Alter argues "that past translations either get the Hebrew wrong or mangle the Bible's syntax or lose the power of the work or even are so up-to-the-minute that they become too conversational to be accurate or interesting."
You certainly can't argue with the "up to the minute" thing, especially after seeing translations offered at our Christian Retail Outlets today. And I'm certainly willing to believe that the KJV might not be an entirely accurate translation (not because the authors weren't careful, but because the authors didn't have access to all the resources available today. For example, a couple of major manuscripts were only found after the KJV, and I'm certain that nearly four centuries of research into the ancient Hebrew and Greek has refined our knowledge of the languages a little.
So... as long as his translation is accurate, bravo.
But the reason I bring him up was a quote from reviewer Michael Dirda from the Washington Post.
Compare with I Kings 19:11-12:
I'm reasonably certain that the irony was unintentional.
Working from the book of Genesis, and risking some speculation on the Hebrew calendar, he calculated that it began at 6pm on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC.
Apparently Ussher skipped I Timothy 1:4 which says, "Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do."
Some might say that this verse doesn't apply to this situation; I ask you then what situation it does apply to?
Also, according to Strong's concordance, the word "questions" is the Greek word zetesis, which means "a subject of questioning or debate, a matter of controversy." So to "minister questions" means to stir up controversy, which is exactly what has happened as a result of giving heed to the geneologies all the way back to Creation.
Anyways, lest we think that Britain's geologists are accusing young-earth creationists of lying, we get this quote:
I think that situations like this show that preachers need to stick to "godly edifying which is in faith." Regardless of the scientific accuracy of the Bible, which is not only up for debate but one of the primary causes of flamewars on message boards everywhere, it does teach a pretty good system of ethics and morality. (Surely everyone can agree on that, can we not?)
(Via Ramblings' Journal)
So, that's the question: Do you choose to be homosexual, or are you born that way?
My answer's in the extended entry.
It all depends on what the meaning of homosexual is. If the definition of a homosexual is one who commits homosexual acts, then yes, that's a choice. If the definition of a homosexual is one who is attracted to people of the same gender, then no, it's not.
You can't choose whom you're attracted to, but can choose how you'll react to that attraction. As a comparison, I find a number of young women at BJU attractive, but I don't touch them. A married man might find his office's secretary to be desirable, but that doesn't mean he's going to engage in an affair with her. In the same way, a homosexually-inclined man should restrain himself if he intends to follow the Biblical definitions of morality.
Tell me, isn't God supposed to be all-powerful? But apparently Pat thinks that God isn't powerful enough to overcome Yasser Arafat's title deed to Jerusalem.
Only God should decide if Israel should relinquish control of the lands it captured in the 1967 war, including the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, Robertson said, in a reference to Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza next year.
"God says, 'I'm going to judge those who carve up the West Bank and Gaza Strip,'" Robertson said. "'It's my land and keep your hands off it.'"
Robertson here crosses the line from stupidity--ignoring one of the most basic doctrines of Christianity, the religion Robertson supposedly follows--to false prophecy. And, as a commenter on Cut on the Bias says, "you know what the Bible recommends as consequences for false prophets."
The following is a quotation from page 4, my emphasis:
"Although modern man is much more sophisticated in the religion he invents, he continues to do the same sort of thing the Phoenicians did. Consider the mythology of evolution. Because a person does not feel comfortable accepting what the Bible says about the creation of earth in six literal days, he accepts the theory that all life happened by chance. He imagines that certain inorganic elements randomly combined into the amino acids that form the basic organic chemical building blocks of all living things. Then, he reasons, through the dual mechanisms of genetic mutation and natural selection, all the incredibly complex and varied plants, animals, birds, and fish we see around us evolved over several hundred million years. A few scientists have dared to criticize Darwinism--even to the point of calling it a hopelessly naive remnant of the nineteenth century (see Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box). But, although some criticize evolution, they seem incapable of positively asserting that the Bible is God's inerrant record of how the world began. Evolution is popular because it allows man to view himself as an independent agent, free from responsibility to the Creator. Man has put himself in the place of God and worships his own mind as the final test of all truth. Humanistic rationalism is more sophisticated than Baalism, but it is just as idolatrous."
