Yesterday’s post regarding the future of Christianity inadvertently set off a debate about whether the Bible is fake. Is the collection of books we call the Bible, anything like the texts the original Christians used either in written form or as part of the oral tradition while they were forming up in the first century? Most Christians accept the argument that the Bible is the product of a long process that started after the life of Christ and his disciples, while others insist the Gospels are firsthand accounts.
The flash point in yesterday’s post was the line about the Gospels being written roughly a century after the events they describe. This should not be a controversial assertion as the majority of biblical scholars think the Gospels were likely written between AD 66 and 110 with the usual uncertainty. That is not a century after the life of Christ, so that is a bit of an exaggeration, but that has no impact on the general point. Early Christians were not waving around Bibles, because the Bible did not exist.
That does not mean the Bible is fake, but it does mean the Bible as we know it would be a strange thing to early Christians. They would recognize the stories, as the written texts were no doubt relying on oral sources. Most scholars think the stories about Christ and his disciples were part of the proselytizing of early Christians, used to convince their audience that Jesus was a miraculous figure. The stories also served as examples for early Christians facing their own persecution.
The way to view the Gospels is as part of a marketing campaign for the new religion that also formed the basis of the new religion. After all, Christianity, like any human organization, had to answer the question, “Who are we?” and what followed is what must always follow and that is a collection of rules that define who is inside the group and who is excluded. Fundamental to being a Christian is accepting that Christ is the son of God and the symbol of God’s covenant with mankind.
The Gospels as a sales pitch offend some people, but it should not, as close to half the New Testament is exactly that and no one complains. The Letters of Paul are clearly intended to support and grow the Christian audience. While much of the content was written to address specific theological issues in the early Christian communities, all of them contain encouragement to believers in the face of persecution, urging them to live in a godly manner and to spread the faith.
The point being is that much of what we think of as the Bible was written by men to address the issues faced by early Christians. Like Christianity itself, those early stories evolved in their telling and then further evolved as they were written and rewritten as circumstances warranted. Even the first effort at formalizing these written texts did not stop this process. The mere act of writing them in Latin meant the first Bible was different from the first written Gospels.
Of course, the Bible was written by men and then rewritten and edited by men, which means errors and omissions. Figuring this out is impossible. Why was the Gospel of Saint Thomas left out of the Bible? Probably because it was not anywhere near as popular as the Synoptic Gospels. Maybe early Christian scholars thought there was a whiff of gnostic heresy in those alleged sayings of Jesus. Whatever the reason, it was most likely not a question of authenticity.
Not only were whole texts excluded, but parts of the included texts have been excluded and rewritten since the first efforts to write them down. This story about a hidden chapter of the Bible was floating around recently. The media claims are overdone, but it does reveal that the editing process started soon after the writing process began and went on for centuries. Much of what we think of as the Bible is the result of practical decisions within the limits of the age.
This is the primary argument against literalism and sola scriptura. You cannot accept the Bible as the literal word of God when it was clearly written and heavily edited by men, with all the errors that come with man’s actions. Similarly, it cannot be the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice when it was compiled by men who were not infallible. Instead, the Bible is to be viewed as a living thing within a living Church that adapts to present reality.
The counter to this argument is that as soon as people start talking about a document as a living thing, they will soon be trying to kill it. This has been the history of the American republic and the Constitution. Everyone who speaks about the “living constitution” is plotting to stab a knife through some part of it. Once people start talking about the Bible as mere inspiration, it is not long before the leaders are embracing sodomy while the congregation is talking about converting to Islam.
Putting aside that debate, the history of the Bible tells us that like the Church itself, the Bible is part of an evolutionary process. Christianity did not spread around the globe and survive to this day, because it was unable to adapt. The Bible itself, with its errors and omissions, survives because of those errors and omissions. The reason people can debate this is because of those imperfections. After all, evolution is driven by defect which turns out to be superior to the standard.
Perhaps that is what lies ahead for the Church. Maybe a third testament, perhaps a collection of yet unwritten texts, adapting the core message of Christ to the modern problems of a technological society, is in the future. No doubt, there will be people who hate it and long debates about what should be in included and excluded, but in the end a timeless message must adapt to the times. It is how we got Mormons. Perhaps for Christians, there is a Joseph Smith waiting to be born.
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‘Perhaps for Christians, there is a Joseph Smith waiting to be born.’
