Saturday, August 05, 2006

Literal Biblical Horrors

Every time I hear someone ranting about violence in the Koran, I wonder whethery they've ever actually read the Bible! Artist Dread Scott has an exhibit that makes it quite clear:

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Literal Biblical Horror is a phantasm that envisions the punishment and death repeatedly called for in the bible and which would be mandated by a literal and fundamentalist application of it. It consists of 11 hooded bound and covered representations of people embedded in the ground up to their waists, piles of rocks, and bibles on lecterns. The bibles and figures will weather and age over time. Each bible is open to a passage prescribing for death for violation of its codes or laws.

For example:

For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. Leviticus 20: 9

Then two scoundrels came and sat opposite him and brought charges against Naboth before the people, saying, "Naboth has cursed both God and the king." So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death. 1 Kings 21:13

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.-

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Psalms 137:8-9

The passages are highlighted in blood.

The work is installed at Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, Minnesota

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stoning for eating shellfish. It's in there.