A Text

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

David remarks:
"The Bible is one of the foremost literary treasures of our civilization,
most particularly in the King James version.  My old man, an ironclad
atheist, said if you needed evidence of the divine inspiration of the
Bible, the fact that a committee of old men did the translation and it
came out great poetry was pretty good.  I do think it's a damned shame
that so many people strip-mine it for arguments to back up their very own
political agendas, personal bigotries, etc."


Like Shakespeare, the Bible is a great source for quotes-out-of-context, even
more so, since literalists won't accept the notion any context beyond the text.

My grandfather (the one who liked to quote that "Too much reading rots the mind")
read his Bible daily and was as devoutly religious as anyone I've ever known,
but he was no literalists.  When church members in Bible study would insist
on the inerrancy of The Word, he would ask, "Do you mean that you believe that
the sun goes around the earth?"  He was a life-long Republican (served ttwo


terms in the legislature of a different state) and no liberal, but the more
othodox these days (the conservative "politically correct") would damn him
as a squishy liberal.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)