Declined. Joe was an occultist, treasure-hunter, and general purpose loondog. That rap about ‘Moroni’ was hilarious. . . L. Ron Hubbard, eat yer heart out!
‘The way to view the Gospels is as part of a marketing campaign’
So, we’re back in the Temple and He’s over in the corner, making a whip out of rope? The things of the spirit are as foolishness to you, an indecipherable language.
Maybe a third testament, perhaps a collection of yet unwritten texts, adapting the core message of Christ to the modern problems of a technological society, is in the future. Essentially what Smith did. But that is why Mormons are not Christian. You can have another false prophet such as Smith, and there will be/are many of them now. But revelation closed with the death of the last Apostle so whatever they are they are not Christian. That type of path is simply not available to the Church. What can (and seems to) happen is “re-interpretation” of the existing text much… Read more »
While modernity does have some problems in need of new solutions, most of what ails the churches is failing to uphold Christian teachings and morals. A compromise here, an update there and before you know it, you’re preaching on behalf of sodomites and promoting sin of all kinds. Would the Catholic Church be in so much trouble had Vatican II never happened? My guess is not. Letting the homos in meant they were unleashing the homos on the children of the faithful.
Vatican II might end up being like New Coke in that it ends up making people appreciate the original more.
Mysterious ways.
Msgr. Ronald Knox was a Catholic priest a century ago, convert from Anglicanism and a friend of Evelyn Waugh, who wrote a bio about him. Knox wrote, “The Catholic Church says: Look me in the eye. Do you believe me? If so, the rest is details.”
I’d upvote this comment a million times if I could. Ultimately, Faith in Christ is ‘opt-in’. Years before I converted to Orthodoxy, I had the same need for ‘the details’. Constant debates about some author of some text in some time or other.
Then, I just said: “I have Faith”.
Never bothered with the debates again. Just shut my mouth, and worked for Christ’s sake. Paul, of course, warns us about pointless arguments.
Agreed. Either one possesses faith or one does not. All of this scholarly pettifoggery about who wrote what when and the proper formulation of the Trinity, for example, while interesting enough as a mental exercise or intellectual history, is totally inessential. Either you believe Christ’s central message or you don’t. Nothing much else matters.
“Either you believe Christ’s central message or you don’t.”
Was Trinitarianism part of J.C.’s central message, or a later add-on by Emperor Constantine’s Church establishment?
Show and cite for us Jesus’ affirmation of the ineffable one-in three-and-three-in-one in the New Testament.
For true atheists, who are incredibly rare, it’s the same. “No further questions.” Religiosity, spirituality, faith—whatever word—is a sense I don’t have (or an insanity I don’t suffer, but I don’t think of it that way). When people say they “believe,” I have no idea what they’re talking about, what experience they’re referring to. The God of the Bible is a barely sketched character in an incoherent text—like Doctor Benway in Naked Lunch—not an entity I can have feelings about or a relationship with. Jesus seems to have been year zero Ted Kaczynski (or Charles Manson), if he existed. I… Read more »
Hrrrrmmmm. I’ve wondered about this stuff too. I know we can pretty much dismiss the idea of mnemonic drift. Current bibles translate almost exactly to the Dead Sea scrolls which are 2400 years old. That in itself is remarkable. To my knowledge no other texts or documents in use today have survived so long with such fidelity to the original script. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the church adapts… but the Bible is pretty rock solid, Z. I note with some merriment that our (((Greatest Friends And Allies))) are eager to help us edit the New Testament… Read more »
It’s interesting how sects like the Mormons and the Anabaptists are treated like they aren’t “real” Christians by the old sects, yet it doesn’t seem coincidental that these unorthodox believers that actually practice what Jesus of Nazareth preached in their daily lives are the groups of Christianity that are currently thriving.
Contrast with the old sects where most practitioners just mouth the words once a week before going back to living materialistic lives not much different than modern non-Christians. Materialism seems to make everything it touches sterile, which isn’t really that surprising I guess.
There was a debate in the comments yesterday about who will inherit Christianity. I thought East Asian Protestantism or African Fusionism but there is a strong argument that Mormonism will win out.
Na……
Have we looked at what Utah is giving us?
Mitt Romney types.
But the Mormons are prepared for a grid-down situation, with vast stores of necessities in homes and warehouses…Their crazy doctrines wouldn’t matter so much in a disaster….and polygamy might be a major benefit!
