Thanks Bob.

In your Christmas letter you said you enjoyed my computer stuff, tasteful or otherwise. Well its tome for some otherwise.

It is not about taste

My blogs may not always be tasteful, but then the Bible is not always tasteful either.

So I am looking for the most tastless disgusting verse of the Bible and why it is there. People who are easily offended can stop reading here.

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Still here? I guess you are not bothered by tasteless language. I shall ese you into it with the verse where Paul swears, you may not realise it due to the English translation, but Paul, who we call Saint Paul does the very saintly thing of using bad language. It’s in Philipians 3:8 … Heres the ESV Anglicised edition:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

Did you spot it? Heres the end of the verse again in the Authorized Version:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

And in the NETBible:

indeed, I regard them as dung!

Got it? Dung. But even dung is a polite translation of the Greek. Clue, It is what goes in here.

Paul is using the Koine Greek word skubala in plural form, something that was only done when using the word as an expletive.

Paul is comparing knowing Christ with the things of his old life, when he was a pious Pharisee and an up and coming theologian studying under Gamaliel, the best there was. The comparison is such that he cannot find w word for how bad he feels about his former life without using an expletive.

That is not the only place he is offensive either, talking about Christians who said that to be a Christian you had to undergo the Jewish rite of circumcision he said: “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” Not only sarcasm, but also knowing those people would read his letter it is also passive-aggressive. A lesson in how to lose friends and alienate people.

But even this is nothing compared to Isaiah. But that is another blog.