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From something I collected:
On The English version of the bible's Old Testament . The Oxford scholar Aelfric created summaries of his interpretations at around 1000 CE. The Anglo-Normans had most of the book translated by 1361. The next English translation, known as Wycliffe version, was intended for general public. This otherwise popular step caused god’s robed, self-proclaimed, literary agents to get quite irate. How dare the public read and discuss what should be left only to the ecclesiastical authority? The priests went bonkers, petrified by what a more educated public might do. How dare the common man own his own bible? To deal with this potential attack on the power of the exalted preacher class, in 1408, Archbishop Arundel tried to bar the use of the English bible within England. Despite a persistent and deep Church hostility and repeated threats of prison, death, or worse, excommunication, the English continued being English. This version remained a hit with the masses, at least those few who had learned how to read. A hundred years later, Tyndale’s Old Testament was so successful that it was considered to have set the benchmark all the way to modern times. In 1535, Coverdale came up with his own very popular, but very faulty version. Later editions contained even greater numbers of errors, until 1539, when he published either his 3d or 4th correction alongside Jerome’s Vulgate. (No one knows on what basis he selected his choice of the Vulgate version from the thousands of Vulgates that existed even that time.) King Henry VIII’s own Great Bible also underwent a number of changes each time it was reprinted. (Much like the king, it was mostly famous for its corpulent size, not its accuracy. Also like the fat king, its content led to the deaths of innocent women.) In the early 1600s, a group of Christian leaders told King James that all previous books were “corrupted.” He hired scores of scholars to work in Cambridge and Oxford and paid them to come up with a new and improved version. In 1611, they published the first King James version. Unfortunately, many of the more accurate Greek works were totally unknown to these scholars. Their ability to translate Aramaic or ancient Hebrew was pretty pathetic. Not one Hebrew or Aramaic scholar existed in Cambridge or Oxford at the time.
In 1870, scholars started a major revision on King James I. Eleven years later, they had made over 30,000 corrections to the New Testament alone. The Old Testament underwent even more significant changes. This revision was published in the US, after undergoing even more serious revisions to “Americanize” the language. Because the Roman Catholic Church refused to soil its pristine, jewel encrusted, greedy fingers on any of the James’ “filthy” efforts, in 1907, even they admitted that their old translations were fatally flawed. They assigned their own rewriting tasks to their Benedictine cult. By 1969, only the Prophets was still unfinished. Even after 62 years of rewriting, there were still problems and major issues. Some of these problems are potentially explosive and are not limited to any particular Christian cult. Recent gains in translation, computer analysis and newly found materials continue to change scholars’ views and understanding. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls continue to create major waves inside most Christian cults. In some cases, the very foundations of their cults are at risk. It should be clear by now, to even the densest, closed-minded, willfully ignorant, religious, Christian bigot, that any resemblance that today’s Americanized Old Testament text has to the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts is purely accidental. And it should also be clear why all human activities are viewed with contempt, especially when those activities may conflict with their very existence. When one considers just how much political wrangling went into many of the translations, today’s most popular texts have very little to do with the original Old Testament.
(SNIP)
New Testament
The New Testament also had a bloody, deadly and violent history. For the first 10 decades, the Christian cultists were true to their hatred of education and learning. They did not trust putting any words into paper. Part of the reason was that literacy was not one of their strengths. Another reason was that by being able to repeat only the words as they chose, in the order that they chose, Christians could adapt and adopt the words at will. Not wanting to “cheapen” god’s words with pen and ink, they relied on the inaccurate and mistake filled method called Oral Tradition. If you have ever played the party game “telephone”, you can only imagine how the words got changed and mangled over time. The pseudo-historian Papias (d. 130 CE) was one of the earliest people to gather the words of actual witnesses, such as John the Evangelist, and put pen to paper. One of the reasons was he was one of the very few who learned how to read and write. He included some of his favorite, new and improved apocalyptical theories that called for a reign of peace a thousand years long after which the world as we knew it would end. We must have missed that part somehow, especially a thousand years of global peace. Some of his many critics suggest that he might have authored them as part of his own fraud. Around 200 years later, Eusebius made a point of showing that Papias got it mostly wrong. (He also called him “a man of exceedingly small intelligence”, a serious insult, even in those days.) By then, christians were well along with their “creative” gospel writing efforts. Because their god was considered to be a living being, many authors thought that they could change gospel language or add to it as they saw fit. Some gospels’ authors were against war, others were against priests and bishops, and still others were decidedly against all organized religious organizations. The christians who were in power at that time faced a serious problem. The drafters of all these new and improved gospels were gathering more attention and support than the ruling class. These competitors had to be stopped at all costs, before the “in” cults lost all that access to money and power. Besides the newly created, more popular cults had ideas which did not sit well with them. Many competing cults had started up over the first few centuries, each of them claiming that their words and ideas were more powerful than others’. The Gnostics claimed that their members receive “revelation” from above, based mainly on intuition. Their growing