<HTML><BODY STYLE="font:10pt verdana; border:none;"><DIV><FONT size=3>Ted writes:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"></FONT></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">"Surely you jest! Of course. You know that other quotes from the Bible will be offered to explain why women have different roles than men. And of course whatever contradictions arise from quoting the Bible can be explained somehow if you only read the text correctly. Of course, of course, of course!" <BR></FONT></FONT></DIV> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">Jest? Me? Of course not. I'm perfectly serious. And as for Doug offering other carefully selected scriptural snippets to justify the subjugation of women, or the Hittites, or people with unfortunate blemishes, I can only say that this is a corner that biblical literalists and inerrantists paint themselves into. I have nothing whatsoever to do with it except to say that insisting that the Bible reads as a coherent whole obliges the reader to make not just a leap of faith -- a leap that differs greatly from denomination to denomination -- but to perform incredible acts of textual and interpretational prestidigitation. </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">Here's a small example. The scholarly consensus is that of the thirteen Pauline epistles, only Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon were actually written by Paul. The rest were composed by Paul's followers sometime after his death. So what does the biblical inerrantist do with Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus? Scholars call them the Deutero-Pauline epistles, but might we not just as easily call them frauds? They pretend to be something they're not -- the direct, inspired word of Paul. And Paul himself is a problem, isn't he? He never met Jesus. He claims only that God zapped his donkey on the road to Damascus and he "saw the light." Why, then, does so much Christian doctrine/tradition/belief rest on the revelations of Paul of Tarsus rather than the "direct" gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke? (I'm using the word "direct" loosely, as Matthew and Luke are roughly contemporary with Paul, and the earliest gospel was recorded some seventy years after the crucifixion.)</FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">There's a Jewish tradition called l'hakshot: it means fearless questioning. To quote Richard Ben Cramer, "That argument, that questioning, even of the Commandments, of all supposed wisdom, is the essence of [Judaism]." If we place Jesus within the context of Jewish tradition -- and unless Doug is a closet Aryan, even he would have to admit that's where Jesus firmly resides -- then what does it mean to say that in Christ, there is no black and white, no Hebrew and Greek, no male and female? What is the specific Christian (not Pauline, or Deutero-Pauline) justification for making gender role distinctions here on earth? </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">BTW, you're quite right to bring up Teilhard de Chardin, Ted; he's an interesting fellow. I doubt, however, that he had anything to do with the Piltdown fraud. I'm in favor of pinning that firmly on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, but any man who can be fooled by two little girls with a camera and some paper cut-outs into believing that fairies live at the bottom of tiny English handkerchief gardens is capable of anything. </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment</FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">PS: For any of you heading to DC in the near future, they've remodeled the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. You're now invited when you enter "to meet your oldest relative," at which point you follow an evolutionary path to a little rat-like creature in a cave It's very cool. In one section, embedded in the floor in beneath a sheet of plexiglass, is a model of the early hominid footprints found in Tanzania. I matched up my own feet to the prints as I walked above them, and it was an amazing experience. </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">PPS: But don't tell George Bush. If he finds out, he'll have them dug up and replaced with a copy of the poem "Footprints in the Sand." </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"></FONT></FONT> </P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"> </FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"> </P></FONT></FONT></BODY></HTML><br clear=all><hr>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a href='http://explorer.msn.com'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></p>