Christianity Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Jordan Peterson Does Not Understand Ancient Languages

I have written before on this blog about Jordan B. Peterson, a professor emeritus of psychology from the University of Toronto who rose to fame in 2016 when he publicly spoke out in opposition to an act passed by the Parliament of Canada to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity and expression.” Over the past seven years since then, he has attracted an enormous number of devoted followers as a self-help author and YouTube personality, appealing primarily to an audience of young, mostly white, straight, cisgender men from middle-class backgrounds who hold conservative political opinions. Peterson has used the platform he has built to publicly promote misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and occasionally even white supremacist ideas.

In a blog post I wrote back in April 2021, I discuss in detail how Peterson routinely tries to use ancient myths and the Bible to support his various noxious viewpoints, despite the fact that he has absolutely no understanding of the academic study of these subjects and his interpretations of them display a profound ignorance of the historical and cultural contexts from which they originate and how ancient audiences understood them. I would recommend that readers who have not already read that post from two years ago go back and read it before continuing with this one, since this post is something of an addendum to that one.

In this post, I want to discuss the troubling way in which Peterson often tries to support his positions by making wildly unsupported claims about ancient languages, mainly Hebrew and Ancient Greek, despite the fact that he has never studied either of these languages in his life and he does not know them or any real information about them.

Jesus Had a Vagina (According to Medieval Christian Mysticism)

About a month ago, a whole host of right-wing media outlets, including The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, NBC Montana, and Fox News, published a flurry of wildly sensationalist articles claiming that a dean at the University of Cambridge said that Jesus was transgender. As Candida Moss, a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity who is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, points out in this article she wrote for The Daily Beast, however, and as I will discuss further in the first section of this post, this claim is entirely false; the dean in question actually said no such thing.

At the center of this controversy, however, stands a very strange and fascinating fact, which is well known to scholars and students of medieval western European art and mysticism, but which is not well known to the general public. As bizarre and improbable as it may sound, medieval western European Christians frequently depicted the wound that Jesus is said to have received in his side on the cross in a manner closely resembling a vulva. Although scholars disagree about what exactly these depictions indicate, most agree that the medieval people who made them and venerated them were conscious of this resemblance. In this post, I will explore the history of these depictions and what they may tell us about late medieval gender and sexuality.

Zwarte Piet Is a Racist Abomination

Zwarte Piet (whose name means “Black Pete” in Dutch) is a figure in the folklore of the Low Countries (i.e., the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) who is said to accompany Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas. In the weeks leading up to the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which is celebrated in the Netherlands on 5th December, he is traditionally portrayed by white actors or volunteers wearing blackface, along with thick red lipstick, a black wig of afro-textured hair, a large gold earring, and colorful faux-Renaissance-style clothing. These “Zwarte Pieten” traditionally take part in parades, entertain young children, and pass out cookie-like confectionaries known as pepernoten and kruidnoten.

Zwarte Piet has been a widely beloved figure among white people in the Low Countries for generations, but, for decades, some people (mostly people of color) have criticized the character as racist (because he is). Over the course of the past decade, and the past few years in particular, there has been something of a sea change, as a deracialized version of the character named Roetveegpiet (“Sooty Pete”), who wears light soot makeup instead of blackface, has eclipsed the traditional blackface version of the character in popularity.

Some white people have tried to defend the traditional Zwarte Piet by claiming that the character can’t be racist because he (supposedly) has no connection to the U.S. tradition of blackface minstrel shows. In this post, I intend to explore the real history of Zwarte Piet and demonstrate that the character does, in fact, owe very much to blackface minstrel shows and is, in fact, racist. Needless to say, readers should be forewarned that this post will discuss some truly deplorably racist material, including both historical and contemporary derogatory visual portrayals of Black people.

Yes, King David Raped Bathsheba

The legend of how King David saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, bathing naked, lusted after her, sent messengers to bring her to the royal palace, had sex with her, impregnated her, and then had her husband effectively murdered to prevent him from finding out is one of the most famous stories in the Hebrew Bible—but also one of the most routinely misunderstood.

Many Christian readers have interpreted Bathsheba as a depraved and nefarious seductress who deliberately bathed in a location where she knew David would be watching in order to seduce him, caused him to lust after her, and gleefully betrayed her husband to have sex with the king. There is, however, absolutely nothing in the Biblical text to support this interpretation. In fact, in the text itself, all the evidence strongly indicates that David spies on her without her knowledge or consent and then rapes her. Bathsheba, far from being a malicious temptress, is actually an innocent rape victim who has been wrongfully victim-blamed for far too long.

Does the Bible Really Say You Should Beat Your Children?

The Book of Proverbs, a work of wisdom literature that is included in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (i.e., what Christians call the “Old Testament”), contains several verses that explicitly tell parents that they should punish their children for their misbehavior by beating them with a wooden rod. Some amateur hermeneuticists have tried to explain away these verses by inventing some rather ingenious new interpretations for them, but, philologically speaking, these interpretations all fall flat. The Book of Proverbs very clearly supports beating children.

