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poor man - could you even imagine 86 mother-in- laws, ouch!

"he claims to converse -- 'in the Spirit', as it were -- with Mohammed."

This calls for an expert. Andy MacIntosh to the rescue. He can explain it. It probably has something to do with the fourth law of thermodynamics...or the forth dimension. If he can't explain it because its bigger than that, bring on Wilder-Smith. He's an expert of fifths...of gin, scotch, rye, vodka, or whatever else he can get his lips around.

"There's something of a mystery here, beyond the theological dimensions to this story. As Andrew Walker reports, no-one is quite sure how Mr Bello Abubakar is able to afford so many wives."

That's the easy part. He's the one in Nigeria on the internet who tells you to put money in his bank account in Switzerland. See, he has miraculous power to cure people of their illness...if they suffer from having too much money and not enough brains.

We'll probably discover a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury saying polygamy is really just as good as monogamy.

Smasher how do you deal with the fact that the Bible supported polygamy for a very long time and some readers of the Bible to this day find support for polygamy in its pages?

Augustine
Where exactly does the bible support polygamy?

GV

Presumably Abubakar is Sufi. This would put quite some distance between Abubakar and Al-Quaeda. Which is interesting, in that I imagine that people will want to make lazy connections betweem Abubakar and Protestant fundamentalists - just as they make lazy connctions between militant Islam and Protestant fundamentalists.

GV

It appears that at times on this blog there is confusion over what the bible actively supports and therefore by implication encourages and approves of, and what is tolerated yet less than the intention of God for his people.

As for people finding support for polygamy (and anything else they might choose) in the pages of the bible, people find support for all sorts of things in all sorts of places, including the bible and other religious texts. It's called self-justification, and we are all susceptible to it.

Polygamy? How many wives did Solomon have? Are gveale and peter seriously arguing that polygamy was disapproved of in the bible??

Polygamy was simply accepted as obvious in the bible; the punters who wrote it had no idea that monogamy was going to be introduced by the Greeks much later. Similarly, slavery was accepted - they didn't have a clue. Why should we expect them to? They were just humans, living in their own culture. Today we know better. It's not as it the bible is the revealed word of god or anything like that...

Solomon, from memory, had a number of concubines too. None of this signals divine approval.

Helio, I never cease to be amazed at the vast number of ways in which you can make the same point!

Of course expecting the people of the ancient near east to have a future view of Israel, the church and the gentiles would be reasonably dim. They *were* just humans, living in their own culture, but this is no basis for rejecting the concept of revelation.

A number of years back however my three year old had a much better reason for dismissing the bible as the revealed word. He said, after hearing a bible story somewhere, "Well mum, guess what? It turns out that Jesus is a sheep." Now if that were true...

Peter, my point is simply that you have no basis FOR deciding that the bible (or bits of it, or whatever) is revelation from some undecidable deity. You might as well assert that Moby Dick or the Beano is revelation.

the bible is simply a human document written by humans. What do you expect?

Deuteronomy 17 v17 states explicitly that the King should not multiply wives. (The Deuteronomist wrote his history prior to Alexander's invasion of the East, so Greek influence is extremely unlikely).
1 Kings 10 -11 associates Solomon's marriages, (and his wealth) with the origin of Judah's political problems. David's personal tragedies result from polygamous marriages.
Augustine should have built a case from Levirate marriages. They are the only example of the Bible approving of polygamous marriages. But they were certainly not meant to be the norm for Israelites, and are tied in to Israel's realtionship with the Land, as well as being a means of providing social welfare to widows.

G Veale

Peter, Graham:

In Genesis 4:19, "Lamech married two women…".
Several prominent men in the Old Testament were polygamists. Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, and others all had multiple wives.
In 1 Kings 11:3, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (wives of a lower status). Solomon clearly outspouses Bello Abubaka.

In Exodus 21:10, after giving him the 10 Commandments, "God spoke unto Moses" that aÌýman can marry an infinite amount of women.
In 2 Samuel 5:13; 1 Chronicles 3:1-9, 14:3, David had six wives and numerous concubines.
In 2 Chronicles 11:21, King Solomon's son Rehoboam had 18 wives and 60 concubines.
In Deuteronomy 21:15 "If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons...".

Peter, Graham, does God approve of polygamy or not, in your opinion? After all, you both are pretty certain he disapproves of gay sex. But it does seem that polygamy, whatever he thinks of it, is not exactly an 'abomination', like homosexuality. In other words, it's ok, or 'tolerable', for a man to have sex with as many women as he wants, but not ok for a women to have sex with as many men as she wants, or for one man to love even one other man or one woman to love one other woman. In other words, the Bible is both sexist and homophobic.

