Beloved by Jews and Christians as a biblical hero, King David is famous for slaying Goliath with a single slingshot. Despite some serious moral slip-ups — he seduced the beautiful Bathsheba then sent her husband off to war to die — David is traditionally championed as the fearless leader who vanquishes the Philistines in the name of God.

But in a new biblical novel by Israeli author Yochi Brandes, “Kings III”, David is portrayed as a blood-thirsty warrior and womaniser who mercilessly slaughters his enemies.

“It’s provocative, and it plays with people’s expectations,” Brandes told Reuters in an interview this week. “The reader gets angry at this dictatorial ruler, then discovers at the end it is actually a character they have been taught to love.”

Brandes, who teaches biblical studies in several Israeli colleges, says she is simply teasing out parts of the Bible and Jewish teachings which have been hidden or ignored for centuries, and giving them a controversial new twist.

But she acknowledges the book, which has been published in Hebrew and is slated to be translated into English, is likely to ruffle some feathers among both religious Jews and Christians.

My interview with Brandes this week explores some of the book’s ideas in more detail, and a lengthier story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz delves deeper into the theological implications for a Bible-educated Jewish audience.

What do you think? Should biblical characters be deconstructed in this way to sell novels? Is this an insult to a central character in Jewish and Christian scripture?

We recently wrote about an exhibition in Vienna’s Roman Catholic Cathedral which has caused quite a stir — it included a homoerotic version of Christ’s Last Supper by Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka. The picture was quickly taken down at the request of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna.

The cardinal has now made a statement about the exhibition regretting the work was ever shown but describing Hrdlicka as one of Austria’s most notable artists. He also says art inspired by biblical subjects is something to be welcomed, even if the artists themselves are atheists. The full statement, sent to Reuters in English, is copied below.

There’s been a lot of criticism of Cardinal Schönborn on religion blogs connected to this exhibition. What do you think of his statement?

“The Vienna Cathedral Museum has dedicated a special exhibition, for which the museum’s director, Dr Bernhard Böhler, is personally responsible, to the artist Alfred Hrdlicka on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Hrdlicka is one of Austria’s most notable living artists who, probably more than any other living artist, has devoted himself to the suffering and downtrodden human being and has appealed for “compassion” with the “Passion”. He expresses this “compassion” in a most perturbing way. Hrdlicka`s best-known works in this respect are the “Danse macabre of Plötzensee” (Berlin) and his impressive Holocaust Memorial (Memorial Against War and Fascism) in front to the Albertina Gallery in Vienna. It is for this reason that I agreed to an exhibition of his works at the Cathedral Museum, albeit without detailed knowledge of the individual works to be exhibited.

“Alfred Hrdlicka has dealt with biblical subjects all his life, especially with the suffering of Christ. In spite of the fact that he claims to be a communist and an atheist, he nevertheless has a burning interest in the Holy Bible, and has personally admitted that he has a great longing for faith.

“This exhibition does not mean that the museum identifies itself with all of Hrdlicka`s works. In some of them he oversteps the essential threshold of respect for the Sacred. From the point of view of committed Christians, certain of his works must quite clearly be rejected. I obviously would not have agreed to have blasphemous or pornographic works exhibited. I therefore explicitly regret that a work of this kind was exhibited without my knowledge. I ordered the particular work - which committed believers find deeply distressing - to be removed on 20 March.

“Nevertheless, I still hold the opinion that we must welcome the fact that artists who do not share our faith, or are still searching for belief, occupy themselves so intensively with biblical subjects.”

The sketchy black-and-white picture shows the Twelve Apostles drinking, dancing, and well, getting extremely friendly with each other. It certainly isn’t the version of Christ’s Last Supper that most people are familiar with…

Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka’s version of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy was supposed to be one of the highlights of an exhibition at the Dommuseum, the museum of Vienna’s Roman Catholic cathedral. An initial favourable review by the local Catholic news agency didn’t seem to find anything wrong. But blink and it’s gone — thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, after the painting sparked criticism in Austria and as far away as the United States. Here’s a protest article in German (with 61 comments and an explicit video about the exhibition) and a comically bad machine translation into English.

The museum, a stone’s throw away from St. Stephan’s Cathedral, says it never intended to offend anyone but stands by its decision to celebrate Hrdlicka’s 80th birthday with a retrospective of his biblical-themed works.

Was the cardinal right to tell the museum to remove the most controversial piece? Should the exhibition have taken place in a museum linked to the Catholic Church anyway?

