It seems that Bill O'Reilly's struggle against the secular left now involves saying the book of Revelations is 5,000 years old even though it would be mighty odd for a New Testament book to have been composed thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
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Better Culture Warriors Needed
17 Nov 2007 12:41 pm
Comments (33)
The funnier part was the George Clooney quote. He read "left England" as "seperated from England" and then made fun of him for saying there was a religious component to the revolution, and even chided the viewer that corrected him for getting the quote wrong.
Bill O'Reilly also said:
"Now, I'm mocking Clooney, because he is the epitome of far-left lunacy. He despises conservatives. He wants a brave new world. Smoke pot, save the witches. Clooney and others like him do great damage to traditional liberals. Because George has a platform, some Americans believe all on the left think like he does. They do not."
I used to consider myself to be a fairly traditional liberal, but I agree with George Clooney that executing witches is a bad idea. That means that I am a far-left lunatic, rather than a traditional liberal.
Thanks you, O'Reilly, for clearing that up.
You have to admit it was pretty funny for Howard Dean to get the Book of Job confused with Pinocchio.
As per Clooney, he could have been clearer in that he was talking about the birth of American society as opposed to the American country (although many people who came to the 13 Colonies for reasons of religious tolerance other than hyper-intolerance came from continental Europe). This however is different from O'Reilly making errors that suggest he forgot what "AD," which I suppose he supportve vigorously against "CE," means.
Jonah. Not Job
Much more comical is Rush Limbaugh getting fooled by a fake scientific paper debunking global warming.
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/11/rush-to-judgeme.html
Official Islamic doctrine holds that the Koran has existed eternally (and merely entered the world of man when it was dictated to Mohammed by God). So O'Reilly's mistake is one that might be expected from a practicing Muslim who assumed the same was true of the Bible.
It's the book of Revelation, not "Revelations."
Not to mention that 5000 years ago is 996 years before the world was created !
You go to culture war with the army you have.
5000 Luffa Falafel Years = 2000 Biblical Years.
It was my understanding that the O'Reilly show used to be a place where guests would come on, accepting the occupational hazard of being yelled at in exchange for using the show to promote their newest book, and then O'Reilly would grind some axe about some news story he wanted to promote.
Nowadays, his show seems to be all about ranting about someone he's pissed off at and screams about them for days on end. One day it was Ward Churchill, then it was Kos, now it's George Clooney. Am I correct that this is a new pattern for him, or was he always like that?
O'Reilly's mistake probably comes from confusing Leviticus with Revelation. These are the favorite books in the bible for the religious right - in fact, they seem to ditch most of the rest of the books.
Not even the frigging Old Testament is 5000 years old.
Even the Rigveda isn't more than 3,700 years old.
The guy knows nothing and just makes shit up for geezers who are as ignorant as he is.
I know he gets a lot of attention because his ratings indicate he's widely watched, but when you consider his average viewer is 74 years old and circling the drain, does it really matter how many people are watching him?
Just ignore him, I say.
Revelation is the worst book in the Bible.
Martin Luther said that it was "neither apostolic not prophetic" and that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it." John Calvin wrote commentaries on every book in the New Testament except Revelation, implicitly downgrading it. He also forbade his ministers to attempt to interpret it. Many early Christians were also skeptical of Revelation, and it only made it into the New Testament canon by one vote. And the only reason it passed was because it was believed to have been written by the Apostle John. We now know that this is not true: the actual author is anonymous.
Revelation is inconsistent with much of the rest of the New Testament. B.A. Robinson of the Ontario Center for Religious Tolerance points out: "This is a very different picture of God than we see described in the synoptic gospels. There is no love for one's enemies. There is only bitterness, hatred, and a desire for revenge." Historians are fairly certain that Revelation was written by a member of an early Christian group being persecuted by Rome, and that the "beast" was the Roman emperor. The purpose of this book was to bolster the morale of Christians by assuring them that God would punish their persecutors. Since the prophecies did not come true and since the lust for revenge is inconsistent with Christian theology, why is this fantasy still included in the Bible at all?
why is this fantasy still included in the Bible at all?
Yes! The process for changing the Bible is far too cumbersome...
"Not to mention that 5000 years ago is 996 years before the world was created !"
Where have you been for the last millennium"
My watch says it's been 6010 since Old Year's Eve on 22 October ;
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/07/deep-time-for-d.html
Well O'Reilly is popular since he knows little more than his viewers. If he knew more than they do, he'd have no audience. You have to see O'Reilly and his viewers as a kind of animal-unit; he being just the mouth.
Having personally visited John's grave, outside the ruins of Ephesus, I can assure you: he did NOT write "Revelation."
How dare you question my intuitions??? I've BEEN there!!!
Of course John did write the Book of Revelation. I DID!!! HAHAHAHA!
...and I fucked Mary Magdalene. Was that wrong?
I think John did write "Revelation", but Paul wrote "Yesterday" by himself.
I kind of like Book of Revelation. It has a certain Kabalistic bent, with numbers being so prominent, 4 riders, 7 seals etc. it is also quite poetic.
One thing that one can observe in the Bible and New Testament both is that God has good days and bad days. The times from Exodus untile the monarchy was established were particularly hard on God and his wrath was frequently unleashed.
Christ himself could be seriously pissed off. He cursed the city of Kapaharnaum where He thought and made miracles and stupid townies did not like it at all. And the city was duly destroyed in the comming war.
So one day you are in a particularly bad mood and you may think: how it would be to say "Goodbye cruel world!" Except that when you are a God, you can do something else about it. It is not you who will be gone.
Many early Christians were also skeptical of Revelation, and it only made it into the New Testament canon by one vote.
