Seriously Irrelevant

Top Ten worst Bible Passages

This goes out to those that quote the bible as a reason to hate and persecute homosexuals. Remember, the bible is symbolic and, even though it’s considered a holy text by many Christians, it’s a dated text. If you’re a Christian, perhaps it’s best to stick with the stuff Jesus actually said in the scriptures. You know… stuff like: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31). That’s pretty straight forward. Instead of this obscure little nugget of hatred: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be put upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13). So… Leviticus trumps Mark for modern Christians… really… I don’t understand these people…

Top Ten Worst Bible Passages

• “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
• “Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.” (1 Samuel 15:3)
• “You shall not let a sorceress live.” (Exodus 22:18)
• “Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock.” (Psalm 137:9)
• “When the men would not listen to his host, the husband seized his concubine and thrust her outside to them. They had relations with her and abused her all night until the following dawn, when they let her go. Then at daybreak the woman came and collapsed at the entrance of the house in which her husband was a guest, where she lay until the morning. When her husband rose that day and opened the door of the house to start out again on his journey, there lay the woman, his concubine, at the entrance of the house with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Come, let us go’; but there was no answer. So the man placed her on an ass and started out again for home.” (Judges 19:25-28)
• “And the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.” (Romans 1:27)
• “Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. ‘If you deliver the Ammonites into my power,’ he said, ‘whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites shall belong to the Lord. I shall offer him up as a holocaust.’ … When Jephthah returned to his house in Mizpah, it was his daughter who came forth, playing the tambourines and dancing. She was an only child: he had neither son nor daughter besides her. When he saw her, he rent his garments and said, ‘Alas, daughter, you have struck me down and brought calamity upon me. For I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot retract’.” (Judges 11:30-1, 34-5)
• “Then God said: ‘Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you’.”(Genesis 22:2)
• “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
• “Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse.” (1 Peter 2:18)

Bonus:

• “If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.” (Deuteronomy 25:11-13)

(via The Boston Globe)