Looking from the outside in, it seems odd the museum was completely unaware of the reaction it would provoke. But Hrdlicka — an atheist who has spent his artistic life being inspired by the Bible (the most thrilling read ever, he says) — is a celebrated public figure in Austria, a country with a tradition of outlandish artists.

Take the now-feted Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele who were condemned for their “pornographic” art at the beginning of last century. Their paintings now sell for millions of euros and the city uses them in its tourism ads.

The museum says a lot of the complaints about the Hrdlicka exhibition came from abroad, where people had read about the exhibition online. Many Austrians who came to the display didn’t seem to have a problem with it, museum director Bernhard Böhler says. He points out that only a minority of the works provoked on-the-spot complaints.

And the cardinal’s office argues that just because the museum exhibited the works, it does not mean that it identifies with all of them. Böhler agrees: “We look for art on biblical themes, but we can’t always choose how the artist will interpret them.”

But by displaying the works, is the museum nevertheless endorsing them? What would have happened if the museum had decided to display similar works concerning the Prophet Mohammad? Is this a valid comparison to make?

It seems unlikely that the exhibition will be closed - it would be slight towards an artist who is as much a part of Vienna as its coffee houses and cobbled streets. Hrdlicka is described on the website of Austria’s chancellor (prime minister) as the country’s “most renowned contemporary sculptor.” His Memorial Against War and Fascism has been on display in the capital’s central Albertinaplatz since 1988.

Hrdlicka also has admirers outside of Austria. At a recent exhibition in Berlin, the leader of Germany’s Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine, compared him to the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. “Like the great Spaniard, the Viennese artist, with his unruliness and his passion, is an unforgiving observer of his time.”

But it seems not everyone is a fan and his works have obviously deeply offended some in the Christian community — something which both the diocese and museum acknowledge.

Hrdlicka, on the other hand, remains slightly bemused by it all. “I’ve got nothing against the Catholic Church,” he says. “But all this has nothing to do with me … I don’t really mind whether the painting is displayed or taken down.”

The exhibition is on display in Vienna’s Cathedral Museum until May 10.

There is no end to modern speculation trying to explain how some ancient event in the Bible may have happened. Here’s the latest, picked up by Jeffrey Heller, editor-in-charge in our Jerusalem bureau:

The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an “altered state of awareness”, Shanon hypothesised…

Read the whole story here. For Shanon’s article “Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative
Hypothesis,” click here.

What do you think of this kind of speculation? Does it make a serious contribution to understanding faith? Or make the speculators seem like they’re straining science to explain — or explain away — miracles?

It’s amazing what you can do with Google Earth. Some Australian artists have used it to create some clever images of biblical scenes. Click here to see “God’s-eye view” shots of Noah’s Ark beached on Mount Ararat, the crossing of the Red Sea and the crucifixion of Jesus.

Their fourth image is supposed to show the Garden of Eden, but I don’t think it makes it. Where’s the naked couple? Or the serpent? Do those trees look like fruit trees?

Hat-tip to Jewcy.com for the link.

“The treasure of humanity … for the price of a coffee.”

With an ad slogan like that and a price of only €1.50 ($2.20), the Bible has become a hot seller in France. In the last four months of 2007, French shoppers snapped up 200,000 copies of a new low-cost edition — as many as are usually sold in a year — in hypermarkets, a leading book chain and in religious bookshops. Another 300,000 have been bought in French-speaking Africa, Belgium, Canada and Switzerland.

The Geneva Bible Society says the new translation (only into French) is meant to be for those who’ve never read the Bible before. “The sentences are shorter and the vocabulary more understandable,” its director Jean-Pierre Bezin told the French daily Le Parisien.

But isn’t France such a secularised country? Frederic Lenoir, editor of Le Monde des Religions, said many French no longer believe in God or attend church but they could not ignore the role of Christianity in western culture. “There are many biblical references in films and books these days and they think it’s useful to know the Bible,” he said. “They wouldn’t spend €25 to buy one, but they’re tempted by €1.50.”

The translation is called Segond 21, after the 19th-century Geneva theologian and Bible translator Louis Segond. The Geneva Bible Society has put two examples of it online in PDF — the Book of Isaiah and the Epistle to the Romans.

Buying a Bible just because it’s so cheap sounds a bit odd. There are so many reasonably priced editions around that I’d think anyone who wanted one would be ready to pay for it. Would you buy a Bible only if it sold at rock-bottom prices?