I disagree with the assumption that anyone who doesn't believe the Bible has invented their own belief system so that they could live any way they pleased. He's wrong to assign a self-serving hedonistic motive to religious beliefs other than Christianity. People believe other religions because they were convinced that those religions were right, not (necessarily) because they seek worldly pleasure or independence from God.
I believe Jaeggli also operates under the assumption that all modern people have the truth to begin with and reject it for their own self-delusions, rather than simply being raised under a different worldview/religion. If I'm raised as a Muslim, then of course my religious beliefs are going to be different from the Bible. Does that mean that I invented Islam so that I could live as a hedonist? No, I believe in Islam because that's what I've always been taught and assume to be true. So with evolution: If I'm raised by an atheistic evolutionist, then chances are good that I'm going to be an evolutionist by default, not because I worship my own mind or something.
Indeed, so it is also with Christianity; Christians tend to assume Christianity to be true because that's either A) what they've always believed or B) what they've been convinced of. If it's your goal to convince others of Christianity, it'd probably be best to not make accusations of self-deception because they don't already follow your belief system.
However, since the book’s topic is not idolatry or non-Christian beliefs, I still hold out hope for the quality of the book. The stated purpose of the book is to study the attributes of God as they are revealed in the Bible, rather than following a “systematic theology” as Ryrie does in the other textbook. In other words, this will be a study about God, rather than about the six-syllable words that describe man’s beliefs in God. (Seriously, Ryrie’s discussion on the doctrine of the trinity and all the petty little squabbles over the exact nature of the doctrine makes my head hurt. Apparently factionalism has been a part of Christianity since the late 300’s A.D.. So you’ve got these two guys, Arius and Athanasius, who are arguing over whether Jesus and the Holy Spirit are made of the same substance as God the Father, or a similar substance. This argument escalates until the church has to call a special council to settle the issue. It’s as bad as the KJV-only nonsense going around today.)
Anyways: Fingers are crossed. Here we go.
UPDATE: I've been told that the introduction above came off as kind of sarcastic. It's not supposed to be. Sorry if I gave that impression.
This strikes me as being a good thing for young-earth creationists/biblical literalists.
(Via Dean's World)
The following passage starts on page 107; any spelling errors are my fault, I'm sure:
No one denies that there are passages in the Bible that contain problems of one kind or another. The inerrancy question does not involve interpretative problems or debates concerning the best text type. But problems of apparent discrepancies, conflicting numbers, differences in parallel accounts, or allegedly unscientific statements do concern the question of inerrancy.Errantists and inerrantists both have access to the same facts concerning each of these problems. Both have capable minds to use in interacting with those facts. Both can read the conclusions of others. But they do not come to these problems with the same basic outlook. The errantist's outlook includes not ony the possibility but the reality of errors in the Bible. Therefore, when he studies these problems one of his possible conclusions is that one or another of them is actually an error.
The inerrantist, on the other hand, has concluded that the Bible contains no errors. Therefore, he exercises no option to conclude that any of these same problems is an example of a genuine error in the Bible. His research may lead him to conclude that some problem is yet unexplainable. Nevertheless, he believes it is not an error and that either further research will demonstrate this, or he will understand the solution in heaven.
In short, Ryrie says he will continue to hold the position that the Bible is without error without regard to the evidence. I cannot begin to tell you how much this bothers me. Is it not written in one of our best-loved hymns, "The Bible stands every test we give it for its Author is divine"? If the Bible is true and inerrant, then it will stand up to our tests; if it is not, then it will not.
