I have a very hard time understanding fundamentalists and Christianists who maintain - largely out of fear it seems - that the Bible is the so-called inerrant "Word of God." Any student of history knows that the Bible of today is very different from the original texts and indeed, no one will likely ever know its original contents. Rather, what we have in today's text is the result of translation related revisions, misinterpretations and out right deliberate changes made to fit the agenda of church fathers over the centuries. This reality is now all the more self-evident with the availability of the Codex Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest known Bible, online. Here is how the website describes the Codex Sinaiticus:*
Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.
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And what can be learned from this anciet document? Quite a bit that will be most unsettling to the professional Christian set and far right Christian extremists. As BBC News reports this document shows many, many differences from the modern Bible (including the King James version, commissioned by King James I of England - who had numerous male lovers - as part of an effort to come up with a text that would lessen the religious infighting withhin the country. Here are some story highlights:
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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.
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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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. This goes out of its way to claim that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who killed Jesus, and is full of anti-Semitic kindling ready to be lit. "His blood be upon us," Barnabas has the Jews cry.
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The Codex - and other early manuscripts - omit some mentions of ascension of Jesus into heaven, and key references to the Resurrection, which the Archbishop of Canterbury has said is essential for Christian belief. Other differences concern how Jesus behaved. In one passage of the Codex, Jesus is said to be "angry" as he healed a leper, whereas the modern text records him as healing with "compassion".
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Also missing is the story of the woman taken in adultery and about to be stoned - until Jesus rebuked the Pharisees (a Jewish sect), inviting anyone without sin to cast the first stone. Nor are there words of forgiveness from the cross. Jesus does not say "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".
Also missing is the story of the woman taken in adultery and about to be stoned - until Jesus rebuked the Pharisees (a Jewish sect), inviting anyone without sin to cast the first stone. Nor are there words of forgiveness from the cross. Jesus does not say "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".
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"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.
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Thus, those who vehemently condemn LGBT individuals and dny us equality citing as justification the "inerrant word of God" do so based on a document that I suspect will increasingly be proved over time to have been written and revised largely by men over the centuries to support certain societal norms of the time and based on tribal bigotry, nationalism, quests for power, and medical and scientific ignorance. Yes, I support the general Gospel message of loving God and loving one's neighbor. Beyond that, however, I believe that it is increasingly risky to act and persecute others based on words in the modern day Bible that may never have existed in the original version.
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H/T Bob Felton.
2 comments:
No responsible Scripture scholar denies that the text of Scripture developed and was redacted until it achieved its final form. Indeed, the Catholic Church, which you love to vilify, leads the way in application of the historical-critical method of biblical study. The Lord worked through fallible men in bringing us the Scriptures. Many of the emendations that you imply were attempts to change the Bible were more likely attempts to correct the miscopying of earlier copyists. There are long, scholarly tomes today that identify every variant reading of every verse found in each significant ancient manuscript, of which the Codex Sinaticus is but one.
Fundamentalists and biblical literalists are pretty odd. They did not appear within Christianity until the modern age, and arose from with Protestantism, not Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
It is not the Catholic Church per se that I vilify but rather its corrupt, hypocritical leadership. Unfortunately, there is no institutional mechanism to readily cleanse the Church of this nasty leadership.
As for Bible literalists, I agree with you. Yet every day we hear them spouting Bible verse as literally true and using it to condemn others. Typically, no one ever challenges them on it.
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