And He Became a Living Soul

I do not write in this blog very much about abortion, since I do not fully understand the issues. But I heard an interesting news report from South Carolina. Anti-abortion protestors stand at the top of the escalator in front of state senators’ offices and accost democratic senators who did not support the total ban on abortion that has just passed. Women senators have had objects slapped onto their backs, and protestors have sent children to run up to them and beg them to stop killing kids. If progressive protestors did this to Republican senators, for example regarding the death of the environment on which our lives depend, they would be jailed.

In one case, a Democratic senator knew more about the Bible than did the protestor. The protestor screamed that the Bible says abortion is murder. The senator, a woman, quoted the Bible back to him. Genesis 2:7 says that Adam became a living soul after God had breathed into him the breath of life. This implies that before a newborn breathes, it is not yet a living soul. Of course, nobody believes abortion is ethical right up to the moment of birth.

Genesis implies, but does not prove, that a fetus is NOT alive. The point is that this interpretation is just as valid as the other interpretations that the anti-abortion activists put upon it. The so-called Christian activists insist that their interpretation, and theirs alone, is correct. They will not permit anyone else to interpret scripture. Apparently God speaks through the Republican party, not through the Bible.

Only Republicans think they have the right to interpret the Bible. The Bible is their weapon, and nobody else can lay a finger on it. God is their God, not the God of the rest of us. Puh-raise Trump!

Why Genesis is Wrong, Even Figuratively, Part Two: Male and Female Created He Them

The second reason that I consider Genesis to be wrong, even when interpreted figuratively, is that Genesis 1 is all about strict and absolute categories. The most popular figurative interpretation of Genesis 1, known as the Framework Hypothesis, explains the days of Genesis as categories for classifying the universe. On the first three “days,” got sets chaos into order; on the second three “days,” he fills them up. Days 1 and 4 are about the heavenly realm: light and darkness made distinct, then filled with sun, moon, and stars. Days 2 and 5 are about the fluid realm: air and sea made distinct, then filled with fishes and birds. Days 3 and 6 are about the solid earth: land and sea made distinct, then land filled with creeping things, one of which was humankind.

This is a nice figure, but we must not take it too seriously. There is no absolute distinction between light and darkness, atmosphere and outer space, land and sea. The world also has dawn and dusk, penumbra, an exosphere that intergrades without boundary into outer space, a world of marshes and estuaries.

Genesis also says that organisms reproduce after their kind. In general, this is true. Species are not simply useful categories of organisms but are realities. Still, the boundaries among species are sometimes indistinct. As a botanist, I will use a plant example. For example, Quercus stellata (post oak) and Quercus macrocarpa (bur oak) are distinct species, but there are a few regions in which they hybridize, producing a hybrid known as Quercus x guadalupensis. The hybrids are rare and, presumably, less specialized than the parents; they probably cannot grow as well in dry as do post oaks, or soil as moist as do bur oaks. Rare though they be, they exist. There are many hybrids between different species of the same genus in plants, and, among orchids, even between different genera.

Genesis 1 also makes an absolute distinction between male and female. This distinction is useless for plants (but Genesis 1 does not apply it to plants). But even in animals, the male-female distinction is imperfect. Whole phyla of animals (for example the phyla that contain snails and earthworms) consist largely of bisexual individuals. In some fish species, individuals may grow up as females then, when they are large enough to be successful fighters, they change into males. Moreover, the natural world contains ambiguity of sexual behavior. Homosexuality is very common in many animal species, where it functions as social bonding (since it obviously has no reproductive function).

The male-female distinction is imperfect in the human species as well. Most individuals are heterosexual males or females. But many humans are gay or lesbian or bisexual. Speaking as a very, very heterosexual male, I admit I cannot understand these people’s feelings, but I acknowledge them and I accept them. I accept their testimony about themselves. They tell me nature has made them so and it is not a choice they made. In particular, there is no small number of people who are physically one gender and psychologically another. Many Native American tribes have long recognized the legitimacy of men who assume female identities: formerly called berdache, this identity is now called “two-spirit.”

There are some people who are born as little girls and then, at puberty, turn into young men. This happens because the gene that produces juvenile testosterone function is blocked, with the result that they develop as little girls. However, their adult testosterone function works fine, and they develop male characteristics at puberty. Of course, they cannot completely turn into men; they retain many feminine characteristics as adult males. The Dominican village in which this commonly occurs refers to them as a third gender: guevedoce, or eggs-at-twelve. A similar phenomenon occurs in Papua New Guinea, where these individuals are called, in pidgin, turnim-men. Nature does this to them, their chromosomes do this to them, and scientists knowexactly how.