popularity was the biggest reason that the orthodox “in” christians, refocused their attention on the apostles’ version of the gospels. This also led directly to the “canonization” (think of editing with a heavy hand) of the New Testament. The Montanic cult started up in the second century. Their popular message about spirituality created yet another serious problem for the early Christians. They responded with a redoubled effort to clean up their instruction manual, with the previously mentioned “canonization”. They also murdered anyone promoting a competing cult. At one time more than eighty competing Gospels existed. In many of them, Jesus didn’t even exist. The four gospels that first mention Jesus’ existence weren’t written, edited or concocted until around the 4th century. Even in those, they contained horrible historical errors. Despite what their “inerrant” book says, Nazareth did not even exist in Palestine at the alleged time of Jesus’ life. Fraud and political maneuvering were rampant. Cooking these books was a way of life. Think about Enron or Halliburton’s Iraqi accounting and billing techniques and you will get the general flavor. Except these stakes were much larger. There was an entire religious movement to mold and control. And with that movement under your control, endless riches could be gained. The first time that this canonization effort was officially attempted was by the famous anti-Semite Marcion. He simply deleted any topics or phrases that sounded “too Jewish” or too Old Testament. Partly because of his work, and other factors, the christians decided on four gospels as authoritative (although their actual contents were subject to change for many centuries to come). Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria was the first of many individuals who tried to make inter-cult peace between east and west christian leaders. He was also the first to decide that 27 books of the New Testament were “canonical”. (translation: they were good enough for him to include in his version of the bible.) Even this approach ran into problems as newer (and much older) documents turned up in different parts off the Middle East. Although forgeries were common, many apparently authentic documents simply disagreed with the accepted Christian dogma of the day. The Syriac Church finally accepted those 27 books as accurate, in spirit, in the 7th century. But since everyone but the Syriacs themselves ignored their decision, we’ve said enough about them. During the next few centuries, many versions of the Vulgate were generally the most popular. During this time, many popular, but not favored gospel texts were searched out and destroyed as heretical. Let’s jump to the Council of Trent (1545–63, 1590), where the canonization of the entire bible was to be negotiated and ultimately decided. Lest you have this mental image of beautifully robed bishops and cardinals involved in peaceful, scholarly, and intelligent discussion, you should know that it was anything but that. Roving gangs, supporting one cult, one gospel or a particular chapter or verse against everyone else’s, combed the city of Trent to search out and physically attack competing Christian gangs. Bloodshed, murder, bribery, riots and political scheming ruled the day. Being on the losing side meant that you would lose status, income, power, perhaps even your life. These street skirmishes continued almost unabated for more than 17 years, with very few breaks. Many of these canonical battles were fought by the sword, and not with Prayer, Faith or scholarly contemplation. Given even those bishops’ collective hatred for all things scientific, intellectual or historical, one must wonder much of the final version came to exist because its supporters had larger, better armed, and more successful gangs, instead of scholarly support. This was still a full century before christians persecuted and prosecuted Galileo simply because he was right and they were wrong. The christian hatred of logic, rational thought and creativity had its roots in much earlier times, from the very beginning. The idea that “Might makes right” did not start with Adolph Hitler, but with christianity. During the Crusades, that approach was tried repeatedly, although rarely with any measure of success. But the Rear Echelon Mystic Fundies who organized the Crusades did quite well. By the time that the battles of Trent were begun, given many forgeries, letters, wars and new cults, there were over 100,000 different variations of different gospel texts (and their variations) available to the warring parties. That, and the constant political and physical battles, explained why the Council of Trent took so long to come up with their final findings. The problems that true christian believers will face in the near future are varied and disturbing, that is, if they permit themselves to think rationally. As translations rely on more advanced computing power and rely on data comparisons, the accuracy of the translations will continue to improve. It will be subject to fewer personal biases and anecdotal portrayals.
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Don't you think that any story, if poorly or inaccurately translated, is no better than make-believe? The history of the bible, the real history, I mean, is one of errors and corrections, editing and battles over text. Gospels were concocted over the centuries, then changed, edited, deleted and altered for political reasons. Just which part are your refering to when you say that everything is well-documented? Honestly, I'd like to know. And which version of the translation. And which original text. And which original gospel.
I don't understand how some people can just set aside fact and history, and claim that everything in the "bible" is well-documented. Hell, in the 1500s, they fought a seventeen year war deciding what words and gospels would be included - FOR POLITICAL REASONS, not religious. Most, if not all of it HAS BEEN refuted. Only those who stick their head in the sand on purpose do their best to ignore fact and instead trust in fairy tales. I am not attacking your beliefs, but I suggest that you are slightly in error.
The 1973 Chicago ruling on the bible's inerrancy is a great place to start - if you dare. From there, it is an easy step to see that the bible truly is a work of inaccurate fiction. Some great stories, true, but still not based in reality or history any more than the Muslims' koran, or the Mormans' writings about lost tribes of Israel roaming the US great plains and the Andes mountains.
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