I never cease to be amazed at the vast number of 'ingenious' ways in which you two avoid answering basic questions. Are you saying that nothing that happens in the Bible can be taken as indicating divine approval? In which case, how on earth can we tell what is 'revelation' and what isn’t? Is the Flood a Revelation? Is the order to slaughter the Amalekites a revelation? Is saying gay sex is an abomination a revelation or just a prejudiced nomad's opinion? Is Jesus walking on water a revelation? Is the crucifixion itself a revelation? After all, logically it makes no sense whatsoever: God killing himself to atone for the sins he himself has given us in the first place? It’s just as ridiculous as the notion that there are 'four corners' of the earth, or that 'the sun stood still and the moon stopped' in Joshua, yet you both dismiss one as of its time while the other becomes a divine act. S’truth!

Perhaps God might have made it clearer to us which bits in his inspired book were ignorant garbage and which bits revelation. As it is, you two are very adept at claiming what you want as either the thoughts or actions of highly fallible ancient desert nomads or as the divine word of an omnipotent, omniscient, all-benevolent deity. Heliopolitan is correct: I could claim that the Beano is divine revelation and pick out bits of the stories to 'prove' it and ignore the real deeds of Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx or the Bash Street Kids (the Beano was my favourite comic as a kid because it oozed a certain fiesty independence and anarchy).

Take an example. For more than a thousand years clerics told us that disease was caused by 'demon possession', because it stated it in the Bible. Now, unabashed by this wilful stupidity and ignorance, they're still lecturing the medical profession about the sinfulness of 'playing God' (though every time we shave we cut off whiskers that God clearly wants us to have because he presumably keeps replacing them); claiming that it is especially sinful to investigate genetic modification, to work on embryonic stem cells, to tackle AIDS with condoms or to undertake sex-change operations, in-vitro fertilisation, surrogate motherhood, medically assisted reproduction or therapeutic cloning, to mention just a few such taboos. If religious busybodies could be prevented from interfering in temporal matters that they don't understand, scientists would be freer to address some of our real problems such as overpopulation, malnutrition, and global overheating.

David Mills (in his book Atheist Universe) suggests that Christianity stifled l500 years of progress, and that but for Christian oppression and persecution, man might have landed on the moon and cancer might have been eradicated five hundred years ago.

Of course, this still doesn't matter at all to some Christians. God revealed himself through Paul: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:19); "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise" (1 Corinthians 1:27); "For the wisdom of the world is folly with God" (1 Corinthians 3:18-19); "Blessed are those that have not seen and have believed".

It would seem that God approves of the ignorance and gullibility displayed by ancient tribesmen. And he is not too hard on them if their kings do have 300 wives. After all, it is much preferable to the 'abomination' of having one man.

H
I have provided arguments for the reliability of New Testament traditions about Christ, and evidence that he was more than a holy man or teacher. He provides, and is, a Revelation from God. (Your reply seemed to be -" Bart Ehrman doesn't think so", which remains underwhelming). Jesus is the central authoritative figure in Christianity; he demanded that his followers take a high view of Scripture by his teaching, and his example.
That is what I would call the evidential basis for my faith in Scripture. There is also a subjective basis. Central to the story of my life is the Gospel - which depends on the historicity of the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Resurrection. It also depends on concepts like Sin and Reconciliation. The only place that I can learn about the Gospel is Scripture.
At this point I am advancing an argument from my own personal Religious Experience, which I would describe as analogous to moral or aesthetic experiences. Of course my experiences carry no weight for anyone else, but I have to deal with them.
I would accept the findings
of my conscience so long as (i) they cohered with my other beliefs (ii) I
could find others who have had similar experiences (iii) I am sure that I am not creating the experience myself, or that others are not manipulating me and (iv) no convincing arguments can be advanced against the beliefs resulting from my moral experience. I will accept my religious experiences if they have similar merits.
I would add that I can only make sense of the world and my life through the central teachings of Scripture. Not only does Scripture cohere with the world and my experience, but in many cases it explains and provides insights and guidance. When I compare these virtues to those of Empiricism or Atomism , I judge that I am on rationally superior ground.
It also seems to me that we are in a
state of moral and intellectual paralysis until we have some sense of who we are, what values we should pursue, and what virtues we should inculcate. We need some grounding for our trust in our moral and intellectual faculties. We need a sense of significance, belonging, and hope. So we need to ground ourselves in some set of teachings if we are not to end up so unsure of who we are, that we become perpetually unable to act or believe. Scriptural faith answers these needs.
I am arguing for the authority of Scripture, not inerrancy. Scripture can be authoritaitive without being inerrant. The central themes and consistent teachings of Scripture, and the key historical events, are the basis for Scriptures authority. As an evangelical I would want to go further, but I would concede that Biblical faith does not require belief in every event recorded in the Bible, or admiration for every text. (CS Lewis, for example rejected some Psalms as barbaric, and others as Pharisaical).
Of course our worldviews need to be criticised from within and without. I should not only look for incoherence in my beliefs, but I should also ask if other Religions, or Atheism, can give a better account of the world. I do not advocate absolute fideism.
But I feel that anyone who would compare the Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Bible to the Beano would rather be flippant than engage the evidence and the philosphical issues seriously.

