scooter-witch:
Maybe @breelandwalker/@hexpositive has some citations?
Oh darling, you KNOW I do.
First, I’d like to reiterate everything Christo and the tags said above. And I’d like to point out that the very fact that every “holy text” ever written has been created by human hands and human understanding, which are inherently imperfect, so Anon, there’s your first citation right there. And if you think for one second that anyone has ever recorded a religious tenet or created a religious law without there being cultural and political reasoning behind it, you are fooling yourself.
Now let’s move into the history, shall we?
Let’s talk about biblical canon. The Catholic Church has, over the course of many hundreds of years and dozens of synods an ecumenical councils (beginning in 382 CE with the Council of Rome), continuously revised and adapted the content of the Holy Bible. During this time, there was prolonged debate about what material to include or exclude, how to define the nature of God (and by extension Jesus and the Holy Spirit), and what exactly constituted orthodoxy. Quite a number of factions broke off and formed sub-orders within the Church, some of which were reabsorbed. Others were excommunicated or prohibited from teaching.
The fact that there have been so many schisms in the Church over the course of its’ existence indicate two things: first, that even the highest-placed and most-educated religious scholars cannot agree on everything in Biblical canon or canon law; and second, that both Biblical canon and canon law have CHANGED over time in response to the changing needs of the Church and its’ congregants.
The Bible as we first see it in history comes from a Greek translation of an old Hebrew text called the Septuagint, with the New Testament (letters from the apostles and so forth) being added later. Translation of a text often means words are changed to fit the translator’s understanding of a certain passage, and they may not directly reflect the original meaning. This is a pattern we see repeated as Biblical canon evolved and as the text was translated into Latin and later English. And over that time, scholars and monarchs continually argued about what various passages meant, often contradicting each other while using certain verses or chapters as justification for their position or their actions.
And SPEAKING of English translations of the Bible, let’s talk about good old King James. Because that man is a PERFECT example of how the Bible was changed to fit the views and goals of a king. James, son of Mary Queen of Scots, grew up terrified of Protestants, women, and witches. All his life, he was told by advisors that Protestants were plotting to seize his throne, that his mother was an evil scheming shrew, and that because he was ordained by God, the Devil had sent witches to cast spells against him.
The King James Bible contains an oft-cited verse, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18) It’s not the only reference to witches in the Bible, but it’s certainly the most well-known. And it’s present because of a deliberate change made by James.
The original context of the passage states, “You shall not suffer a poisoner / one who creates poison to live among you.” (The Latin text uses the term maleficos, but in the Greek translation of the Septaugint, the word pharmakeia is used, being the Greek word for both one who makes herbal medicine and one who makes and sells poisons. The original Hebrew term MIGHT mean something like “witch,” but scholars are divided on this point.) But since King James was obsessed with witches, he changed the wording on this verse and several others to bolster his agenda to eradicate suspected witches. And this rhetoric DID go on to influence policy and public thought and cost many innocent people their lives.
(See Also: The North Berwick Witch Trials and Daemonologie. Suggested Reading: God’s Secretaries, Adam Nicolson, HarperCollins, 2003.)
And let’s go even further forward to the 20th century, when conservatives began to point to the verse, “Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman, it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)” as justification for their hatred of the LGBTQ community. HOWEVER. Previous and more direct translations of the verse in context indicate a prohibition against incest and sexual assault, not consensual same-sex relationships. But since the bigots needed holy justification for their behavior, they conveniently ignored this and have been for some time. It’s the same reasoning used to pre-emptively pardon the sin of murder for the knights of the Crusades.
So to conclude, Anon, fuck you and your demand for CREDIBLE sources. Crack open a history book sometime, you useless week-old breadstick. Holy texts and religious rhetoric have ALWAYS been used to justify the actions of rulers, ever since there were texts and rhetoric to cite. In many cases, that was the entire point of having them in the first place.
If you don’t understand that scripture written by human hands will always have inherently human fallibility and that the ruling class will always use the excuse of Divine Right to prop up unjust actions, there’s just no hope for you.