Talk to me in a few decades. The system is trying very hard to turn out Mormonism and Utah. There is evidence it is succeeding. Some people on our side have commented on it over the years. As usual they targeted the women first and have been flooding it with migrants the past four years. They have also been trying to normalize polygamy for the country at large, in the process, of course, making it totally degenerate and disgusting. Not that I support it in its “Utah form”, I don’t, it’s clear the system has targeted this part of the… Read more »
They cucked in the 70s on blacks. They cucked even earlier than that on polygamy, though that was probably overall a good thing. Not only did they cuck, they excommunicated anyone who wouldn’t abide by the cucked rulings. Every time their religious views conflict with globohomo, they will cuck. They’re just a little late to the game. They take great pride in their alleged tendency to be very nice. Being nice is fine, but plan B should always be making them fear you. They cannot please their enemies with niceness. Their enemies hate them and want them destroyed, the very… Read more »
Read Fawn Brodie’s bio of Smith. When Mitt ran for president, I told my coffee group anyone gullible enough to believe Smith was a prophet was too gullible to be president.
There is a reason, for sure, why the Mormons have been under attack in popular culture for the past decade or two. Think of that TV show “Sister Wives”, or “Big Love”, or all the shows about Amish leaving the community and becoming total degenerates. But I also think that the Mormon institutions have struggled in the face of the attacks, especially the universities. it seems like BYU is following the same path that Notre Dame did 75 years prior – and why not, the same tribe is in charge, and it was so successful in South Bend.
I suspect Scientology was attacked for the same reason. That and Mormonism are the only effective goy spiritualities that (((Producers))) can’t influence. Yet.
Scientology really belongs in its own category. Not sure what category, but it’s not religion as the vast majority conceive of it.
Scientology is just as legitimate a religion as Bitcoin is a legitimate investment.
Touché. Good one.
Z-man’s point about the “living” Constitution is right on…Our Constitution was in fact a contract between the 13 States in which they delegated some of their rights and powers to a central Government…And those States quite intentionally made it difficult to change the terms of that contract, which of course annoys the left and the warmongers…so we had a long process of making up reasons why our Government could ignore Constitutional restraints…The current Supreme Court has been gradually walking that back, always accompanied by howls from the usual suspects.. But consider your reaction to your bank changing the interest rate… Read more »
Ultimately, the US will break up, because the Constitution did not have strong enough provisions to protect it from the dictators and social justice advocates…..
The Catholic Church put out documents in the late 1800s to explicitly warn against the sort of “adaptation to modern times” that you discuss, under the guise of “Americanism.” Unfortunately, the post-WW2, post-Vatican 2 Church pretty much ignored all that, which leads us to the situation now. Thankfully, the Church has not gone down the same route of, as I said yesterday, the queer pastor telling us God is nonbinary. But it still has not been good enough. That said, the Catholic Church is well-equipped to handle anything that gets thrown at it, the question is whether or not it… Read more »
The core wisdom embodied in Christianity has served its adherents quite well over the past two millennia. Western European peoples thrived and advanced, and eventually gave us the Renaissance, Newton, classical music, and modern medicine. That is no trivial achievement. One could argue that it advanced the evolution of the species in the realm of nurture and augmented what nature afforded, particularly with respect to brain development and mental functioning. Religion is an important asset in our continuing development and should not be cast aside, as is now happening due to malign forces.
Merry Christmas to all! Thanks to the Zman for all his gifts throughout the year.
Z, I think you are referring to the Catechism. This essentially adapts the Bible to modern times and is updated.
Merry Christmas!
I thought about that, but that would mean a longer post, so I stopped at that point.
Why was the Gospel of Saint Thomas left out of the Bible? Probably because it was not anywhere near as popular as the Synoptic Gospels. This is absolutely wrong. If you read that slop you will know on the spot that it’s uninspired gnosticism, not even of mythological/fanfic value like King Arthur or the Divine Comedy. By the way, the oldest copies of many “Latin pagan classics” are often as recent as the Renaissance. The oldest Talmud is from the 14th century. The gospels are freakishly well attested compared to just about anything else and it suggests very high literacy… Read more »
If Jesus was God in the flesh, the God who created the universe, then the idea that He is capable of managing the content of the Bible that has been preached in His name for 2,000 years seems a trivial matter.
Z-Man, It may seem a trifle, but as a professing Christian I greatly appreciate you capitalizing words such as Gospel, Christian, Bible, Christianity, and the Church. Thank you for that, regardless of where the two of us stand on the topic of my Christian faith. Merry Christmas, and please keep up the great posts!
