It’s not mainstream media, but enough readers sent along this recent Cybercast News Service story by Pete Winn that I thought we’d take a quick look. The article features biblical scholars challenging whether a quote used by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in favor of political solutions for the environment is found in Scripture:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of quoting a particular passage of Scripture. The quote, however, does not appear in the Bible and is “fictional,” according to biblical scholars.
In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children’s children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature.”
The reporter asked the speaker’s office for the origin of the quote for two days before running the story. He spoke with a range of biblical scholars who said they did not know of any passage approximating her quote:
John J. Collins, the Holmes professor of Old Testament criticism and interpretation at Yale Divinity School, said he is totally unfamiliar with Pelosi’s quotation.
“(It’s) not one that I recognize,” Collins told Cybercast News Service. “I assume that she means this is a paraphrase. But it wouldn’t be a close paraphrase to anything I know of.”
I wasn’t sure from reading the initial quote whether it was fair to view Pelosi’s statement as a quote or an interpretation. Different versions of the press release that I saw on the always-reliable internet had the quotation without quotes around it. But for a “gotcha” piece, Winn did his homework, listing many and various occasions when Pelosi had used the quote, sometimes attributing it to the Old Testament, other times to the Prophet Isaiah.
He also spoke with a Baptist professor of Old Testament and a Roman Catholic doctor of Scripture, among others. The main problem with the story is the lack of a vigorous defender of Pelosi. Winn’s sources do run the gamut from scholars who think she’s off her rocker to those who think she’s merely misguided:
Mark Goodwin, an associate professor of theology at the University of Dallas, said Pelosi’s quote only reflects a partial Scriptural truth, at best.
“‘To minister to the needs of creation is an act of worship’ doesn’t sound right to my ears,” Goodwin said. “To minister to the needs of creation’- yes, but not as an act of worship. I’m not sure what she meant by that, and if I were there, I would have raised my hand and asked her to clarify that.”
Westminster Theological Seminary professor Peter Enns told Cybercast News Service that there is nothing in the Bible even approaching a proof-text for Earth Day.
“As wise an idea as it might be to be concerned about the environment, I think to find a specific biblical anchor in the Old Testament might be asking things of the Bible it’s just not prepared to deliver,” Enns said.
“To say that humanity (is the steward) of creation is not so much - in the ancient world -a statement that the goodness of creation has to be protected, but more a statement in the Bible of the supremacy of humanity as the pinnacle of creation,” he added.
I appreciate the way the reporter contextualized the verses of the Old Testament that deal with man’s stewardship of creation, but many conservationists and environmentalists are inspired by real verses in the Old Testament directing care of the earth. I know it’s a story about a politician quoting Bible verses that don’t exist, but perhaps the biblical motivations of environmentalists could have been mentioned a bit more.
 | Posted at 11:12 am |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (15) |
April 25, 2008, at 12:28 pm
Granted that Pelosi was mistaken about that being an exact quote but the more interesting question to me is what the Bible does indeed say about the environment. Is she correctly interpreting the Bible even though she’s technically mistaken about the quote. I looked around and found http://www.jri.org.uk/resource/bible_wenham.htm which is replete with quotes and discussions from the Bible. He concludes:
The media does love to nit-pick to the extent that I think many reporters illustrate what the Bible says about straining at gnats and swallowing camels. (Matt. 23:23-24). The real question is what a Christian is called upon to do in this area rather than obsessing about the accuracy of one particular politican’s quote.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 12:56 pm
I think it’s from the Nag Apocryphon.
Not to be confused with II Psoriasis 7:14 (“The Lord doth helpeth whomsoever first helpth himsef.”).
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 1:40 pm
II Psoriasis?
That, I believe, is in fact written in the Book of Benjamin of Philadelphia, wherein one also reads,
“A penny saved is a penny earned”
and
“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Who said the canon was closed?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 3:48 pm
I don’t think Winn is straining at gnats. He listed
If I said that Shakespeare in Hamlet wrote “You have to know yourself to love yourself without killing yourself,” then anyone would have good cause to wonder if I really knew what I was talking about - regardless of whether my quote/interpretation was defensible.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 5:14 pm
No, no, no. It comes out of I Opinions 5:13 right after “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” In context, it is talking about polution.