Perhaps anticipating my reaction, Ryrie attempts to explain himself with the following illustration:
If a happily married man comes home unexpectedly one day to find his wife waving good-bye to a handsome man about to get into a car, what will he think? If his confidence and trust in his wife is total and unwavering because of their years of satisfying experiences together, he will assume that she had a good reason for seeing that man. Though he may be curious, the husband will not doubt his wife's loyalty. Perhaps it will not be until later that he learns that the man he saw was delivering a special present his wife had ordered for him.But if his confidence in his relationship with his wife is even a bit shaky, his thoughts will wander him into all kinds of paths including unfaithfulness on her part. Because of his insecurity, his wife will forever be branded an adulteress in his eyes.
The analogy is clear, isn't it? If I come to the Bible with confidence that its words were breathed out from God and therefore without errors, and if that confidence is buttressed by years of proving the Bible totally reliable, then I won't be shaken by a problem, and I will certainly not conclude that it is in error. But if I think there can be errors in the Bible, however few or many, then I will likely conclude that some of those problems are examples of errors. An even if there is only one, I have an errant Bible.
The problem with the analogy is that, regardless of the mindset of the married man, there is the very real possibility that his wife did have an affair. The evidence of years of faithful marriage beforehand are not necessarily meaningful; she could have been having affairs without his knowledge. Carrying that over from the analogy, just because I'd never noticed an error in the Bible doesn't mean that it wasn't there all along, regardless of how many years I missed it.
Now, following the illustration, the man's first thoughts aren't likely to be that she'd had an affair, but he'd probably ask his wife who the other man in the car was. If she couldn't provide a satisfactory answer, a red flag might go up, and he'd investigate further, and he might come to the (possibly accurate) conclusion that his wife was cheating on him. Likewise, in approaching the Scripture, it's likely that any perceived errors are explainable in some way; if there isn't a good explanation readily at the mind, the student of the Word should dig deeper, ask teachers and pastors, and find one. If there is no explanation to be found, then it's possible that the Bible might just be in error.
But I most certainly will not ignore evidence that the Bible is untrue simply because my ideology says that the Bible must be true; it's the mental equivalent of plugging one's ears and shouting until the problem goes away. To borrow an another analogy, this one from essayist Bill Whittle (his emphasis):
We need a map. Several are for sale. How do we choose?Well, it seems like a good idea to choose the map that best conforms to the coastline we see unveiling before us. We choose the map that best fits the territory. We choose the map that best matches reality – the objective, external, indisputable reality of bays and promontories, capes and gulfs and rivers and shoals.
We can, indeed, lay out competing philosophies on the table, and see where each conforms to reality and where it does not. No maps are without distortions; none of these are likely to be, either. And one map may conform perfectly to the coastline in one area, and be dreadfully amiss in another. We can cut and paste them as we wish. This is too important for us to be arguing about who is right – all our energies must go to getting it right.
And before we start, we must agree to one thing, and one thing only: we will never be so full of arrogance and blinded by pride that we dare confront a place where the map does not match the coastline, and proclaim that the coastline must be wrong.
That said, and a good half an hour gone, I leave you for my studying. Be back later.
On Saturday, September 25th, the American Veterans Standing for God and Country will bring to Greenville the 5000-pound Ten Commandments monument which once stood in the Alabama courthouse where Roy Moore served as a State Supreme Court judge. It will be displayed in front of Rodeheaver Auditorium from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The University family and the Greenville community are invited to view this historic monument. People may come for photo opportunities or to spend time in prayer for the nation at this critical moment in our history.
Have I mentioned Roy Moore before? (::checks::) Yep. I still believe Instapundit's right: "If judges don't obey court orders, who will?"
