Young man I really don’t appreciate your condescending tone! You’ll be in my prayers.

Love the blog, and even enjoyed the departure from the usual subject. I am mostly in agreement with your perspective here, though I feel the need to point out one statment that I viewed as misleading.

You said: “As centuries passed, different texts were added and removed, and there’s always been controversy about these decisions.”

This gives me the impression that you view the list of sacred texts (the “canon”) as having been continually in flux. More accurately, the canon of the New Testament has been pretty well set since the second certury AD, and all-but cemented by 300 AD. (One remaining dispute, if I’m not mistaken, remains about the book of Revelation, which is not recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church.) It would be hard to identify more than 2 of your passing centuries. Given the two millenia of church history, it was a relatively short time between when the texts started circulating and when people stopped adding more texts to the list.

The Old Testament as we know it was officially recognized even sooner, before 100 AD, but the matter gets slightly more complicated when you consider the Apocrypha, a set of texts generally recognized by Catholics, but not most Protestants. However, as I understand it (as a Protestant myself), even most Catholics categorized these books as ‘deutero-canonical’ (e.g., a secondary canon), so they viewed as importants, but are not given the same weight of authority as the books which have unanimous agreement. Many protestants would likely feel the same way if they took the time to read these texts. (I do, and so did some of the writers of the New Testament.)

So in my view, the problems we have with applying the Bible to our lives today are not so much textual as they are interpretive. But when it comes to the important doctrines (“Jesus is God and he wants you to love your neighbor, which means your enemies too”) Christians everywhere are in agreement, at least those who respect the authority of Scripture and of the Church as a whole in its various forms down through the ages.

By the way, Elizabeth Gunness is also in agreement with you, though I suspect she doesn’t know it. The greek word translated “God-breathed” in some translations means “inspired.” The connection still exists faintly in english: inspire -> respire -> breath.

Finally, as a student of the Bible in its original languages (but not a professional scholar – I make my living in creative development), I must point out that the King James Version is one of the worst versions you could read in terms of faithfulness to the original manuscripts. Though admittedly, it does have a unique poetic flair to it that is lacking in many recent translations. I use the New American Standard Bible for serious study along side my Greek text, and the New Living Translation is pretty good (and easy) for casual reading, particularly for those of us raised on the NIV who tend to gloss over familiar passages too easily. A change of pace is good.

Hope this is helpful to somebody. Comments, Questions, or corrections? BlogLurker[at]chapmanmedia.com

In case anyone is interested, the technical name for what John is talking about in terms of the Torah (to Christians the “Old” Testament) is the Documentary Hypothesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis has a good explanation in terms of its academic study. It’s a totally fascinating topic, when you consider Western Civilization might be vastly different if the belief had come into being before its modern inception in the 19th century. I’m taking up space.

Happy Chrismahanakwanzikahmas, everyone.

Don’t want to take up Mr. August’s space, but try reading Paul for a very poetical, somewhat mournful style:

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

One of the worst written books of all time. Think of a graduate student stringing a bunch of religious studies research papers together and then gluing them together with very thin plot. “Joe did this. Joe did that. TERM PAPER!!!”

The movie will be better than the book for once.

RAmen.