Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 6:33 pm
@ Disney's Divinity:
Thanks so much for your post. You said exactly what I wanted to say, but probably did it much better. What's interesting to me, is that most religious people don't want to know about the history of the Bible. When I was still in university, I followed a course called "Who's who in the Bible", which was about both the content of the Bible and its history. We learned a lot about the way the Bible was created and put together. But nobody there was religious. The religious people I knew wouldn't want to follow that course.
I think it's because that book is holy to them. They've invested all their belief in a book, and if facts and history would cause them to doubt it, their whole worldview might collapse.
You bring up a good point about distortion through translation. Many people are not aware of the importance of translation. A message can severly alter through translation. Have you ever played that game where you would have a whole line of people sitting next to each other, then the first would whisper something in the next person's ear, and everybody would have to pass on the message, and you would wind up with an entire different message at the end of the line? That's translation in a nutshell. (For example, the fact that we refer to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute comes from an error in translation; Mary was just a female companion to Jesus, some say his wife --que the Da Vinci Code!)
Anyway, your remarks about Paul (Saulus) never having met Jesus and still be considered an authority, and your remarks about destortion through translations made me think of a scene from Life of Brian. Many people consider it to be 'just a comedy', but if you've studied the origins of christianity, you will see it's a clever and quite accurate satire with a whole lot of truth in it. This particular scene made me think of Lenin's speech, from a balcony, to a huge mass of workers, who all cheered and clapped at what he said. Afterward, it turned out nobody heared a word he said.
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Thanks so much for your post. You said exactly what I wanted to say, but probably did it much better. What's interesting to me, is that most religious people don't want to know about the history of the Bible. When I was still in university, I followed a course called "Who's who in the Bible", which was about both the content of the Bible and its history. We learned a lot about the way the Bible was created and put together. But nobody there was religious. The religious people I knew wouldn't want to follow that course.
I think it's because that book is holy to them. They've invested all their belief in a book, and if facts and history would cause them to doubt it, their whole worldview might collapse.
You bring up a good point about distortion through translation. Many people are not aware of the importance of translation. A message can severly alter through translation. Have you ever played that game where you would have a whole line of people sitting next to each other, then the first would whisper something in the next person's ear, and everybody would have to pass on the message, and you would wind up with an entire different message at the end of the line? That's translation in a nutshell. (For example, the fact that we refer to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute comes from an error in translation; Mary was just a female companion to Jesus, some say his wife --que the Da Vinci Code!)
Anyway, your remarks about Paul (Saulus) never having met Jesus and still be considered an authority, and your remarks about destortion through translations made me think of a scene from Life of Brian. Many people consider it to be 'just a comedy', but if you've studied the origins of christianity, you will see it's a clever and quite accurate satire with a whole lot of truth in it. This particular scene made me think of Lenin's speech, from a balcony, to a huge mass of workers, who all cheered and clapped at what he said. Afterward, it turned out nobody heared a word he said.
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