Biblical corn

One of the things I find amusing about people who argue over the meaning of passages in the Bible is that so few of them seem to recognize that they're working from a translation.

A few -- very few, in my experience -- people are true biblical scholars, and have worked with the Aramaic and Greek originals (and I use that word with some hesitation, as even those were copies of earlier documents, copied and perhaps translated themselves with uncertain accuracy).  Most everyone else acts as if their favorite English translation is the literal word of God, as if Jesus Christ himself spoke pure, unadulterated 'Murican.

It does give rise to some funny situations.  We have the argument over whether the forbidden fruit that Eve gave Adam was an apple, a fig, or a pomegranate.  We have the claim (Micah 5:2) that the Messiah would be descended from David, and both Matthew and Luke go to great lengths to show that Joseph was a descendant of David (although they disagree on his descent, so they can't both be right) -- and Jesus wasn't Joseph's son in any case.  We have one person who has argued that the creation story was translated wrong, and that God didn't create life, he "separated" humans from everything else, presumably by giving them souls.

We even have some folks who claim -- tongue-in-cheek, of course -- that the line from Leviticus 20 about "if a man lies with another man, they should both be stoned" as biblical support for same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization simultaneously.

All of which strikes me as funny, because no matter how you slice it, you're still arguing over the meaning of an uncertainly-translated text that has been recopied with uncertain precision an uncertain number of times, and reflects the beliefs of a bunch of Bronze Age sheepherders in any case.  Notwithstanding, you still have people arguing like hell that their translation is the correct, God-approved one, and all of the others are wrong.

And then you have this guy, who takes things a step further, declaring that the translation of one word is correct, and that means that... pretty much everything else we know about the history of the Middle East is wrong.

That word is "corn."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

The word occurs 102 times (in the King James Version, at least) -- mostly as a translation of the Semitic root dagan.  The problem, of course, is that corn is a Mesoamerican plant, and did not exist in the Middle East until it was brought over after the exploration of the New World. It's very easily explained, though; not only did dagan mean "grain" (not, specifically, corn), the word "corn" itself once meant "grain" in early Modern English -- a usage that persists in the word "barleycorn."

But this guy doesn't think so.  He thinks that the use of the word "corn" means... corn.  As in the stuff you eat at picnics in the summer with lots of butter and salt, the stuff cornmeal and popcorn and corn starch and high-fructose corn syrup are made from.  And therefore, he thinks...

... that everything in the bible actually happened here in the Western Hemisphere.

I'm not making this up.  Here's a direct quote:

The difficult situation with CORN in the BIBLE is that most people, due to the brainwashing that has been handed down through generations, firmly believe that the Biblical events happened in the Middle East.  After much research I can PROVE that the Middle East has absolutely NOTHING to do with the history, geography, and genealogy of the Holy Scriptures.  Nothing!...  CORN is in the Bible because the PEOPLE, PLACES, and EVENTS of the Biblical narratives were in the AMERICAS!

The "true history" of the events of the bible, he says, have been "hidden for over 500 years."  He has proof, which he will tell us when his book is released, and it's gonna overturn everything you think you know about history.

Oh, yeah, and the Crusades happened over here, too.  Apparently the Crusaders didn't trek to Jerusalem, they were trying to retake Peoria or something.

'Murica! Yeah!

I'm not making this up, and the guy who wrote it seems entirely serious.  But it does highlight what can happen when you decide that any human-created document is the infallible word of a deity, or even (as I've heard) that God guided the translators and copiers so that it still is inerrant even after the inevitable Game of Telephone that translating and copying usually entails.  Not many people go as far as Corn Dude does -- but it does bring up the question of whether any translation of the Bible is good enough that we should even entertain using it as a guide to behavior or (heaven forfend) science.

So that's our exercise in eye-rolling for today.  Me, I'm done with the topic, so I'm going to go get breakfast.

For some reason, I'm in the mood for cornbread.  Funny thing, that.

