Editor's Note: Today we will look at the Old Testament, a far more conservative document than the New Covenant. Some clergymen have pointed out that the God in the new Testament does not resemble the mean spirited one in the Old Testament at all.
Myth: The Bible is conservative.
Fact: Using the Bible to support any political ideology is highly problematic.
Summary
The New Testament is a liberal's paradise; almost every principle espoused in it is one that liberals -- not conservatives -- espouse today. (The only exceptions are its pronouncements on divorce, sexuality and slavery.) The Old Testament, however, is a conservative haven, filled with pronouncements favoring war, slavery, theocracy, monarchy, wealth accumulation, capital punishment, extreme female submission and more. Interestingly, however, the Old Testament is sexually permissive. Attempting to use the Bible to justify their modern beliefs therefore poses significant challenges to Christian conservatives.
Argument
Does the Bible really espouse conservative philosophies?
Let us briefly run through the politics of the religious right, just so the comparison will be fresh in our memory. Christian conservatives believe firmly in God, country and family.
Self-sufficiency and rugged individualism are highly esteemed qualities; people should pull themselves up their own bootstraps. Becoming rich is a keen goal and almost universally admired. Taxes are seen as a curse. Social programs for the poor are a waste of tax-payers' money, and the sort of people on those programs (mostly blacks) are lazy and given to crime.
As for criminals, they should feel the full force of the law. And that goes for international criminals as well... a nation should deal with its enemies from a position of strength, and should never be afraid to let them feel the full force of its military might.
The Old Testament is filled with philosophies that conservatives agree with today. This is, in fact, the most common conservative defense. From the condemnation of homosexuals to the praise of wealth and national defense, the Old Testament is indeed a conservative's paradise.
And Jesus himself said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them." (Matthew 5:17.) But this argument fails on a single point. If the Old Testament were still valid, we would still be obeying it. That is, Christians would still be bringing doves into the temple for slaughter upon the altar. We would still be sinning for planting two different crops in the same field, or wearing two different fabrics at once.
Even the least educated Christian knows that a profound difference occurred at the cross, and that a different set of rules came into play. Those rules can be found in the New Testament, and they are overwhelmingly liberal.
Even so, falling back on the Old Testament often backfires for Christian Conservatives. The problem is that the Old Testament goes
too far to the right. The Old Testament was not only undemocratic, it featured a monarchy. (1 Samuel 8.) Social inequality not only existed, but was embodied in slavery. In fact, it was legal to beat slaves so severely that they could not get up for a day or two. (Exodus 21:21.)
Children were not only expected to respect their parents; their parents could legally kill them if they didn't. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21.) Women not only had a submissive and inferior status to men, they were considered chattel. (Genesis 3:16, Exodus 21:7-11, Numbers 30.)
God not only ordered Israel to initiate wars of aggression, but ordered Israel to kill all captive men and non-virgin women, and to bring the virgin women into sexual slavery. (Deuteronomy 7:1,2, Numbers 31.) God even ordered the suckling infants of the enemy to be massacred. (1 Samuel 15:3.)
Interestingly, there is one area of the Old Testament that runs diametrically opposed to the conservative's most cherished values: sexuality. Of course, many conservatives frequently cite the Old Testament laws against incest, homosexuality and bestiality (Leviticus 18:6,22,23). But in almost all other sexual matters, the Old Testament is really quite permissive.
There were no laws prohibiting pre-marital and non-marital sex, and only a few stipulations to this liberty were explicitly stated. One was that if a man seduces a virgin, he must pay a bride-price and marry her. (Exodus 22:16.) However, the law says nothing about non-virgins, including divorced or widowed women. Also, a wife found guilty of adultery could be stoned to death along with her lover. (Deuteronomy 22:22.)
However, no law prevented a married man from carrying on with as many affairs as he pleased, as long as they were not with other men's wives. For a man, divorce was both legal and easy to obtain, if for no other reason that she displeased him. (Deuteronomy 24:1-4.)
Prostitution was illegal for Jewish women, but it was permitted
for foreigners. (Deuteronomy 23:17.) However, many Jewish women became prostitutes as well. The practice was widely tolerated by the authorities, and considering how many scriptural warnings were voiced against harlots, it is clear they did a thriving business.
If Christian conservatives find all this alarming, it gets worse. Polygamy was not only allowed, but King Solomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines were recorded as a matter of national pride. (1 Kings 11:3.) Concubines served the role of secondary wives; they were often, but not necessarily, purchased servants.
As for purchased female servants, male masters were allowed to have sex with them (Exodus 21:7-11), a practice which Christians defend by claiming that the rights of these slaves were "well-regulated." (!) If a male soldier found a female captive to be attractive, he could force marriage, and therefore sexual relations, on her. (Deuteronomy 21:10-14.) In modern society, this is called rape.
Except for a distinct misogyny and homophobia, the ancient Jews were generally free of sexual repression. Like most cultures and religions of the world, they celebrated heterosexual pleasure as a gift from God. This positive view is reflected in
Song of Songs, an erotic poem that even becomes sexually explicit:
"Listen! My lover is knocking: 'Open to me, my sister, my darling…' I have taken off my robe -- must I put it on again?… My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock, I opened for my lover…" (Song of Songs 5:2-6)
The sexual double entendre here is obvious, and has been the source of embarrassment and controversy to Christians for almost 2,000 years. The standard disclaimer is that the author was really describing God's relationship to his people, a view that even the ancient rabbinic scholars taught. But this is
still an embarrassment to the sexually repressed philosophies of Christian conservatives, given the overtly sexual nature of the poem.
What is more likely is that the author was engaging in the sort of double entendre that often occurred in ancient Jewish writings. Many of their stories and parables having second meanings, just as many of their character's names are actually puns in Hebrew. It seems that the author of the above poem was engaging in this tradition: writing erotica under the guise of religious metaphor.
Rabbinical scholars also taught that both men and women had a right to receive sexual pleasure in marriage.
Jesus did not seem bent on fundamentally reforming Jewish law and culture on sex and marriage. His only statement on the subject was that it was wrong for a
man to divorce
his wife for any reason, not just adultery. (Matthew 5:31,32, Luke 16:18). It is easy to see the Jewish context in which Jesus was arguing, and that he was only concerned about refining the existing law, not revolutionizing it. (However, Jesus also mentions in Mark 10:12 that a
woman cannot divorce her husband and marry another man without committing adultery. Controversy surrounds the point of whether the woman in this case is the initiator of divorce, or merely has been divorced.)
So where did the sexual repression of the New Testament come from? It first surfaces in the writings of Paul, and worsens with the other apostles. That is because these writers generally come from the Greek world, where the anti-sexual philosophies of Greek Stoicism were dominant. Paul was born and raised in Tarsus, an important Greek trading port which was also the birthplace of two famous Stoic philosophers and the site of several excellent Greek schools.
Christianity failed to take root in Israel, but it flourished in the Greco-Roman empire. As this new religion swept through that region, it absorbed the anti-sexual tenets of Greek philosophy and then spread them wherever the Christian empire spread, even to the shores of America. Those familiar with this history know that it is horrific; the Church Father Origen, for example, castrated himself in his fear that sexual temptation would deprive him of the kingdom of heaven.
And women -- the purveyors of sexual evil -- were so vilified under Christian doctrine that the Inquisition tortured and murdered them for two centuries as "witches". For these reasons, European and American history is filled with a sexual repression and guilt that is unmatched anywhere in the world.
In summary, both the Old and New Testaments offer profound challenges to modern Christian conservatives who wish to quote the Bible as the basis of their political beliefs.
Source: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bibleconservative.htm
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