\u201cBecause you know, when the Bible was written, and then rewritten, and then edited, and then re-edi -ted, then translated from dead languages and then re-retranslated and re-edited again, then re-re-re-edited, and then re-translated, and then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts out, and then re-edited and re-translated and given to the pope for him to approve, and then re-edited and re-written\u2014 all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years after they had happened to people who didn\u2019t know how to write\u2026 I guess what I\u2019m trying to say is, the bible is literally the world\u2019s oldest game of telephone.\u201d<\/em> (David Cross, comedian)<\/p>\n We could respond soberly, but I have an idea that is more fun. What if, in the middle of his comedic diatribe, Mr. Cross got smacked with the facts. The result might be something like this:<\/p>\n \u201cBecause you know, it seems that something might have happened in Jerusalem, but of course all we have is oral tradition and hearsay\u2013oops, scratch that\u2013well, apparently we have written eyewitness accounts, but we are stuck with only 1\u2013oh? Goodness me\u2013make that four eyewitness accounts, written 90 years\u2013Oops, I\u2019m sorry\u201330 years from the event (and\u2013who knew? Turns out there are some mentions within the letters of Paul penned only 15 years afterward); Of course all of this was written in dead languages (like Greek\u2013who can speak that?) by people who were clearly illiterate\u2013like that Pharisee scholar Paul and Luke the physician\u2013ok maybe not so illiterate but hey, let\u2019s not let facts ruin a good narrative, eh?\u2013And of course that information only survived in a few manuscripts\u2013oops, turns out it\u2019s actually tens upon tens of thousands of manuscripts, hmm\u2013but these are obviously from centuries \u2013oops, correction\u2013as early as decades after their writing; still, probably they have wildly different information, which of course is because of later editing and endless re-translations and due to the activities of kings and medieval popes, and\u2013oh wait\u2013I guess it turns out that these copies are all virtually identical and differ only rarely in insignificant ways such as missing punctuation marks. Well, shucks, I guess it looks the Bible is more like honest reporting than like a game of telephone. But hey, I\u2019m a comedian, not a scholar, and I still don\u2019t like the Bible, so feel free to ignore it and ridicule any of your friends who feel differently. (Christians are fun to ridicule, because they are nice and won\u2019t behead you like certain other scary religions we won\u2019t mention).\u201d<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you have friends like mine on Facebook, then this bit of drivel has probably been tossed your way: \u201cBecause you know, when the Bible was written, and then rewritten, and then edited, and then re-edi -ted, then translated from dead languages and then re-retranslated and re-edited again, then re-re-re-edited, and then re-translated, and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[371,376,372,373,375,374],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-bible","tag-bible-translations","tag-david-cross","tag-holy-bible","tag-new-testament-canon","tag-the-gospels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}