The absolute categorizations of the universe that are implied in even a figurative reading of Genesis 1 are therefore imperfect. This does not present any great problem unless you are a creationist or a fundamentalist. Creationists insist that “after their kind” means that evolution cannot occur. This is based on taking “after their kind” too seriously. Fundamentalists insist that all humans are either male, or female, or deviants who must be restricted or punished in some way. This is based on taking the phrase “male and female created he them” too seriously. One example of this is a certain state-funded university whose academic vice president rejected the tenure application of a transgender woman on religious grounds. At this point, Genesis 1 becomes an oppressive and oppressing chapter of scripture, even if no attempt is made to force Earth history into a six-day schedule.

The Cannons of Canonicity

Conservative Christians, such as those among whom Frank Schaeffer used to operate (see previous entry), claim that the Bible is the supreme source of authority. But this is not really the case at all. I will explain three ways in which this is so.

First, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which books should be included within the New Testament “canon.” For centuries after Jesus, there was dispute among different factions concerning which books should be included. “The New Testament” consists of 27 books that one of these factions eventually chose for inclusion. But even in this faction, which eventually became “The Church,” there was a little disagreement. The first list that has all 27 books, and only those books, that was “universally” accepted was the list prepared by Athanasius in 327 CE. Athanasius was one of the men chosen by Emperor Constantine to help resolve disputes within the church that Constantine had joined and which became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (See Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted for more information.) Therefore, the authority of this list largely depends on the authority of Constantine. While he was far from being the worst Roman emperor, he was by no means someone who would be considered godly by today’s self-appointed Christian leaders. For example he had his wife Fausta and his son Crispus executed as political opponents. Before he was emperor he had vanquished Frankish kings and troops fed to beasts as entertainment. He had the decomposing body of a challenger, Maxentius, fished out of the Tiber and decapitated, and then had the head sent to Carthage. At about the same time that he was building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he also built a pagan monument, the Arch of Constantine. He was not baptized until just before he died. Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them,” but the life of Constantine was not particularly holy—not enough to give him the authority to have established by decree which books should be in the New Testament. So conservative Christians apparently accept Constantine as the supreme authority, since he (as Emperor) determined the canon.

Second, there is no clear “revelation from God” as to which exact wording should be accepted for the canonical books. There are several versions of each of the New Testament books, and it is not clear which, if any, is original. It is difficult to believe in “the exact words of Jesus” when the gospels that are in the Bible today, and the ancient variations of those gospels, contain words that are not exactly the same. Many fundamentalists solve the problem by simply declaring that the 1611 King James Version is the true Bible. What about all of those years before King James? Well, I guess those people had no hope of being Bible-believing Christians. King James I was not a particularly bad king, but he was not someone whom modern conservatives would consider to be a good one either. He initiated the first formal series of witch hunts in Scotland. Conservative Christians believe his version of the Bible but not, apparently, his book Daemonologie. Perhaps most astonishingly, conservative Christians embrace his version of the Bible yet overlook the clear possibility of King James’ homosexual relationships. Conservative Christians consider homosexuality to be the worst thing in the world, worse even than murder and torture and rape. There were rumors throughout James’ life of his affairs with male courtiers such as Esmé Stewart, later Duke of Lennox; Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A restoration of one of James’ palaces in 2004-2008 revealed a previously secret passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers. Perhaps, to conservative Christians, James’ homosexuality is made up for by his affair with Anne Murray (not the singer, but Lady Glamis). King James was most likely a practitioner of a lifestyle that conservative Christians consider most despicable, yet they base their faith on the Bible translation that he commissioned. James’ express purpose in having this translation done was to establish the divine right of kings. James was particularly bothered by egalitarian Presbyterians; he said of them, as I recall reading someplace, that “every Tom, Dick, and Harry tell me and my council what to do.”

[But you have to grant that King James got one thing right. He considered smoking to be morally bad and unhealthy. Here is a quote from a treatise he wrote in 1604: “Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in contemp; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”]

Third, there is no clear guide as to how the Bible should be interpreted. Each conservative Christian leader considers himself or herself to be the ultimate authority on how to interpret them. I do not have time here to mention the numerous ethical offenses of leading Christian Right preachers of the present day.

If we are to accept Constantine, or King James, or Christian preachers as authorities for what to believe about the Bible, then their lives should (as Jesus said) be exemplary. They were not and are not. Instead, Christian preachers merely enforce their own preferences about the Bible by sheer force—the cannons of canonicity.