Religious Ignorance – Part 2

Actually, that's not in the Bible – by John Blake, CNN

(CNN) – NFL legend Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible.

“Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season. “This, too, shall pass.”

Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. The phrase “This, too, shall pass” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Ditka was quoting a phantom scripture that sounds like it belongs in the Bible, but look closer and it’s not there.

Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. The Bible may be the most revered book in America, but it’s also one of the most misquoted. Politicians, motivational speakers, coaches - all types of people - quote passages that actually have no place in the Bible, religious scholars say.

These phantom passages include:

“God helps those who help themselves.”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

And there is this often-cited paraphrase: Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.

None of those passages appear in the Bible, and one is actually anti-biblical, scholars say.

But people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better, says Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

“In my college religion classes, I sometimes quote 2 Hesitations 4:3 (‘there are no internal combustion engines in heaven’),” Bouma-Prediger says. “I wait to see if anyone realizes that there is no such book in the Bible and therefore no such verse.

“Only a few catch on.”

Few catch on because they don’t want to - people prefer knowing biblical passages that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, a Bible professor says.

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs.

“They have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in,” he says, “but they ignore the vast majority of the text."

Phantom biblical passages work in mysterious ways. Ignorance isn’t the only cause for phantom Bible verses. Confusion is another.

Some of the most popular faux verses are pithy paraphrases of biblical concepts or bits of folk wisdom.

Consider these two:

“God works in mysterious ways.”

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

Both sound as if they are taken from the Bible, but they’re not. The first is a paraphrase of a 19th century hymn by the English poet William Cowper (“God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform).

The “cleanliness” passage was coined by John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist who founded Methodism, says Thomas Kidd, a history professor at Baylor University in Texas.

“No matter if John Wesley or someone else came up with a wise saying - if it sounds proverbish, people figure it must come from the Bible,” Kidd says.

Our fondness for the short and tweet-worthy may also explain our fondness for phantom biblical phrases. The pseudo-verses function like theological tweets: They’re pithy summarizations of biblical concepts.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child” falls into that category. It’s a popular verse - and painful for many kids. Could some enterprising kid avoid the rod by pointing out to his mother that it's not in the Bible?

It’s doubtful. Her possible retort: The popular saying is a distillation of Proverbs 13:24: “The one who withholds [or spares] the rod is one who hates his son.”

Another saying that sounds Bible-worthy: “Pride goes before a fall.” But its approximation, Proverbs 16:18, is actually written: “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

There are some phantom biblical verses for which no excuse can be offered. The speaker goofed.

That’s what Bruce Wells, a theology professor, thinks happened to Ditka, the former NFL coach, when he strayed from the gridiron to biblical commentary during his 1993 press conference in Chicago.

Wells watched Ditka’s biblical blunder on local television when he lived in Chicago. After Ditka cited the mysterious passage, reporters scrambled unsuccessfully the next day to find the biblical source.

They should have consulted Wells, who is now director of the ancient studies program at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania. Wells says Ditka’s error probably came from a peculiar feature of the King James Bible.

“My hunch on the Ditka quote is that it comes from a quirk of the King James translation,” Wells says. “Ancient Hebrew had a particular way of saying things like, ‘and the next thing that happened was…’ The King James translators of the Old Testament consistently rendered this as ‘and it came to pass.’ ’’

When phantom Bible passages turn dangerous

People may get verses wrong, but they also mangle plenty of well-known biblical stories as well.

Two examples: The scripture never says a whale swallowed Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, nor did any New Testament passages say that three wise men visited baby Jesus, scholars say.

Those details may seem minor, but scholars say one popular phantom Bible story stands above the rest: The Genesis story about the fall of humanity.

Most people know the popular version - Satan in the guise of a serpent tempts Eve to pick the forbidden apple from the Tree of Life. It’s been downhill ever since.

But the story in the book of Genesis never places Satan in the Garden of Eden.

“Genesis mentions nothing but a serpent,” says Kevin Dunn, chair of the department of religion at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“Not only does the text not mention Satan, the very idea of Satan as a devilish tempter postdates the composition of the Garden of Eden story by at least 500 years,” Dunn says.

Getting biblical scriptures and stories wrong may not seem significant, but it can become dangerous, one scholar says.

Most people have heard this one: “God helps those that help themselves.” It’s another phantom scripture that appears nowhere in the Bible, but many people think it does. It's actually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation's founding fathers.

The passage is popular in part because it is a reflection of cherished American values: individual liberty and self-reliance, says Sidnie White Crawford, a religious studies scholar at the University of Nebraska.

Yet that passage contradicts the biblical definition of goodness: defining one’s worth by what one does for others, like the poor and the outcast, Crawford says.

