From: Anton Aylward (anton_at_the-wire.com)
Date: Thu May 13 2004 - 06:13:08 PDT
On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 22:59, Mike Burrell wrote:
> on 5/12/04 10:20 PM, Martin Joseph at martyNT_at_barknaturalpet.com wrote:
> >
> > On May 12, 2004, at 7:04 PM, Mike Burrell wrote:
> >>
> >>> Andrei
> >>> (morals are not an absolute, they are an opinion)
> >>
> >> Morals are absolute if you accept the Bible as God's word.
> >>
> > yeah and as long as you have absolute faith in your ability to
> > perfectly interpret it.
> >
>
> How hard is this to interpret?...
> 9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be
> not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
> effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
> 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners,
> shall inherit the kingdom of God. I Corinthians 6
Ah, but it already HAS been interpreted, the last step by the people,
the committees of people with a set of political agendas, who translated
the KJV (and later), the scribes who made, wittingly or unwittingly,
minor elises or emphasis that the versions that the those people used.
And its well documented that the translators of the KJV, apart from the
politics they were faced with, did not make use of the earliest texts
available to them. Even so, we have better sources today.
But one thing you forget, there in the frontispiece of the KJV: part of
the whole political justification of that translation was the
unification of the now united Kingdom under James, that other
interpretations and translations were to be swept away, and this this
bible was to be READ, not studied. Its is beautiful prose when compared
to the English language precursors, and that was its purpose, to be
seductively powerful. That's what was needed at the time, four hundred
years ago, for political reasons.
But to consider this the literal word of God -- and there is no evidence
that the early Christians did, and lets face it, you quote one of the
letters of the Paul, who was very much a political animal, giving advice
to another community -- is an insult to those who have laboured hard
over the years to learn about the culture of those times and those who
have put great effort into better understanding the subtleties of the
Greek and Aramaic of the earliest texts -- some of whom are close and
good friends of mine.
Not only that, to consider the ENGLISH text to the only and correct
version is arrogant and chauvinistic and shows a complete disregard not
only for people of other cultures and languages but a self-centred
attitude for a language that did not even exist at the time of Christ.
-- Anton Aylward <anton_at_the-wire.com> -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
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