New Zealand’s Associate Minister of Education John Banks Believes in Adam and Eve but not in Evolution

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ACT, Adam and Eve, Associate Minister of Education, Darwin, evolution, first chapters of Genesis, Genesis, John Banks

On 20 August 2012, conservative evangelical New Zealand radio station, Radio Rhema, interviewed the Associate Minister of Education John Banks about the teaching of Creationism in schools. The interview follows the recent announcement of the plan by the free-market neoliberal ACT Party – of which Banks is the party leader and sole MP – to introduce private “Charter Schools” in New Zealand from 2014, many of which will be administered by evangelical Christian groups.

John Banks – New Zealand Associate Minister of Education and believer in Adam and Eve rather than in Evolution

While the interviewer wanted John Banks to tell him whether he supported the teaching of Creationism in schools, Banks attempted to steer the question to his own personal belief. On the question of his personal belief, Banks agreed that he believed in the story of Adam and Eve and did not accept the scientific fact of evolution.

His answer on teaching Creationism in schools was more cagey. He refused to make a clear statement that he supported the teaching of Creationism, referring obliquely to the liberal humanist enemy – possibly the “basket-weaving, hairy-legged feminists” whom he has often referred to – who would pounce on his words (“we have to be very, very careful about parading all this…”). But his comments on presenting ‘both sides’ of the issue removes all doubt that he wants Creationism to be taught in schools as a ‘scientific’ option.

Interviewer: As the Associate Minister of Education, how do you feel about schools teaching Creationism?

Banks: What do you mean? Can you just explain it to me so I clearly understand.

Interviewer: I guess your question back to me is fair, because there would be many different kinds of Creationism. There would be Intelligent Design, there would be long earthers, there would be short earthers. But I guess to nutshell it, to stereotypically nutshell it: that God created the world, that Darwin’s theory of evolution is not accurate, that God created Adam and Eve and that everything else has come from it. What do you think about schools teaching that…?

Banks: That’s what I believe! That’s what I believe. That’s what I believe. But I’m not going to impose my beliefs on other people, especially in this post-Christian society that we live in, especially in these lamentable times. I’m not going to be judgmental; I’m too old and have moved past that now. But I know what is important to me, I know what’s important to you, I know what’s important to our families, and I know what will make this country great again. But we have to be very, very careful about parading all this, because there are reactionaries out there, humanists in particular, that overrun the bureaucracy in Wellington and State education that you and I would be an anathema.

Interviewer: So let me get this clear, John Banks, Associate Minister of Education, you disagree with Darwin’s theory of evolution, you believe the Genesis account of how life began?

Banks: Yes.

Interviewer: Well how do you feel, therefore, about the other question: about evolution being taught in our schools?

Banks: Well I don’t have a problem. There are a lot of things taught in our schools that I don’t particularly like being taught in our schools. That’s where we’re at now….

Banks: … I don’t see anything wrong with a Christian school teaching Christianity and Adam and Eve and everything that follows.

Interviewer: And do you think there is a place to teach these opposing views equally? Darwin’s theory of evolution would not sit on an agreeable level with those who teach the six-day creation story, and vice-versa. Can two opposing views like that be taught on an equal level in our schools?

Banks: I don’t have any problem with schools teaching opposing views, because I think it is important that children have a rounded education. So I don’t have any problem with them teaching those opposing views. But what we must clearly understand is this country has moved on from a Christian country to a nation of humanism and a post-Christian society and all the attendant ills have followed. I don’t have a problem with people teaching what your faith is. My faith and your faith we share, but it is not the faith that other people might want to share….

The media report that circulated today summarised that John Banks “believes the Genesis account of the start of life on Earth” and that “he has no doubts the first chapters of Genesis are true”. This summary is easily misleading in respect of such a contested passage, as Banks is consistently vague about his precise understanding of Genesis, preferring to broadly agree with the interviewer. But Banks did make an affirmative response to the interviewer’s question of whether he “believed the Genesis account of how life began”. It is not clear that Banks believes in a literal six-day creation as Gavin Rumney suggests after reading the media report, or as Hemant Mehta does, or that he is a young earth creationist (believing that God made everything about 6000 years ago). GayNZ is cynical, entitling their blog post, “John Banks Believes in Talking Devil Tree-Snake !“

Uncovering the Bible’s Crumbitude: Reviews of R. Crumb’s Genesis

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crumbitude, Genesis, Naomi Seidman, R. Crumb, Robert Alter

Here are two good reviews of R. Crumb’s Genesis comic, from two of Berkeley’s Jewish Studies professors. The first review is by Robert Alter, on whose translation of Genesis Crumb largely bases his own text.

