More Proof the Bible is Not Inerrant

While Christianists and moronic people like Sarah Palin make it difficult, I still consider myself a Christian/deist and my beliefs are not so fragile that discovering that portions that parts of the Bible are not literally true are not cause for me to go into a mental/emotional meltdown like so many fundamentalists. Any educated thinking person should be quickly able to figure out that over time, the Bible has been modified and manipulated to serve various purposes, both political and in a quest for control and power within the Christian faith. Stark new evidence that this is the case is provided by the reuniting of the scattered portions of the Codex Sinaiticus which will eventually be available online for those who wish to peruse it. This Codex clearly demonstrates that the Bible that Christianists and fundamentalists cling to is a man manipulated work and not something that fell complete from the sky (even the King James Version venerated by far right Protestants was edited by a committee appointed under King James I of England - a notorious homosexual - in an effort to settle religious/political issues in Britain. Here are highlights from a new BBC story:

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What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. . . . For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found - or stolen, as the monks say - in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.

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Now these different parts are to be united online and, from next July, anyone, anywhere in the world with internet access will be able to view the complete text and read a translation. For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's bible.

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The Codex, probably the oldest Bible we have, also has books which are missing from the Authorised Version that most Christians are familiar with today - and it does not have crucial verses relating to the Resurrection.

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When the different parts are digitally united next year in a £1m project, anyone will be able to compare and contrast the Codex and the modern Bible. Firstly, the Codex contains two extra books in the New Testament. One is the little-known Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd Century - the other, the Epistle of Barnabas.

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Mr Ehrman [a distinguished New Testament scholar] was a born again Bible-believing Evangelical until he read the original Greek texts and noticed some discrepancies. The Bible we now use can't be the inerrant word of God, he says, since what we have are the sometimes mistaken words copied by fallible scribes.

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Many Christians have long accepted that, while the Bible is the authoritative word of God, it is not inerrant. Human hands always make mistakes. "It should be regarded as a living text, something constantly changing as generation and generation tries to understand the mind of God," says David Parker, a Christian working on digitising the Codex. Others may take it as more evidence that the Bible is the word of man, not God.