. . . to rightly divide the Word of Truth. At least, some people don't think education is important when it comes to reading and interpreting the Bible.
I was briefly distracted from my studies the other night when I saw this link that Ken Brown noted on Twitter (posted earlier by Brandon Wason). The link directs to an article titled "Why Bible College is Unscriptural and Wrong" by the infamous Pastor Steven L. Anderson (of "pisseth against the wall" Youtube fame), fundamentalist, King James only, uneducated . . . and proud of it.
I was baffled by his attempt to write-off "college" because the Bible doesn't mention "college" except once in the KJV and it's associated with . . . <gasp> a female preacher! More precisely, it relates to the prophetess Huldah in 2 Kings 22:14 (and parallel in 2 Chron 34:22) who lived "in Jerusalem in the college." Of course, if Anderson knew anything about Hebrew or used any other translation than the KJV, he would have known the word the KJV translates “college” is ha-mishneh “the Second Quarter” of Jerusalem; it has nothing to do with higher education. I’m really not sure where the translation “college” came from, unless it was just an anachronistic assumption that the prophets and prophetesses lived together in the same area (used religiously in the “college of cardinals” sense). I have to admit that I stopped reading at this point. I’d seen more than enough to recognize the work of a crank.
Then to my surprise, the crazy exegesis of Mr. Anderson popped up again yesterday in my RSS feeds. Darrell Pursiful and Dr. Claude Mariottini (also here) fearlessly take up the cause of pointing out how ridiculous Anderson's interpretation of Deut 22:5 really is (the part where the Bible says cross-dressing is wrong).
His completely ignorant, anachronistic way of reading Scripture can only be explained by the fact that he believes formal biblical training in college or seminary is somehow wrong and unscriptural.
Yes, we’re all incredulous at his assertions. Yes, he’s serious. He might be crazy, or at least slightly out of touch with reality. He definitely needs to take 1 Tim 2:2 about respecting the government more seriously.
I think he should be in the running for the next Worst Preacher Ever competition. There are many more examples of how bad he can be on his Youtube channel with over 400 videos uploaded. Education? He doesn’t need it.
Brandon Wason actually posted that link, I just passed it along. I have to admit, I thought it was a spoof until about two-thirds of the way through!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification, Ken. I was attributing where I saw it. Brandon's must've fallen too far down
ReplyDeletefor me to see it. I'll update the post.
For some reason I thought of Anderson while jogging this afternoon (I also saw that on Twitter the other day). I was thinking that maybe it would be a fun exercise to assign one of his videos, or a post like the one you linked to, and have students give a critique from different angles. I don't know of anyone nearly as extreme, but this type of thinking and interpretation certainly creeps up here and there. Then again, maybe it's not that great of an idea . . .
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