I was reading part of today's Carnival of the Vanities, and I came across an article about "Christian Libertarianism" on a blog entitled Dispatches from the Culture Wars (You'll need to scroll down to July 30th, 2004. On the way you'll see posts entitiled about "More Anti-evolution Absurdity," "Biblical Literalism and Silly Rationalizations," and "A Case Study in Religious Right Hypocrisy," which ought to tell you where he stands on Christianity). He in turn links to a guy by the name of Jon Rowe who tells us how a group called "Christian Reconstructionists have managed to infiltrate libertarian circles." I had never heard of this group before. It turns out they want "to replace this big government with, of course, a biblical theocracy." (quoting "Dispatches")
From further reading I discover that these Reconstructionists (which I originally thought might have been some sort of holdover from the Civil War era) want to set up a government based on old testament law! Rowe links to a Reason Magazine article about the group, which contains this quote (my emphasis):
So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."
And people thought the Federal Marriage Ammendment was bad!
Seriously though, I'll say this once to you, David Chilton: Don't you dare put those words in my mouth. I do not, do not want Christianity reduced to another version of the Taliban, and, were we in a different era, I'd be tempted to take that statement as an attack on my honor and challenge you to a duel. The establishment of Bible-based tyranny is most emphatically not what Christianity is about. Clear?
Another quote from the same article:
I'm almost speechless at this. Let me correct his doctrine: God gave man a free will. He did not put armed guards and barbed-wire fences around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Put another way, a man is not moral just because he's never been given the chance to do wrong. (I believe I'm badly mangling someone else's words here, but I can't find the actual quote.) Therefore man needs autonomy to be truly moral. He has to have the ability to choose between right and wrong, or else morality is meaningless.
::shudder::
You may be wondering how a group that calls itself "Christian Libertarianism" could say "We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy." That's a pretty good question. Sandlin states elsewhere:
Thus, the state must punish murder (Ex. 21:12), theft (Ex. 22:1-4), idolatry (Ex. 22:20), and other sins that the Scriptures explicitly requires it to punish. Since we may deduce from Scripture that abortion is murder (see Ex. 21:22, 23), that copyright infringement is theft, and that the public worship of the Earth by New Age advocates is idolatry, the state may suppress these crimes.
So, apparently, the libertarianism side comes from the "and nothing beyond" part.
Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: the state is the wrong instrument for spreading any form of Christianity, and it should not be used to enforce "Christian" values. If the government ever follows after this line of thinking, it will become no better than the Taliban and other Islamist governments that have held their people back for centuries.
To you non-Christians: Please, please, please understand that these men, Chilton and Sandlin, are on the lunatic fringe of Christianity, and don't judge us all by them.
Then Dean Esmay linked to several of his other tracts. One of them, entitled "The Curse of Baphomet" features the story of Alex Scott, whose son attempts suicide. Their friend, Ed, links the suicide attempt to Alex's membership in the Masonic lodge. Ed then proves himself to be some kind of expert on Masonry, and claims that the "highest degrees" of Masons learn that the "Great Architect of the Universe" is this guy Baphomet.
Ed later claims that the "symbol of Baphomet" is worn by "the century's most notorious Satanist." Here's another fun claim:
The Washington Monument is of the devil. And, the ancient Egyptians worshiped Sauron.
OK, enough of this one. Next, we have Chick's claim that "the Catholic Church invented Islam." (The previous statement quotes Dean Esmay, not Chick).
Ironically, the title of this tract is "The Storyteller."
Oh, by the way: The Catholic Church is plotting world domination, and keeping a database of every protestant's name (see the final panel of this page). They're murdering (last panel) the illegitimate children of nuns and burying them under their convents. They're bullying churches into the ecumenical movement by breaking up churches, which they do by accusing innocent pastors of having affairs with young women, or by whisper campaigns, or by outright assasination of protestant church leaders. The Catholic church also being run by the Masons (See the 14th panel).
I wish Chick had stopped at "This Was Your Life."
Or: Why can't more Christians be original? Yesterday, my mom walked into my room and invited me to join her on a trip to Christian Supply, a local Christian bookstore. She had a coupon that expired today, and I had nothing better to do, so I went. Luckily, I brought my Clie with me, so I could shoot some photos. Unluckily, the Clie's camera isn't a very good one, so please bear with the low-quality images. Click the extended entry link below for my photo-essay.
