Pick and Choose Your Battles

There was a conversation on the vanpool today which started off innocently enough about the purchase, price and quality of HD capable television sets. A couple of the van riders piped up to confess they had in fact taken the plunge into the HD market, but haven’t yet decided to take advantage of HD programming outside of DVDs. This swayed the conversation to what is available through cable and satellite providers in the way of programming, and what each other would watch.

The conversation of Christian television, radio, and religious types of programming came up and the discussion started how it is safe for the family, and not lewd and such. I didn’t feel the need to start an argument over such a thing, because it is their right to believe in such a thing, and I don’t have a problem with that. If their beliefs and viewpoints start to interfere with me directly, attacking me, or persecuting me for who I am then there is a problem and I would have been compelled to defend myself. I always had a problem with the phrase “safe for the family” though when it comes to public programming, but that is another argument.

This particular subject was brought up shortly after I heard after I heard a story on NPR’s Fresh Air. It featured Scholar Bart Ehrman's discussing his new book, and explores how scribes - through both omission and intention - changed the Bible. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

There are specific examples of how scribes intentionally changed the stories of the Bible as it was being transcribed, by hand over the years. Since it was all done by hand there were many opportunities for mistakes and modifications to stories, which in fact happened and has been displayed such an act was committed through the study of transcriptions which were years apart.

An example given early on in the broadcast was the story of a woman who had committed adultery, and the people had set a trap for Jesus, bring her to him. If he was to follow the laws of Moses, she would be stoned to death for her acts, but that would contradict his teaching of love, compassion and forgiveness.

Mr. Ehrman’s studies show that the story had originally been passed down to a scribe who had written the story in the margin of one of the manuscripts. Another scribe who would take that manuscript for reproduction would then move the story from the margin to the actual text, so this is a case where the story would appear in English versions adopted from the King James Bible, which would not appear in the original Greek version. He continues to talk about those who view the Bible as an authoritative guide; they would have to go to the original version, which no longer exists. If the new one is interpreted as authoritative, and theses scribes were able to modify the text as they saw fit, and was then interpreted as scripture then who or what is to say what I speak or write couldn’t also be considered scripture?

Another example is the crucifixion of Jesus which is told in the gospel of Luke and of Matthew.

So I bit my tongue and decided not to bring this up, avoiding such a fight which is based on deeply personal values. Just something to think about I suppose…

Fresh Air Story