Graham Veale

Brian
Good to hear from you again. I couldn't find "Closing of the Western Mind", but I did find Freeman's "381 AD". It'll be a week or two before I get around to reading it, but it looks interesting.
One problem that I have with Fundamentalism us that it does not take the Bible seriously as literature. Fundamentalists decide on genre and context before they have even read the text. They also preach and teach on isolated passages or verses, pulled out of their literary context. I find that you take the same approach to Scripture Brian.
Critical scholarship -and I have to confess Brian, that I find your apparent lack of knowledge of this discipline patchy at best - draws distictions between genres. For example the historiography of the ANE had different intentions and standards than Graeco-Roman biographies. There is a difference between Wisdom literature, Apocalyptic, and Graeco Roman rhetoric. These are the insights of Critical Scholarship, not Evangelical Apologists.
So if you believe a "Deuteronomist" compiled and edited a substantial portion of the OT that included the Pentateuch and Kings, then you would not find it unreasonable to suppose that David and Solomon's marriages are presented as disastrous decisions. (The "Deuteronomist" is a hypothetical editor, working at the time of the exile, or just after. A lot of evidence supports this hypothesis). This is the outcome of critical scholarship, not evangelical apologetics.
If you had read my post, you would have seen that I talked about Levirate marriage, which explains Deut 21v15.
What followed was a rant. The case for Christianity will not collapse in the face of soundbites and popular histories. Turning up the heat and dimming the light will not change this.
Sorry to be so direct, but my grovelling apologies over a minor and insubstantial misinterpretation of one of your posts has not helped your mood. And when you are cooly critical, I learn so much more from you.

Graham Veale

By the way, has Dan Brown a translation of Exodus 21 we should all know about?

Graham:

Just one comment for the moment. You refer to focusing on isolated passages or verses, pulled out of their literary context. But what you and Peter do is to pull some gentler texts out of an ocean of murder and mayhem and make them the basis of your Christianity. You do EXACTLY what you accuse me of. That is the whole point that Helio and I are making in reference to the Beano.

Brian
Good to see you back on target.
Just two comments in reply for the moment - the murder and mayhem is a result of the Fall - from Eden and from the Covenants.
As for "gentler" texts, I've never argued that God was nice. In any case Job, the Prophets, and many of the Psalms protest at the mayhem in I AM's universe. (There's even a book called Lamentations, for crying out loud!). So we do not have a few gentle texts on one side, and murder and mayhem on the other. We have a large body of literature in the canon trying to reconcile the two.
(Your comments on Paul are perfect examples of texts pulled out of historical and literary context BTW)

GV

Graham, unfortunately you haven't really made any case at all for the authority of the bible - its authority just rests on your (well, not you personally - lots of punters of course) say-so. You agree that much of it is crap - good stuff. How do you decide *which* bits are cr_p?

We know the bible writers were humans (but usually not *which* humans), and we know that they got things wrong - the post-resurrection stories are classics, and you can read 'em for yourself - you don't need Bart Ehrman or me.

Your problem is sifting out which bits to believe, and which bits to reject. CS Lewis was right to reject some of the Psalms - dashing little ones against rocks is hardly very nice (and admitting that god can be an abusive arse at times hardly excuses this).

I am arguing for the authority of Scripture, not inerrancy. Scripture can be authoritaitive without being inerrant.

...and we're back to the Beano.

The bible is enormously interesting, for sure. But what you are doing is mapping your view of your life, based as it is on a liberal rational ethical consensus, built up over centuries of Western thought, back onto a base text that is really not worthy of it. It isn't "scripture".

