Is everything you thought you knew about biblical history wrong?

According to this article, there was no "great temple of Solomon;" the real great temple was on Mt. Gerizim in the land of the Samaritans, where it had stood and would continue to stand until 128 BC when the Maccabees burned the Samaritan temple, and the Jews then re-wrote the bible to edit out the temple on Mt. Gerizim:

Shortly before his death, Moses issued an important command: The people must first travel to Mount Gerizim. He said that six tribes should climb it and proclaim blessings, while the other six tribes should proclaim curses from the top of nearby Mount Ebal. It was a kind of ritual taking possession of the promised land.

Finally, the prophet tells the Israelites to build a shrine "made of stones" on Mount Gerizim and coat it with "plaster." Indeed, he said, this is "the place that the Lord has chosen."

No Mention of a 'Chosen Place'

That, in any case, is what stands in the oldest Bible texts. They are brittle papyrus scrolls that were made over 2,000 years ago in Qumran, and have only recently been examined by experts.

In the Hebrew Bible, which Jerusalem's priests probably spent a good deal of time revising, everything suddenly sounds quite different. There is no longer any mention of a "chosen place."

The word "Gerizim" has also been removed from the crucial passage. Instead, the text states that the Yahweh altar was erected on "Ebal." "By naming the mountain of the curses," says Schorch, "they wanted to cast the entire tale in a negative light, and deprive Gerizim of its biblical legitimacy."

You can always count on Elaine Pagels...

...to say something that the news can find "quoteworthy" around Easter.

This year it is the "Four Big Myths of the Book of Revelations":

3. The writer of Revelation was a Christian

The author of Revelation hated Rome, but he also scorned another group – a group of people we would call Christians today, Pagels says.

There’s a common perception that there was a golden age of Christianity, when most Christians agreed on an uncontaminated version of the faith. Yet there was never one agreed-upon Christianity. There were always clashing visions.

Revelation reflects some of those early clashes in the church, Pagels says.

That idea isn’t new territory for Pagels. She won the National Book Award for “The Gnostic Gospels,” a 1979 book that examined a cache of newly discovered “secret” gospels of Jesus. The book, along with other work from Pagels, argues that there were other accounts of Jesus’ life that were suppressed by early church leaders because it didn’t fit with their agenda.

The author of Revelation was like an activist crusading for traditional values. In his case, he was a devout Jew who saw Jesus as the messiah. But he didn’t like the message that the apostle Paul and other followers of Jesus were preaching.

This new message insisted that gentiles could become followers of Jesus without adopting the requirements of the Torah. It accepted women leaders, and intermarriage with gentiles, Pagels says.

The new message was a lot like what we call Christianity today.

That was too much for the author of Revelation. At one point, he calls a woman leader in an early church community a “Jezebel.” He calls one of those gentile-accepting churches a “synagogue of Satan.”

John was defending a form of Christianity that would be eclipsed by the Christians he attacked, Pagels says.

“What John of Patmos preached would have looked old-fashioned – and simply wrong to Paul’s converts…,” she writes.

The author of Revelation was a follower of Jesus, but he wasn’t what some people would call a Christian today, Pagels says.

“There’s no indication that he read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or that he read the gospels or Paul’s letters,” she says. “….He doesn’t even say Jesus died for your sins.”

So, Pagels thinks that all that talk in Revelations about the "lamb who was slain" who "sits on the throne" is really about a lamb? Who was slain? And sits on a throne?

From Revelations 5:

11 I looked again and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless 5 in number,
12 and they cried out in a loud voice: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing."
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: "To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever."
14 The four living creatures answered, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped.

That's not referring to Jesus who died for our sins?

Seriously?

First Century Fragment of Mark?

Dan Wallace discusses the still-officially-undisclosed discovery of a purported first Century fragment of Mark:

At my debate with Bart Ehrman (1 Feb 2012, held at UNC Chapel Hill) over whether we can recover the wording of the New Testament autographs, I made the announcement that a probable first-century fragment of Mark’s Gospel had been recently discovered. I noted that a world-class paleographer had dated this manuscript and that he was pretty darn sure that it belonged to the first century. All the details will be coming out in a multi-author book published by E. J. Brill sometime in 2013. Several newspapers and magazines have covered the story already. John Farrell, writing for Forbes, wrote a brief article on it, followed up by an update (now incorporated with the first article). He is working on a third article that will discuss new technology that may help us to be more precise in our dating of the manuscript. In particular, there is a newly developed carbon-14 dating method that does not destroy the object it is dating. That’s always a good thing when it comes to ancient manuscripts! The inventor is Professor Marvin Rowe of Texas A & M. His assistant, Dr. Karen Steelman, wrote her dissertation on this new procedure. I met with both of them recently and discussed the possibilities of using this technology for dating ancient manuscripts.

