Sunday, October 29, 2006

When Ignorance Isn't Bliss

The other day, my family and I were eating out at a local resturant. We were in a section that had one other large family sitting in it. At one point the other families' discussion grew more audible and we could tell that they were discussing the bible. It was at this point that we were privy to this interesting tidbit:

The bible was written in Hebrew, then translated into jewish. From jewish, it was translated again into the King James.

Now, it isn't neccessary for me to go into a correction of the above quote for the simple reason that if you are reading this blog then you probably have an idea of how our english bibles came to be. I suppose the only thing I would like to say about this episode is that if people are going to be this ignorant, they should at least do it in the privacy of their own homes because they never know when their ignorance might appear on the 'net as someone else's blog fodder!

4 comments:

James Reggio said...

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to learn "Jewish" in order to study the transmission of Scripture in the church. And to think that I was going to take Latin next semester.

[Don't conversations like that make you want to get up and gently, yet awkwardly, correct them?]

J. Matthew Cleary said...

Hi James,

"Don't conversations like that make you want to get up and gently, yet awkwardly, correct them?"

Yes they do but that would have been unwise in this situation. The folks who were having the discussion on the the bible being written in Hebrew and then translated into jewish were the kind of people who begin and end each sentence with "By God". And where I'm from, you don't correct these folks in public unless you are willing to spend the evening in jail with a disorderly conduct charge for throwin' down in public!

Evelyn said...

Calvanism: How do you explaine this?

Passage 2 Peter 2:20:
20If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.

1 Corinthians 15:2:
2By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

J. Matthew Cleary said...

Hi Evelyn,

Explain what? Calvinism affirms the truthfulness of these passages just as much as they do the truthfulness of such passages as John 6 and Romans 9. If you believe that the two passages you have quoted somehow contradict my position then you will need to present an argument for me to consider. As it stands, all you've done here is prooftext under the guise of posing a question.