We are all biblical scholars now

Maybe it's a sign of the end of the world approaching. But we feel that we are being sent a subtle message by seemingly disparate incidents -- that the number of refences to the Bible seems to be growing. We were put in mind of this by a recent P O'Neill conversational tangent (of which there are many) of just why it is that the scene in 24 Hour Party People where Tony explains the routine involving a band called Barabbas is so funny.

Then today, "smart conservative" New York Times columnist David Brooks tells us that we should all be reading the writings of an Anglican evangelical intellectual who in turn stresses Barabbas's fellow prisoner Jesus as the source of all wisdom. Finally (in another sign of the coming end of the world), we found ourselves thinking that Ian Paisley is being at least slightly misunderstood in the latest rhetorical salvoes accompanying the Northern Ireland peace process:

Earlier, Mr [Gerry] Adams [Sinn Féin leader] responded to a call from the [Unionist] leader Ian Paisley for the IRA to 'wear sackcloth and ashes'. The Sinn Féin leader said the politics of humiliation do not work.

Now if one goes to the Bible (where else would Paisley draw a quote like that), one finds that that sackcloth and ashes have less to do with humiliation and more with anguish and mourning. In the fine words of Radiohead, you do it to yourself, just you and no-one else. It's not humiliation, no more than penance is humiliation. But of course this is Ian Paisley we're talking about. So we won't stretch this exegesis too far.