“So he got a job proofreading bible translations.”
…said the man in the booth behind me at Steak n’ Shake the other day. The implications are staggering.
If God ensures the accuracy of His word, as many Christians claim He has done throughout the ages, so that the Bible is inerrant or infallible (depending on who you’re talking to), then why would a publisher employ a proofreader? Wouldn’t God take care of that Himself?
Maybe God doesn’t like to get involved with a first draft. Perhaps He’s counting on humans use a proofreader, so He really doesn’t pay attention until the second draft. Did the ancient Hebrews use proofreaders? How about the early Christian writers? If not, there could be trouble. How do we know that what’s been passed down to us went through that crucial second step? I mean, what if the shortest verse in the Bible isn’t “Jesus wept?” What if it’s supposed to be, “Jesus swept?”
Some factions would forbid the use of vacuums, because Jesus didn’t vacuum, he swept. But a case might be made that Jesus would have used a vacuum had they been available at the time, so some sects would allow them. The arguments would be fierce, but surely the history of blood spilled over the subject of dust mops would cause people to approach the subject with some caution. Right?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Felix // Oct 17, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Isn’t this why all new Torah’s are copied one character at a time and verified against the previous copy by multiple individuals (and now numbered and tracked)? Of course, this flies in the face of the evangelical claim of the Bible as “received” knowledge, infallible, and incapable of transcription, mistranslation, etc…
Or maybe those change are divinely inspired, and God is editing on the fly?
Yeah, I know, I’m obviously a heretic/atheist/commie-pinko…
2 James // May 4, 2008 at 5:32 pm
My first novel will be published (after six long years of writing) this winter. It is called “Jesus Swept.”
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