A religion of Jesus or a religion about Jesus…As Jonathan Swift once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
”among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (jesus) by his biographers, i find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. i separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him (jesus) the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. of this band of dupes and impostors, paul was the great coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of jesus. these palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. i found the work obvious and easy, and that his past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man.” – thomas jefferson, letter to william short, april 13, 1820.( from Martin Buber Institute )
Valpy:Made for a reason The King James Version (KJV) – its other name is the Authorized Version (AV) – is the product of royal and religious politics, linguistic nationalism, church bureaucracy and accident.
It was commissioned in 1604, a year after James was crowned, at a conference he convened “for hearing and for the determining of things pretended to be amiss in the Church.”
Indeed, much was amiss in England’s strife-riven Anglican Church, a mere 70 years after Henry VIII hived it off from Roman Catholicism: His son, Edward VI, made it Protestant; his older daughter, Mary I, restored it to Catholicism and then younger daughter, Elizabeth I, made it a big-tent monopoly edgily embracing both Protestant Puritans and Anglo-Catholics.
The son of Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed by Elizabeth for treason, James was already ruler of Scotland when he succeeded Elizabeth upon her death in 1603. But before he could get south to London, he received a petition signed by 1,000 ministers belonging to the Church of England’s Puritan wing complaining about practices – the wearing of robes, bowing at the name of Jesus and so forth – of their priestly colleagues in the Anglo-Catholic wing….
…His response was to convene the conference, which was a failure except for the suggestion that a new Bible be prepared to correct known errors and bridge doctrinal differences.
James welcomed the idea. He saw it as a means to replace the popular Geneva Bible – the Bible of Shakespeare and, for the most part, of Milton – which he declared the worst in English because it was Puritan and counter to the divine right of kings. Read More:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-the-mighty-has-fallen-the-king-james-bible-turns-400/article1896037/ a
Read More:http://dialogicalecology.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html