Crawford cites a scripture from Leviticus that tells people that when they harvest the land, they should leave some “for the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:9-10), and another passage from Deuteronomy that declares that people should not be “tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.”

“We often infect the Bible with our own values and morals, not asking what the Bible’s values and morals really are,” Crawford says.

Where do these phantom passages come from?

It’s easy to blame the spread of phantom biblical passages on pervasive biblical illiteracy. But the causes are varied and go back centuries.

Some of the guilty parties are anonymous, lost to history. They are artists and storytellers who over the years embellished biblical stories and passages with their own twists.

If, say, you were an anonymous artist painting the Garden of Eden during the Renaissance, why not portray the serpent as the devil to give some punch to your creation? And if you’re a preacher telling a story about Jonah, doesn’t it just sound better to say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, not a “great fish”?

Others blame the spread of phantom Bible passages on King James, or more specifically the declining popularity of the King James translation of the Bible.

That translation, which marks 400 years of existence this year, had a near monopoly on the Bible market as recently as 50 years ago, says Douglas Jacobsen, a professor of church history and theology at Messiah College in Pennsylvania.

“If you quoted the Bible and got it wrong then, people were more likely to notice because there was only one text,” he says. “Today, so many different translations are used that almost no one can tell for sure if something supposedly from the Bible is being quoted accurately or not.”

Others blame the spread of phantom biblical verses on Martin Luther, the German monk who ignited the Protestant Reformation, the massive “protest” against the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church that led to the formation of Protestant church denominations.

“It is a great Protestant tradition for anyone - milkmaid, cobbler, or innkeeper - to be able to pick up the Bible and read for herself. No need for a highly trained scholar or cleric to walk a lay person through the text,” says Craig Hazen, director of the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University in Southern California.

But often the milkmaid, the cobbler - and the NFL coach - start creating biblical passages without the guidance of biblical experts, he says.

“You can see this manifest today in living room Bible studies across North America where lovely Christian people, with no training whatsoever, drink decaf, eat brownies and ask each other, ‘What does this text mean to you?’’’ Hazen says.

“Not only do they get the interpretation wrong, but very often end up quoting verses that really aren’t there.”

TJA

Faith without Reason: Introduction

Introduction

The following is a preamble to a series of essays that will explore the subjects of belief, religion, theology, Christianity and the Bible from a modern academic perspective that will focus on the rational for religious beliefs. The faith of all believers generally evolves over time and this movement is commonly referred to as one’s spiritual journey. The general thesis of these essays is that while a person generally knows what they believe they don’t always know why or how they came to their beliefs; the rationale lost somewhere in the evolution of beliefs over time.

Some may wonder why these essays were written and published on this website. First, while I consider myself a scholar I hold no academic degrees in divinity, theology, bible or religious studies. One reason for writing these essays is simply to enhance my own learning. It is one thing to read and study something but another to compile, organize and record learning's and thoughts onto paper. In an early career as a teacher I was responsible for not only creating a course curriculum but also designing lessons that fit the curriculum. This required much research, reading and study but the greatest challenge in the learning process was organizing the information into a format that could be used to effectively teach others. The best way to learn is to teach. My hope is that others will benefit from my studies.

I came to the study of these disciplines simply as a student who wanted to learn more about his faith and to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of both the history of the Bible and Christianity; subjects that are rarely if ever touched upon in church liturgies, homilies, catechism classes or adult Bible studies. When I began my study I did so without skepticism or cynicism, I simply wanted to find answers to several questions that could be answered with research, like for example, how the early Church Fathers influenced the Christian faith and who wrote the Bible, when and why. I wanted to better understand the various philosophical theories of religious beliefs about God knowing that they were just that, theories that were speculative at best. I was also interested in the most current findings of professional academic scholars. It did not take long to discover some rather controversial findings of many credible scholars that I was totally unaware; conclusions that question key doctrines of faith that apparently have been known by scholars and theologians for decades.

The Cat Is Out of the Bag

The theological academy has had a long history of keeping their biblical research relatively private and not easily accessible to the lay public. This is common practice in most scholarly circles, especially in the science disciplines of study. However, in the last couple of decades many noted professional bible scholars have broken their fraternal silence and have begun freely publishing some of their research in books targeting the public, to the chagrin of the academic community and organized religion. Some of the research material extracted from these publications would be considered heretical to most traditional Christians, challenging the core doctrines of Christian beliefs, and if proven true, would shake the very foundations of the Christian faith. Several examples: 1) Jesus did not claim to be the messiah or to be divine 2) Jesus did not demand that people “believe in” him or worship him 3) Jesus did not intend to establish a church or found a new religion 4) Jesus did not believe that his death would be a sacrifice for sins 5) There is no historical evidence that Jesus had no human father 6) There is no historical evidence that Jesus’ corpse came back to life. Most of these assertions are in direct conflict to the established creeds of the Christian Church.

