But despite the Apologists and Commentators, the actual writings still exist. Folk can go read the stories themselves. The different Canons do exist; there is no such thing as "The Bible".
There is, in fact, something pretty close to a de facto Bible. Close enough that I don't think the fact that there are different Canons is an insurmountable issue in most discussions with Fundamentalists or even in 90+ percent of the discussions on EvC. The KJV and a few translations that incorporate exactly the same books as the Bible pretty well constitute the text that is cited in the vast majority of discussions at EvC. Absent a visiting Jehovah Witness, Mormon or Catholic, essentially nobody here quotes a text that cannot be found in the KJV even if the translation is different. In only a few discussions to even those differences matter.
Of course no version of the Bible did existed at any time when Jesus, Paul, or Peter was alive. A fact that does not stop people from claiming that Jesus wrote the Bible in some way.
Note that it is now an extra-Biblical belief the determines how to interpret the Bible and not what is actually written or actually exists.
I do note that. Normally the excuse given is that you have to read the Bible 'spiritually' a phrase which almost always turns out to mean buy the doctrine or the agenda before you read.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
™ Version 4.2
