(thanks to Bob Chambers for this one)
When I was a teenager (and a Southern Baptist) I remember asking a deacon and a teacher why the Bible was called the "holy" Bible. They laughed at me and said, "Because it is God's word." But they couldn't tell me why it was God's word.
As a philosophy and a lifestyle, I have no problem with Christianity. To paraphrase Gandhi, it's Christians I have a problem with. One thing I've always wondered is how some Christians can see the Bible as the unerring, immutable Word of God when it's been transcribed, translated, and revised over the years by humans, often based on personal, human prejudice. The latest effort by one group to rewrite the Bible without "Liberal bias" (there goes the entire New Testament) is merely one example of how fallible mortals have rewritten or are in the process of the infallible Word of God over the course of history. Look at how many different versions of the Bible have been produced since the death of Jesus Christ. So how does one translate the infallible Word of God? And what sort of uncritical mind accepts the translation of a translation of events and teachings written in some cases many years afterward as infallible, unerring, and beyond question?
I'm not saying that I have an answer to the questions I'm raising, but I do have to wonder about the leap of faith and the willing suspension of disbelief required to think as so many Christians do. All I want to know is why the Bible is the infallible, inalterable Word of God? How can something that's been translated, altered, and revised so many times over the course of human history still be seen as being representative of the unfiltered, infallible, and unerring thinking of Almighty God?
Just wondering....
