RKG
11-15-6
Dear Mr. Rense
I would like to respond the Ted Twietmeyer's article, _Did Francis Bacon Fry the Bible?_
To put the case bluntly, Mr. Twietmeyer is an ignoramus. I shall examine some of his statements to prove my point. Quotations from his article are marked with *
*Many ministers essentially bark at their people on Sunday, "You're all worthless and weak. Now drop and give me 10!" *
Acknowledging one's need for God does not make a person worthless. Quite the contrary. If God thought people were worthless, he would never have sent Jesus in the first place.
The Lord taught to turn the other cheek, but He never once taught people to lie down and be a doormat.
No, but Jesus did warn us about false Christs and false teachers. And the Apostle Paul warned us about false teachers as well. He said, "But examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good" (1 Thessalonias 5:21, NASB). Naiveté is the result of cultural conditioning, not Biblical teaching. If people are taken advantage of, it's usually their own fault.
*Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek (at least that's what the KJV translation has told us.) The overall Biblical reality is that the other cheek wasn't always turned. Instead, swords were picked up. The Bible is a very bloody Book indeed. Seemingly endless wars and death are documented, many of which were claimed to be committed in the name of God. And so were those hanged in Salem for witchcraft, killed by the Spanish Inquisition and countless others. Naturally. Perhaps all this even inspired Steven King's books? *
The reason the Bible is so bloody is twofold: first, The Bible describes people as they really are, not as they see themselves. History is full of violence, not all of it religiously based. Second, it is not unusual for God to use a nation to judge other nations. If Mr. Twietmeyer doesn't understand this concept, it's because he is ignorant of the Bible's cultural context (after all, it was written by ancient Semites, not modern westerners).
*Bacon certainly was no angel and lived his life much like other people of both his time and ours, except that he was in a far higher tax bracket for his time. How can one live such a life, and still be expected to do an accurate translation of the Bible's manuscripts? *
This argument is foolish. Morality is not a necessary prerequisite to being a Biblical scholar; knowledge is.
*Pen names are used all throughout the literary world even today. So why couldn't Bacon be Shakespeare? *
Does Mr. Twietmeyer have any proof of this? Is it relevant?
*One of the most contentious and heated arguments among church lay-people and born again Christians is regarding the completeness and accuracy of the Bible. The tired phrase "nothing can be added to the Bible or taken away" has been chanted for years by Christians. Repeated endlessly, this reminds one of the Hari-Krishna airport terminal types. Usually this is chanted by born-again Christians that have it all figured out - and they won't hesitate to tell you so. Scholars and historians will tell you that more blood has been shed throughout history in the name of religion, than for any other reason. Anyone claiming Biblical completeness is simply ignorant of the true facts about the Scrolls. If we look at just one small panel of the Dead Sea Scrolls Book of Exodus (below) we can see that the scrolls are in the same condition as a cheap paperback book left in a hot attic would be after 40 years, flaking apart at the edges. Can any idiot using any portion of their working brain ever honestly declare the Bible is COMPLETE? *
So Mr. Twietmeyer manages to attack both Christians and Hari-Krishnas in one fell swoop! How clever!
Any Christian who thinks they have it "all figured out" is naive, to say the least. Mature Christians realize that as with any field of knowledge, the more they learn, the less they know -- no one ever "arrives."
And, the Bible is NOT based on the Dead Sea Scrolls! Rather, the Dead Sea Scrolls, when compared to more recent Hebrew Old Testament documents, show the accuracy and reliability of the transmission process. The relevant documents are as follows:
* /*The Dead Sea Scrolls*/: date from 200 B.C. - 70 A.D. and contain the entire book of Isaiah and portions of every other Old Testament book but Esther. * /*Geniza Fragments*/: portions the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic, discovered in 1947 in an old synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, which date from about 400 A.D. * /*Ben Asher Manuscripts*/: five or six generations of this family made copies of the Old Testament using the Masoretic Hebrew text, from 700-950 A.D. The following are examples of the Hebrew Masoretic text-type: o /*Aleppo Codex*/: contains the complete Old Testament and is dated around 950 A.D. Unfortunately over one quarter of this Codex was destroyed in anti-Jewish riots in 1947. o /*Codex Leningradensis*/: The complete Old Testament in Hebrew copied by the last member of the Ben Asher family in A.D. 1008.
