Brilliant! The 'woman taken in adultery' only occurs in John, the latest gospel.It's obviously right that these modernisers remove it. The early Church elders thought it properly included, but what did they know? It has no relevance to modern life.Who stones adulterous women nowadays? Much easier and better to have a court give them a house and the second yacht
At least they haven't made God 'it'. Making him female is obviously out. Think of all those jokes about his having to be female because he can never make up 'his' mind
Originally posted by philalethist: There is still a message in it when one figures out how it could be known all the fact in the mater concerning all. The guilty party and the accusers.
Yes.It's my favourite event in the whole of the gospels. It seems to me to summarise a truly Christian attitude of mind.
The account is very finely written. We can see the scene, with the terrified woman sobbing, 'in the midst' surrounded by these eminent men who condemn her, bewildered as they leave slowly, from the eldest even unto the least, leaving her alone with her saviour: 'Woman, hath no man condemned thee?' 'No man, my lord' 'And neither do I condemn thee.Go, and sin no more'
It appeals to the lawyer in me, too. Christ's reply ,"Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone against her", is devastating to his opponents, and (I'm told) is taking a passage from Jewish law or the Old Testament and turning it against them, when they have cited the law in an attempt to trap him into denying the law.No wonder Christ did not answer the men directly, but continued writing in the dust. He was trying to formulate his best line in law. Some of us have done just that,pausing to think when suddenly faced with some legal attack, but unfortunately, there's a marked shortage of dusty floor in the Central Criminal Court
And, as we say, he 'got a result'.
If it wasn't in the earliest manuscripts, it should have been!
In conservatizing the Bible the name Jesus Christ and all variations of it should be removed and in it's place should be put the WORD OF GOD. That is in accordance with Revelation 19:13.
Posts: 2188 | Location: Kingsford, MI USA | Registered: 06-13-02
Shouldn't that be 'WORD OF GOD, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS'? (biblegateway.com)
I guess that is a tack the re-writers could take - arbitrarily deciding that this means that, then replacing words and phrases wholesale. 'Poor', for example, could become 'shiftless bums who should get a job'. Or 'reserve labour force necessary for holding down production costs'.
Shiftless bums who should get a job exsist even in todays time. Some people rewrite for people who are really not qualified for a job and try to make them appear to be what they are not. These are the shiftless bums who should get a real job.
All these things you are trying to interject have already been done by over zealous minds sporting their own deceptions. Some taken in the snare are those who choak on a nat and swallow a camel.
Posts: 2188 | Location: Kingsford, MI USA | Registered: 06-13-02
If sitting in your chair and beleaving what you read in Reveleations 19:13 it would be you reading those words seen in 19:16 and litteraly they would be written on your thy. Put hither thy finger and behold my hands. 1 Corinthians 12:27 now ye are the body of christ and members in particular. Surely is not what the churches would like you to think. 1 Corinthians 3:16 and that be as Deuteronomy 30:20
Posts: 2188 | Location: Kingsford, MI USA | Registered: 06-13-02
...it would be you reading those words seen in 19:16 and litteraly they would be written on your thy
I see. Actually, that forced reading is kind of clever. But wouldn't the writer of the passage have used scrolls rather than books - and you don't sit with a scroll on your thighs.
For anyone who isn't sure what Philalethist is on about, I think his idea is that everyone is god (or has god inside, or is his or her own god, or something like that). 'Jesus' is not a person (or demi-god, or aspect of god, or whatever it is he is conventionally supposed to be) but the words of god. It's actually not such a bad idea, and I think it could stand on its own without being propped up by cherry-picked, truncated, willfully misread quotes from the Bible.
Which is maybe the problem here. The conservatives in the original post have their own ideas, clearly, about right and wrong and all the rest of it, which is fair enough. They are free to interpret scripture as they like, I guess, but when it comes to re-writing the Bible they cross a line. That would apply to people of any persuasion trying to do the same.
These days, if you want to base your argument on Biblical authority, then you have to work with what's there - all of it, and without too much creative interpretation. On the other hand, if you think you have 'The Answer' yourself, you're maybe better letting that stand or fall on its own, without trying to borrow authority from the Bible, bending and cutting things to fit. All the heavy editing was done at a few hundred years CE, and now it's too late.
It's like putting on Shakespeare. There's certainly scope for all kinds of interpretation and ways of playing a piece - but there's also a line that might be crossed where you get too 'creative' so that, while what you have may well be great theatre, you can't sell it as Shakespeare anymore.
In many ways and in many places throughout the Bible it is written to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. By being a doer it seperates, or gives the mind the ability, to learn the difference between what does and does not make any difference at all. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never past away. Heaven will be rolled up as a scroll and in our modern day it may be flat paper that the words are written on but it should have been figured out while they were still rolling up the parchments.
Posts: 2188 | Location: Kingsford, MI USA | Registered: 06-13-02
