Friday, November 30, 2007

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Biblical Edition

Since last week was National Bible Week... well, I should've posted this last Friday, I guess. But I didn't, so I'm posting this now: a list of Bible verses used to justify hatred of miscegenation. This list was copied from the end of the book Whom Has God Joined Together?, by Dallas Jackson. Jackson is a living racist--the book was only published in 1990--but many of these same verses were bandied about by dead racists, as well.

I've provided something of an annotation here, a brief explanation of the thought process that lead them to conclude that these verses prove God hates exactly whom they hate.

  • Genesis 1:11-31
    God created all the animals "after his kind" (which was taken to mean species or race), and he declared that this was "very good."

  • Genesis 2:18-23
    God created Eve, whom Adam said was "flesh of my flesh." So she was created the same race as Adam.

  • Genesis 6:9
    Noah was declared "perfect in his generations", which must mean that his genealogy was racially homogeneous

  • Genesis 12:14-20
    Pharoah tried to get it on with Sarai, Abram's wife, which made God plague him and his house. Clearly because they were of different races.

  • Genesis 24:1-4
    Abraham makes his servant swear to go on a trip to get Isaac a wife from "my kindred" instead of the surrounding Canaanites. Obviously this must be about interracial marriage and not interfaith.

  • Genesis 26:34-35
    Esau married Hittites, which "were a grief of mind" for Isaac and Rebekah.

  • Genesis 27:46
    Rebekah frets that Jacob might marry a woman like Esau did.

  • Genesis 28:1-9
    Isaac commanded Jacob not to marry a Canaanite, but to go to Laban and get a wife from him.

  • Genesis 34:1-34
    Shechem a Hivite rapes Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and tries to marry her. So Jacob's sons slaughtered the entire city. Supposedly this is because Shechem wasn't of the same race--it's not like anyone would care if their sister were raped by someone of the same race.

  • Exodus 11:1-7
    "The Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel". God discriminates against the races, why don't you! It's the cool thing to do.

  • Exodus 20:14-17
    "Adultery" is redefined to mean "miscegenation", so God forbids it in the ten commandments even! How do they justify this bizarre definition? Well, "adultery" shares the same root as "adulterate", which means to make impure--and obviously that's what miscegenation does. And I'm sure this was true even in the original Hebrew, but there's no need to check or anything.

  • Exodus 33:16
    Moses's people will be separated "from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." Go segregation!

  • Exodus 34:10-17
    Verses 15 & 16 say not to join another religion, or even to let your kid marry someone of another religion lest they get tempted to join that religion. Why people seem to think that this is therefore a racial thing and not a religious thing is beyond me.

  • Leviticus 18:1
    Uh. This was probably a typo.

  • Leviticus 20:22-26
    God's commanding the Israelites "not [to] walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you." So, no goose-stepping then?

  • Numbers 25:1-18
    Phineas (or Phinehas) saw "one of the children of Israel" with a Midianitish woman, so he ran into their tent and killed them both with his spear. For this, God rewarded him with "the covenant of an everlasting priesthood." So God blesses people who kill race-mixers. Today, some violent Christian Identity groups refer to themselves as the Phineas Priesthood.

  • Numbers 36:1-13
    Here we have the daughters of Zelophehad commanded to marry among their father's tribe (of the multiple Israelite tribes). God is really picky.

  • Deuteronomy 7:1-6
    Verse 3: don't marry the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, or Jebusites, and don't let your kids marry them. Cause God hates foreigners. Well, technically God hates the natives of Israel, so he killed them all and gave the land to the Hebrews. But genocide is okay when you're totally benevolent.

  • Deuteronomy 32:7-9
    God "separated the sons of Adam [and] set the bounds of the people." Clearly, God endorses segregation. And also condemns migration. Unless you're white, then he's totally in favor of spreading to new lands.

  • Joshua 23:1-16
    If you intermarry, God will let other people kill you. So, you know, don't do it. Or brown people will kill you.

