You’re right though. I can appreciate the Bible more because of it’s “realness.”

By the way, tell Lindsay I said hi. ;)

I think Abdul’s right and wrong.

Abdul’s right. the The KJV translation of the Bible is pretty bad in some areas. Scribes taking it upon themselves to ‘brush up’ the word of God and adding their own comments, diverging versions of the Bible developing on their own in the W and the E before being combined, Papal politics impacting the final version. The current NASB and the NIV Bibles aren’t too bad, but there still are more than a handful of verses where we’re really not sure if we have it right or not. See especially concepts of the Trinity, women’s role in church, and Christology. The authors who wrote the Bible were very different people and in some places didn’t even agree on how some events went down (look at how many times the Gospel writers, while referencing Mark, will quote an entire paragraph verbatim and but change a few adjectives or stick in/remove a sentence or two because they have a different memory of how things happened).

Abdul’s wrong. The fact that the Bible was written by different people, often from different viewpoints and often even disagreeing on some small things is very encouraging to me because they agree on all the big things. Paul and Peter, who obviously had a few run-ins back in Rome in the early days, write directing early Christians with the same basic tenants. Matthew and Luke, even though they may disagree with some minor points of Mark’s writings (based on Peter’s preaching), are in agreement with every single important thing. And all of the salvific issues of Christianity remain unchanged, even though the letters of the NT were passed around so many different people groups and re-copied and re-translated. It gives such credibility to the 99% of the text that all of these different authors (allegedly with their own agendas) agree on. On a less technical note, it just feels better too; if all these guys remembered and wrote the exact same thing then it would totally smell like a con job to me. I like seeing the individual personalities and writing styles and audiences; makes me feel like they’re actual people who just happened to be witnessing a diety.

*shrugs*

In addition to being really long-winded and possibly boring, I realize that I’ve just offended a ton of readers who, being from Jacksonville, are probably Baptist. You were taught that each word of the Bible was infalliable back in Sunday School, weren’t you? Anyawy, sorry if you found this offensive or heretical.