The Top 10 Worst Bible Passages

Justin Thacker, Head of Theology at the Evangelical Alliance devotes this week’s Friday Night Theology to ‘The Top 10 Worst Bible Passages’, published in The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper is reporting the results of a survey by Ship of Fools, who have been asking for people to vote on their least favourite verse.

Here’s the top 10, as summarised by Justin:

1. The ban on women teaching in church (1 Timothy 2:12)
2. Samuel’s instruction to ‘totally destroy’ the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3)
3. Moses’ command: ‘Do not allow a sorceress to live’ (Exodus 22:18)
4. The ending of Psalm 137: ‘Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks’
5. The gang rape and murder of a concubine (Judges 19:25-28)
6. The condemnation of homosexuality (Romans 1:27)
7. Jephthah’s vow which led to his daughter being sacrificed (Judges 11)
8. God’s instruction to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:2)
9. The instruction that wives submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22)
10. The instruction that slaves submit to their masters (1 Peter 2:18)

I was reminded of the remark which is often associated with Mark Twain: ‘It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.’