Getting It All Wrong

NFL legend Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible.“Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season. “This, too, shall pass.” Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. The phrase “This, too, shall pass” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Ditka was quoting a phantom scripture that sounds like it belongs in the Bible, but look closer and it’s not there. Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. The Bible may be the most revered book in America, but it’s also one of the most misquoted. Politicians, motivational speakers, coaches - all types of people - quote passages that actually have no place in the Bible, religious scholars say. These phantom passages include:“God helps those who help themselves.” “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” And there is this often-cited paraphrase: Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden. None of those passages appear in the Bible, and one is actually anti-biblical, scholars say. But people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better, says Steve Bouma-Prediger, a religion professor at Hope College in Michigan. “In my college religion classes, I sometimes quote 2 Hesitations 4:3 (‘There are no internal combustion engines in heaven’),” Bouma-Prediger says. “I wait to see if anyone realizes that there is no such book in the Bible and therefore no such verse. “Only a few catch on.” Few catch on because they don’t want to - people prefer knowing biblical passages that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, a Bible professor says. “Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

Phantom biblical passages work in mysterious ways
Ignorance isn’t the only cause for phantom Bible verses. Confusion is another. Some of the most popular faux verses are pithy paraphrases of biblical concepts or bits of folk wisdom. Consider these two: “God works in mysterious ways.” “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Both sound as if they are taken from the Bible, but they’re not. The first is a paraphrase of a 19th century hymn by the English poet William Cowper (“God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform). The “cleanliness” passage was coined by John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist who founded Methodism, says Thomas Kidd, a history professor at Baylor University in Texas. “No matter if John Wesley or someone else came up with a wise saying - if it sounds proverbish, people figure it must come from the Bible,” Kidd says. Our fondness for the short and tweet-worthy may also explain our fondness for phantom biblical phrases. The pseudo-verses function like theological tweets: They’re pithy summarizations of biblical concepts. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” falls into that category. It’s a popular verse - and painful for many kids. Could some enterprising kid avoid the rod by pointing out to his mother that it's not in the Bible? It’s doubtful. Her possible retort: The popular saying is a distillation of Proverbs 13:24: “The one who withholds [or spares] the rod is one who hates his son.” There are some phantom biblical verses for which no excuse can be offered. The speaker goofed. That’s what Bruce Wells, a theology professor, thinks happened to Ditka, the former NFL coach, when he strayed from the gridiron to biblical commentary during his 1993 press conference in Chicago. Wells watched Ditka’s biblical blunder on local television when he lived in Chicago. After Ditka cited the mysterious passage, reporters scrambled unsuccessfully the next day to find the biblical source. They should have consulted Wells, who is now director of the ancient studies program at Saint Joseph’s University. Wells says Ditka’s error probably came from a peculiar feature of the King James Bible. “My hunch on the Ditka quote is that it comes from a quirk of the King James translation,” Wells says. “Ancient Hebrew had a particular way of saying things like, ‘and the next thing that happened was…’ The King James translators of the Old Testament consistently rendered this as ‘and it came to pass.’ ’’

When phantom Bible passages turn dangerous
People may get verses wrong, but they also mangle plenty of well-known biblical stories as well. Two examples: The scripture never says a whale swallowed Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, nor did any New Testament passages say that three wise men visited baby Jesus. Those details may seem minor, but scholars say one popular phantom Bible story stands above the rest: The Genesis story about the fall of humanity. Most people know the popular version - Satan in the guise of a serpent tempts Eve to pick the forbidden apple from the Tree of Life. It’s been downhill ever since. But the story in Genesis never places Satan in the Garden of Eden. “Genesis mentions nothing but a serpent,” says Kevin Dunn, of Tufts University. “Not only does the text not mention Satan, the very idea of Satan as a devilish tempter postdates the composition of the Garden of Eden story by at least 500 years,” Dunn says. Getting biblical scriptures and stories wrong may not seem significant, but it can become dangerous, one scholar says. Most people have heard this one: “God helps those that help themselves.” It’s another phantom scripture that appears nowhere in the Bible, but many people think it does. It's actually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation's founding fathers. The passage is popular in part because it is a reflection of cherished American values: individual liberty and self-reliance, says Sidnie White Crawford, a religious studies scholar at the University of Nebraska. Yet that passage contradicts the biblical definition of goodness: defining one’s worth by what one does for others, like the poor and the outcast, Crawford says. She cites a scripture from Leviticus that tells people that when they harvest the land, they should leave some “for the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:9-10), and another passage from Deuteronomy that declares that people should not be “tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” “We often infect the Bible with our own values and morals, not asking what the Bible’s values and morals really are,” Crawford says.