You can see the Forbes article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/02/27/fragments-of-marks-gospel-may-date-to-1st-century/. Stay tuned for follow-ups! In the meantime, the best attitude for all to have is “wait and see.” Über-exuberance or dismissive skepticism are both unwarranted responses based on the information supplied so far. But when the fragment is published along with six other early New Testament papyri (all from around the second century), the scholarly vetting will do its due diligence. It should be fun!

Raiders of the Lost Textual Fragments!

Archeologists uncover First Century fragments of the Gospel of Mark.

And there are not earth-shaking revelations!!!

According to Dan Wallace:

On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These fragments now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 43% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

Not only this, but the first-century fragment is from Mark’s Gospel. Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century (c. AD 200–250). This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.

How do these manuscripts change what we believe the original New Testament to say? We will have to wait until they are published next year, but for now we can most likely say this: As with all the previously published New Testament papyri (127 of them, published in the last 116 years), not a single new reading has commended itself as authentic. Instead, the papyri function to confirm what New Testament scholars have already thought was the original wording or, in some cases, to confirm an alternate reading—but one that is already found in the manuscripts. As an illustration: Suppose a papyrus had the word “the Lord” in one verse while all other manuscripts had the word “Jesus.” New Testament scholars would not adopt, and have not adopted, such a reading as authentic, precisely because we have such abundant evidence for the original wording in other manuscripts. But if an early papyrus had in another place “Simon” instead of “Peter,” and “Simon” was also found in other early and reliable manuscripts, it might persuade scholars that “Simon” is the authentic reading. In other words, the papyri have confirmed various readings as authentic in the past 116 years, but have not introduced new authentic readings. The original New Testament text is found somewhere in the manuscripts that have been known for quite some time.

These new papyri will no doubt continue that trend. But, if this Mark fragment is confirmed as from the first century, what a thrill it will be to have a manuscript that is dated within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection!

66 or 73?

What text? Whose tradition?

Francis Beckwith on the canon:

This led to two other tensions. First, in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon, I argued, as noted above, that although some of the Church’s leading theologians and several regional councils accepted what is known today as the Catholic canon, others disagreed and embraced what is known today as the Protestant canon. It soon became clear to me that this did not help my case, since by employing this argumentative strategy, I conceded the central point of Catholicism: the Church is logically prior to the Scriptures. That is, if the Church, until the Council of Florence’s ecumenical declaration in 1441, can live with a certain degree of ambiguity about the content of the Old Testament canon, that means that sola scriptura was never a fundamental principle of authentic Christianity.


After all, if Scripture alone applies to the Bible as a whole, then we cannot know to which particular collection of books this principle applies until the Bible’s content is settled. Thus, to concede an officially unsettled canon for Christianity’s first fifteen centuries seems to make the Catholic argument that sola scriptura was a sixteenth-century invention and, therefore, not an essential Christian doctrine.

Second, because the list of canonical books is itself not found in Scripture – as one can find the Ten Commandments or the names of Christ’s apostles – any such list, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be an item of extra-biblical theological knowledge. Take, for example, a portion of the revised and expanded Evangelical Theological Society statement of faith suggested (and eventually rejected by the membership) by two ETS members following my return to the Catholic Church. It states that, “this written word of God consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.”

But the belief that the Bible consists only of sixty-six books is not a claim of Scripture, since one cannot find the list in it, but a claim about Scripture as a whole. That is, the whole has a property – i.e., “consisting of sixty-six books,” – that is not found in any of the parts. In other words, if the sixty-six books are the supreme authority on matters of belief, and the number of books is a belief, and one cannot find that belief in any of the books, then the belief that Scripture consists of sixty-six particular books is an extra-biblical belief, an item of theological knowledge that is prima facie non-biblical.

For the Catholic, this is not a problem, since the Bible is the book of the Church, and thus there is an organic unity between the fixing of the canon and the development of doctrine and Christian practice.

Now playing on Facebook - a diatribe about what Private Interpretation is and is not.

... and put here because I don't want to have to rewrite it.

Let's talk about some basic concepts -


Authority - Scripture is authoritative. The Church is authoritative. You can disagree with the latter, but it is supported throughout the texts you accept as authoritative. See e.g., The church is the pillar and bulwark of truth. 1 Tim. 15 - 16. The Church is also visible. See John 17 and other passages.