Just because these verses advise parents to beat their children, though, does not mean that Jewish and Christian parents today who regard the Book of Proverbs as scripture should beat their children. It is important to consider the historical and cultural context in which the Book of Proverbs was written and recognize that that context was very different from the context that exists in the world today.

Here’s the Meaning of the Symbolism in Lil Nas X’s Controversial New Music Video

Until last Sunday, I honestly had no idea who Lil Nas X was. I don’t really follow music in general and I honestly know especially little about rap in particular. Then, while we were driving back to Bloomington after visiting our parents for Easter, my sister mentioned to me that Lil Nas X is a rapper, that he wrote a song about being gay—which I later learned is titled “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”—and that the music video for it includes a scene of him riding a stripper pole down to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance. She explained that religious conservatives were having a huge moral panic over this music video because they think it glorifies homosexuality and Satanism.

Having heard this, I naturally decided to look up the music video for myself to see what all the fuss was about. I have to say that, for a three-minute clip that involves the main character riding a stripper pole to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance, the music video is remarkably intellectually sophisticated. The people who worked on this video clearly did a ton of research. As soon as I watched it, I was genuinely impressed by the sheer number of classical and Biblical allusions that they managed to cram in.

It incorporates specific references to works of ancient Greek and Roman art, the Bible, Greek mythology, works of Greek philosophy, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. They even managed to include an exact, direct quote from Plato’s Symposion in the original Classical Attic Greek! Here’s a detailed explanation of the music video’s classical and Biblical symbolism.

In Defense of Representative Emanuel Cleaver’s Prayer

On 3 January 2021, Emanuel Cleaver, an ordained United Methodist pastor who is currently serving as a Democratic representative for Missouri’s 5th congressional district, delivered the opening prayer for the 117th Congress. For the most part, it was an entirely conventional mainline Protestant prayer, asking for the usual sorts of things using the usual language. At the very end, though, Representative Cleaver added some remarks in an effort to make the prayer more inclusive, saying:

“May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace—peace in our families, peace across this land, and (dare I ask oh Lord?) peace even in this chamber for now and ever more. We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and God known by many names by many different faiths. Amen, and awoman.”

Naturally, Republicans are extremely outraged over this (or at least pretending to be extremely outraged in order to make their supporters feel outraged). They have, however, expressed their outrage in ways that show they clearly don’t have particularly in-depth knowledge of Christian history or even the Bible itself.

How the Buddha Became a Beloved Christian Saint

It is generally well known that Christians don’t tend to hold favorable views towards the founders of other religions. At least historically, Christians have generally seen founders of non-Christian religions as heretics or false prophets. This is why, for instance, as I discuss in this article from June 2020, in his poem The Inferno, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (lived c. 1265 – 1321) portrays Muhammad, the founder of Islam, being tortured in Hell with his torso split open from his chin to his anus and his guts spilling out, dangling between his legs.

For this reason, many people may be surprised to learn that Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, has actually been honored as a saint in Christianity for well over a thousand years under the name Ioasaph, which is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit word bodhisattva. It’s a bizarre, fascinating story of religious cross-culturalism that demonstrates how surprisingly interconnected the cultures of the Old World were during the Middle Ages.

The Hagia Sophia Is Now a Mosque

The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was built by the Byzantines in the sixth century AD as a Christian church. It was the largest and arguably the most famous Christian church in the world for nearly a thousand years. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it was converted into a mosque and, after the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey, it was converted into a museum.

Then, on 10 July 2020, amidst international outcry, the Turkish government officially converted it back into a mosque. On 21 August 2020, the Chora Church, another famous Byzantine church in İstanbul that had previously been converted into a mosque and then a museum, was converted back into a mosque as well.

These decisions, in particular the decision regarding the Hagia Sophia, have triggered a great deal of international debate. Unfortunately, there is a very long and complex history behind this discussion that is often left out. In order to fully understand this debate, we need to talk about the history of the Hagia Sophia, who built it, why it was turned into a mosque to begin with, and why it was later turned into a museum.

Did Medieval Christians Really Crucify Heretics?

There seems to be a very popular misconception that, in Europe during the Middle Ages, fanatical Christians went around crucifying anyone they suspected of heresy. This trope of medieval Christian crucifixions seems to be especially common in television shows with anti-religious agendas, where the writers are eager to portray medieval Christians in the worst possible light.

It’s easy to see how this misconception might have arisen. After all, medieval Christians did talk a lot about crucifixion because of the crucifixion of Jesus and they do have a well-earned reputation for dealing harshly with those accused of heresy. In historical reality, though, crucifixion was never used as a form of punishment by Christians in Europe during the Middle Ages.