THE TELEGRAPH: A list of the top 10 worst Biblical verse has been drawn up, which includes approval for sexism, genocide and slavery.
Readers of the humorous Christian website shipoffools.com were asked to submit their 'favourite' worst verses to compile the list, in a light-hearted project called Chapter & Worse.
Topping it was St Paul's advice in 1 Timothy 2:12, in which the saint says: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent."
The extract is often used to justify opposition to women priests.
Next was this worrying verse endorsing genocide, from 1 Samuel 15:3: "This is what the Lord Almighty says ... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.' "
Third was Moses's call to kill witches, in Exodus 22:18: "Do not allow a sorceress to live."
Another gruesome verse to make the list was Psalm 137, which celebrates this terrible revenge: "Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
A more controversial inclusion was that of St Paul's thoughts on homosexuality, from Romans 1:27, currently an extremely divisive matter with the Anglican church: "In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
Others on the list included God's test of Abraham in Genesis 22, in which Abraham is made to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice; this endorsement of female subservience in Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord"; and similar advice for slaves in 1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel." >>> | Tuesday, September 01, 2009
