Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Ones You Didn't Hear in Sunday School

Shameless Self-Promotion Time again, folks.

Our Peerless Leader, Alex, suggested that I plug one of my other blogs here.  The name of it is The Ones You Didn't Hear in Sunday School, and it's sort of like the pieces I've been posting on Poplitiko about science fiction novels and applying the same treatment to some of the more obscure stories of the Bible.

Here's how I introduce it in the blog:

Some Bible stories are better-known than others.  Even people without a strong religious background have probably heard of David and Goliath, or Jonah and the Whale, or the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  They’re part of our Western Cultural Heritage, like Cinderella or Snow White or Star Wars: The New Hope. 
But how many people have heard about Dinah and the Shechemites?  Or Abigail and her Really Stupid Husband?  Or the Parable of the Sleazy Embezzler? 
There are some stories in the Bible that are not widely known. They don't often come up in Sunday School; sometimes because they are too violent, sometimes because they have sex in them; sometimes because they are disturbing and have no easy morals to apply; and sometimes they're just plain weird. Sometimes these stories present challenges to the Christian Faith because they seem to contradict what we want to believe.
Whether difficult or disturbing, confusing or confounding, lewd or just plain ludicrous; all these stories are a part of our religious heritage.  Whether we like it or not. 

One of the things I'm trying to do with this blog is show some of the ways these oddball stories of Scripture turn up in our popular culture.  Like when Hamlet puzzles Polonius by remarking that Jephthah had a daughter -- what did he mean by that?  Or when a TV pundit refers to a political shibboleth, what's he talking about?

Perhaps you did hear these stories in Sunday School; perhaps you might have forgotten them; but if you have a curiosity about what happens when Holy Writ gets weird, stop by and give my blog a look.

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