“Crumb has always been an artist with a single style, a distinctive and emphatic one–in this regard as in others he is certainly no Picasso; and so it should neither surprise nor disappoint us that he has used his style to interpret the Bible. His women have always been broad-shouldered, big-breasted, thick-lipped, erotically energetic figures with the physiques of NFL linebackers, and that is how his biblical women, from Eve to Rebekah to Rachel, appear. The Crumb brand is certainly here; but in this signature visual idiom he has produced a frequently arresting interpretation of Genesis. I stress that it is an interpretation, because the extremely concise biblical narrative, abounding in hints and gaps and ellipses, famously demands interpretation… The Midrash, produced in late antiquity, is often an interpretive fleshing-out of the spare biblical narratives, an attempt to fill in the narrative gaps and read closely and imaginatively between the lines. And this is essentially what Crumb does graphically, with a special emphasis on the element of flesh.”

(‘Scripture Picture’, by Robert Alter, The New Republic, 19 October 2009)

“What seems to have surprised many of the reviewers, including this one, is not only how “straight” Crumb played the Bible, but also how far from jolting even the most striking of these illustrations are, as if he were not imposing an alien and coarse modern sensibility on an exalted ancient text but rather uncovering a certain Crumbitude that had always been inhabiting it. There was, it seemed to me, an affinity between whatever it was Crumb stood for (sexual lewdness as well as emotional honesty, a fascination with the unbeautiful body, the interconnections between desire and vulnerability or beauty and power) and whatever Genesis had on offer.”

(‘Sex, the Body, the World: It’s R. Crumb’s Bible Now’ by Naomi Seidman, Religion Dispatches, 10 November 2009)

Lost Knowledge from Pre-modernity: (1) Giants are at least 15 cubits tall

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15 cubits, antedeluvian, Francesco Sansovino, Genesis, Giants, Honorius Augustodunensis, Honorius of Autun, Luigi Pulci, Margutte, Nephilim, Numbers, Og, the Flood, Tuscan folk, Walter Stephens

Q. How do we know how tall Giants are?

A. Giants must be at least 15 cubits tall (23 feet tall).

Why? Yea, it is a matter of logic. The Bible tells us that the Great Flood covered the mountains by 15 cubits, killing all flesh. Yet, the antedeluvian Giants, the Nephilim of Genesis 6, appear alive and well after the flood (in Numbers 13). Ergo, the Giants who survived the flood must have been more than 15 cubits tall!

(This otherwise unimpeachable logic ignores any other ingenious ways that Giants managed to survive the Flood. Some rabbinic sources claim that Og managed to escape the Flood by holding onto the outside of Noah’s Ark).

Walter Stephens, in his wonderful book, Giants in Those Days, describes this lost medieval knowledge, concerning the height of Giants, as “an erudite commonplace”. Stephens mentions the Twelfth-century theologian Honorius of Autun or Honorius Augustodunensis (PL 172.165) and Sixteenth-century Italian man of letters, Francesco Sansovino as two scholars who had amassed much erudition concerning the height of Giants (65).

Sansovino quotes Tuscan folk as saying: “Ed hebbi voglia anco io d’esser gigante / Vedi che sette braccia sono a punto.” According to Stephens, these lines didn’t really originate with Tuscan folk at all. Instead, they reproduce part of the half-Giant Margutte’s self-description in the Fifteenth-century work by Luigi Pulci, Morgante: “Ed ebbi voglia anco io d’esser gigante, / Poi mi penti’ quando al mezzo fu’ giunto, / Vedi che sette braccia sono a punto” (18.113.6-8).

Why was Margutte a ‘half-giant’? Because he was only 7 cubits, not 15 cubits, tall. As Stephens translates the lines quoted from Morgante, above: “And I also desired to be a Giant, but I thought better of it when I had arrived halfway–note that I’m exactly seven cubits tall.”

QED

Ignorance of half the Old Testament’s Umwelt

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Genesis, Gian Conte, Greek, Intertextuality, Morton Smith, Roman

Buried away in a footnote to Studies in the Cult of Yahweh (1996), Morton Smith laments the days – from about 100 years ago and before – in which Old Testament commentaries regularly examined Greek and Roman parallels to interpret the book of Genesis.

“The earlier commentaries, especially, cite numerous Greek and Roman parallels, reflecting the happier days of Biblical scholarship, before the specialization of ‘ancient near eastern’ studies had entailed ignorance of half the Old Testament’s Umwelt.” (Vol 1, p. 235, no. 37)

If we accept that “a text can be read only in connection with, and in opposition to other texts” (Gian Conte), then in effect Morton is saying that, for the last century, Old Testament scholars have largely missed the boat.