Among the idiosyncrasies of British life is the fact that this secularised open society has an established church and a law banning blasphemy against it. This anomaly was back in the headlines this week when a member of Parliament tried to abolish the blasphemy law with an amendment to a bill on crime and immigration. With the issue back on the table, another MP submitted a motion to disestablish the Church of England. By a coincidence some might see as a warning, it was listed as motion #666 — the number of the Beast in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, associated with Nero, the Antichrist and other opponents of Christianity.

Change is coming, but it won’t be apocalyptic. After heading off the amendment on the blasphemy ban, the government has pledged to scrap the outdated law against “scurrilous vilification” of the faith after consultation with the Church of England. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has co-signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph advocating the abolition of a ban “in clear breach of human rights law.” The Church of England has signalled it could accept abolition if the government proceeds with caution.

(UPDATE Jan 12: Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, later said the Church of England “is not going to resist the repeal of the blasphemy laws given their awkward and not very workable legacy at present.”)

Motion #666 probably won’t be debated, but it’s a sign. “Momentum for looser ties between Church and State is growing, as the support for the repeal of the blasphemy law illustrates,” writes Ruth Gledhill of The Times.

Ironically, the move to scrap the blasphemy law came after a Christian group tried to use it against the BBC for airing the musical” Jerry Springer - The Opera.”

There was an uproar in Britain recently when Sudan charged a British teacher with blasphemy for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammad. Do you think London should sweep in front of its own door before criticising blasphemy laws elsewhere?

Until now, there have been two explanations for the origin of the Giant’s Causeway, that magnificent collection of interlocking rock formations on the County Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. Geology tells us it is made of columns of basalt that formed after intense volcanic activity millions of years ago. Irish folklore tells us that it was a bridge that the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built to cross over to Scotland to fight another giant. The geologists are right, of course, but the old Irish tale is harmless fun.

Now Biblical creationists are trying to add a third interpretation. The Belfast Telegraph reports that a new group called the Causeway Creation Committee wants to add a creationist explanation to a tourist centre project being discussed.

The newspaper writes:

Their belief is that the causeway was created by a huge watery catastrophe - Noah’s flood… The committee has been set up to lobby for information on their theories to be included in any future visitors’ centre at the causeway. They say more than 1,000 people have so far signed the petition.

Founding member Stephen Moore (30) is a Christian evangelist who runs outreach programmes for young people in Portrush.

He explained: “We don’t believe God created it the way it is, it was definitely a result of volcanic activity. Where we differ from the official theory is that we believe the cause of that activity was the flood we read about in The Bible. It says the fountains of the great deep opened up and because of that there was volcanic activity.

“The other main difference in our view is the date. They say the causeway was created 60 million years ago but we believe that’s a fairy tale. When you follow The Bible timetable it is about 4,500 years ago and due to volcanic activity that surrounds the events of a global flood.

“I take issue when people talk about the scientific view because our view is scientific as well. We use the same evidence and observations, we just interpret it differently.

“It just comes down to what glasses you are wearing.”

Further down, the report says:

But a longer term goal for the committee is to have intelligent design theories taught as science as part of the curriculum in our schools. Intelligent design is the assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Its website states: “We also desire to see the fact of Intelligent Design being taught alongside the Theory of Evolution in our local schools.”

The issue has been discussed on several blogs in the area — see here and here.

Is this just a case of “what glasses you are wearing?” Is one explanation just as good as another?

Donald Duck has been expelled from Noah’s Ark.

To be more precise, a Donald Duck film clip has been removed from a replica of Noah’s Ark in the Netherlands. That came after a local church protested that the film being shown to children visiting the ark strayed too far from the Bible story.

Some background first — a Dutch evangelical named Johan Huibers has built a 50-meter (164-feet) long replica of Noah’s Ark to teach children the Bible story that most didn’t know anymore. Finished last spring, it is about one-fifth of the size mentioned in the Bible but looks like the ship portrayed in religious art. Huibers and his staff have been docking it in Dutch port cities and towns including Amsterdam and Rotterdam for several weeks at a time so local children can visit it.

One of his teaching methods was a clip from the Walt Disney film Fantasia 2000 showing the Ark story. Donald Duck appears in it as Noah’s hapless helper, herding the animals onto the ship and busying himself with odd jobs during the voyage. In another non-Biblical twist, Daisy Duck also appears, but neither she nor Donald knows the other made it aboard before the Deluge struck. Their reunion on dry land is a classic Disney happy end.

