Bible

Overview

The Bible, in its various forms, is quite possibly the world's most popular scriptural work.

It is often cited as a source of moral authority. This is, however, inconsistent with the fact that nobody – not even the staunchest fundamentalist – follows every word of the Bible, and therefore those parts of the Bible which are given as authoritative moral statements are in fact being chosen by the quoter on the basis of her/his own beliefs.

Versions

• Over 7000 editions of the Bible have been published
• The Catholic Bible also contains the Apocrypha, consisting of about a dozen books not included in "standard" Bibles
• The official scriptures of the Mormon Church include the Bible and several "latter-day" revealed writings
• Five of the books in the Bible's Old Testament are also the first five books of the Tanakh, the Jewish holy book (to oversimplify a bit)

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Skeptic's Annotated Bible: uses illustrations from The Brick Testament
• The Brick Testament: the Bible illustrated using Legos
  • According to a comment on Contrary Brin [1], "The site's author is an atheist, and the depictions of the Biblical scenes are mainly intended to point out how archaic and immoral the actions of everyone involved are compared to modern standards. This hasn't prevented the site from being popular with fundies, as the scenes are completely faithful to the Biblical passages, and the irony sails over their heads completely. Check out the passages from Leviticus, and you'll see what I'm talking about. They're pure comic gold."
  • Warning: some scenes not family-friendly (largely because of the source material)
• Jefferson Bible: Founding Father Thomas Jefferson's modified Bible removed passages referring to supernatural events or beings and is still termed a "Bible" (even by Pat Robertson or someone of that ilk; need to find reference), thus one more piece of evidence that you can, in fact, rewrite the "Word of God" (in addition to the fact that all the English translations are rewritten to one extent or another, often heavily in "contemporary" versions, because of translational difficulties) (P.S. Where is the text available freely online, as mentioned in the article?)
• Semantic Bible: "an emerging exploration of new applications of markup and computational linguistic technology to the study of Scripture, with an emphasis on practical tools that encourage understanding and personal transformation."
• Bible abuse, i.e. misusing the Bible by quoting passages out of context for use as tools of discrimination or oppression:
  • Confronting Bible Abuse by Micah Royal
    • Part 2: Beginning Again with God

Inerrancy

Many branches of Christianity, including Catholicism, hold the Bible to be the literal word of God.

Pope Leo XIII wrote:

...it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it – this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost..."

Quotes

"The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals." – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (excerpted here)

Arguments

• The Bible is not a source of moral authority at Issuegroups

Notes

• legendary "letter to Dr. Laura" showing the selectivity of Biblical adherence

Interpretations of Biblical Stories

A member (not an official) of the LDS church interprets the "incident in the book of Judges" (probably referred to in the first video here) as something not sanctioned by God. "The whole book of Judges, as its own introduction points out, was a belief summary of hundreds of years of Judiac history where the people were not following God, did not have a prophet and were not specifically writing down God's word and direction."

Satire

New Revised Tower of Babel

5 But the LORD came down to see the civilization that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people understanding the same reasoning they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their reasoning so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD gave them different faiths and creeds, and with each a separate reasoning and understanding, and scattered their thoughts from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the civilization and fell to warring. 9 That is why it was called Babel – because there the LORD confused the reasoning of the whole world. 10 From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth that they might never speak with understanding to one another.