BIBLE ABSURDITY ABOUT DOGS

Do you have a dog, or dogs, you love dearly?  Have they become to you, as to us, almost like children in your home?  Do you cherish their happy and trust-filled smiling faces and revel in giving them special treats, just like you would a child or grandchild?  Do they snuggle up to you at night and you find that you cannot get up or go back to bed without giving them a loving pat or pet?

If so, join the other millions who are thankful to have these denizens of the animal kingdom to add another fulfilling dimension to their lives. 

Your attitude would be a heresy in the Muslim world.  It also flies in the face of the prejudiced attitude toward dogs found in that revered book we've inherited from the Middle East, the Bible.

Cute little toy dogs and the multi-spendored array of breeds existent today just didn't exist in the backward, undeveloped world from which either the Bible or the Koran emerged.  In those backward, prejudiced, unscientific tomes, dogs are looked down upon and references to them are used as a slur. 

In the Muslim world, to be called a "son-of-a-bitch-dog" is one of the greatest of insults.  It's also a quite common derogatory retort that's come down to us in the Western world, but we don't add the "dog" part, in my experience, and most people don't really think about what they're saying or what original attitude it is based on.  The same basic attitude and origin applies to the disrespectful labeling of a woman as a "bitch" -- a female dog.

Dogs of two thousand or more years ago were not far removed from the wolves from which they descended.  They were useful for some purposes but not highly regarded and seldom treated the way we treat our pets.  There was no Humane Society back then.

Proverbs 20:11 sneers at dogs as creatures who will return to and eat their own vomit.  Jesus referred to gentiles as "dogs."  Several Old Testament scriptures portray dogs as scavengers that will eat human flesh and lick up human blood.

Deuteronomy 23: 18 says, in the King james translation:  "You shall not bring the wages of a harlot, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord your God...."  Modern translations meet modern sensibilities toward our pets by making the term apply to male prostitutes, but there is considerable evidence that the meaning of the original was actually "dog."

As for us, we love our dogs.  They are more loyal and loving than many humans.  Dogs are a wonderful, highly intelligent and useful complement to us humans.  I seriously doubt that a lion will ever, in any world, lie down with any lamb, no matter what the Bible supposedly foretells.  Our dogs lie down with us all the time, and neither they nor we have the slightest fear of each other.

Again, the Bible shows itself as an unreliable source of much of anything.  Of any true science it is almost totally lacking and unreliable.  Many of its social teachings are archaic and repugnant to a modern, enlightened mind (approval of slavery being just one example).