Moreover, the P source, written, perhaps a hundred years later "as an alternative" to the E and J sources, was, in turn, selected by a redactor some two hundred years later to become the Genesis 1:1 - 2.3 that we read in the Hebrew Bible today. Professor Freedman speculates that the redactor (probably Ezra) included all four sources in the Hebrew Bible for two reasons, notwithstanding their contradictions: (1) each source had long-standing popularity by the time the redactor got to them and (2) each source was popularly thought to have been written by Moses.
And, thus, it is from such mundane and erroneous considerations -- and not the literal word of Moses -- that today's Crackpot Christian dominionists claim their authority.
The New Testament is equally riddled with errors and contradictions. For example, consider the story of the "virgin birth" found in Matthew and Luke. According to biblical scholar, Paula Fredriksen, "The tradition that Jesus' mother was a virgin...draws on a prophecy available only in the Greek version of Isaiah 7:14: In the original Hebrew, the word that stands behind the Septuagint's parthenos, "virgin," is aalmah, "young girl." [Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, p. 27.
Moreover, Matthew and Luke are but two of the four fictitious names given to the authors of the Gospels. We know this, because in the original texts "their authors chose to remain anonymous" [See Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament, p. 8) According to Professor Mack, "with the exception of the seven letters by Paul and the Revelations to an otherwise unknown John, the writings selected for inclusion in the New Testament were not written by those whose names are attached to them." [Mack, p.6])
In addition, as Professor Ehrman tells us, in his book Lost Christianities, "Mark's Gospel circulated in different versions" something he knows because "we have numerous manuscripts of Mark's Gospel." Of even greater significance is the fact that "the last twelve verses of Mark, in which Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection... [are] not found in the oldest and best manuscripts of Mark. Instead these manuscripts end at Mark 16:8." [p. 78]
Among other discrepancies found in the Gospels, Ehrman notes the following: "Did Jesus die the afternoon before the Passover meal was eaten, as in John (see 19:14), or the morning afterwards, as in Mark (see 14:12, 22; 15:25)? Did Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt after Jesus' birth as in Matthew (2:13-23), or did they return to Nazareth as in Luke (2:39)? Was Jairus's daughter sick and dying when he came to ask Jesus for help as in Mark (6:23, 25), or had she already died, as in Matthew (9:18)? After Jesus' resurrection, did the disciples stay in Jerusalem until he had ascended into heaven, as in Luke (24:1 - 52), or did the straightaway go to Galilee, as in Matthew (28:1 - 20)?" [Lost Christianities, pp. 169-170]
Given all of these errors and contradictions, what should sensible Americans -- including sensible American Christians -- make of the Crackpot Christians who rely upon biblical literalism and inerrancy to inform their speculations about the End of Time? Why, just yesterday, ABC News reported on a group of (Crackpot) Christians, who are lending their support to Israel's bombing and invasion of Lebanon, because, as Rev. Margaret Stratton told her 200 Methodist Church attendees in Waco, Texas, "'What is happening in Israel today, with their neighbors is prophesied in the Bible. The whole world should understand the reason for the conflict in the Middle East,' she said, adding this has all been foretold." ["Save Israel, for Jesus?" ABC News, August 3, 2006]
Now, there are at least two problems associated with Crackpot Christianity's End of Time's biblical literalism. First, these crackpots make this claim virtually every time violence flares up in the Middle East. As Mark A, Noll writes in his exceptionally wise book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, within weeks of the outbreak of the Gulf War of 1991, "evangelical publishers provided a spate of books featuring efforts to read this latest Middle East crisis as a direct fulfillment of the biblical prophecy beholding the end of the world." [p. 13] Moreover, as historian Paul Boyer has concluded (in his study of prophecy belief in modern American culture, When Time Shall Be No More):"popular interest in Bible prophecy burgeoned under the impetus of the atomic bomb, the founding of Israel in 1948, and other factors." [p. 10]
The second problem with the End of Time's fixation by Crackpot Christians also was highlighted by Professor Noll. End of Time's believers "all shared a disconcerting conviction that the best way to provide moral judgment about what was happening in the Middle East was not to study carefully what was going on in the Middle East. Rather, they featured a kind of Bible study that drew attention away from careful analysis of the complexities of Middle Eastern culture or the tangled twentieth-century history of the region toward speculation about some of the most esoteric and widely debated passages of the Bible." [pp. 13-14]
Thus, just from these few examples, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that America's Crackpot Christians are no less delusional than the Islamic jihadists who expect virgins in paradise as the reward for their martyrdom. (One scholar of ancient Semitic languages believes that the Koran's "virgin" is a mistranslation of the term "hur," which should be translated to read "white raisin," a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. See Alexander Stille, "Scholars Are Quietly Offering New theories of the Koran," The New York Times, March 2, 2002)
But an understanding of their delusion goes far to explain the election of a Crackpot Christian as President of the United States, America's subsequent invasion of Iraq for the sake of oil and Israel, and the current indifference to the tremendous suffering precipitated there by the United States -- all of which has resulted in the precipitous collapse of America's moral stature around the world.
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