-H

H
Follow the the argument.
1) I said I'm an evangelical, who would take a much higher view of scripture than Lewis. Let mw get that clear from the start.
2) I wasn't trying to prove that Scripture was authoritative - simply that it was not an irrational leap of faith to believe that it has divine authority. I dare say similar arguments could be used for the Koran, or the Upanishads. (You could throw the Beano in there if you wanted to be puerile. Don't know that it's produced any religious experiences or conversions, though).
3) Revelations produce worldviews. Central themes can be discerned. Some doctrines are more central to the "web of belief" in any religious worldview. These can be used to assess peripheral beliefs. The priority given to forgiveness, and the prohibition of murder seems to conflict with some of the Psalms. The teaching of Christ seems to conflict with the Psalmists confidence in his righteousness. Obviously the teachings of the Son of God take priority over the Psalmist's. I think Lewis was mistaken about the Psalms, but had a perfectly sensible way of sifting out what he did and did not take to be authoritative.
4) In Islam the belief in the unity of God is more central than the belief in jinn. Nibbanna is more central to Buddhism than the belief in gods and titans. To reject the part is not the same as rejecting the whole.
5) In accepting revelation rationality is not abandoned as the explanatory power and guidance given by the Worldviews produced can be compared.
6) Furthermore evidence can be sought to verify the religious experiences produced - eg. the Resurrection of Christ.
7) If the accounts coming out of Georgia at the moment do not cohere exactly, and I only have access to written accounts, can I conclude that no inavsion has taken place? Especially if some accounts seem exaggerated?
8) Actually, the resurrection accounts disagree just enough to show that they are independent. They agree enough to show that they go back to a common belief. They are odd enough to show that no attempt has been made to make them more explicable, or theologically comprehensible. These are not the product of Evangelical apologists, but liberal and critical scholars like Paula Fredriksen and Gerd Thiessen. Ehrman is a popular but peripheral figure in this field. Thiessen is an authority (if not THE authority on the Historical Jesus.)
9) Rational people of good intention can reach different conclusions over the same evidence. On the level of worldviews, much more disagreement can be expected. I wish you would keep this in mind when attempting to demolish a 2000 year old faith with cheap wisecracks.

GV

Hi Graham

Reading your posts, particularly # 14, I have a couple of comments.

You say that Jesus demanded his followers take a 'high' view of the scriptures. I am not absolutely convinced of this: I think it is fairer to say he used the Hebrew scriptures, recognised that there was treasure there, but was not afraid to set his own teaching in opposition to tradition. It seems to me he had a highly pragmatic view of scripture.

I may, of-course, be hopelessly misreading what you wrote but it seems to me that the reduction of your argument is that the scriptures are true because you want or need them to be true. Many of us who call ourselves Christians have no need of this certainty and do not experience any moral or spiritual paralysis in its absence. I, for one, have very clear opinions on right and wrong which I base on my ability to reason and my experience of a transcendent and transforming love which has often left me, as Shelly so beautifully put it, "Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!"

Portwyne
Thankyou for your comments. Some replies
1) Keep in mind, I'm not trying to prove beyond all doubt that Scripture is authoritative - merely that it is not irrational for me believe it is authoritative. I'm not taking a blind leap of faith.
2) I absolutely agree that belief in Scripture is not the only way to ground rationality or morality. It's teachings provide one way, a way that needs to be compared to others - for example your Religious Experiences of Transcendent love. But rationality and morality are not self-justifying. No philosophical proof against skepticism is available. So we need to have some sort of "faith" or "hope" that rationality and morality are not futile practices.
3) My Religious desires do factor into my argument - I think Augustine was correct - our deepest desires point us to God. I think Lewis was correct to point out that as hunger would be odd in a world without food, Religious desires would be odd in a world without God.
4) But my argument from Religious Experience does not reduce to my desires. (i) My experiences puport the existence of objectively real beings (God, Christ) events (Resurrection, Atonement) and circumstances (Salvation, Forgiveness). They go beyond my desires. (ii) In fact, sometimes the experiences are most unwelcome (eg. of Sin). (iii) That is to say my religious experience has cognitive content - it generates a set of beliefs, as well as emotions. (iv) That set of beliefs can and should be rationally evaluated. So (a) Does it cohere with my moral and aesthetic experiences? (b) Better still, does it help explain them? (c) Can it account for the religious experiences of others? (d) Do my beliefs cohere with (or better still explain) the Universe I live in? (e) My set of beliefs can be checked against the findings of History. Does history falsify my set of beliefs?
5) I think I made it clear that (i) I needed to be sure that my experiences were not the result of wish fulfilment or manipulation (ii) They were formed in an appropriate manner (eg. absence of intoxicants) and (iii) That I could check my experiences against those of others.
6) As to Jesus attitude to Scripture (a)I think there is universal consent among those who study the Historical Jesus that he used the OT to justify his teachings on the Kingdom. The OT was used to give his teachings authority.
(b) He also claimed the right to interpret the OT authoritatively and
(c) He put his own teachings on a par with the OT. Hence the NT. This is not a pragmatic use of Scripture, but rather a claim to authority.
(d) I would further add that Jesus is increasingly seen as a figure within, not opposing, Judaism. This makes it highly unlikely that he did not take the Torah as God's words. It does make it very surprisng that he put his own teaching on the same level. This is a fact that calls out for explanation.

