Here’s an extremely interesting NPR interview with Bart Ehrman, a biblical scholar and former “fundamentalist” (his word) who wrote a book about how the Bible was significantly changed by the scribes who made copies of it back in the day. He has a lot of insight about the Bible’s origins and about the meaning of the Bible today (he thinks it is important to the religious and non-religious alike, and I agree). His basic point is that while the Bible can be important and insightful, it cannot be seen as the monolithic and authoritative Word of God – because it’s neither monolithic (it was written by many authors who had many and conflicting messages) nor authoritative (we don’t have the original text).
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[…] Hitchens considers the Gospel of Judas. Once again, I’m struck by how clearly we can see the human-driven process of creating and editing a book that is supposed by so many to be the Word of God. It also strikes me how much more story there is to the Greatest Story Ever Told. […]
[…] “booty” to “spoils”. Which we know is not a big deal, considering all the editing, interpretation, and retranslation that went into creating all our current versions of the Bible.Via The Morning News.Related postsThe […]