Where do these phantom passages come from?
It’s easy to blame the spread of phantom biblical passages on pervasive biblical illiteracy. But the causes are varied and go back centuries. Some of the guilty parties are anonymous, lost to history. They are artists and storytellers who over the years embellished biblical stories and passages with their own twists. If, say, you were an anonymous artist painting the Garden of Eden during the Renaissance, why not portray the serpent as the devil to give some punch to your creation? And if you’re a preacher telling a story about Jonah, doesn’t it just sound better to say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, not a “great fish”? Others blame the spread of phantom Bible passages on King James, or more specifically the declining popularity of the King James translation of the Bible. That translation, which marks 400 years of existence this year, had a near monopoly on the Bible market as recently as 50 years ago, says Douglas Jacobsen, a professor of church history and theology at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. “If you quoted the Bible and got it wrong then, people were more likely to notice because there was only one text,” he says. “Today, so many different translations are used that almost no one can tell for sure if something supposedly from the Bible is being quoted accurately or not.” Others blame the spread of phantom biblical verses on Martin Luther, the German monk who ignited the Protestant Reformation, the massive “protest” against the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church that led to the formation of Protestant church denominations. “It is a great Protestant tradition for anyone - milkmaid, cobbler, or innkeeper - to be able to pick up the Bible and read for herself. No need for a highly trained scholar or cleric to walk a lay person through the text,” says Craig Hazen, director of the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University in Southern California. But often the milkmaid, the cobbler - and the NFL coach - start creating biblical passages without the guidance of biblical experts, he says. “You can see this manifest today in living room Bible studies across North America where lovely Christian people, with no training whatsoever, drink decaf, eat brownies and ask each other, ‘What does this text mean to you?’’’ Hazen says. “Not only do they get the interpretation wrong, but very often end up quoting verses that really aren’t there.”
From CNN, by John Blake

Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!

Sadhu is a Pali word which means good, excellent or auspicious. Examples of the word’s use are: ‘It is sadhu to see noble ones’ (D.I,88), ‘It is sadhu to control the mind’ (Dhp.35), and ‘Even one who leads a sadhu life will decline by consorting with a lazy person’ (It.71). Sadhu is also occasionally used in the Tipitaka as an exclamation. To show his appreciation of something Sariputta had said the Buddha responded: ‘Sadhu, sadhu Sariputta!’ (Vin.I,56). Today it is common for people in Buddhist countries to say sadhu three times to express their happiness or approval of something related to the Dhamma.

Rama Meets The Bodhisattva

Although they are unlikely to have ever read it, most people probably know that the Ramayana is one of the two great Indian epics and is considered a sacred texts by Hindus. It tells the story of Rama and Sita, their exile and their triumphant return. What most people do not know is that there is no single texts called the Ramayana but many of them. The most well-known is the one composed by Valmiki in 24,000 verses. This is considered the Ramayana, the standard one, the one by which all the others are judged. But there is no good reason for doing this other than that Valmiki’s Ramayana is the most widely known version in northern India, that its contents are the most detailed and interesting and that its language is exceptional. Valmiki used an earlier Ramayana, perhaps several of them, as the basis of his own great work. Some of the other versions of the Ramayana are the so-called Southern, the Western and the North-Western Recensions. Then of course there is the Jain Ramayana, which other than following the rough outline of Valmiki’s is an entirely independent work. The Thai Ramayana differs greatly from the Indonesian one, not just in what it says but in its story line, and both are very different from Valmiki’s. And when I say different, I mean really different. In one version Ravana not Rama is the hero. In some versions Sita is Rama’s sister, not his wife. The Malay Ramayana, Hikayat Seri Rama, and the Lao version, Phra Lak Phra Lam, make Lakshmana the hero and Rama his sidekick.
None of this detracts from the Ramayana’s, or more correctly, the Ramayanas, importance, their influence has been enormous. They have left their mark on nearly every aspect of Indian life. Tulsi Das’ rendering would easily be the most widely read book ever written in Hindi. It could be plausibly argued that the Indonesian Ramayana has had more influence on that country’s art, sculpture, architecture and literature than Islam has had. And Thailand? Go to Wat Phra Keo, the most important Buddhist temple in the country, and it is not the life of the Buddha that is depicted on the walls of the passageway around the main shrine but scenes from the Thai Ramayana, the Ramakien. The former capital of Thailand was named Ayodhya, after Rama’s home town, not Kapilavatthu. All kings of the present ruling dynasty of Thailand take the throne name Rama, not Siddhattha, Suddhodana or even Buddhadasa. What the Bible is to Europe, the Ramayanas have been to India and wide areas of South-east Asia.
Now this is a Buddhist blog so what am I doing going on about the Ramayana? Well, here is another fact that I suspect you didn’t know. The earliest version of the great epic is the Buddhist one, the one found in the Jatakas (No 461). It’s called the Dasaratha Jataka, Dasaratha being of course the name of Rama’s father. Now although the Dasaratha Jataka is immediately identifiable as a version of the Ramayana it differs greatly from most other versions. For example, Rama and Sita are siblings, not husband and wife; Dasaratha does not banish them but sends them away to protect them from their jealous step-mother; they are exiled to the Himalayas, not to Dandaka in the Deccan; there is no reference to Lanka or Ravana; Rama and Sita return to Benares not to Ayodhya after their exile, and somewhat uncomfortably, they then marry.
Now reading Valmiki’s Ramayana, and I confess to not having read it all, one discovers little bits of Buddhism popping up here and there throughout it. For example, the story of King Sibi giving his eyes to the blind man (Jataka No 499) is there. I strongly suspect that the exile of Vessantra as told in the Vessantra Jataka (No 549) was the inspiration for Rama and Sita’s exile in Valmiki’s Ramayana, although I don’t know what scholars say about this. Having said all this, it is also true to say that the Dasaratha Jataka is not a literary masterpiece and Valmiki’s Ramayana definitely is. It is nowhere near as long (is any poem?), it lacks its narrative charm and excitement, and its didactic elements are much more limited. If you are interested in reading the Ramayana (and you have 6 month to spare) have a look at http://www.valmikiramayan.net/ where you will find the Sanskrit text and a word by word translation of it with notes.

