Quote:
He was now prepared to believe that Jesus died for his sins and was resurrected,
that the Bible was the inerrant word of God.
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There are two main problems that come to mind when I read this.
1. The inerrant word of God, according to a theologian I know, was
first written in Aramaic (ancient Hebrew) and then translated into
ancient Greek, then into Latin, then into the Old English of the
King James bible. That means
the current meaning of any Bible passage
could be three times removed from its original inception. (The
commandment, "thou shalt not kill" is apparently originally written
as "thou shalt not do murder" -- once "kill" and "murder" are separated,
you can now justify punishing someone for committing premeditated murder
while rewarding them for killing in the name of an army.)
2. During the Wars of the Roses, a King -- one of the Henrys? --
reprinted the Bible with an added passage of great political interest
and distributed it to the peasants, to sway their support in his
direction. (Bear in mind that in those days, the King of England
ruled by Divine Right, and was entitled to treat himself like
God's representative on Earth.)
The passage went something like this: "The current wars that plague
England are a result of [my family] being denied their rightful place
on the throne.
The wrath of God will be appeased, and things
will be set right again, the day that I resume my rightful place
on the throne of England."
Is Stephen Baldwin aware of the
history of this book, this great
patchwork of texts, written and accumulated over centuries,
often by minds that never met and had competing political motives?