“We want to teach the Ark story to as many people as possible,” Jacky Baken, one of the ship’s staff, told the Dutch newspaper AD. “The Donald Duck cartoon is a good way to do this. People remember it, especially people who don’t know the story.”

But some people at its latest port of call, Sliedrecht, remember the story quite well and are not impressed with the Disney version. “We must always try to stay as close as we can to the word of God,” a spokesman for the local church, a member of the Christian Reformed Congregations, told the public broadcaster NOS. “But that doesn’t happen in the way this film tells the story.” After a meeting with church leaders, the Ark staff decided to yank Donald for the rest of their stay.

“From a strictly Christian point of view, the film seems to be poking fun,” Baken told AD. “Of course, that is not the intention.” He added that the Ark would probably resume showing the cartoon once it left Sliedrecht.

Sliedrecht is located at the southwestern end of what the Dutch call De Bijbelgordel — their own Dutch Bible Belt. Our Amsterdam staffer Alexandra Hudson visited a town at the northeastern end for a feature earlier this year.

The cartoon has fabulous graphics and a fun music score. But that’s really not the point here. Is Disney a good way to teach the Bible? Are the good burghers of Sliedrecht overdoing it a bit?

The cautious Vatican reaction to the dialogue appeal from 138 Muslim scholars has prompted one of the signatories to question whether the top Catholic official for relations with Muslims understands Islam. More specifically, Aref Ali Nayed has asked how Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran can say that a serious theological dialogue with Muslims is not possible because they will not discuss the Koran in depth. This debate (discussed in an earlier post here) is dense and highly specialised. But it may be at this level that this unprecedented dialogue could take off or fail to ignite.

Nayed, a former professor at the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome and main spokesman for the 138 scholars, flatly refutes Tauran’s view. He says Muslims have always interpreted the Koran and studied it both historically and linguistically. Their methods were even the forerunners of the “historical-critical” method that Christians use with the Bible, he says. Protestants began applying this “higher criticism” to the Bible in the 18th century and Catholics accepted it only in 1943, making them latecomers to this exercise in Nayed’s view. I am no specialist on these details and will need to hear reactions from Christian theologians.

Readers interested in Nayed’s argument can read it on the website of Islamica magazine or read Cindy Wooden’s story for the Catholic News Service on it. I’ll just quote the crisp conclusion:

“Unfortunately, Cardinal Tauran’s statement turns out to be based on ill-founded ‘Islam versus Christianity’ ‘contrast tables’ developed and advocated by some ‘Islam experts’. Rather than unilaterally declaring the impossibility of theological dialogue with Muslims, Cardinal Tauran would have been wiser to ask Muslim scholars themselves as to what kind of dialogue they feel is possible, from their point of view. To unilaterally pre-determine what is possible and not possible for the other, on behalf of the other, is one sure way of achieving closure in matters dialogical.”

Until we get the Vatican’s official reaction to the Muslim scholars’ letter, we won’t know exactly how it plans to answer this criticism. But comments made by Pope Benedict before and after his election in 2005 strongly hint he has a well-developed view of the difficulty of holding a theological dialogue with Muslims. Fr. Samir Khalil Samir S.J., an Egyptian-born Catholic expert on both faiths who welcomed the dialogue appeal despite some reservations, published this long and detailed analysis of the Pope’s views on Islam in Asianews.it in April 2006.

Joseph Ratzinger is an old-school German professor and they don’t give in lightly. He was so opposed to blurring the differences between faiths that he criticised Pope John Paul’s spectacular Assisi inter-faith summit in 1986. But Pope Benedict found a way to pray with Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti of Istanbul, in the Blue Mosque last year. Are we hearing echoes of Goethe’s Faust (Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust — Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast) or should we look to another poet to explain this?

While we’re on the subject, Benedict and Saudi King Abdullah will meet at the Vatican next Tuesday for the first talks between the head of the Catholic Church and the monarch who is custodian of Islam’s holiest site of Mecca and ruler of a kingdom that follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam. Benedict has frequently noted the lack of religious reciprocity in some Muslim countries that bar the construction of Christian churches even though Western countries allow mosques to be built on their territory. In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not allowed to visit Mecca. Other religions cannot build houses of worship. Christians can’t even own a Bible. Abdullah’s visit will give Benedict the opportunity to repeat his complaint about the lack of religious freedom to the man whose country is regularly listed — as here by the U.S. State Department– as among the world’s worst offenders.

Tauran, by the way, is not the only one cautious about the Muslim scholars’ dialogue appeal. The British weekly The Spectator gave it a less-than-enthusiastic review.