It’s an abomination!
[ by Charles Cameron — the perils of adding scriptures to scripture, tearing or burning them — and flags, paper money too ]
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It may be that the last time you used the word abominable it was in relation to a snowman. It’s not a word that’s frequently on my tongue, I have to admit, but an Israeli MK apparently used it — or it’s Hebrew equivalent — to describe the New Testament, which he was in the process of ripping up.
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Shades of Pastor Jones burning a copy of the Quran!
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The thing is, when you have a sacred scripture it’s delimited, it’s hands-off! And if someone else comes along and adds a slim volume or two, it’s an abomination, almost by definition, sight unseen.
Thus the New Testament is an abomination to Knesset member Michael Ben Ari, according to YNet:
“This abominable book (the New Testament) galvanized the murder of millions of Jews during the Inquisition and during auto da fe instances,” Ben Ari said adding that “Sending the book to MK’s is a provocation. There is no doubt that this book and all it represents belongs in the garbage can of history.”
And please note, I am definitely not suggesting that Ben Ari is representative of all Jews — nor, for that matter, Pastor J. Grant Swank of all Christians. Yet from Swank’s perspective, the Tanakh and New Testament are scriptures, but, and I’m quote him:
Obama’s so-called holy writ is the abominable Koran.
The Qur’an is a later scripture, neh?
And Swank’s tirade gets better. Still speaking of the President of the United States, he continues:
His hope for eternity is unknown; but if he becomes a suicide bomber for Allah, he will be guaranteed pronto a score of virgins for everlasting. His hope for the present seems to be his reliance upon Islam’s Koran furthered by his clandestine support of Islam World Rule via czars and a shadow government given to overthrowing our Republic.
And then on the other side of the political aisle there’s Mitt Romney‘s Latter-day scripture, The Book of Mormon, which bills itself as Another Testament of Jesus Christ. It too has been considered an abomination.
I don’t know if people still use the word much when talking about the Book of Mormon, it’s considerably less controversial these days than the Qur’an — but abominable was what Arthur Cleveland Coxe called it in his 1855 Sermons on doctrine and duty, writing of Joseph Smith:
an obscure and illiterate individual, in our great West, was busily forging the abominable “Book of Mormon,” which, fourteen months later, he foisted into the world…
People really don’t like other people making add-ons to their scriptures, do they?
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Scriptures — and flags.
Look, I weep for a religion some of whose adherents kill when their scripture is burned or defiled, and I am glad for a religion that condemns such killings. As you might expect, there are tearers and burners in all three Abrahamic religions, and all three religions have those who object to such tearings and burnings.
And yes, the ratios of religiously-provoked modes of destruction vary across religions and across centuries…
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But what of flags?
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