These findings would surprise, even shock, most churchgoers yet they represent a broad consensus of mainstream critical scholarship. Uncovering this information can be a difficult challenge because it is generally hidden deep within scholarly textbooks using theological terms unfamiliar to the average person, so the dissemination of new facts is slow to reach the public. While many traditional Christian apologists take issue with these findings the evidence against the orthodox traditional scriptural interpretation is substantial. One thing for sure, you most certainly will not hear mainstream Christian clergy bringing up these controversial issues or referring to them in public services and liturgies. I was anxious to understand the rationale behind these assertions.

The obvious question, why hasn’t this information been revealed to the general public by the Christian Church? It motivated me to dig deeper in an attempt to validate the credibility of some of these claims. While I found that some scholars disagreed with the findings, I could not invalidate the assertions. Obviously, a lot depends upon the professional integrity of not only the scholars involved but also the verity of their work as judged by their peers in the academic community. Another reason for writing these essays is to reveal these claims and to discuss their implications.

Reasons for Non-disclosure
 
Through the centuries religious scholars and theologians have learned a great deal about both the history of Christianity and the Bible, but for several reasons, this information was not shared with the general public. One reason, as alluded to earlier, is that most of the research findings of scholars were only accessible to other professional scholars in the academic community in the form of published journals, papers and textbooks. It was not generally shared with the public because the average untrained person would not know where to go to access it, and if they did, it was too difficult to understand the glossary of terms that academic scholars use or the various disciplines of study and methodologies employed in conducting research. The same is true with other professional subjects like medicine for example. The average untrained individual would find it extremely difficult to read and comprehend a professional journal or textbook of medicine written for and by medical doctors.

However, this code of secrecy among professional biblical and theological scholars began to break down over the past two decades when a few religious scholars began publishing their research findings targeting the general public. This required each author to present his or her material in ways that the untrained layperson could comprehend. It finally dawned on religious academic scholars that they could not only enlighten the general public with new information but they could also make a profit in writing and publishing books. This is also a popular trend for many other professional disciplines of study. The advent of the Internet has also provided a vehicle for the general public to acquire new resource and research information that otherwise would have been difficult to obtain in the not too distant past. However, while the Internet can be a resource of information one must be extremely careful in discerning what information is credible and which information is not.

Another more ominous reason why important information has been suppressed from the general public is that different elements of organized Christianity would prefer that lay folks not know the truth; unfortunately in this day and age it seems that there are many factions that have an agenda that make it even more difficult to discover the truth. If the average lay person knew the truth then this new information would not only undermine the authority of the church but may also threaten its very existence. While many Christian churches conduct Bible studies most of these courses purposely omit the findings of prominent academic scholars and theologians, and as mentioned earlier, little or no information is given about the history of Christianity or the Bible. The church knows that the average lay person will not go to the trouble of conducting their own comprehensive study of Christianity and the Bible because it would require a substantial effort to access, read, study, interpret and comprehend a variety of complex academic textbooks, journals and papers written by professional scholars. Fortunately, several new progressive Christian Churches have surfaced that are eager to share current research on the history of Christianity and the Bible with their congregations, and for them facts and the truth are essential in having a credible foundation for their beliefs. They want their faith grounded in reason and not in conflict with modern science.

Another reason why this information is not distributed to the public is that many fundamentalists’ Christian Churches reject any and all new information learned about the Bible because they believe the Bible is and always has been the infallible, inerrant and literal word of God. They often employ a ‘circular fallacy’ by using the Bible to justify itself…everything in the Bible is true because the Bible says so.

There is yet another less sinister and perhaps more altruistic motive for keeping the status-quo in religious education and that is simply not to undermine the overwhelming current belief and ‘faith’ that people have in God. Many believers don’t want anything to change because new insights might challenge their own sense of security. Many denominational churches are well aware of this and as a result do not want to ‘rock-the-boat’ so to speak because they may risk losing membership.

On top of this a new troubling trend in Christianity is developing, and that is people, generally the later generations, are slowly moving away from their faith.

