Monday, October 25, 2010

The Most Inconvenient Book

The Bible. It is such an inconvenient book. It tells you to do stuff. It tells you to not do stuff. It tells you this is right and that is wrong. Nations have gone to war over it. Nations have tried to eradicate it. Educated men have dismissed it as foolishness. Yet, with an estimated publication count of 6 billion copies in 2,000 languages, it persists and hounds its detractors even while they belittle and persecute its believers. It even claims to predict the future. It makes fools of the worldly wise and it makes wise the simple man. Worse, it probably either doesn't say what you think it does, or it doesn't say what you want it to say. Yes, the Bible is the world's most inconvenient book.

So, is it just an old book of fable written by man with little or no value to us today, or is it written by the creator of the Universe for people of our time? To determine that, we need to establish the Bible's credit rating much like a loan officer needs to establish your credit rating before loaning you money. We also need to deal with translation issues. After all, the King James version was penned by neither Moses nor the Apostles. In fact, none of the original copies exist anymore. So, how much can we trust the Bibles we have on our shelves? These issues are the focus of this blog.

Who am I, what do I know, and what will this cost you?

I'm a Nerd that was born in the early seventies that probably enjoys research more than you perhaps think I should. The Bible, among other things, has been a subject of my research from the time I could read. I am not a paid clergyman. Your belief or non belief in the Bible will in no way affect my pocketbook. I may; however, cost you some thinking and some of your current beliefs. I intend on keeping this blog add free for two reasons. One is Mathew 10:8, the other is what I recall seeing on this one Baptist preacher's site. One one side was the preacher's morality sermon, and on the other side was an add containing a woman showing off her ample cleavage. Yeah, I'm not going to open the door to that sort of embarrassment.