criticism theories were rooted out; professors were required to sign loyalty oaths to the corporate church entity and if they did not, they were fired and were denied their pensions and sick leave, without any right of appeal. When it ended and the cost was tolled: it became clear that it was perhaps, the greatest religious purge in history. And of course in war—the winners take the spoils.”
Professor Mostly carefully copied the best arguments made by both sides, and annotated them in his notebooks. One such commentary reads: “A twenty-first century Southern Baptist seminary president stated it this way: ‘The Bible itself claims to present absolute and non-negotiable truth that effectively trumps all other authorities, which means, from beginning to end, the Bible undermines the modern secular worldview at its very foundation.’”
That was the way Professor Mostly discovered that almost all the early fathers of the New Biblical World Order, (as it became known in succeeding centuries), taught that to deny “the complete truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God” is to deny “the unique and absolute authority of the Bible in our lives.” For the Fundamentalists, (as they were then called,) the issue was to reinstate the entire Bible as the authentic legal, spiritual and political authority for a “lost world.” As R. J. Rushdoony, the father of the movement wrote, “It must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society.”
Professor Mostly carried the logic forward and wrote, “So the only way to make God the ruling deity—was to make Him or His Bible the source of law! And making the Bible the source of law was the infinitely superior choice—because an agency composed of mere men would have the power to declare what God meant or intended in His Bible! ” (And that is of course what David Klinghoffer had so effectively helped along!)
Nevertheless, fearful their intent would be targeted as “establishing a theocracy,” the men of that early age, including Klinghoffer, were careful to call the end product “a democratic and constitutional government…open to looking to the Bible for political wisdom.” So they called it merely, “a biblically correct democracy.”[5]
Later, in a conversation with me, Mostly pointed out that when the battle over the Bible began, both sides believed they were only trying to establish “Truth,” but a few clever men like Pat Robertson, Charles Colson and others clearly understood the enormous political power lying innately within their grasp.
About the same time, Professor Mostly also discovered that notwithstanding the slogans and the verbiage, it was an open secret that both sides wanted to use scissors and cut out the portions of Scripture that disagreed with their own views. For example, Mostly sent me this shocking list, which he wrote in a code we devised for obvious reasons:
“Dear Gully, [He rarely used my Christian name, Ethel].
“I have compiled this list, which I think you will find fascinating! Twentieth and twenty-first century fundamentalists wanted to forget that if the entire Old Testament cannon of laws were still applicable (with the exception of the law that all men had to be circumcised, which was not only uncomfortable but painful, and which in any case was fully discontinued by the early Church at the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15: 1-35), there would still be a whole series of unacceptable laws which they would ignore or simply “cut out” of their Bible! And what is worse, our own century completely agrees with their list!
1. “First, there is the law that the Sabbath is on the seventh day or Saturday (Exodus 16:26) and not on Sunday, the first day. Today the law is totally suppressed or cut out of existence. Though the law requires that no one may work on the Sabbath, under penalty of death, it is not enforced. In addition, the law included a specific prohibition against ‘kindling a fire’ on the Sabbath—(presumably no matter how cold!) (Exodus 35:2-3)—but kindling a fire on the Sabbath is not a violation of modern law. Is it an oversight? I doubt it!
2. “Another ‘cut-out’ law prohibits the wearing of fabrics made of two or more different threads, such as linen and wool, or a cotton and polyester blend (Leviticus 19:19). But this law is not enforced and no penalty is attached to its violation.
3. “Another example is the law that prohibits men from shaving around their temples, and prohibits them from rounding the corners of their beards according to Leviticus 19:27. (In fact, clean-shaven faces were not biblically allowed in ancient Israel.) This law is not enforced.
