posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
revdorothyl at 10:49am on 13/03/2009
revdorothyl at 10:49am on 13/03/2009A co-worker forwarded me the link to this announcement of a 'symposium' on UFO's and Milton (er, I mean, aliens and some very peculiar 'Christian' interpretations of the Bible):
Since many of the students in my 8-week intensive introductory course on the Hebrew Bible this semester were repeatedly frustrated and puzzled by my inability to direct them to the canonical Old Testament passages that tell about the Fall of Satan and his rebel angels after their rebellion against God, or the verses describing in detail the devil's musical talents, etc. (I tried telling them that much of what they thought was biblical lore was actually derived from an odd mixture of Milton, Dante, and made-for-cable miniseries about 'nephilim' and fallen angels), and since all of those same students have yet to turn in their take-home final exams, I shudder to think what some of them might do with the links provided by this particular 'Alien Resistance' group.
I'm still having post-traumatic flashbacks to reading (more accurately, trying to decipher) a student's 10-page paper some three years ago, summarizing (but not in any sense critiquing or even bothering to look up the bible references in) a 1970's mass-market paperback, interpreting the first few chapters of Ezekiel as an encounter with alien hardware (I think it was The Spaceships of Ezekiel by Josef Blumrich, but I've tried to repress all memory of the event, so don't quote me). I can just be thankful, I guess, that their term papers have all been turned in already.
All of this is not to say that I find anything inherently objectionable or ridiculous about mixing biblical scholarship and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or that I'm not fascinated by the use of "Nephilim" as an ever more popular mcguffin in science fiction and fantasy media.
However, the 'biblical' interpretations featured prominently on the 'Alien Resistance' web-page are, for the most part, so dubious (primarily based on deuterocanonical or 'apocryphal' writings, and then reading those INTO the margins of the canonical texts -- like fanfic masquerading as original source material) that I wouldn't want my students to go anywhere near anyone associated with this group . . . unless I could count on them to be doing it in the spirit of sheer entertainment, and not to assume that this is the cutting edge of current biblical scholarship. Which (judging from the lack of critical thinking in almost every paper I've received from them over the past 7 weeks) is something I dare not count on.
Somehow, all of this mixing of popular archaeology, E.T.'s, and 'religion' was so much more entertaining on Stargate: SG1. *sigh*
Oh, well. At least this will give us something interesting to talk about over the coffee breaks at work, here at the publishing house today!
The "very first" Christian symposium on aliens will touch down in, where else? Roswell, N.M. this July.
Guy Malone, author and co-founder of Alien Resistance, is organizing the event, where he will make the case that aliens and UFO's are actually fallen demons.
Malone's Alien Resistance organization is devoted to looking at UFO's and alien abductions in "biblical" ways.
Since many of the students in my 8-week intensive introductory course on the Hebrew Bible this semester were repeatedly frustrated and puzzled by my inability to direct them to the canonical Old Testament passages that tell about the Fall of Satan and his rebel angels after their rebellion against God, or the verses describing in detail the devil's musical talents, etc. (I tried telling them that much of what they thought was biblical lore was actually derived from an odd mixture of Milton, Dante, and made-for-cable miniseries about 'nephilim' and fallen angels), and since all of those same students have yet to turn in their take-home final exams, I shudder to think what some of them might do with the links provided by this particular 'Alien Resistance' group.
I'm still having post-traumatic flashbacks to reading (more accurately, trying to decipher) a student's 10-page paper some three years ago, summarizing (but not in any sense critiquing or even bothering to look up the bible references in) a 1970's mass-market paperback, interpreting the first few chapters of Ezekiel as an encounter with alien hardware (I think it was The Spaceships of Ezekiel by Josef Blumrich, but I've tried to repress all memory of the event, so don't quote me). I can just be thankful, I guess, that their term papers have all been turned in already.
All of this is not to say that I find anything inherently objectionable or ridiculous about mixing biblical scholarship and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or that I'm not fascinated by the use of "Nephilim" as an ever more popular mcguffin in science fiction and fantasy media.
However, the 'biblical' interpretations featured prominently on the 'Alien Resistance' web-page are, for the most part, so dubious (primarily based on deuterocanonical or 'apocryphal' writings, and then reading those INTO the margins of the canonical texts -- like fanfic masquerading as original source material) that I wouldn't want my students to go anywhere near anyone associated with this group . . . unless I could count on them to be doing it in the spirit of sheer entertainment, and not to assume that this is the cutting edge of current biblical scholarship. Which (judging from the lack of critical thinking in almost every paper I've received from them over the past 7 weeks) is something I dare not count on.
Somehow, all of this mixing of popular archaeology, E.T.'s, and 'religion' was so much more entertaining on Stargate: SG1. *sigh*
Oh, well. At least this will give us something interesting to talk about over the coffee breaks at work, here at the publishing house today!
There are 12 comments on this entry.