The method the Jews used to copy the Old Testament is extremely meticulous. Every /*letter*/ of every page had to be in /*exactly the same position as the original*/, otherwise the copy would be destroyed and the scribes would have to start over again.
The differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and more recent copies are very minor, and /*do not in any way*/ affect the meaning of the text! Please refer to the website History of the Bible: How The Bible Came To Us
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorigin.html
for further information on this subject.
*How did these fragments [the Dead Sea Scrolls] become a nice, complete Book with perfect sentences and a nice even number of chapters - 40? *
Mr. Twietmeyer is apparently confusing the book of Exodus, which contains 40 chapters, with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is in fact several books, not just one.
The original documents were written with perfect (that is, complete) sentences. The Jews arranged the material into columns. The chapter and verse divisions were officially added later, around the 16th century. More information on this subject can be found here http://www.bible-researcher.com/chapter-verse.html and here. http://www.williamtyndale.com/0transmissionofbible.htm
Also, general information about the Dead Sea Scrolls can be found at Wikipedia.com here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls
*One doesn't need to be a scholar to see that countless sentences in the Dead Sea Scrolls are either unreadable or missing. In the standard KJV Bible words shown in italics were added by James' translators to compensate for missing fragments, or to "clarify" meaning. No, God didn't come down and put those words in to make it perfect as many wish to be the case. If one looks carefully at the modified sentences (which are numerous and on almost every page) and reads these modified sentences both with and without these added words, the entire meaning of the sentence can change quite dramatically yet in clever, subtle ways. Pastors, priests and ministers never talk about these italic words on Sunday mornings, however. *
Again, the Bible is NOT based on the Dead Sea Scrolls! Italicized words in the King James Version were NOT added to compensate for missing fragments; they were added to make the English more readable, since the KJV is a literal /*word-for-word*/ translation, and Hebrew and Greek grammar is different than English grammar. They were certainly never added to change the meaning of the original!
Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. Years ago, a song was written in Spanish entitled, "Eres Tu." In English, the title is translated as "It Is You." However, that is a literal, /* word-for-word*/ translation. A better translation would be "It Is Always You," since the verb is future indefinite. In King James parlance, the word "always" would be italicized. Accurate translations are possible, but there's no such thing as a perfect translation.
*KJV/Bacon version:* *"Rev. 6:4 And there went out another horse THAT WAS red, and POWER was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword."*
*Let's re-read that same verse again without the words THAT WAS and THE SON* [He meant to write "POWER"]:
*"Rev. 6:4 And there went out another horse red, and was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword."* * * *So we see that the horse may have been red in the un-embellished version. But removing the word POWER changes the meaning of the second part of the verse. After all, what is a deity without special powers? And without the word POWER, it indicates that no power was given to him to take peace from the Earth! And what of the one who "sat thereon?" It appears all he will get is a red horse to do his job. How did Bacon know what words to add throughout the Bible - and where? Perhaps the word POWER could also have been FIRE, DISEASE, PESTILENCE, etc... Any of these can take peace from the Earth and make people kill one another, too.*
*Although almost every page in the Bible has numerous examples of tinkering, we continue to hear from well-meaning Christians that "nothing can be added or taken away from the Bible." These people can shut their pie holes now, because it's too late. Bacon already tinkered with the Bible centuries ago! No one in their right mind can believe that "creative writing" will always have the same meaning an "inspired work" has.*
These people can shut their pie holes? Mr. Twietmeyer doesn't seem to have any respect for those well-meaning Christians! Perhaps he doesn't deserve any respect in return?
"And there went out another horse red, and was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword."
What does the phrase "and was given to him" refer to? Is it speaking of the red horse ("and [the red horse] was given to him")? In that case, this person's ability to take peace from the earth rests entirely on whether or not he had a red horse to sit on!
