Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

A blog about words, wordplay, and etymology, with slightly more than occasional political rants.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

How well do you know your scripture?


Try this fun quiz with your friends and family - identify which of the following verses are from the Bible and which are from the Quran:

  1. If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you.
  2. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet... But women will be saved through childbearing.
  3. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
  4. Suppose you hear in one of the towns your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. 
  5. Then I heard God say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children.
  6. If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods... do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you.
  7. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. 
  8. Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
  9. Now go, attack the Amalekites and utterly destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

If you guessed they're all from the Bible, congratulations, you're on to my little game. This isn't to prove that Christian scripture is evil, or that it is more violent than the Quran, but just to point out that you can cherry pick evil stuff out of Christian scripture as easily as you can the Quran. Just as Nazis used Christian scripture to justify their actions, ISIL uses the Quran to do the same. But just as the Nazis conveniently ignored all the bits in the Bible about loving and not murdering, ISIL conveniently ignores passages in their own scripture - the bits about never killing women or children or non-combatants or clergy...

1) Deuteronomy 21:18-21, 2) Timothy 2: 11-15 3) Matthew 10:34-36 4) Deuteronomy 13:13-19 5) Ezekiel 9:5 6) Deuteronomy 13:7-12 7) Numbers 31: 17-18 8) Hosea 13:16 9) 1 Samuel 15

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