Words Still Mean Things
So anyway, I was reading Mad Mikey the other day and happened upon his post about that California grade school principle who banned the Declaration Of Independence because it mentions a "Creator".
A commenter named "scroff" left, among other things, this brain dropping:
btw, according to the bible, it's ok to own slaves ;), even god handed out slaves as a reward...
"The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys."
Genesis 24:34[sic]
Posted by scroff at November 26, 2004 07:17 PM
So I grabbed my trusty Bible (which I keep handy for moments like this) and looked up the scripture. I then wrote in the comments:
Scroff, which translation is that from?
The New International Version (most widely read after the King James Version) says it differently.
A servant of Abraham is sent to find a wife for his son Isaac. He tells Rebekah and Laban in Genesis 24:34-35:
34"So he said, 'I am Abraham's servant. 35The Lord has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, manservants and maidservants, and camels and donkeys.'"
These were not slaves in that they were not stolen from their families and forced into involuntary servitude.
They were assistants, maids, etc, who served the wealthy Abraham because it was a way of life that was better than scrounging for crumbs in a ditch somewhere.
They served willingly, and were free to leave at any time. It was a kind of patronage, not slavery.
Moses brought his people OUT of slavery, and Abraham did not then turn around enslave them.
Posted by Tuning Spork at November 28, 2004 02:22 PM
Scroff was kind enough to email me the source. "That would be the New Revised Standard Bible," he wrote.
So I googled it. Turns out that this is a version of the Bible "translated" by the National Council of Churches in Christ. Ever heard of them? No? Allow me to introduce them.
The National Council of Churches acts as if they're a communist sympathizing organization. I first heard of them during the Senate hearings concerning President Clinton pardoning of those FALN terrorists.
The FALN is/was a Puerto Rican "nationalist" Castro-backed communist insurgency group. The panal before that Senate committee (chaired by Sen. Orrin Hatch and co-chaired, I believe, by Sen. Dianne Feinstein) consisted of police officers and relatives who were direct victims or witnesses of the horror perpetrated by the FALN convicts.
But the last panalist was different. She was an Asian-American (judging from her speech she was definately native all-American) garbed a Catholic priest's robe and collar. "What denomination is SHE with?" I wondered.
She was a representative of the National Council of Churches, and defended the organizations efforts to secure pardons for Castro-backed killers who'd made no effort to apply for pardons on their own.
Many, at the time, thought that the pardons were a cynical attempt by President Clinton to try to garner Puerto Ricans' support for Hillary in the 2000 election. But I began to suspect that something else was going on.
Flash forward some number of months and we're dealing with the Elian Gonzales case: a Cuban boy whose mother died getting him to America.
Elian's father, Juan, is brought/sent to America to bring his son back to Cuba. Juan Gonzales's attorney is Clinton-friend Greg Craig. But how can Juan afford a high-powered attorney like Greg Craig, ye ask? Craig is being paid for by none other than *drumroll* the National Council of Churches.
Now, why in the world, you may well ask, would a "National Council of Churches in Christ" have ties with a religeon-banning statist tyrant commie like Uncle Fidel?
And, just as importantly, why on earth would a "National Council of Churches" want to write their own "new" "revised" "standard" version of the Bible?
Again, Scroff wrote:
btw, according to the bible, it's ok to own slaves ;), even god handed out slaves as a reward...
"The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys."
Genesis 24:34[sic]
If the National Council of Churches isn't a communist Castro-backed cabal of anti-religion statists who are attempting to poison the language of scripture in order to discredit it in a very long-term effort to undermine faith in any religion other than government, then why do they act like it?.
You think I'm nuts, eh? Maybe so, I wouldn't know. But I'm going to get to the bottom of this one way or another!
The King James and New International versions of the Bible were written by Hebrew scholars. This "New Revised Standard Bible" was written, I suggest for the sake of argument, by theophobes in priests' garb while dripping fraud onto the pages all the whilst trying to tell me that my grandmother's Bible says that Abraham owned slaves.
bbl. Pardon me while I go do some research into what else these woolen-clad wolverines might be trying to pull over us..... ;)
UPDATE: Oooookay, time to eat some crow. I'm gonna surf the web for a decent recipe, then post about how just a cursory perusal of the Old Testament (after decades of neglect) can reveal to me that you I don't know/recall a fraction of what I should about it.
Posted by Tuning Spork at December 3, 2004 10:16 PM