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This week's Skeptophilia book of the week is scarily appropriate reading material in today's political climate: Robert Bartholomew and Peter Hassall's wonderful A Colorful History of Popular Delusions.  In this brilliant and engaging book, the authors take a look at the phenomenon of crowd behavior, and how it has led to some of the most irrational behaviors humans are prone to -- fads, mobs, cults, crazes, manias, urban legends, and riots.

Sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking, this book looks at how our evolutionary background as a tribal animal has made us prone all too often to getting caught up in groupthink, where we leave behind logic and reason for the scary territory of making decisions based purely on emotion.  It's unsettling reading, but if you want to understand why humans all too often behave in ways that make the rational ones amongst us want to do repeated headdesks, this book should be on your list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!] 

Gotcha!

I think we need to clarify what counts as a "gotcha question."

It's a charge that gets levied against the media every time a political candidate is asked an awkward question.  Doesn't seem to matter whether the awkward question is relevant or not, whether it has anything to do with qualifications for public office, whether it makes sense or not.  If the candidate doesn't want to answer the question -- for whatever reason -- all (s)he has to do is call it a "gotcha question," and the onus is thrown back on the media for even asking it.

Now, to be fair, some things are "gotcha questions."  Take, for example, the question that Jeb Bush was asked a couple of days ago by a reporter from Huffington Post, apropos of whether Jeb would go back in time if he could and kill Hitler as a baby.

So here we have a question that presupposes using an impossibility (time travel) to commit a crime that might or might not prevent World War II and the Holocaust.  In Jeb's place, I would have responded, "What a fucking stupid question.  Where did you get your journalism degree from, Steve's Mail-Order Diploma Warehouse?"

Which explains, at least in part, why I will never run for public office.

Jeb, instead, decided to answer it.  He said, "Hell, yeah, I would.  You gotta step up, man...  It could have a dangerous effect on everything else, but I'd do it."

And what was he expected to say?  "No, I'd leave Baby Hitler alive, and sacrifice millions of innocent lives instead."  Or, "No, the bible forbids the taking of a life, I wouldn't kill an infant even if it results in a disaster."  Or "Of course, ethics demands that the value of many lives outweighs the value of a single person, even though I've claimed in the past that every life is sacred."  No matter what he answers, he opens himself up to being blasted -- and all over something that isn't even a hypothetical, it's completely impossible.

Adolf Hitler as an infant [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

On the other hand, the questions that Ben Carson is being asked about his veracity in the past are not "gotcha questions."

There's his claim that he was offered a scholarship to West Point -- until it came out that West Point doesn't offer scholarships, and he amended that to saying that he was "invited to apply by a local ROTC officer."  Then it turned out that he in fact never even applied.  Carson said the news stories about the claim were a "political hit job."

There are the stories of his troubled childhood, that more than one person who knew Carson as a child say simply aren't true.  Carson responded by saying that the stories were too true, and that the things he recounted had happened even though none of the folks who knew him were aware of it at the time.

Then there's further evidence of a tenuous grasp on reality, with his claim that the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built by the biblical figure Joseph as places to store grain.  Confronted with this bizarre statement, Carson stood by what he said, placidly responding that the controversy over his words was nothing more than a liberal hatchet job.  "The secular progressives try to ridicule it every time it comes up and they're welcome to do that."

Okay, Dr. Carson.  We're happy to oblige.

See the difference?  With Bush, we have a deliberate setup using a pointless hypothetical, where any answer would leave you open to being lambasted by one side or the other.  With Carson, there are very real questions regarding his apparent lack of understanding of the commandment "Thou shalt not lie," not to mention its less-known corollary, "Thou shalt not make weird shit up."

So anyway.  Yes, the media could do a better job of avoiding stupid "If you were a fruit, would you be a banana or a mango?" type questions.  Just like with any profession, there are people who are competent and intelligent journalists, and people who are total morons.  But that doesn't make every awkward question that puts a candidate on the spot a "gotcha question."  There are times we need answers, because political figures should be held accountable for the claims they make.

To put it simply: dammit, truth matters.