Or rather, does it refer to the person's ability to take peace, regardless of the horse's color? A better rendering would be, "And there went out another horse [that was] red, and [authority] was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth..."
The phrase "was given" is from the Greek word "didomi," which means "to give, to bestow, to grant, the have power," etc. Thus the rendering "...and power was given to him..." is quite correct.
Mr. Twietmeyer would know this if he bothered to consult _Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible_, or _Zondervan's Parallel New Testament in Greek and English_, _or Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words_, among others. I used e-Sword, free Bible software which can be downloaded here.
*How did Bacon know what words to add throughout the Bible - and where?
*Because Francis Bacon and the other scholars could read Hebrew and Greek. Duh!* *
We do know that after the first five Books of the Bible, the organization of the Bible ceases to be chronological. It was organized that way by King James' and his employees who decided it will be that way. I don't think anyone really knows why to this day. Perhaps it's simply the order they randomly unwound the scrolls and did their translation. Today, there are some scholars that fear some of these lost Books ended up in a fireplace or were tossed aside and lost, because the teachings they contained were too heretical for that era.
The Books of the Bible were organized first, by category, and second, by chronology. This arrangement, while not perfectly chronological, is nevertheless logical. Who came up with this arrangement or when or why is /*entirely irrelevant. */
Certain books were kept out of the Biblical Canon for good reason. Either they were not relevant to the larger context of the Bible (some were mere histories), or they were never accepted by the Jewish community, or, in the case of some Old Testament books and the Gnostic Gospels, they have no historical credibility.
*The principle of tithing (giving 10%) as stated in Genesis 14:20 [7] appears to have been completely removed from the Torah, as used by Jewish orthodoxy today. *
Do you know this for a fact? The changes in Judaism which I'm familiar with are found in the Talmud, Mishnah and other Rabbinical writings, not the Torah. These were the teachings which Jesus criticized because the scribes and Pharisees placed them above the Torah (see Matthew 15:1-9, for example).
*Quite likely somewhere in the past the Jews have done their fair share of "editing" of the scriptures, too. By taking the principle of tithing out of the Torah, Rabbis everywhere are free to demand money whenever they like. And they don't hesitate to do it. *
Do you have any evidence that the Jews have deliberately "edited" the Old Testament? The Dead Sea Scrolls are evidence to the contrary (see above)! These statements about the Jews changing the scriptures for financial gain are anti-Semitic, unless you can prove them to be true (I'm referring to Jews living today, not the ones Jesus was talking about 2,000 years ago). And even if they are, that doesn't prove that all Rabbis are corrupt!
Regardless of the statement, many KJV bible churches and believers never speak of it [tithing], in the proper context. Instead of asking the members to pay just 10%, they make them sign pledge cards forcing them to commit to far higher amounts than they can afford.
2 Corinthians 9:6-7 states, "But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a /*cheerful*/ giver" (NASB; emphasis mine). /*Nowhere*/ in the New Testament does it state that Christians are required to give financially.
We owe such much to "scholars" like Bacon and his colleagues for helping to create this ecumenical disaster. He was a closet free mason whose beliefs and un-inspired editing of the Bible helped to ignite the chaos we have in religion today.
What ecumenical disaster? Again, Mr. Twietmeyer is quite misinformed. The King James Version is based on the Textus Receptus, which just happens to be the source for the New Kings James Version. The other modern translations generally use the Alexandrian documents. And, those "scholars" he refers to were /* genuine scholars*/, something which Mr. Twietmeyer certainly is not.
In conclusion, Mr. Twietmeyer's allegations consist of nothing more than uninformed, unintelligent straw man arguments. His ignorance of all things Biblical is abysmal, to say the least.
In the future, I humbly ask that if anyone wishes to criticize the Bible or Christianity, that they would please, please, please take the time to thoroughly research the topic first. If they can use the internet to share their ideas, they can certainly use it to acquire information which both is accurate and relevant.
The only intelligent, well-written and well-researched article which I've read on Rense.com in this genre is _Who's Right About Jesus - The Quran Or New Testament?_ by Dick Eastman. I don't agree with Mr. Eastman about the deity of Christ, but he does bring up some really good points, and I respect him for that