  • Judges 3:1-11
    The Israelites "dwelt among" foreigners, married their children to them, and worshipped their gods. So God got pissed and sold them into slavery. But it's only the marrying them that really got him mad, not the serving their gods. God's much too mellow to get upset by that.

  • I Kings 8:49-53
    God "separated" the Israelites, but somehow this applies to everyone else, too. You'd think he'd have said something to that effect somewhere, though.

  • I Kings 11:1-13
    Solomon's wives, many of them foreign, turned him away from God, and God got angry. But it wasn't the worshipping other gods that did it, but the marrying foreign women. Marrying seven hundred of them also wasn't a problem so much as their skin color.

  • I Kings 16:29-33
    Ahab married Jezebel (a Zidonian) and started worshipping Baal. So, uh... yeah. These people have crappy reading comprehension.

  • Ezra 9:1-15
    So the Israelites are all marrying other peoples, right? And Ezra--a totally righteous dude--is all "Oh noes! What'll we do?" And God's like, "Don't do that, man!" And Ezra's like, "Dude, you are awesome!"

  • Ezra 10:1-44
    All the people who had intermarried dumped their wives and gave up a ram for penance.

  • Nehemiah 9:1-3
    The Israelites all separated themselves from the other people, so therefore Christians should, too. They just want to be popular, y'know?

  • Nehemiah 10:28-34
    All the people who had intermarried promised they wouldn't do that anymore. It's like some racist after-school special. "I promise I'll never do drugs get it on with darkies again!"

  • Nehemiah 13:1-3, 23-31
    The Hebrews separated from "the mixed multitude" in the first part, and then Nehemiah found little biracial children and decided to kick their ass. I mean, he beat them, he tore out their hair. That'll teach 'em to be biracial and bilingual! Note: God endorses violence.

  • Esther 3:8
    Supposedly this is supposed to mean that the Jews were keeping separate, though I think this guy doesn't really understand what "dispersed" means.

  • Job 12:7-9
    Look at animals and learn from them. Now I ask you: have you ever seen animals spending time with animals of another species?

  • Proverbs 2:16
    This guy takes most any mention of "strange" women to mean "of a different race". So wisdom will deliver you from intermarriage, which is good, because going with her will result in death.

  • Proverbs 5:3, 20
    See above.

  • Proverbs 23:27
    "Strange" women are traps. You think it's all going good and then BAM! You wake up without a kidney.

  • Isaiah 2:1-9
    Especially verse 6--God has forsaken the Israelites because they intermarried. The psychic thing is okay, though--God just loves watching John Edward.

  • Jeremiah 2:1-29
    In verse 20, God calls Israel a "harlot", which means "adulterer", and--as we saw above--"adultery" means "miscegenation." No-one mangles the English language like a Christian trying to justify his position with the Bible!

  • Ezekiel 16:1
    I think this is a typo. In verse 2, though, God says he'll explain exactly what Israel's abominations are. And they apparently include: (16:15) being a harlot, like above; (16:26) screwing Egyptians; (16:28) screwing Assyrians; and (16:29) screwing Canaanites and/or Chaldeans. Wow, Israel really is a harlot.

  • Ezekiel 44:1-23
    ...y'know what? I'm getting tired of this. No more explanations, just a list.

  • Hosea 5:1-7

  • Hosea 6:4-10

  • Hosea 7:1-10

  • Malachi 2:1-17

  • Matthew 24:36-39

  • I Corinthians 10:1-10

  • Hebrews 12:16

  • Hebrews 13:4

  • II Peter 2:9-16

  • Jude 7-11

  • Revelation 2:11-16

  • Revelation 5:9

  • Revelation 7:9

  • Revelation 10:11

  • Revelation 11:9

  • Revelation 13:7

  • Revelation 14:6

  • Revelation 17:15

  • Revelation 21:24

  • Revelation 22:1

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