G Veale

Sorry about the length of that post. Bad even by my standards.

Graham

I have been reading some of your recent posts made me absente and your last point rather neatly ties-in with another issue I wished to raise - the matter of Dr Myers to whom you refer on the 'Pornography without sex' thread.

You have said that Jesus is increasingly seen as a figure within and not opposed to Judaism. Possibly that is so though I am again not wholly convinced. What is certain is that effectively he set out to subvert / fulfil (pick your verb according to perspective) the Mosaic law. In so doing he did not pull his punches, he did not try to avoid offending delicate sensibilities. Imagine the effect of saying "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8 v.58) to an orthodox Jew even today - the response was, and is, predictable. In a nation obsessed with Sabbath observance imagine letting your disciples casually pick corn on the Holy day (Mark 2 vv. 23-28) - surely you would agree it was calculated to make a point - dramatically, effectively, offensively.

Viewed in this context I would contend that an accurate description of Dr Myers actions would be 'Christlike'.

Some of us do not believe there is such a thing as blasphemy and I must confess I was horrified by your assertion that "...it was perhaps the most evil act a person could commit within the law." (post # 22 Pornography without sex'). I do not see it as evil at all whereas, if I were to catalogue evil under the law in contemporary society *I* would view Mrs Robinson's incitement of gay and lesbian people to self-hatred as being right up there among the most evil actions a person might legally commit.

Portwyne,
I'll try to show that Jesus did not attempt to subvert Israel's holy writings on this thread, and deal with the other issues on the PZ thread.
1) Israel's views on the Sabbath were not monolithic. Furthermore, whilst Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes may have had strict rules on the Sabbath, that does not mean that they had convinced every Israelite. The Pharisees show some frustration with the people of the land, and Galileans in particular. A sabbath obsessed" nation is quite a leap from the evidence.
2) Furthermore, Jesus placed human need above traditions about the Sabbath (traditions as to what constituted work). There is no evidence that he disregarded the Sabbath altogether, or did not consider it holy. He simply had a list of priorities.
3) Similarly, he paid the Temple tax, even though it was not, in his eyes, an obligation, and pronounced lepers clean, yet insisted that they be inspected by the Priest. He stated that external things do not make one unclean - but provided no further instruction to his disciples regarding food laws. The evidence is that Jewish Christians in Jerusalem continued to observe the traditions of their people.
4) The Torah is not coextensive with the Mosaic law. There is a "before" and "after" to consider as well.
(a) Before the Law was given righteousness was possible (Job). There was a natural order that revealed something of God's will. Jewish Wisdom theology (Job, Proverbs, Ben Sirach) was based on a rational reflection on the creation order.
(b)There was also the "after" - a New Covenant and Messianic Age promised by the prophets. In this age, the realtionship to the Law would be different. (Jer 31).
(c) So it was possible to move beyond the requirements of the Law, and stay within the confines of Jewish theology.
5) Of course if the Messianic age began with Jesus, then a rethinking of Israel's relationship to the Law of Moses might be called for.
6) Jesus was only blaspheming if he was wrong.
7) But, yes, there is an implicit claim to divinty in Jesus' teaching and actions. Again, this is stated in a very Jewish way, and rather than subverting the Jewish Scriptures, Jesus' claims seek to fulfill them. "You shall have no king but God" was Israel's hope - yet there was also an expectation of a human messiah. Read Ezekiel 34, for example, and look at how the hope moves from God as Israel's only shepherd, to the hope for a Davidic shepherd. Jesus combined the two hopes in his own ministry and mission. This is not a Hellenistic incursion into Jewish thought, but rather an working out of Israels hopes engendered by their Scriptures.