Merry Christmas to you.
Christianity has spread throughout the world because it was carried to these places by Europeans. Had it arisen a couple thousand miles further south in, say, Chad, it would have gone nowhere. Oh, but what about the converts: they must have have been persuaded by the theology, right? Not really. Latin Americans adopted Catholicism because their leaders were dead, and their conquistadors decreed it. Some leave that church for Mormonism today because its message is brought by smart, fair-haired American boys who represent, to them, the best of what El Norte has to offer. And what of the theology? One… Read more »
On its current trajectory, the Church will resemble the Fosterites in a few generations.
Christianity was most useful when it was a militant religion building empires and unifying European ethnic groups. “God is on our side” is great motivation for a believing people in a war.
It worked well when Western people were more tribal, but the universal aspect of Christianity has led modern believers to love the Other more than their own blood.
It is sad and regrettable.
One major clue indicating that the New Testament was written and disseminated within the first half-century after Christ’s death is the lack of references to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. – except in prophecies. Paul’s letters still talk about a church in Jerusalem. Such a cataclysmic event would have warranted mention.
Matthew 24:28
“For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
A reference to the eagles of the Roman legion gathered around Jerusalem?
Frankly, that is a very thin reed. That could just as easily be explained by story tellers editing the story to make them feel like first hand accounts to the intended audience. More important, it is not necessary to date the Gospels to the time of Christ. The dating of the texts has little bearing on the text and its history.
The argument that the Gospels and Paul’s letters were written hundreds of years after the events is often used to attack them as concocted. Acceptance of them having been written and disseminated within living memory of said events is a huge boost to their credibility. A.D. 70 was (and remains) a catastrophe for the Jewish people, something they still mourn today. There’s no way it would have not been mentioned.
Notice I did not say hundreds of years. It is a matter of fact that the first Bible was compiled in the 4th century, but the Gospels and the Letters of Paul were first century creations.
I’ve also seen those verses used as proof that Jesus was a prophet, since the temple was destroyed within a generation afterwards.
The New Testament seems much more solid in proximity to the days it describes compared to the Old Testament. Even with internal biblical chronology you have Moses writing about events thousands of years before his time. OTOH Bible scholars will tell you those books were edited and revised up to at least Maccabean times.
There is a ton of speculation with all of this, of course, but scholars think mark was first compiled in 60 AD. That means there were probably people still alive who witnessed the events. Since the first scribes were relying on oral stories, those stories most certainly contained some first hand accounts, but how much is hard to know. We also know that people have terrible memories and often remember things that did not happen because they make the story work. The Jewish Bible is most certainly apocryphal in large parts. For example, the journey through the desert business was… Read more »
The gospels use a lot more literary techniques than i had noticed before I started studying them seriously. The writers used them to focus on important lessons or insights. I’m fine with the Rashomon like variation, as that is also relatable. Flattened gospels (harmonizations) lose a lot of that.
The OT by comparison seems as literally reliable as, well, anything else from that source…
“The flood story goes back to before the Jews.”
Certainly. “Jews” didn’t exist as a distinct line until Judah, long after Noah. The question remains whether it was before the people known for at least the last few millennia as Hebrews. Was it a borrowed story, or are Hebrews descended from Noah? Does it really matter?
There is no question about the flood story coming before whatever name you want to use for the people of the Old Testament.
Why? From a secular POV, everyone descended from whatever the original hominids were. If there was a cataclysmic cleansing flood, everyone currently alive would be related in some way to Noah. Doesn’t matter whether Noah was Gilgamesh in another language and lineage.
There is a catastrophic flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is a Sumerian epic. Could be purely coincidental, of course.
Unlikely to be coincidence. Irving Finkel the cuneiform expert at the British Museum (Yes, I know, Volksgenossen) who has some really interesting and sometimes very amusing content on YouTube has a pretty convincing theory which goes like this: There was a typical pattern in the Fertile Crescent and environs in ancient times that when a people was conquered, you’d cart them off and resettle them where it suited you. Reason for this being that in hydraulic empires your power was a function of how many people you had to work on extending and maintaining irrigation plus doing the manual work… Read more »
There is another important point as to why the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 would have been important to mention: it marked the literal, point-of-no-return end of the Jewish religion based on Mosaic law and rituals. Records of the Levitical priesthood were destroyed, no more animal sacrifices: even if they wanted to (and many do) rebuild the Temple, any rituals would be illegitimate since there’s no way of confirming a true descendant of the line of Aaron. The Judaism that we know today owes much to the Pharisees in exile: the same Pharisees who were so hostile to… Read more »
…so mentioning this enormous event – which directly confirmed Christ’s own prophecies – would have been a no-brainer to Paul and the early Christians.
