Gavin M. over at Sadly, No! is a champ with the "Shorter..." motif, and gives us his take on Marsha West's screed against John Edward. I am terrible at making anything shorter, but I don't really see a need to go into too much detail about this batshit piece of muddled paranoia. There's just one part of it that reminds me of an issue I often have with Christians who continue to use biblical passages to rail against witchcraft, and I feel compelled to share.
For the record, I believe pretty firmly that John Edward is full of crap. He's a great showman, which is fine so far as it goes, but his brand of terribly sincere world-wisdom reads to me more as charlatan than seer. This, however, does not cause me to agree in the least with Marsha, who gives the following lesson on why John Edwards is obviously in league with Satan.
"When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead" (Deuteronomy 18:9-11).
Could God be any clearer than that?
The Greek term used for contacting the dead is "necromancy." According to Wikipedia.com, "Necromancy is a form of divination in which the practitioner seeks to summon 'operative spirits' or 'spirits of divination,' for multiple reasons, from spiritual protection to wisdom. ... [S]ince the Renaissance, necromancy has come to be associated more broadly with black magic and demon-summoning in general, sometimes losing its earlier, more specialized meaning."
Now for the definition of witchcraft: "Witchcraft (from Old English wiccecræft "sorcery, necromancy"), in various historical, anthropological, religious and mythological contexts, is the use of certain kinds of supernatural or magical powers."
Now, I would bet that Marsha is one of those ignorant fundamentalists who believes that her chosen translation of the Bible is the actual Word of God™, superior to all other translations, including the ones it was translated from. I can't do anything with that. That's the kind of conversation-ending stupidity that fundamentalists always run to, driving rational Christians like myself crazy. But whatever. Marsha has probably already been informed that English translations of the Bible were targeted to turn people against regional pagan religions in the drive to convert England completely to Christianity, and that different translations of Hebrew words create profound differences between biblical interpretations. She can't hear that. Okay. But surely she can understand a simple timeline.Deuteronomy was not written in Greek or in Old English. Etymology does not apply, since these are not examples of language slowly changing over time but being translated from one established language to another. No matter how many links you can conjure up between the meaning of the modern word "witch" and Hebrew words like "m'khashepah", the simple fact remains that the Celtic pagan earth worship of Europe, which is what the word "witchcraft" commonly refers to, did not exist at the time Deuteronomy was written. The concept that the Old Testament references celtic paganism, or eastern mysticism for that matter, is about as believable as the concept of Jesus the carpenter giving lessons on using a table saw. Regardless of how you feel about translation, it's just not plausible based on simple chronology.
I'm always amazed that, when questioned, these people can't adequately explain why celtic pagan rituals count as witchcraft, but similar rituals of Shintoism, Hinduism, Native American religion, Kabbalah and even Christianity do not. You'd think this is something you'd have to ponder before damning the followers of a belief system.
Frankly, it's astounding how many people believe that the bible literally condemns any actual or believed communication with the dead, and yet pray to Jesus on a daily basis.
3 comments:
You mean John Edward, not the Senator, right?
Yeah, obviously. Duh. Sorry. I is idiot.
Edward, not Edwards. John Edwards is made of awesome, not full of crap.
Also, completely off topic, I totally disagree with you about gifted programs. I would elaborate, but
A) You don't allow comments
and
B) I'm not entirely in my right mind tonight.
But anyway, thanks for catching me in an embarrassing mistake. =P I will fix it immediately, and we shall pretend this never happened.
Things count as witchcraft when they could potentially undermine the "purity" of the tribe.
There is the possibility that the original purpose of the law sections of the Old Testament were supposed to be broad guidelines or standards.
I remember my formal study on the subject being that the laws were more for the purpose of sustaining a fierce tribalistic behavior into the Israelites. They were determined to be different from neighboring tribes and kingdowms and to not allow themselves to assimilate into other cultures, but have other cultures assimilate into them.
In that context, fundamentalists may actually be keeping to the original intent of the text, most likely without even realizing it. Having known and witnessed a great many fundamentalists, how many times have all of us heard them state, "We are the chosen people of God"? Tribalism lives on in a quite fierce strain among fundamentalists, recognized or not.
The purpose of the early behavioral codes were to make sure that your culture changed as little as possible. They needed to be able to resist outside enticements such as different ways of thinking, new technologies and professions until the ruling caste had their chance to look over its effects in detail. Fundamentalists (particularly lay fundamentalists) have internalized this to a reflexive degree, such that they only believe what they are told by specific people and things, and they will bend reality within the scope of their own minds to make it fit, painful or not.
Dealing with fundamentalists and reflexive conservatives is fast becoming part of daily routine up where I live now, so I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot lately. For me, it isn't important that I prove them incorrect, as most will simply refuse to acknowledge simple facts, let alone complex facts predicated on them.
Bah, there goes my tendency to digress once again- your analysis of issues of translation is good as always- but one subtlety people forget even today is that even the original language has changed in meaning from year to year. I can't tell you how many variant translations of my own religious texts have gone through- made even worse by the fact that its original language has no written form, and is itself a bastardization of another ancient (and dead) language! One of the key concepts of my own belief system, dukkha, has well over a dozen translations- most scholars conclude that none of them are complete or accurate by themselves. That however is to be expected of a belief system that has very few absolutes.
Good to see you writing regularly again; I've spent some time recently catching up on what I've missed since you're reopened your blog after moving away. Looks like most of us had a pretty rough patch there for a while. Let me know if you want to catch up on past events later. :)
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