Luci F. Erinwhite - The Bible: Exposed, or how to be happy in your disbelief

The BIBLE: EXPOSED

or

How To Be Happy In Your Disbelief

by

Reverend Luci F. Erinwhite

The most fun you can have

with your Bible open

For information contact:

stuwulze@aol.com

"The Bible has some noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

Mark Twain: Letters From Earth

NOTE : Except where indicated, the Bible I will be quoting from is the New International Version . BCE means Before the Common Era (Before Christ); CE means the Common Era (after Christ); CCR means Credence Clearwater Revival. Also, I do not capitalize he or him when referring to God, except in direct quotes or in a sense of irony. There is no grammatical reason to capitalize these personal pronouns except as a nod to the church. And let me apologize beforehand for the constant use of the masculine form of pronouns and nouns. Thats the way it is with God, so were stuck with it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION - 4

THE OLD TESTAMENT - 31

THE NEW TESTAMENT - 132

REVELATION - 173

CONCLUSION - 179

TWELVE STEPS TO F.F.R.* - 181

*Freedom From Religion

Preface

What if there were only two religions in the world? Wouldn't it be logical to assume that at least one of them was wrong? What if there were 33,000 Christian religions and they were all based on the same book? Have you read it? It's called the Bible.

INTRODUCTION

First off, let's decide

Which Bible?

I tell you we got Bibles. Right here in River City. We got Catholic Bibles and Mormon Bibles and children's Bibles and illustrated Bibles and annotated Bibles and talking Bibles and Braille Bibles and E-Bibles. Why, I've seen three-inch, armor-plated pocket Protestant Bibles for soldiers, and gold-encrusted King James deluxe illuminated nine-pounders for your aunt Dorothy in Des Moines. And that starts with D and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bible. Right here in River City.

Got a thesaurus? Look up Bible : New International, Douay, Wycliffe, New English, Pesheitt, Vulgate, Polyglot, Gideons, Targim, Tyndale, the Geneva, the Feminist Bible and Bobby Ray's Aryan Home Goodbook are all Bibles, and though they disagree in significant ways, each one claims to be the official word of the one-true-god of the church on Earth.

SAUL'S HOUSE OF BIBLES

Below, find a list of popular Bibles arranged by approximate date of first use. Some of them are only a few words apart; others differ in their entirety. Most are named after the person responsible for the translation or revision. Pick whichever one you like and worship accordingly.

1,400 BCE: The First Bible is, of course, the Ten Commandments, written by God.

1,000-500 BCE : Books of the Torah are collected.

50-275 CE: New Testament is written and rewritten, mostly in Greek.

315: Codex (First Bible in book form)

352: Vulgate (Latin Bible, with Apocrypha)

610-632: Qur'an (Same God, different prophet)

1380: Wycliffe Bible (First English Bible. No Apocrypha)

1450: Guttenberg Bible (First moveable type book is a Bible)

1517: Luther goes Lutheran, writes German Bible .

1520: Polyglot (The Bible in three languages, plus some other heavy stuff.)

1525: Tyndale Bible (First English Bible direct from the Greek.)

1535: Coverdale Bible (First "Modern" English Bible)

1549: Matthew/Tyndale Bible (A compilation)

1560: Geneva Bible

1568: Bishop's Bible

1589: Doway/Rheims Bible

1611: King James Bible (The mother of all English Bibles.)

1663: Algonquin Bible (The first Bible written in America is in Algonquin Indian.)

1830: Mormon Bible (Same God, new prophet in a New World)

1833: Webster's Bible (Yeah, the dictionary guy had his own Bible)

1881: English Revised Version

1901: American Standard Version

1971: New American Standard Version

1973: New International Version

1982: New King James Version

2002: English Standard Version

2010: New Revised American International Standard... uh, Version , I think.

2011: My Version . (And why not?)

It's Everywhere! It's Everywhere!

We all own one. Even you. According the American Bible Society, 430 million copies were distributed in 2003. Which means there are more Bibles in America than there are Americans. It is the biggest selling book since Guttenberg invented Helvetica. It's been at the top of the New York Times best seller list for 10,400 weeks in a row, which is a miraculous run, especially when you consider that you don't know anyone who has ever actually bought one.

What? You say you don't speak English? No problem. Suppose you speak Swahili:

Kwa maana jinsi hii mungu alipenda ulimwengu hata akamtoa Mwanawe pekee, ili kila mtu amwaminiye asipotee; bali awe na uzima wa milele.

John 3:16

Or Gullah:

"Gullah, a dialect still spoken by many Atlantic coast blacks, has its own Holy Bible, in which 'he is not here, but is risen,' becomes 'Jedus ain't yah. E done git op from mongst de ded an E da life gin!'"

Arthur Plotnick: The Elements of Expression

Or Pig Latin:

"Monk Translates Bible into Pig Latin"

Weekly World News (December 7, 2003)

ONE BILLION JESUS FANS

CAN'T BE WRONG

A recent survey found that eighty-two percent of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God. If you live in Kansas, odds are pretty good that you're one of them. But even if you live in Bangladesh, even if you've never touched a Bible, it will touch you. The territorial and moral boundaries of nations are drawn in its pages. Wars are fought and people die enforcing these boundaries. Fundamentalists dress in Bible approved clothes and they get Bible approved haircuts (or not) and they eat Bible approved food. They marry within the church, they vote as a bloc and they share common enemies. Protestants, Catholics, Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Anabaptists, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Branch Davidians, Quakers, Shakers, the Silver Saucer Saviors from Saturn, and a holy-host of others all swear by it. Be ye Christian or Jew, everything you know about your god and his laws and his teachings begins and ends with the Holy Bible. It is without a doubt the most important book ever written. Everyone in the world has read it, right?

Bzzzt! Wrong.

More people have read Harry Potter.

Oh, sure, we all know a quote or two, but most of us lack the discipline and mental stamina to hack our way through all 845,000 words. On those rare occasions when we do open it, we might skim over a few verses before running low on motivation. Even your aunt Helen, who has never missed a day of church in her life, rarely quotes past Proverbs. Even your parish priest just picks at it, peeling off a parable here or a prophet there.

Okay, so it's a tough read. That's what Preachers and Rabbis are for. At least we all agree that the Bible is God's perfect word and that the stories are all true and that each lesson is made perfectly clear and that there is zero chance of a misunderstanding, right?

Bzzt Bzzt! Double wrong.

In the Tempe Public Library, cast in amongst the dozens of Name Brand Bibles, there are at least another five hundred books written about the Bible. I suspect there may be thousands more. Some are thicker and drier than a stack of stone tablets. No two authors agree on the exact meaning of God's words. On one point, however, they all agree: The Bible doesn't even agree with itself.

Okay, so maybe it's not quite as straightforward and lucid as it might have been. At least the Good Book teaches us right from wrong, right?

Not so much.

"Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white."

William Blake (1757-1827)