@ Jannie Uh, I’m no Biblical scholar but I don’t think the church in Jerusalem that Paul was referring to was the second Jewish Temple. My understanding is that he was referring to the Christian church in Jerusalem, that is to say, the followers of Jesus led by James. Nevertheless that doesn’t weaken your argument. Jesus quoted the scriptures of his time — the Septuagint. There’s no reason to think his disciples were any less literate than He. Well, maybe a little but they all came from the same class of common people. There’s every reason to believe that written… Read more »
If the Gospel and other New Testament writings were doctored, amended, concocted, whatever, in order to “market” Christianity, the tamperers would have surely inserted the events of A.D. 70 since they were a clear confirmation of Christ’s prophecies. The fact that said events are not mentioned indicates to me that the New Testament is reliable, first-hand, and unaltered.
Excellent point.
“Decay is inherent in all things. Work out your own salvation with dilligence.”
But only after a Merry Christmas
I grew up in the Deep South and have listened to a lot of fundamentalist preachers on the radio over the decades. Several interesting broadcasts stand out in my memory. One said that the Palestinians were the descendants of the Old Testament Philistines and God hated them anyway and they deserved to be exterminated. Another broadcast from a different preacher said that since President G.W. Bush kindly asked the Israelis to please stop creating illegal settlements on the West Bank, a couple of weeks later, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. At the time, I wondered, if God wanted to… Read more »
Those aren’t fundamentalist preachers, those are fundamentalist adorers of earhtly power, and It who gives earthly power.
Or sworn enemies of Christ (who probably don’t know they are).
This is such an adult and refreshing take. This holy season is when we reflect on this very thing.
And, very White of you, Zman. Without Whites there would be no such thing as Christianity or Christian values. It is our celebration of what we are the avatars of.
They didn’t teach us, we taught them, and like it or not, we are the cure.
Rather than turning our thing into a weapon against us, it is most heartening to see what should retvrn to our advantage and a strength.
Merry Christmas Eve, and here’s a toast to our future!
As much as my preferred form of government would be a loosely federated Catholic Imperium (with Space Marines!), I have always been intrigued by the Marcionite heresy, which is drawn from the oldest compiled canon: a proto-Luke and some of the more authentic Pauline letters.
Marcion’s dualistic theology solves certain epistemological problems (with the added benefit of making Yahweh the bad guy), without going down the Gnostic rathole. It is also more or less consistent with the Kenite Hypothesis, which is the most likely explanation for the development of early Judaism.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
…Or an Isaac Leibowitz if things don’t pan out well.
I accept that man had a role in assembling the scriptures, the ultimate question I think though is that we ask is this stuff that we have today in the Bible true at all? Did this God really raise this Jesus fellow from the dead? Is the man called Paul or Peter really real and if they were real did they just make this stuff up about seeing the resurrected Jesus? I must admit that i go back and forth at times on what it all means and if its true or false or maybe half true and half false?… Read more »
There is a verse in 2 Timothy about “every word of Scripture is inspired and useful” that people use to insist that each and every random verse is important. Which is weird when as you say, the Bible didn’t look anything like it does now until much later. Maybe they meant the Septuagint? It is perhaps a reason we have KJV-only churches now, people want their bible to not ‘live’.
I wish bible scholarship was more inspired, but it seems many scholars lose faith as they go along or went into it to disprove the Bible (Eg, Bart Ehrman).
I’m afraid you’ll not get much inspiration from many scholars… they’ve become far too accustomed to ‘proving’ stuff was correct. Trying to meld theology with ‘The Science’. It’s worth noting that, in one theological school I was acquainted with, not a single one of the lecturers, as far as I could discern, was actually religious. I appreciate Z Man’s take on the matter of Christianity and the compilation of it’s core documents, but it also seems like an effort of an inquiring mind to uncover the truth. To prove it’s true – when really, Faith that it is true is… Read more »
Very well said, brother.
Christ is Born!
