Deep Meaning In A Dumb Quiz

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Hey, all right!

Your morality is 0% in line with that of the bible.

 

Damn you heathen! Your book learnin' has done warped your mind. You shall not be invited next time I sacrifice a goat.

Do You Have Biblical Morals?
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This quiz has been criticized as a slam on traditional Jewish law, or as an uninformed and biased test pulling out quotes without context.

An interesting criticism in its lack of self-awareness, I would say. This quiz seems to be a slam on exactly what the second one says it's doing.

A lot of the more bigoted and hateful opinions perpetuated these days are justified by a context-free couple of sentences yanked out of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, with no nod to either the literary context, or the cultural context.* When you say “These two sentences say homosexuality is wrong,” we do point out that another couple of sentences say that eating shellfish is wrong. Now, neither of those opinions is very logical, but the comeback is meant to illustrate the ridiculousness of just lifting a random passage from a book and using it as your argument.


*This does not excuse the many atrocities the Tanakh and the Bible do condone and the many harmless things they do abhor, but I would prefer that people actually know which things are in those categories first.

Comments

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Er, actually, in the time period, it did make sense to tell people not to eat shellfish, due to certain diseases such as the red tide which aren't easily detectable, and in certain places in the world you still can't eat the pork due to trichinosis, so those laws were put in as a warning against possibly unsafe foods.

Not to contradict or anything, it's just that, um, this book is a part of my tradition and I do feel insulted when the Tanakh is mocked.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you misunderstand--that's exactly my point. When I give the "don't eat shellfish" commandment as-is, it sounds pretty stupid. However, if I give that cultural context, you would see how that applies to the people involved, how the culture works, then it makes sense--and then they can see whether or not it applies to them now, whether it makes sense in their own context.

(I admit, the shellfish one seemed a lot WISER than a few of the commandments--or, at least, more practical.)

So yeah, I'm advocating taking a closer look at the book. Then decide whether it deserves mocking.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Actually you can interpret the kosher laws as either food safety laws or "don't do this because {those people} do and we are DIFFERENT than they". Gotta give the rabbis *something* to argue about for the next four thousand years. :-)

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. ;) Having lived in places where food safety was an issue, I'm sure that the laws were influenced by both!

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

love the icon