Graphic found at an atheist site today:
OK, so, look, you know I’m not wont to give Judeo-Christian scripture the benefit of the doubt. I’d jump on the former if it were remotely fair. But it isn’t.
I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which is absolutely fascinating. If you thought The Da Vinci Code was kinda cool, and felt like it was “taking a class”, and plowed through the hack writing for the neato stuff about religious secrecy, then, well, you’re an idiot, but a forgivable one; it was nicely packaged. But Lost Christianities was the book you wanted to read all along. I know it doesn’t have albino assassins or anything in it, but it’s still gripping. And while the Luke 19 bit isn’t directly addressed in Ehrman, his books give one a much better understanding of the heterogeneity of early doctrinaires and the numerous forgeries, flame wars, actual flames, actual wars, and other assorted weird stuff going on in 2nd-3rd century proto-Christendom.
So, here’s Luke 19, in overview:
Verses 1 – 10: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he”
Verses 11 – 24: Parable of the Talents, which neocons love so much because they can interpret it as blessing the super-rich who make all their money by investing
Verse 25: “Can I get a witness?!”
Verses 26 – 27: OMFG Hail Hitler!!!1!
Verses 28 on: And then he went to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples stole a horse, and he taught random stuff that was probably furiously modified by later writers, and cried and shit.
Great. Let’s go back to verses 26 to 27. Read it in context. Here it is in KJV:
19:24 And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
19:25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
19:26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
19:28 And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.
19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,
There is no way that was in the original. Damn. Even in translation it stands out in glaring blood-red. Look, atheists: you can’t just take random verses out of context and call Christians Nazis. You need to glork the context a bit more. I know it’s weird to talk about the impropriety of surreptitiously corrupting Sci-Fi for later generations, but you are not helping if you just stand at the sidelines and throw stuff into the argument.
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