I appreciate the sentiment that Western religions must adapt. “Woke religion” isn’t working. Mormonism isn’t either though. (Working). “Missions” for the youth are now open to women at 19 years of age; it’s a vastly protected (and curated) experience. What was once a right of passage for boys becoming me, celebrated in their communities and returning to favor and marriage is now a “I don’t need no man” experience for women. The LDS liberalizing to get more converts in the short term while trying to liberalize by equalizing men and women’s roles will lead to their downfall in the long… Read more »
does this timeline for the bible include the orthodox church?
It does. Back then, the Church was still unified.
Finally got to yesterday’s, I saw somebody was giving 3g4me heck.
So, in that vein, you can have Christianity and 3g4me’s who abide by it, or you can have:
India: It’s Worse Than You Think | ZeroHedge
(from American Renaissance)
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/india-its-worse-you-think
Go ahead. T’ain’t all scholarly, but it sure is a hoot. Good golly moses!
Z, my man, you are not winning any friends with this topic. It’s just not something that can be discussed in this manner, people aren’t used to it and people on both sides are going to make assumptions about you and the arguments you’re making that don’t have anything to do with what you actually said.
Probably won’t stop you, it rarely does, but I find it’s just not worth it to wade in these waters.
A Christian does not need a bible. Jesus lived and preached love. Love is infinite beyond time and space and certainly knowledge. The church including the Bible are rationally motivated and built on rituals and laws. All of this is hypocritical and subject to change at any time.
Okay Mr. Lennon. I hate to tell you, but Jesus also taught a few other things, as well.
Without the Bible, how is it, exactly, that you know Jesus lived and preached love?
I think I’d prefer to buy you a dose of Zyklon B rather than a beer, if that’s OK.
Your assertions prove the scripture, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Thus it has always been.
I won’t bother to confront you on your many and various egregious errors of logic and understanding, as it would be both lengthy and pointless.
Of course not. That would expose you to the hazards of rebuttal and refutation. Seems like a cowardly approach, though. So please cite just three examples of outrageously bad mistakes. Maybe through so doing you’ll convince a few readers that you are not just another poo flinging user of the ironic “natural man” attack upon Christianity’s critics.
I won’t call it a mistake, but take umbrage to the assertion that the Bible cannot, should not, be used as “mere inspiration”. If not inspiration, what can it be? The internal disagreements and selection decisions have been known for centuries. What remains is spirit, which leads to inspiration, and that is eternal—especially when we discuss the New Testament.
I’ve never had a problem with all the detractors attempting to tear down the faith by pointing to man’s hand in the process. They miss the forest for the trees.
What remains is spirit How does that provide a standard for discriminating among texts such as the Koran and the gospels? It looks like coded language used to disguise prejudice and emotional commitment of believers. One believer is Trinitarian; another is Muhammadist. Both can cite “spirit” as their basis for confidence in their respective scriptures while denouncing the other’s as Satanic. Not both believers’ religions can be true, however, and, if they are like most believers, their confidence developed long before reading and analysing their heilige writing without bias. Considered from the third point of view, it’s reasonable to suspect… Read more »
I have no use for the Koran, nor just because others believe in it—and its spirit—I must accept it as a valid alternative to the Bible. Simple as that. Scientology has its adherents as well. I do not ask anyone to believe in the Bible, nor do I care what others believe in. My reference to the Bible’s spirit stands alone.
“I have no use for the Koran, nor just because others believe in it—and its spirit—I must accept it as a valid alternative to the Bible. Simple as that.”
No, it’s not as simple as that.
I’ll bite:
but in the end a timeless message must adapt to the times.
If the message is timeless, then it should not have to adapt; else, it is not timeless.
Rather, the proper analysis would be that times which ignore timeless messages are soon over. Often painfully.
Perhaps instead of thinking of it as an adaptation you should think of it as a translation? Which might be more or less faithful to the original, better or worse at capturing some of the nuances…
Zyklon B? Why do you want to delouse him?
Well, I feel louse-y this morning. Had one too many Guinness last night.
Guinness is horse piss. What’d you expect?
It’s the best tasting beer that earns the mild habitual drunk’s endorsement: “You can drink fifteen of them.”
If you think Christianity sets the ocelot among the guinea fowl, just you watch Z post an article on beer!
(Or whiskey.)
Boooooooo! Needs to stand on the bar for an hour before drinking in order to be perfect. And yes, the Irish do keep the best for themselves.