The notes in the Ignatius study bible are not "authoritative" because they were written by Scott Hahn. Insofar as they have authority, they are authoritative because a bishop of the Church has inspected the notes and determined that they are free from doctrinal error.

That doesn't mean that Hahn's notes are scripture or that they define the only truth. What it means is that are within the range of orthodox opinion.

Private Interpretation - I suspect that Private Interpretation does not mean what you think it does - I suspect that you think that Private Interpretation means "reading the Bible, using your mind, consulting other sources, and coming up with the 'correct' interpretation."

Of course, the devil is in the idea of "correct." How do Protestants come up with the "correct" understanding. The answer is that as a practical matter, they do exactly what Catholics do - they consult tradition and delimit what is "correct" by the answers that their tradition has given in the past.

The only difference between what Protestants and Catholics do is that Catholics are honest about it.

But what "Private Interpretation" really means is that there are no "correct" interpretations. "Private Interpretation" is vaguely defined. I note that Alister McGrath doesn't offer a definition of it in his "Christianity's Dangerous Idea," but he does say that the core of Private Interpretation is that "the interpretation of Scripture is the right and responsibility of every Christian."

What this idea connotes is that everyone has the same shot at interpreting scripture correctly, because if that wasn't the case, then we couldn't say that the interpretation of scripture was the right and responsibility of everyone; rather, we would say that some people should listen to those with the more correct interpretation.

Here you can see why my idea that Augustine might be an abler interpreter of Scripture than a bunch of guys on the internet was attacked with vehemence. I was suggesting that not everyone had the same ability, that Augustine might just be a more worthy interpreter than some dude writing on Facebook in 2011.

Consider the responses that I got. I was told that everyone had the same access to the Holy Spirit - which is nonsense - and that people today had better access to information because of the internet than Augustine - which is equally nonsense, as I demonstrated.

Private interpretation is intellectual nihilism that denies that there is a correct interpretation that we can know with any certainty. If everyone has the same access to the Holy Spirit, and is sincere and diligent in their efforts to understand scripture, and if they come up with radically different understandings, then there is no basis under Private Interpretation to say that one interpretation is right and another is wrong. They are all equally right FOR THE PEOPLE DOING THE INTERPRETING!

Hey, does that sound like the history of Protestantism at all?

Do you deny that?

In fact, does that sound like modernity and relativism at all?

The contrary to Private Interpretation is to say that there is an objectively correct interpretation that can be reached through reason over time as defined by the Church. This doesn't mean that all of scripture is given a single interpretation. That would be impossible because scripture is always succeptible to different interpretations. But it does mean that the Church can define certain interpretations as wrong. For example, it is wrong to deny that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Generally, so long as that is understood, we are free to interpret subject to that limitation.

So, non-private interpretation does not mean that there is no interpretation. It means that interpretation must be done within the broad guidelines of defined doctrines.

Epistemology - So, having framed this anaylsis, the answer should be clear. How do we know certain doctrines as being true? The exact same way that you and other Protestants know it - because the Church - our church - told us. You don't hold to the Nicene doctrine because you started with the Bible and got there yourself. You accept the Nicene Creed because of a long-series of argument that sought to make sure that the Nicene doctrines "fit" with the rest of Christianity.

We don't have to re-invent the wheel. We can rely on the church which is the pillar and bulwark of truth and which is led by the Holy Spirit into all truth.

The question is, do you trust the Church? I do. I know that my church was founded by Jesus Christ. I can follow an unbroken linkage of bishops back to the beginning. I trust the promise of Christ that the Church will prevail against the gates of Hell.

Since Protestants can't make that claim, they tend to get sucked into a circular argument where Scripture is the only authority because it is Scripture. Of course, why it's scripture or who said it is scripture is simply an issue that gets dropped into a Protestant "blind spot."

Now, I ask you, did I do "Private Interpretation" in accepting the authority of the Church? The answer is "No." I wasn't interpreting the Scripture. I was looking at history.

Once I get to the point of trusting the Church, I now reject Private Interpretation. It is not primarily my right or responsibility to interpret scripture. It is primarily the right and responsibility of the Church to interpret Scripture. My right and responsiblity is secondary to that of the Church. I am not deluded that my interpretation would be better than that of the Church or of the great thinkers of the Church.

Now, reflect back on the CAA diatribe. My point was that whether the Old Testament epiphanies where appearances by God - as everyone seemed to believe - or by Angels - as Augustine argued - was all within the limits of orthodox belief. The church has offered no definition on the subject. So, we can argue about the issue. I offered Augustine as a possible interpretation. Not a single Protestant bothered to read Augustine. Not a single Protestant said, "hey, that's interesting." Why was that?