4. “Then there is one of the most suppressed, ignored and “cut out” biblical passages that demonstrates the Bible does not teach that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses are people. To the contrary, it refutes that position, which is a good thing because thirty to seventy percent of fertilized eggs don’t reach the point of implantation in the womb. Instead, the Bible makes no distinction between a woman who miscarried and a woman who was having her regular menstrual period (Leviticus 15: 19). And Leviticus 15: 25 reveals that the Bible makes no distinction between the aborted embryo or fetus and the discharged blood—both make the woman unclean. The significance of this law is almost universally ignored or denied by the Pro-Life Political Party (PLPP).
(Of course these facts totally falsify the assertion that a fertilized egg is a human being with all the rights of a living person. And what is worse, our Department of Justice continues to arrest and try every female for murder who does not bring every fertilized egg to term. That’s why every female, from age seven up, must undergo their weekly screening test that detects fertilization and miscarriages and reports the results to the Pre-Infant Support and Guidance Department. So far as I can tell, that department has tried, found guilty, and executed close to two hundred million women and young girls world wide in the last five centuries alone—for “failing to bring a fertilized egg to term,” that is, “for aborting an embryo.” In my opinion the effect of this law is simply to reduce women to their reproductive roles and deny them their humanity. It actually is terrifyingly similar but yet the reverse in some ways of Aldous Huxley’s banned book, Brave New World, which I read in my youth. When one considers the two hundred million executions—well it makes one pause.)
5. “However, if the two hundred million deaths are not sufficiently apalling, I found documentation from the Jewish Talmudic teaching by Rashi, that not only settles any conflict between the life of the mother and that of the fetus but unequivically comes down on the side of the mother in Sanhedrin 72b, which, of course has been completely cut out of our law books:
‘Regarding a woman having a difficult birth which threatens her life, the midwife may insert her hand and cut up the fetus and extract it in pieces, because as long as it hasn’t come out into the world it is not considered a living being and one may kill it to save its mother.’[6]
6. “Perhaps the most compelling legal position in the Bible that is not only completely ignored but actively repressed (or even rewritten) is the law that if someone causes a woman to have a miscarriage (by striking her), the expulsion of her fetus is not to be considered a human death, much less a crime such as murder or homicide, which were recompensed by ‘the life for a life’ penalty in the Bible. The verse reads:
“If, when men come to blows, they hurt a woman who is pregnant and she suffers a miscarriage, though she does not die of it, the man responsible must pay the compensation demanded of him by the woman’s master; he shall hand it over after arbitration. But should she die, you shall give life for life…” (Exodus 21:22.) The Jerusalem Bible
Instead of capital punishment, the Bible authorized compensatory (or monetary damages). In other words, the act that caused the fetus to be expelled in this instance was a tort to which the woman had obviously not given her consent! Thus in the Bible, the expulsion of a fetus with the woman’s consent is neither a tort nor murder, nor a homicide nor manslaughter. So it logically follows that an intentional act by a physician, done with the woman’s consent is also not a biblically recognized crime![7] Thus terminations of pregnancies are clearly allowed in the Bible—as they must be—since miscarrying is not only a natural phenomenon—it also serves the purpose of protecting the life of the mother.
7. “But perhaps the most potentially irritating law to people in our border states like Arizona and Texas is Leviticus 19:34, which asserts essentially that all illegal aliens who cross over the Mexican border to live in the U.S. of A, ‘shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.’ (This latter law of the Bible was grievously violated in the Texas Republican Party’s Platform beginning in the early twenty-first century and continues unabated to our present time.)”