TJA

The Religious Knowledge Void

Religious Knowledge Survey

In 2010 the PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life published a “U.S. Religious knowledge Survey”. The following was the intro to the survey: “In his 2007 book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – And Doesn’t, Boston University professor Stephen Prothero wrote that “Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion.” “To support his contention, Prothero offered many compelling anecdotes and some isolated findings from public opinion polls. He also cited a few studies about the extent of biblical literacy among young people. But, as he discovered, there was no comprehensive, national survey assessing the general state of religious knowledge among U.S. adults. To address this gap, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life set out to gauge what Americans know about their own faiths and about other religions. The resulting survey covered a wide range of topics, including the beliefs and practices of major religious traditions as well as the role of religion in American history and public life. Based on an analysis of answers from more than 3,400 people to 32 religious knowledge questions, this report attempts to provide a baseline measurement of how much Americans know about religion today.”

Executive Summary

“Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 (50%) religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 (65%) correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 (64%) and 20.3 (63%) correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 (50%) correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7 (46%). Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.

On questions about Christianity – including a battery of questions about the Bible – Mormons (7.9 out of 12 [66%] right on average) and white evangelical Protestants (7.3 [61%] correct on average) show the highest levels of knowledge. Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism; out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answer 7.9 [72%] correctly (nearly three better than the national average) and atheists/agnostics answer 7.5 [68%] correctly (2.5 better than the national average). Atheists/agnostics and Jews also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion.”

A 2013 PEW survey indicated that “the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.” It also said “with few exceptions, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.” It appears that not only is there a growing ignorance in religious knowledge in the America but also a growing apathy in religious beliefs, especially among the younger generations.

Faith Legacy

Most Christians inherit their faith from their parents and it is reinforced by church attendance, if church attendance diminishes then so does the indoctrination and reinforcement. For the majority of believers the only Christian education they experience is via Sunday school and listening to the homilies and liturgies taught by clergy during church services and by watching religious documentaries and epic movies on television aired during the Easter and Christmas holiday seasons. Surveys suggest that while the Bible is the best-selling book of all times it is also the least read. A recent 2014 nationwide survey of over 2,000 participants commissioned by the American Bible Society found that only 37% of those who owned bibles read them and that 26% of all American adults never read the Bible. Perhaps more telling is that 39% of Millennials (age 18-29) never read the Bible.

A previous religious PEW survey taken in the U.S.A. indicated that while most people have read parts of the Bible, few have read it in its entirety cover to cover. While one can only speculate as to the possible causes for this phenomenon the following reasons seem probable. The bible is filled with stories that are difficult to read and understand literally or figuratively and appear to represent ancient renderings or interpretations of God. People have a tough time relating to ancient civilizations in far-off regions of the world. People are growing weary of a slow evolving and unchanging religion that is founded on man-made creeds and rituals frozen in time; faith born out of supernaturalism and superstition out-of-sync with modern knowledge, science and reality; a faith that relies on antediluvian tribal beliefs.

Faith without Reason

If you believe that our beliefs define who and what we are as individuals and collectively as a human race then there is nothing more important than our beliefs. Because of their importance and how they influence our behaviors it is critical that they are grounded in ‘reason’. We can certainly believe that our beliefs are grounded in ‘truth’ but the actual truthfulness of faith is a difficult claim to measure or substantiate. However, most would agree that trust, confidence and loyalty in anything doesn’t just happen without at least a presumption of truth. Religious believers don’t come to their beliefs without reasons for their beliefs.

Even though a person’s beliefs are born out of a presumption of truth they are also generally born in a vacuum, in that they were either inspired by or inherited from parents who hail from or live in a particular country or region of the world. These beliefs are strongly influenced by that country’s prevailing faith, ethnicity and culture. Chances are you would inherit the predominate faith of that particular nation or region of the world. The other factor that is often overlooked is that the average child is generally initiated, indoctrinated and possibly baptized into a religion without a choice. The bottom line is that we are essentially born with a bias. Yes, we can eventually change our minds and broaden our perspectives as we mature; however converting to a different faith tradition other than what we were born into is the exception rather than the rule. Protestant Christians may choose to move from one denominational church to another but generally stay Christian. Unfortunately, most individuals are ignorant about faith traditions other than their own, and have little interest in learning about other religions once their own faith is established.

The word ‘faith’ has essentially four meanings. It can mean an unquestioning belief in something but especially God or a religion. It can be used as a synonym for the word religion. It can mean a complete trust or confidence, and finally it can merely mean loyalty. In the phrase “faith without reason”, the word ‘faith’ is a synonym for religion but can apply to all four definitions. It simply suggests that credible religious beliefs should at minimum require sound reasoning. The elements of faith, trust, confidence and loyalty in a person or belief are generally earned. In the case of religion, it is attempting to discern fact from fiction, myth from reality, and faith from fallacy; it is a quest for truth.

TJA