Dialogue With The Devil

Walter Kaufmann was one of America's most famous philosophers and I became a fan of his years ago. I was first introduced to his writings by Venerable Nyanaponika who had a great appreciation for him also. He had all Kaufmann's books and with his characteristic generosity lent them to me. Kaufmann was the one of the very few academics at that time who actually read the Tipitaka instead of the then often unreliable secondary literature. He knew the Tipitaka through Neumann's lyrical German translations. As a result, Kaufmann was able to write authoritatively about the Dhamma and he often did. In his brilliant Critique of Religion and Philosophy (1958) Kaufmann has an amusing and insightful fictitious dialogue between Satan and an atheist. I reproduce a small part of it here.

Atheist: You look so content. Have you grilled another theologian for breakfast? Or did you heat up a Christian for your lunch?

Satan: Both, my friend.

Atheist: I have often wondered how you catch Buddhists. After all, they do not believe the sort of thing Christians believe, so you can't undermine their faith.

Satan: I get them to fall out of love with the world.

Atheist: By dangling beautiful women in front of ascetics?

Satan: Not necessarily. Their aim is to fall out of love with the world. I try to show them that suffering is worthwhile.

Atheist: That’s what I said; women.

Satan: That works only with the least interesting cases. The others I try to interest in some cause, some task, some mission. I may even persuade them to spread their knowledge to as many men as possible. As soon as I have kindled some ambition I generally do not find it too hard to involve men in all sorts of compromises. But there are other ways.

Atheist: Just name one more.

Satan: Sometimes I try to lead then from detachment into callousness and indifference to the suffering of others. But that only works in the early stages. Once a Buddhist has developed his particular detached compassion he represents one of the hardest cases I know.

Going To Mt. Kailash

Earlier this year I wrote a small book called Mount Kailash, A Pilgrim’s Companion. Now Ven. Anandajoti has with my encouragement put this book on his web site. You can read it at http://www.photodharma.net/Guests/Dhammika-Kailash/Dhammika-Kailash.htm

Drowned Temple

When Sri Lanka’s great Kotmale Dam was completed and started to fill some decades ago it drowned several villages together with their temples. Recently, unprecedented dryness has left the dam water level lower than it has ever been, exposing some of the long-inundated buildings. This is what one of the temples looks like.

'Alternative' Precepts and Commandments

There are several ‘alternative’ Ten Precepts and quite a lot of ‘updated’ Ten Commandments going around today. About the best I have come across is from Hal Urban’s book The 10 Commandments of Common Sense - Wisdom from the Scriptures for People of all Beliefs. Hal Urban’s Ten Commandments are informed by a tolerant, open-minded Christian faith and I would recommend his book to anyone. I’m trying to get his earlier book Life's Greatest Lessons but have been unable to find it yet.
1. Don’t be seduced by popular culture. It prevents you from thinking for yourself.
2. Don’t fall in love with money. It will make you greedy and shallow.
3. Don’t use destructive language. It hurts others as well as yourself.
4. Don’t judge other people. Its better to work on your own faults.
5. Don’t let anger get out of control. It can wreak relationships and ruin lives.
6. Keep a positive outlook on life. It's the first step to joy.
7. Bring out the best in other people. It's better to build up than to tear down.
8. Have impeccable integrity. It brings peace of mind and a reputation of honor.
9. Help those in need. It really is better to give than to receive.
10. Do everything in love. It is the only way to find true peace and fulfillment.