The first thing you see as you come in the right-hand entrance is this:
You know, I'm not sure how this thing fits in with "Thou shalt not make any graven image," but, hey! What do I know? Here's some more selections from the Christian Supply Wall o' Idols:
That's a very specific demographic.
I mentioned one of these before, but now they've come out with two more magazine-esque versions of the Bible(!) I'd be embarrassed to take one of these to church, myself. (I just use my Clie. It's a very useful tool.)
Notice one of the headlines on the Refuel edition: Today's hottest songs. I wonder if they're planning to put out a new issue every month. The top headline is: Girls, cash, and cars. Yep... Appealing to preteenage boys' greed and libido is definitely the best way to sell the Bible.
Next!
As we skim the back cover (link to image) we see this quote: "Revolt against the cheap substitutes the world calls the 'good life' and become a part of the CrossCulture." Ah, so we'll also appeal to the teenage drive for rebellion to sell our books. OK. Oh, and let's also change some of the "lingo"--Christianity just has such a dull ring to it. Let's have our marketing guru's come up with the best new name for the Christian life they can.
Seriously though, despite the marketing spin, I think this book might actually be worth reading. Another line reads "It's about daily sacrificing your selfish ambitions" and another says "What you will find is a call to total commitment and surrender to the one person who is able and willing to transform you into the person you were truly meant to be." It's at least somewhat creative, which is more than I can say for a lot of products in the store, such as this:
"In a horrifying vision, Chelsea Adam has relived the victim's last moments." Mmm-hmm. Wasn't this also the premise of an NBC drama called The Profiler? Cross out "psychic" and refer to her "new-found Christian faith" instead, and you've got the makings of a great book!
Then you've got the people who profit off of other people's work by attacking it, such as these two:
Key quote from the second book (images here and here): "According to information compiled from a number of web-sites, Pokemon, short for pocket monsters is an RPG/simulation Game Boy game released in 1995 by Nintendo of Japan."
I'm sorry, but it takes just a little bit of credibility away from you when you cite "a number of websites" as your primary source. Reading through the pages I glanced through, it became evident that the author's primary sources were sites like this one which insist that the Pokemon franchise has occult ties and that its authors are probably agents of Satan. As one who played the original GameBoy game, I can tell you that their claims are way, way off-base. But it's not my purpose here to refute this book's premise or its poor arguments, nor to question whether poorly-reasoned attacks on harmless children's games are tantamount to the boy who cried wolf, nor even to point out the obvious pun between the book's title and it's subtitle. My purpose is instead to point out how too many Christian authors are trying to sell books on the coattails of other people's hard work instead of creating their own original ideas.
On that theme, we have this:
Compare this
to this: 
My mom believes that the book with headphones came first; I'm not too sure.
On the other hand, there's no questioning what inspired this T-shirt:
The middle line reads "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Due to a bit of a hand shake, the rest is illegible. But you can definitely see which movie series they're trying to cash in on. If I had done this photo-essay a few years ago, I could have shown you many more marketing style T-Shirts, like the infamous "Godweiser" shirt. But, fortunately, the time of that particular fad is over.
I'll end with one other, much more original idea, what I've chosen to term the Tub o' Religion:
Here's to more original ideas like this one! Good night!
To explain why it's offensive (although it's fairly self-evident), we need a round of Achievement Test Analogy Time: "Fag" is to homosexual person as "nigger" is to black person. Both words are highly offensive and neither word can legitimately be used in debating an issue. In essence, the BBC attempts to undermine the entire argument against gay marriage by showing these sign-wielding scum as the only possible people who aren't erudite enough to welcome gay marriage with open arms.
But when has the BBC ever been terribly concerned with accuracy or a balanced look at the issues?