II Guesses 3:1 also mentions the fact that when man swallows too many camels, he will make the species extinct.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 7:51 pm
Biblical writers would be concerned about a lot of things. That’s not the point. Imagine what would happen if a politician claimed to quote the Bible (even citing Isaiah) to support a conservative cause, but no such quote or paraphrase of such a quote was in the Bible. The howls of outrage in the MSM would be deafening, and I doubt that Jerry would be lecturing us about how the howlers were obsessing, nit-picking, straining at gnats and swallowing camels, and missing the larger point.
If you are going to cite the Bible, cite the Bible.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 7:57 pm
I submit that there IS no “visgorous defender of Pelosi.” Either her supporters don’t know for sure that there is such a quote or—more likely—they know there is NO such quote and are unwilling to speak to it!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 25, 2008, at 8:08 pm
Ironically, the apostles and even Jesus quote scriptures that nobody can locate - and some are paraphrases, at best.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 26, 2008, at 6:00 am
I am a defender of Pelosi and defended her in my first post here. Maybe my defense was not strong enough. In my judgement, Pelosi was accurate about the “spirit” of what the Bible says which “giveth life” rather than the letter (exact quote) which “killeth”. Is that a strong enough defense?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 26, 2008, at 9:41 am
Jerry:
You may be on to something - Pelosi seems to be a Catholic who ignores the actual teaching of the church on politicians and support of abortion in favor of what she thinks the Catholic Church’s position should be.
That’s kind of like reference to the “spirit of Vatican II” instead of reference to the actual documents of that council.
This type of thinking is also analogous to thinking of our “living Constitution” rather than what the Constitution actually says.
BTW “killeth” is an exact quote of the KJV translation of the original Aramaic; nor is it an exact quote of all the other translations out there.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 26, 2008, at 4:09 pm
Biblical Exegesis is indeed made more difficult because of the varying versions of the Bible. I personally like the KJV even if it less literally accurate than other versions. I personally find it more evocative and more accurately reflecting the spirit.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 26, 2008, at 4:14 pm
If Pelosi is attempting to quote Scripture, she is more than “technically mistaken,” she is way off. I think she would be on more solid ground with a well-placed “that”.
“The Bible tells us in the Old Testament that to minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.”
At least then she is more clearly offering an interpretive summary (as Jerry seems to suggest) and looks a lot less like she is artificially speaking “the language of faith”.
That said, Jerry is also way off with both the letter and spirit of his allusion to 2 Corinthians 3 - unless he is suggesting that actually knowing what the Bible says kills people while Pelosi’s Scriptural assertions will restore humanity to a life-granting covenant with God (in which case, Winn could have written a very different article…).
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 26, 2008, at 11:17 pm
Lucky for her her name isn’t “Dan Quayle”, or she would never hear the last of it.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 27, 2008, at 11:25 am
If someone makes a point that the media disagrees with and quotes (or misquotes) Scripture, “ignorance” and “arrogance” are the charges.
If someone makes a point a journalist is sympathetic to, well, um, what really matters (per Jerry) is the “spirit” of what’s said. It must be Scriptural somewhere, and if it’s not, well it should be anyway.
Julia’s suggestion that apostles, and Jesus Himself, quoted and paraphrased Scriptures we don’t know of is also spurious. They could have been quoting other scriptures popularly known then, since lost. Pelosi had the audacity to quote the “Old Testament” and “Isaiah”, two books which have been canonized (i.e. accepted, completed) and manuscript verified. That’s the whole point - we have the reference, so if you’re going to “quote” it, it’s not too much to ask to be accurate.
Pelosi would be among the first to defend the holy enshrined *Separation Of Church And State*. She should take an extra dose of that medicine, and leave the Bible misquotes out of her political speeches. If she wants to make a valid point, she can simply make the point without hijacking Scripture.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 28, 2008, at 7:38 pm
The article indicates she’s been doing this since 2005. SUrely she or her staff have had time to look it up? And it’s such weird locution. Doesn’t sound like anything in the Bible.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0