The Wandering Heretic

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This post does not glorify or in any way support the actions of the terrorists of 9/11/01. As a Christian, I cannot do anything but condemn the actions of men who deliberately killed other innocent men, women, and children to do nothing more than make a statement. The attack certainly had no military goal since no immediate follow up occurred. The action was obviously meant to be a symbolic. But symbolic of what?

I think the story of the Tower of Babel gives a hint of interpreting the symbolic act that at least the destruction of the Twin Towers entailed.

In my last post, I determined that the builders of the Tower of Babel were not the population of the entire planet as commonly assumed. Instead the best choice for the subjects of Genesis 11:1-9 were the sons of Joktan from Genesis 10:26. This assertion would limit those who built the Tower to the families of Joktan’s 13 sons: Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. This segregation of the builders of the Tower of Babel from the rest of the population of the earth answers many of the questions I raised in my first post.

Part of the problem with determining what is going on in Genesis 11:1-9 is the text’s extensive use of the pronoun “they.” As I noted in the last post, then extensive use of “they” in the passage makes you question just who “they” are. As I also noted, the first verse may not make the builders the people of the entire earth, as 1) the word for earth could just as easily be translated land or region; and 2) the whole verse may be describing just the language unity of the earth. The people who built the Tower could be just a subset of everyone who spoke the single language. I also noted some internal problems with the passage if everyone in the entire earth is assumed to be the subject.

So if the “they” of the Babel enterprise are not the entire peoples of the earth, then just who are “they”? I shall use the rest of the post to put a people to that pronoun.

The Subversive Verse of the Month for January, 2006 is an unlikely candidate: Genesis 11:1-9. This passage covers the familiar story of the Tower of Babel. As I have often discovered, familiarity can lead to, if not contempt, at least obliviousness. Frankly, when carefully read, this passage can generate more questions than it does answers. This confusion becomes pronounced when the standard global/whole world interpretation is applied to this passage. As in most things, the death is in the details. In this case, many of the details put to question the universal scope often given to the Babel Incident.

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If I read the above statements correctly, according to the U.S. Military, or at least the Marines, one of the purposes of God is the give soldiers “something to hold on to” and to provide the moral principles to allow you to kill people.

Am I the only one that finds such a sentiment disturbing?

To see prior posts of the Joshua’s People cartoons, click on the Joshua’s People Gallery tab on the side bar. Once in the gallery, you click on the Joshua’s People icon, then click on the individual strip icon, then click on the medium size panel to see the full size cartoon.

href=”http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/112050.php “>the Arizona Star, at the University of Arizona’s Distinguished Lecture Series, Father Andrew M. Greeley noted that “Evangelical Christians should not be typecast as illiterate Southerners who hate abortion and love President Bush.”

Speaking to more than 160 people at the Arizona Inn on Wednesday, Greeley, also an author, said generalizations about conservative Christians in the United States are not only untrue but amount to bigotry. And the current paradigm of the culture wars has been miscast by the media, he added, explaining that, in his opinion, the country is not polarized the way it is portrayed in the press.

“Conservative Christians get a bum rap,” Greeley said. “They are the new hate group. It is all right to hate the evangelicals.”

Normally I do not disagree with much of what Greeley says; however, this time I must. Evangelical Christians are not picked on because of bigotry. They are made the brunt of jokes because it just makes sense to make them the target of your humor.

To see prior posts of the Joshua’s People cartoons, click on the Joshua’s People Gallery tab on the side bar. Once in the gallery, you click on the Joshua’s People icon, then click on the individual strip icon, then click on the medium size panel to see the full size cartoon.