Young Miss Harger is in for a nasty shock if she insists on relying on the Bible as a historical source.
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I mean, I agree that the Bible should be readily available at the school library for anybody who wants it… as long as no other books are being banned, either. If they are, the Bible should be the first to go along with them, because if they’re being banned for sex, violence, etc., it’s gonna be in there.
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To be fair, if she’s talking censuses under Herod, Paul writing letters to Ephesus, and Quirinius being governor of Syria, I’ve got no problem with that.
But of course we all know that’s not the history she’s talking about, don’t we?
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Surely it’s time to weed that book and replace it with books that incorporate the latest archeological findings?
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Student of medieval European history here: The Bible is very definitely a historical source.
The Bible was at the core of pretty much everything done in Christian Europe, and at least a basic knowledge of how they understood it at the time is necessary to really understand what was going on.
Thing is, that’s not just “reading the bible”, that’s going into deeper aspects of Christian practice (including feast and lenten days, festivals, hourly/daily/weekly/montly/annual religious routines), of Typology and prophecy, of common understanding of theological concepts, of theological disputes and how they were reflected in politics and society, how issues in politics and society were reflected in theology, of art and music, etc, etc, etc. It got into places where you’d never expect to find it.
You basically can’t really understand the European Middle Ages without having the Bible as a historical source.
It doesn’t matter if you believe it, it matters that they believed it.
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Being the Preacher’s Kid at my church, this is the kind of stunt I pulled when the deacons were trying to groom me into being a leader there. A couple of graphic scripture readings and a really bad unrehearsed prayer, and I no longer had to take up the mantle. 
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… yet somehow I bet this is off limits
The Obscenity Trial Over the Publication of “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs
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… Mark Twain’s “War Prayer” is always timely
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… before everybody gets too excited, it was only pulled temporarily
Holy Bible briefly pulled from Florida school shelves after it was challenged for ‘sexually explicit content’
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The bible is not the greatest book, but it is definitely one of the books that everybody should read. There are so many cultural references that you can miss without reading it at least once. It should never be taught in public schools, because I do not want the Catholic church, the Southern Baptists, and all other denominations arguing about how it ought to be taught. Students ought to be told that the bible is important, told that they are expected to read it, and also told that they are not required to believe a word of it. And students should not be graded on how well they understand it. At least in the public schools. Your Sunday school can do whatever it likes.
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Please tell me that they illustrated the “She-bears vs. small children” episode.
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I mean it is without a doubt that. But to use it as such you need a scholarly annotated edition. Somehow I doubt that’s what a Florida school library had, nor would Hannah Harger like what the footnotes say.
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I have fleeting moments of optimism when I think “Well, yes, Medieval Europe shows how everyone can get locked into the hidden assumptions of their totally fucked belief system, so it is impossible to imagine anything else. So we are probably just as unable to see the hidden assumptions of our own fucked belief system and unable to think outside it. Yet somehow there is progress, and we get smarter, and able to use our brains for more than occasional flashes of light in the darkness.”
Then I look at US politics, and as I said, these are only fleeting moments of optimism.
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Of course in that case they would need to have a copy of the Vulgate (probably the Weber-Gryson edition) and of associated popular religious writing such as the Legenda Aurea. I don’t think a version of the King James Bible printed by some Florida megachurch has the same evidence value.
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Oh, believe me, for those of us looking in, the US is definitely a society locked into a strange belief system that it assumes is universal but which is very exotic to the rest of the world. (And yes, the same is true of us, I know).
That said the Middle Ages were a time of great social, political and technological change. It’s not a time of stagnation and the church didn’t (in my opinion) contribute to any regression in development. On the contrary, it was a driving force of the preservation and propagation of knowledge, as well as agricultural techniques, architecture and technology, especially in the Early and High Middle Ages.
(Anyone who thinks that the Middle Ages were a regression should take a time machine, pick up a Roman from the height of the empire and watch their jaw drop to the floor when they show them a gothic cathedral with stained glass windows or a knight in full armour)
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Which bible do you think is “The Bible”?
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The Golden Legend intrigues me, as an example of the collective manufacture of fiction. You know that someone just made it up. People thought “Well, this biblical narrative is all very well, but it is meagre on the circumstantial details, like Who were Mary’s parents?” So someone pulled a story out of their arses. Other people repeated that account, knowing that it was fabricated but thinking “Hey, it gives people comfort, nothing wrong with that”. And later stages in the human centipede just repeated the accretions, thinking that they were in the Holy Bibble.
You see the same pattern going on now, e.g. in the antivax canon, or in conspiracy-theory circles, or in rightwing politics (but I repeat myself). I just wonder how the early stages in the human centipede justified the fabrication to themselves.
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I like to think of the Legendea Aurea as being like an extended medieval SCP project for hagiography.
Prompt: “Many, many arrows.”
Prompt: “A Wheel.”
Prompt: “A Tower.”
Prompt: “Hard to destroy reptile”
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