S
Sniffles
Guest
Fear and immaturity are right here, plainly to be read. Is this the attitude of a follower of Christ, or a slave to church dogma? I'm sure it is if we take the offensive, abominal and criminal historical actions of the church into account. Souls uncounted were tortured and destroyed in the name of the church to "protect" the integrity of it's position. This is old, available and well-understood history motivated by the basest of human interests with no real reference to divine law. Burn heretics? are you serious? Do you think what happened long ago was forgotten; that writing a statement as patently offensive as this could be excused by your disgust for these two publications? This is simply out of line.
Would I buy either of these books? Probably not. I can find passages myself in conventional sources to support our responsibility to creation...and I am sure others could find just as many passages supporting the notion of creation as essentially ours to dispense with as we see fit without reference to stewardship or husbandry. The idea of "slicking up" a version of the New Testament to draw in an audience who might otherwise ignore it should offend only those who stand to lose something from that possibility and have no faith that the word can stand up to any presentation. There should therefore be no representation of the Word in any other form than that available to a select few, or approved by them? Sounds very familiar. Of course when efforts were first made to provide legible translations to the laity centuries ago the church took persistent steps to capture, torture and execute those trying to expand the understanding of the Word. It is disappointing to see that this mindset survives especially in one who has gifts enough to amend many of the hurts perpetrated by the church and expand a truly "universal" understanding.
The uniform of faith is that of the healer, the open, helpful hand and guide; not that of the judge, soldier or executioner as it has all too often been understood to be by insitutions hoarding and exercising it's inherent power, the ultimate, pathetic sorrowful irony of our history.
You wish to burn books? Or better yet those books along with those who might read them and come to a different conclusion than you? I cannot with propriety dispense my full response to your writing on this forum. In short it could best be expressed by the phrase "grow up".
Hirsch, I actually have great respect for you. So in light of that I'm choosing to just ignore most of this post.
And yes I'm very aware of the history involved here. For one thing, the opening of the Vatican archives have shown that the scale of burnings, torture, and executions in general was vastly exaggerated. In many cases, burnings of effigees was falsely counted as actual executions.
According to researchers into the archives, barely 2% of people ever brought before the Inquisition were executed - and even then most of the time was done under provisions in secular law. Henry Kamen for one noted that the Inquisition had the lowest execution rate of any court in Europe at the time - an average of 3 people per year.
As for translating the Bible; that was done throughout the early Medieval period. Alfred the Great comissioned an English translation of the Bible, Charlamenge commisioned a translation into German; and the missionaries Ss. Cyril and Methodius translated it into Old Slavonic.