The answer was that they didn't think they needed Augustine. I was told repeatedly that Augustine might be great theologian, and no one was saying that they were as good as Augustine, but their opinions were really as good as Augustine, ALL WITHOUT EVER READING OR ADDRESSING WHAT AUGUSTINE WROTE!

That is just disappointing from any group that claims to be intellectual. Augustine, as I said, might be right, he might be wrong, but, heck, he ought to have some persuasive authority in an area that is unclear.

Interpretation - As I said, there are places where the Bible is unclear. There are places where Augustine is clear. My questions to you were (a) do you deny that? and (b) if you admit the obvious, what does that do to your claim about needing interpreters to interpret Augustine?

Why there are so many Protestant denominations...

...because somebody notices something in the Bible, gets excited and runs away with a brand new doctrine, entirely innocent of the fact that their discovery has been considered "no big deal" for 2,000 years.

A case in point from Facebook -

I have been studying the old testament and I believe I have come to the conclusion that "The Angel of the Lord" is the third person in the trinity (pre-incarnated Jesus).

"The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give your forfathers. I said, 'I willo never break my covenant with you." Judges 2:1

The interesting thing here is that he speaks in the FIRST PERSON.

You see similar strange incidences in Genesis 16:7,9-11; 13; Genesis 31:11,13 and Exodus 3:2-6

What are your thoughts? Is this just an 'Angel' of the Lord or is it a person in the tTtrinity?

Various responses:

"Angels are messengers and agents of the divine will, so you could say it was both."


"my seminary president, Dr. Paige Patterson held this view. He believed the Angel of the LORD was a christophany theophany because Melchazisldek in the OT and in the Book of Hebrews."


"I believe that the Angel of the Lord was/is Jesus too. I was actually getting ready to write a series about this on my blog. I can send you a link once I have some of these articles up."


"The Arians/Unitarians try to claim that all of these theophanies are just "office of agency", perhaps some are but others are clearly not that."


"I think those were Christophanies, but you can't prove it."


"It would be a mistake to imagine that "the angel of the Lord" has to be "an angel," exactly. The word is "malach," a form of the same word used to designate a king. Hebrew does not have a rich vocabulary. The same word would refer to anything that's powerful and other-worldly -- a demon, and angel, a space alien, God Himself, or whatever. I think if the Lord appeared in any form, the Hebrews would have used "angel" to describe Him."

My response:

"*Sigh*


This is why you guys need to get away from "private interpretation."

Seriously, your discovery has been known for about 2,000 years, and thre has been an explanation during that time. Read Book 2 of St. Augustine's "On the Trinity" and note that St. Augustine recognizes that "angels of the Lord" speak as God:

"23. But when Moses was sent to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, it is written that the Lord appeared to him thus: Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is here also first called the Angel of the Lord, and then God. Was an angel, then, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?"

In Book 3, Augustine explains the quandary of an angel speaking in the first person as God (in the case of the burning bush to Moses) as follows:

23. But some one may say, Why then is it written, The Lord said to Moses; and not, rather, The angel said to Moses? Because, when the crier proclaims the words of the judge, it is not usually written in the record, so and so the crier said, but so and so the judge. In like manner also, when the holy prophet speaks, although we say, The prophet said, we mean nothing else to be understood than that the Lord said; and if we were to say, The Lord said, we should not put the prophet aside, but only intimate who spoke by him. And, indeed, these Scriptures often reveal the angel to be the Lord, of whose speaking it is from time to time said, the Lord said, as we have shown already. But on account of those who, since the Scripture in that place specifies an angel, will have the Son of God Himself and in Himself to be understood, because He is called an angel by the prophet, as announcing the will of His Father and of Himself; I have therefore thought fit to produce a plainer testimony from this epistle, where it is not said by an angel, but by angels.

I was honestly surprised to find that the so-called "theophany" of the Moses and burning bush involved an angel. St. Augustine actually suggests - tentatively - that all theophanies prior to Christ's incarnation - involved angelic appearances.

So, no reason to redefine the Trinity."

Inerrancy - What about those saints in Matthew 27?

Apologianick at Deeper Waters is tracking the ongoing debate between Mike Licona and Norm Geisler on whether the resurrection of the saints mentioned in Matthew 27 was an allegorical vibration from apocalyptic literature or whether it was really and truly something that happened. Licona holds to the former position and Geisler holds to the latter.  (Nick is invested in the issue because Licona is his wife's father.)

Here is a further post on the issue, which includes a letter signed by various bible scholars who opine that Licona's position does not conflict with the doctrine of "biblical inerrancy," which, if that's true, makes literalism and fundamentalism a whole lot less literal than it has previously been.