Hey, wait a minute, that's the same margin as George Bush! Is this a sign of the apocalypse?
5000, 2000. It's a simple slip of the tongue. O'Reilly should be more embarrassed for saying, "Go to Revelations in the Bible and look at the prediction for the end of the world... It's fascinating, because it does involve the Middle East."
Yes, fascinating that a book written by someone who lived in the Middle East and knew nothing of the rest of the world, except for the city of Rome, wrote about future events happening in the Middle East and Rome.
I've been arguing with SuperChristians for almost 30 years, ever since I met my first Campus Crusader as a freshman.
This brand of Christianity is a doctrine created by the stupid, for the stupid, and is spread by the stupid. It's not possible to maintain a fundamentalist world view unless you suspend your intelligence and believe and spew many exceptionally stupid things.
O'Reilly isn't a fundie, of course - he's just an opportunistic asshole who has no idea what he's talking about. I'm just surprised he hasn't decided to run for the GOP nomination yet. He'd fit right in.
Also amusing: Olbermann made fun of O'Reilly for this the other night, but he made the at least equally stupid mistake of saying that Anno domini dates from Christ's death rather than his birth. Ah the sad state of Biblical literacy, among saint and sinner alike!
I really liked Revelations in my pot-smoking period.
One of my friends told me that the island where it is believed that the Book of Revelation came from is also known for tons and tons of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Very likely the whole thing was generated by some ancient tripper.
Anent the above, in which I reveal my own ignorance by calling it "Revelations" rather than "Revelation": it is at least a popular error, and not illogical since the Book does have A LOT of revelations in it -- or as grumpy suggests, hallucinations.
Moe,
It does contain one or two prophecies that are remarkably close to actual history (i.e. the Roman empire did in fact intrust its defences to ten barbarian tribes which then destroyed it, as the Apocalypse predicts). But it's not essentially meant to be a detailed prediction of the future.
I think that the end of the Apocalypse of John has some of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. The vision of a kingdom where there is no grief nor sorrow, and where the light of God's presence shines for ever. The vision of the city of God and of the Lamb. The vision of the tree of Life, of the Blessed Mother of God, of the destruction of the scarlet whore of Babylon, of the courts of God, of the new heaven and the new earth. If you think that the book is just about death and destruction you haven't carefully read it.
The Apocalypse of St. John contains the core of the New Testament teaching that Christ will 'come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.' Yes, there is a lot of death, destruction and vengeance because the world is an evil place, and the sufferings of the innocent need to be avenged. There is a time for forgiveness, and a time for vengeance. Much as it is impossible to conceive of a heaven without a corresponding hell, or of a God without a corresponding devil. The Apocalypse shows us the essential nature of evil and how the struggle between evil and good on this earth will ultimately resolve itself.
Whether your vision of the perfect society depends on the Christian conception of heaven or on a secular conception of heaven on earth, it owes much to the Apocalypse of John. The Apocalypse has been called the foundational myth of Western civilization. Pretty much every social movement that sought to overturn social injustice or to carry out social revolution was inspired either by the theology or by the imagery of the book of revelation, and this includes the most secular and indeed atheistic of them. Marx and Engels after all said that the Apocalypse of John was what dreams of social revolution looked like in a religious age. A Bible without an Apocalypse would be incomplete, would give a distorted image of God, and would not be a Bible that spoke to me nearly as much as the real Bible does.
Well, I realize we can't expect liberals to be any good at arithmetic: according to Bishop Ussher, the world was created 6,000 years ago, give or take a few, so LARick is wrong: even according to O'Reilly, the Revelation could have been written after the creation of the world.
More serious is Josh G.'s fantasy that the Revelation of John is inconsistent with the rest of the New Testament. Jesus appears in the gospels as a fire-and-brimstone preacher, asserting that the judgment of God is near, and it won't be pretty. (He's also shown as an exorcist and faith-healer -- really, the Oral Roberts and Pat Robertsons are much closer to Jesus than, say, Martin Luther King Jr. was.) Jesus said, according to the gospels, that the end would come during the lifetime of at least some of those who heard him, and he warned that few would be saved -- most would be lost, to the fire that is not quenched and the worm that is not sated. Aside from the overtly "apocalyptic" material in the gospels, how can anyone read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the gospel of Luke and try to claim that Jesus was all forgivenness, sweetness and light?
The misinformation I see in this comment thread is no better than O'Reilly's. Just because you're not a fundamentalist, that doesn't mean you're knowledgeabout about the Bible, as the commenters here show.
Re: There is a time for forgiveness, and a time for vengeance.
Um, how about justice instead of vengence. Revenge is a purely selfish desire bearing the same relationhsip to justice as pornography does to healthy sex.
JonF,
Well, OK, retributive then. Pure vengeance is off limits to US, but that doesn't mean it's evil in itself, it means that it belongs to God.
'Brothers, do not avenge yourselves; for, Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.'
I wonder how anyone can look at today's Gospel reading and think that the teaching of Christ was all about sweetness, light, and 'can't everyone just get along'. It's noteworthy by the way that that particular prediction about the temple of Jerusalem being torn down was fulfilled only 40 years after His death. Just a coincidence, or something more?
It's true, Christ talked a lot about the worm that would never die and the fire that would never be quenched. It's hard to imagine a Heaven without a corresponding Hell. It's absurd to try to write Hell, the Apocalypse, and the reality of the devil out of the New Testament.
JonF, I think you're insulting pornography there-- at least pornography can lead to better sex. You can't get justice out of vengance.
Comments closed December 01, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Does O'Falafel even matter anymore? Only old people watch him.
Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | November 17, 2007 1:10 PM