The Dumplin' Dumbash Page

Shame on Dumplin' Dumbash

When it comes to applying the honor and shame paradigm to the Biblical world, Dumplin' Dumbash can't refute it, especially since his knowledge of the social world of the Bible is roughly equivalent to his knowledge of the workings of quantum particles. So he opts for another tactic.

He flashes his membership card in the KKK and whines about how horrible such societies are.

You can tell that the bigot is out in full force from the firsy few lines: If anything, we've become more civilized and less brutal about "shaming" people than the ancients were—for all his talk about shoving things down my throat and choking me, I trust Holding would not really do physically the violent things he expresses verbally—but shame and honor are a huge part of theology, politics, professional sports, and many other areas. Yes, that's right, Dumplin' Dumbash (aka Uncle Whitey McSam is here to "civilize" you barbaric and "brutal" agonistic people with his sophisticated modern Western values. It would never occur to Dumpy that in such societies, the most used mode of shaming involves verbal warfare, not physical contact. No, of course, those barbaric people with the bones in their noses -- 70% of the world even today - are obviously beating each other bloody and senseless with clubs studded with the teeth of sabre-toothed tigers. It's little wonder so many people in the rest of this world think we're so arrogant. Dumpy is a prime example of why.

So Dumpy embarrasses himself when he says that in ancient times, literal physical violence was how shame and humiliation were inflicted. Uh, 'scuse me Uncle Whitey -- that was ONE way it was inflicted; and as in the case of Jesus, it is how it was inflicted normally by authority figures maintaining authority. As such, the worst was reserved for the governments punishing crimes; the rest came from authority figures like parents and teachers applying corporal punishment. And the fact is, such elements remain part of what we do today.

In all of this, Dumpy plays the spin doctor game as usual; my article on this was motivated primarily by his reaction to Mel Gibson’s The Passion, and his desire to divert attention from the physical suffering of Jesus to something less abhorrent. There was no "desire to divert attention" from anything save a false view, Dumplin'. Since by your own account you can't refute the argument, you're obviously motivated by a "desire to divert attention" from your rampant ignorance, which is why your post amounts to shouting, "PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN THOSE BARBARIC SAVAGES!" over and over again. He also ignores a critical phrase of mine: "pain was of secondary focus to the ancients." In other words -- let's just put it simply -- they weren't the wimps we were when it comes to pain. They had learned to endure it and live with it. In our day of over the counter meds, we have people who cry and whine at the slightest headache (Dumplin' is one of those, it seems) and pitch a fit over the slightest discomforting lump in a seat cushion.

Dumplin' also wah wahs that "Moreover, Jesus' own references to eternal torment follow the same model of shame and mortification through suffering endless pain." No they don't, Dumplin'. That's just your ignorant fundamentalism talking again. (He wins a Screwball yet again for his comment, Though of course, Jesus never had the opportunity to "read some works by credible scholars on this subject (like Malina and Rohrbaugh)," so maybe he was just poorly educated and had no ability to grasp biblical scholarship (just like me, wow!). That would explain some of the snide things Jesus had to say about people who put their trust in the teachings of men instead of in the Word of God.) -- as he manages to ignore such points I made as this:

Biblical passages support our thesis: Daniel 12:2 speaks not of everlasting pain, but of disgrace and everlasting contempt. The "weeping and gnashing of teeth" associated with punishment verses "describes a reaction of persons who have been publicly shamed or dishonored" (Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary, 76, emphasis added). Miller says of the passage in Luke, of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man: [The rich man's] "quality of life" is equated to the quality of life that the beggar Lazarus had during his lifetime (e.g. lack of getting all of his basic needs met in community). Note that a beggar was a person of the lowest social status, and therefore one of the most "shamed" individuals.

No answer to this; just wah wah like this instead that also wins the award:

Then again, when you’re limited to the kind of scholarship that, by definition, can only "discover" things by making comments on the comments of other commentators, you’ve got a fairly weak basis for drawing scholarly conclusions about the real world anyway. All you’re really doing is a study of human literature, and all you’re learning is what men have thought and said (and how effectively they’ve said it).

Yes indeed. Still a fundy after all these years.

Beyond this, no more reply to the issue of the atonement; as usual, Dumplin' picks a few lines and thinks he's done. He now turns to another item in which I educated him and said:

Dumpy needs an education here. He doesn’t understand that there are two types of honor in this ancient paradigm: Inherent (what you get by virtue of being you, like being in a rich family) and ascribed (what comes as a result of what you do and what others do respecting you). The former God has in spades, and that, truly, can NOT be taken away. On the other hand, the latter can be, and no omni-ness will change that.

Though this explains it in full, Dumplin', dense as he is, doesn't think this "changes anything." He thinks I "have a certain mental blind spot that prevents him from understanding the difference between insulting someone and actually damaging their reputation." Um -- Dumplin' -- in an honor and shame paradigm, an insult is for the purpose of damaging reputations, you moron. That wins another Screwball Award. Dumplin' thinks he somehow gets around this by pointing out that such attempts could backfire. Duh, really? So if you try to shoot someone and the gun fails, that means guns are not actually "instruments used to kill people" and we can only say that they are part of "an attempt to kill people." Wow. Such profoundness from the little brain of Dumplin' Dumbash.

As a matter of fact, insults, yes, could be ineffectual (and thus backfire), but this doesn't change the fact that there are other attempts that are more effective than others -- and these still can take away from Gos's ascribed honor, a point that Dumplin' dutifully sidesteps. He also sidesteps the issue to launch a screed on how "[s]in ought to lack the power to genuinely damage God’s reputation" when the issue here wasn't sin, but the shame applied at the crucifixion to a member of the Godhead. That said, to whatever extent a sin may detract from God's honor, it is all ascribed honor, not inherent honor, and Dumplin' never is able to explain why this cannot be subtracted from, gyrations notwithstanding in which he ignores the dichotomy: