If you apply the OT legislation concerning homosexual behavior – that is, a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman, than you have to stop eating shrimp and you have to stop wearing garments of mixed fabrics’.

The problem with this argument is that it fails to distinguish moral law from ritual law.  As such, and as a failure to understand genre, category, and purpose, these arguments are flawed and inappropriate.

Sounds good. Sounds scholarly… But will it work?

To be fair to Jim this is a longstanding and very convenient Christian approach to eating their cake and having it around still too. The problem, gay marriage apart, is that there are a ton of Old Testament laws Christians (even those who claim to be faithful Bible-believers) don’t want to follow. But even more they don’t want to be accused of cherry-picking the Bible – a horrible sin.

Along comes a fine upstanding, grey-bearded biblical scholar (or in view of recent discussion in various places, rabid scholarship hating religious person who happens to spend their life studying and teaching the Bible) and waves a magic wand and the nasty problem goes away. “You no longer have to obey ritual law because it has been anulled by the superior sacrifice of Christ on the cross.” They intone, “But you should still, of course, obey all the moral laws.”

Sounds good, but does it work?

Take Ex 21:22-25 :

22 When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine.
23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Sounds like Christians for the death penalty are onto a good thing? “Oh, no!” interrupts the grey-bearded scholar (or possibly religious bigot in disguise) “That does not apply any more either, civil law is also abolished in Christ.”

Hmm. So, what makes the treatment of disorderly conduct, or slaves civil law and something else moral law? It’s quite simple really. Moral law is about sex and civil law isn’t.

• Bible and technology guest post
• Bible and technology guest post (part two)
• Bible and technology guest post: Audio Bibles
• Bible and technology guest post: Reading experience
• Bible and technology guest post: Bible reading as personal
• Bible and technology guest post: ubiquitous Bible reading

One phrase in Mark’s guest post(s) has been ringing in my ears overnight. He wrote:

Can people be enticed to read the Bible if it is delivered in digital forms?

To someone brought up as heir to the radical wing of the reformation (in a self-consciously Non-conformist English family) there is something deeply disturbing about the thought that people must be “enticed” to read Scripture. The Bible is the book that set my spiritual ancestors free of human lords and priests. It is also in large measure the book that freed the slaves (despite its use by slaveowners and traders to justify their commerce in humanity). It is the book which has opened the door to God’s amazing grace for so many across the years. How could people need to be “enticed” to open such a treasure?

Yet we do.

Rich,¹ fat,² comfortable inhabitants of the “Christian” West can hardly be persuaded to read Scripture. In part this very affluenza is the problem, as a Peter Kirk reminded us in a comment on Facebook, the Bible is avidly read in other parts of the world. A Galilean teacher once pointed out that it was easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich person to accept God’s grace…

And then there’s our church culture, by and large (at least in the Evangelical sectors I inhabit) church culture has rushed to follow the TV evangelists and accepted the lie that the Bible is merely a storehouse of “verses”, small fragments to be used like a lucky charm to ensure continued blessing, or like a club to beat an opponent in conversation into submission. Generations (like all those alive in the West today) who have been loosing old superstitions (even if eagerly adopting worse ones) will hardly continue the first with quite the same enthusiasm. And no one not but a bully could find the second attractive … no wonder Bible reading is loosing its hold on the Western mind.

1. By global standards not merely rich but very rich.
2. Suffering in fact an obesity epidemic.

[TB: WordPress is throwing a fit every time I try to post these, so I'll post them one by one :( ]

• My sense is that there will always be a place for audio Bibles, but they will not likely become a predominant form.
  You, Tim, have been involved with the podbible and the 5minutebible projects, and there is also The Bible Podcast site. These are great resources for people who have various challenges reading, and my commuting students loved having them available. On the other hand, hearing is just much slower than reading, audio is becoming largely associated with music, and music is being challenged by video.

I think there is also a conceptual factor at work. People still simply conceive of the Bible as a printed, physical book. There is an older gentleman in my home congregation who uses a computer regularly for email and internet, but when he reads his Bible, he pulls out his mother’s RSV Bible from the 1950′s. It’s rewarding for him to have that tangible connection with his family’s history. Even when he was part of an online Bible study group, and I linked directly to biblical texts using bib.ly or Reftagger, he still pulled out his Bible to read the text. It’s not just an issue with older readers, however. Biblical scholars and seminary students have certainly discovered the benefits of working with Bible software, but I don’t know how many of them actually just read the Bible on their computer. How does this concept of the Bible as a physical book affect the number of people reading the Bible? Sales of physical books have been steadily declining in recent years, and just last year, Amazon reported that they were selling more e-books than physical ones. So, if fewer people are reading physical books, and the Bible is primarily conceived as a physical book, we should not be surprised to see a decrease in Bible reading. I believe that the majority of Bible readers simply have not made the shift to think of the Bible as a digital resource.
Now the question becomes, “Can people be enticed to read the Bible if it is delivered in digital forms?”

[More in part three all being well, WordPress problems continue.]

Mark, advances in electronic communications technologies and equipment (especially Internet and mobile phones) makes Scripture and the tools to understand it more easily and widely available than ever. Yet at the same time rates of engaged regular Scripture reading among Christians in the West since the reformation has hardly been lower.

Are there technologies or tools you think have the potential over the next few years to revitalize Scripture reading among Western Christians?
He writes:

Thanks for this question, Tim. I know it’s a concern that is near to your heart!

Two or three decades ago, at least in the United States, it was not unusual to see Christians who would regularly carry their Bibles around with them and presumably read them. There was quite a market for Bible carrying cases. A quick check on Amazon shows that there still is a market for them (over 900 items under “bible carrying case”), but there in the fourth spot is a “Leather Christian iPad 2 Case.” My point? As you note, technology is providing more biblical resources than ever, and they are easier than ever to access. So why the decrease in Bible reading?

I am convinced that Christians, both consumers (readers) and producers of content, will eventually get in sync with the possibilities technology offers, but it also is probably going to require some revitalization of Christianity in general. I’m trying to say a few things with that sentence, so let me expand.

[I have been having real problems with WordPress today :( I hope I can post the expansion in another post.]

The picture I stole from Jonathan and he stole from New Biscuit (I don't know if they stole it or what...)

Jonathan my fellow ξἐνος and fellow Kiwi has posted the April (Fool’s/Fools) Biblical Studies Carnival. As is usual for these carnivals there is plenty of good solid stuff to think about and the required monthly pseud-archaeological controversy is well summed up in the linked posts. As one expects from Jonathan there is also plenty of hilarious humour. All in all a fine job and a useful contribution :)

I could not resist stealing just one illustration…