Purandara88
05-15-06, 01:32 AM
The local "science museum" has been running an exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I got free tickets, so last night I decided to go check it out. Now, I'm aware that many of you don't live in a podunk, white bread, button down, butt cut, Eddie Bauer edition Ford Explorer, Applebee's-your-friendly-neighborhood-restaurant shi.thole in the heartland of Christistan, and thus cannot fathom why a few scraps of paper in a dark, overcrowded room could elicit great excitement among the Faithful. But trust me, this goat and pony show has been here for about a month, and people are still clamoring to get a look at said scraps of paper (ok, parchment, but the point still stands). Of course, you also probably live in cities that actually have some real museums. Charlotte, on the other hand, has Discovery Place, which is to museums what TekWar was to literature. It's got a handful of fish and rocks in the basement, but other than that, it's an educationally themed Chuck-E-Cheese.
The exhibition itself was mildly interesting, to an extent (I wouldn't have thought to use DNA testing to reconstruct fragmented scrolls, but then again, I wouldn't have thought to write on goat skin paper in the first place). But there were a several huge problems.
1. A lot of politically charged bullshi.t was inserted into an exhibition where it didn't fuc.king need to be. It was jointly sponsored by the Israeli government (always a reliable, non-biased source for information on the history of the Levant) and by the Levine Foundation (a local philanthropic organization dedicated to spreading Zionist propaganda and encouraging white guilt). Not surprisingly, the exhibition was littered with pro-Jewish and pro-Israel misinformation, the better to keep the money flowing from the Cheeseus freaks who always bend over backwards to help the "Chosen People."
2. Where the exhibit really failed was in placing the scrolls and the Qumram community in any larger context, beyond throwing a sop to the Cheeseus crowd with lots of meaningless references to "Jesus of Nazareth" and incredibly superficial commentary like, "It is very interesting to see a Jewish group within the very century that Jesus lived in that is so concerned with messianic and apocalyptic prophecy." Yeah, well, no shi.t. How about some honest insight, instead of pandering to the fundies by implying that the Essenes were some sort of proto-Christians?
3. Crotch droppings...EVERYWHERE! Listen up folks! I don't care how much you love Cheeseus, this is a serious exhibition that is WAAAAAAAAY the ****** over your elementary school brat's head. LEAVE THEM AT HOME WITH A SITTER OR DON'T FUC.KING COME. It's hot enough in here without five hundred munchkins doing the hokey fuc.king pokey in line. And, if you insist on bringing them, at least teach them to behave, rather than simply letting them run around, squirming between my legs, and having weird god.damn seizures in front of all the exhibits.
The exhibition itself was mildly interesting, to an extent (I wouldn't have thought to use DNA testing to reconstruct fragmented scrolls, but then again, I wouldn't have thought to write on goat skin paper in the first place). But there were a several huge problems.
1. A lot of politically charged bullshi.t was inserted into an exhibition where it didn't fuc.king need to be. It was jointly sponsored by the Israeli government (always a reliable, non-biased source for information on the history of the Levant) and by the Levine Foundation (a local philanthropic organization dedicated to spreading Zionist propaganda and encouraging white guilt). Not surprisingly, the exhibition was littered with pro-Jewish and pro-Israel misinformation, the better to keep the money flowing from the Cheeseus freaks who always bend over backwards to help the "Chosen People."
2. Where the exhibit really failed was in placing the scrolls and the Qumram community in any larger context, beyond throwing a sop to the Cheeseus crowd with lots of meaningless references to "Jesus of Nazareth" and incredibly superficial commentary like, "It is very interesting to see a Jewish group within the very century that Jesus lived in that is so concerned with messianic and apocalyptic prophecy." Yeah, well, no shi.t. How about some honest insight, instead of pandering to the fundies by implying that the Essenes were some sort of proto-Christians?
3. Crotch droppings...EVERYWHERE! Listen up folks! I don't care how much you love Cheeseus, this is a serious exhibition that is WAAAAAAAAY the ****** over your elementary school brat's head. LEAVE THEM AT HOME WITH A SITTER OR DON'T FUC.KING COME. It's hot enough in here without five hundred munchkins doing the hokey fuc.king pokey in line. And, if you insist on bringing them, at least teach them to behave, rather than simply letting them run around, squirming between my legs, and having weird god.damn seizures in front of all the exhibits.