Language, Culture and the Bible.

I have just learned that in Punjabi while there different words for "uncle" - depending on whether the man is your father's brother or your mother's brother or the man who married your mother's sister, etc. - there is no word for "cousin."  Hence, those male family relations that we would call "cousin," "brother", "step-brother" or "second cousin" are simply called "brother."  Ditto for female relations - whether an actual sister or a female cousin, the term used is "sister."

In Punjabi, if you want to distinguish between a true sister and a female cousin, a circumlocution like "the daughter of my father's sister's husband" would be used.

All of which looks a lot like Aramaic in passages like Matthew 13:55:

55Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?


56And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

And Matthew 27:56:

Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.

So, were James and Joses the sons of Mary the mother of Jesus or sons of Mary the mother James and Joses?

And Jude 1:1:

Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, ....

And Luke 6:

¹² One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. ¹³ When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: ¹⁴ Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, ¹⁵ Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, ¹⁶ Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

So, was the apostle Jude, aka Judas, the son of James or the brother of James?

Obviously, the word "brother" did not mean in First Century Palestine what it means in 21st Century English.

Father Barron on Biblical Family Values.

Clue - it isn't very sentimental.

8 Reasons Jesus was being literal in John 6

At Bible Tidbits.

A brief summary of ...

...the Council of Jamnia.

Are there contradictions in the Resurrection accounts?

This is a big issue for raging fundamentalist Bart Ehrman, but it's not so much for other - saner - people.

Aquinas on the Apocrypha

On the Commendation and Division of the Sacred Scriptures:

Jerome mentions a fourth kind of book, namely, the apocryphal, so called from apo, that is, ‘especially’, and cryphon, that is, ‘obscure’, because there is doubt about their contents and authors. The Catholic Church includes among the books of Sacred Scripture some whose teachings are not doubted, but whose authors are. Not that the authors are unknown, but because these men were not of known authority. Hence they do not have force from the authority of the authors but rather from their reception by the Church. Because there is the same manner of speaking in them and in the hagiographical works, they are for now counted among them.

That Puzzling Erasmus.

Erasmus is invariably cited as someone with the opinion that the "deuterocanonical books" - i.e., the books that were contained in the Greek Septuagint, but not contained in the Hebrew canon formulated after the destruction of Jerusalem, such as Maccabees, Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, etc - were or should not be part of the Christian canon.

That statement has puzzled me ever since I read Erasmus' Diatribe on Free Will which was written to rebut Luther's doctrine of predestination. In the Diatribe, Erasmus offers as a "proof text" a quotation from Ecclesiasticus - one of the books subseqently removed from the canon by Luther. Erasmus has a throw-away line about how he assumes that Luther will accept Ecclesiasticus as authoritative because it has been recognized by the Church for so long. Luther, of course, does no such thing in his "On the Bondage of the Will, and his kerfuffle with Erasmus might be the point where his attitude to defining his own canon begins to really take shape. (OK, I'm really speculating about that idea.)

Erasmus wrote a rebuttal to "On the Bondage of the Will" called the Hyperaspistes. Although "On the Bondage of the Will" is considered to be one of Luther's three most important books, the Hyperaspistes gets very little notice. For example, it cannot be found on-line.

So, I ordered it.

On page 344 is this passage:

But when Luther says that he has a right to take exception to the authority of htis book, which goes under the title of Ecclesiasticus, because in the past it was not in the canon of the Jews, either he is inconsistent or he gives little credit to the authority of the Catholic church. For previously he had said that the book of Esther, which is in the canon of the Jews, is especially worthy of being removed from the canon; and here he attributes such great authority to their canon that he proclaims he is free to reject a book that the Catholic church accepts as a holy source of its public liturgy, often beginning mass with a text from this book instead of a psalm or taking something from it to be read as an Epistle. Even St. Augustine himself borrows weapons from this book to transfix heretics, and when they in turn aimed at him arguments from it, he does not have recourse to rejecting it but rather to interpreting it soundly.

It seems that Erasmus should not be cited as a reason for believing that the Old Testament canon was uncertain prior to Luther.

Archduke Ferdinand found alive; WWI fought by mistake.

Jews and Christians have been mistranslating the Bible for thousands of years. Genesis does not say that God "created" the world.

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"

According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.

Tradition, smadition...we're talking science here.

Furthermore:

A spokesman for the Radboud University said: "The new interpretation is a complete shake up of the story of the Creation as we know it."

Prof Van Wolde added: "The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now."

I'll just bet all the rabbis, pastors and bishops are feeling pretty darn foolish right now.