With Kindest Regards,
Chris
Shortly after I received Mostly’s letter, he sent me an example that demonstrated how the Bible was being misread, twisted and even rewritten by the elite leaders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. David Klinghoffer asked this question: “Would the Bible countenance a woman’s liberty to run for president?” His answer was this:
‘“You shall set over yourself a king,’ according to the book of Deuteronomy (17:15), not a queen. So biblical tradition understands that verse. Nor may a woman fill any public office…. True, before the Israelites established their monarchy, they were ruled by judges, one of whom was a woman, Deborah (Judges 4:4). But that appears to have been a one-off sort of deal, commanded by God for a specific reason at a particular time, not as a model for succeeding generations.”[8]
Apparently not wishing to sound as if he were a misogynist and having forgotten that Deborah was in fact a role model, Klinghoffer explained:
“For us, what’s imperative is not to deny women the opportunity to run for office because the Bible provides no model of female officeholders, nor to outlaw divorce, but merely to point out that women’s natural power base is in the home, not in the office, the legislature, or the governmental executive’s mansion, and that a wise society seeks to protect her power.”[9]
No wonder then, as Professor Mostly verified, the famous motto of that era became: “He who controls the Bible rules the world!”
Actually the conflict was a Godsend for the Fundamentalists who dreamed of worldwide power. They leapt at the opportunity to “defend” the Bible, knowing that they could enlist millions of Sunday pew sitters into an army that would resurrect and awaken the Church Militant!
The Fundamentalists won of course. There was simply too many of them. Professor Mostly, however, began to realize the reason they won: the Bible was too long! It amounted to a mountain of reading—and few people actually read it. In fact, few people were reading anything at all during the “Battle for the Bible” era. (That is why later historians called it the Age of Unreason.) Nevertheless the churchgoers of that age flocked to ministries and churches led by leaders who told them what to do and told them what the Bible said! Additionally the churches were redesigned as theatres and became harbors for social groups, complete with classes for learning with videos, and music, thus developing into a massive entertainment enterprise, exceeding in power, growth and income any entertainment businesses that preceded them! In this way, the religious entertainment industry truly became “a soothing drug of choice for the people!”
Notes:
[1] Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 1994 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) Grand Rapids, Mich.
[2] Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1973 at pages 427-428.
[3] David Klinghoffer, How Would God Vote? Doubleday, New York, 2008, at page 5.
[4] Ibid. at page 24.
[5] Ibid. at page 4.
[6] Larry Yudelson and Yori Yanover, How Would God Really Vote? A Jewish Rebuttal to David Klinghoffer’s Conservative Polemic, Ben Yehuda Press, New Jersey, 2008, at page 68. The authors also show that according to rabbinical teaching the fetus “is not viable until the very end of gestation. When it has taken its first breath it has become equal to its mother…” p. 68
[7] Ibid. at pp. 65-66. And see also Katherine Yurica, Bloodguilty Churches, Erasmus Books, Bellingham, Washington, 2005, in the chapter, “What Does the Bible Say About Abortions?” pp. 66-67. And also published on the web at: https://www.yuricareport.com/Religion/TheBloodGuiltyChurches.html
[8] David Klinghoffer, How Would God Vote? Doubleday, New York, 2008, at page 34.
[9] Ibid, page 35
Send a letter to the editor about this Article and be sure to include the title or the url. See the excellent article on Pushing the Law that Life Begins at Conception: "Extreme Measures, An in-depth look at the implications of Amendment 48" by Pamela White Antiabortion Efforts Move to State Level Legislatures & Often Mandate Restrictions by Peter Slevin, Washington Post
On Defining “Dominionism”
and “The Cultural Mandate”:
Is it A New Anti-Christian Religion?
By Katherine Yurica
May 1, 2009
Some years ago I felt the term
“religious right” was
accurate enough for describing a large segment of
the church world’s involvement in American “conservative”
politics, but it seemed inadequate as a term when one
struggled to understand the theological underpinnings
that were driving the movement. In fact, it became obvious
that a new religious doctrine was being taught that
urged Christians “To take back America!” not just as
a political objective but also as a theological and
religious necessity.
Visit our New Directory: Museum of Modern Books Directory of Books Featured and Reviewed Humor and Parody Directory
See Also these Yurica Report Directories Directory on the Rise of Christian Dominionism Strategies, Communication and Propanda Techniques Directory on Religious Trends