Next to godliness

My mom never got a dishwasher. That's because when we were kids she kept up with us by forcing us to wash dishes with her after dinner. That's how I taught her how to study scripture.

In Catholic grade school and on into my first year of high school I was learning about how the Bible isn't literally true, about how there are different kinds of literature in it, about how there wasn't really an Adam and Eve, etc. And over drying dishes mom wasn't buying it. Not the way the nuns taught her, apparently. Not that it mattered that my teacher was a priest. Apparently we can be heretics just as easily as anyone else. But I didn't give up on her and eventually she came around. She thanks me for it now.

Well apparently there are Muslim scholars that are applying the same type of tools to the Qur'ān that we Christians apply to the Bible. They held an annual conference this week at the University of Notre Dame. Nicholas Kristof writes about it in today's New York Times:

At Notre Dame, scholars analyzed ancient texts of the Koran that show signs of writing that was erased and rewritten. Other scholars challenged traditional interpretations of the Koran such as the notion that some other person (perhaps Judas or Peter) was transformed to look like Jesus and crucified in his place, while Jesus himself escaped to heaven. One scholar at the Notre Dame conference, who uses the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for safety, has raised eyebrows and hackles by suggesting that the “houri” promised to martyrs when they reach Heaven doesn’t actually mean “virgin” after all. He argues that instead it means “grapes,” and since conceptions of paradise involved bounteous fruit, that might make sense. But suicide bombers presumably would be in for a disappointment if they reached the pearly gates and were presented 72 grapes.

I have a feeling that suicide bombers aren't the only ones who might have problems with these scholars' work. They are having to have their conference at a Catholic university after all. They might find their audience even less receptive than my mom. Here's hoping they don't give up though. The hardest part is convincing people that scholarship doesn't take God or inspiration out of scripture.

And it's not like we Christians have had an easy time with it either. That creation museum in Northern Kentucky is still pretty new. And I hear of the occasional priest who still preaches a seven day creation. Maybe my mom was right about us priests after all.