Care for more scorpions, Tommy?

Tastes like chicken.

Uncle Di gives us an example of the assured result of modern biblical criticism: namely, agnosticism.

The arid wasteland that is Catholic biblical scholarship at the beginning of the 21st Century is nothing short of astounding. Far from opening the book to the faithful (as called for by the Second Vatican Council), this sort of thing slams it shut, essentially telling the reader he can't trust his lying eyes.

Moreover, it puts a gnostic elite between the lay reader and the Bible: the scholars are the ones who know what it really means, you poor benighted ignoramus. You need to run through the gauntlet, get swatted on the fanny with Bultmann, Wellhausen, et al and genuflect before the altar of form criticism before you can understand it. Preferably by spending lots of kaysh and writing a hardwood-smiting otiose dissertation that only the Ph.D committee will ever have the displeasure to read. But taking a formation program that feeds the results to the unfortunates in Alpo chunks will do just as well.

Either way, you're a fundy if you dare disagree with it.

I've always liked Diogenes' challenge to the scholar: "All right, fine. Then tell me how it would read differently if it had actually happened."

It's a nice way of telling His Imperial Majesty that he should at least consider a mansiere.