Biblical truth

15 August

Mediocrity; now there’s a big word for first thing on a Monday, and no, I didn’t look it up either. For years and year my spelling had been absolutely terrible. Such a word as mediocrity was well outside my comfort zone. However, when I typed it yesterday at the end of the blog, I was rather pleased with myself, hence it’s appearance here. Most of my mistake now are typos really. Every so often while I’m typing away here, I get an idea for tomorrow’s blog so I type a one-word reminder of the idea about the date at the head. Yesterday I typed of them, mediocrity being just one of them, the second one is biblical truth.

That one came to mind as I wrote about the film Noah, and its vagueness about how the arc was built, and even more so about Noah was to live for over 600 years. Having read the whole Bible at least twice, there is a lot of vagueness within the whole book. Think about it though: The Bible is the story of the rise of the Jewish nation over several thousand years, even if it is a ‘potted’ history. A similar history of any other nation on earth would also be very short and potted. Just as with most history books for a long time, they deal with the leaders and prominent figures with the story. The idea of social history, or the story of the everyday folk, is a fairly new idea.

As with all thought systems, the problems start when some people begin to take short passages from them and build a wholly new system that reflects their own views. Take the Creation for example. There are those who believe that the earth was made just over 6,000 years ago, creationists. In a way they may well be correct, up to point. Counting back the generations mentioned in the Bible and 21 years as an average generation, then 6,000 years sounds acceptable to me. But hang on … if we accept that the Bible is a history of the rise of the Jewish nation, then surely that means that they as a nation, are 6,000 years old.

The other side of this coin is the scientific lobby who point out that there is far too much evidence contrary to the Creationist idea for it to be taken seriously. For myself, I have a foot in both camps, or at least in the camp of the history of the Jews and the evolutionist view point. That is not a contradiction my friends, it’s my view, my interpretation of the reading I have done over years. You see, even I’m using words to stake my claim here. We all do it, no matter how we feel about anything we wish to expound.

One of the more recent bombs to gone off along these lines, it Dan Brown and he The da Vinci Code. Brown is an art historian and knows about the various interpretations of the works of da Vinci. He takes some of those thoughts, many of them hundreds of years old and weaves them into a modern tale of murder and mayhem. However, there is nothing new in what he wrote, what was new was the way he presented those views. By including a strict RC cast of priests who fight to prevent certain secrets from becoming common knowledge, he also throws doubts on the Catholic Church as a whole. Or does he …

Brown can point to everything in the book being based on fact. All the painting he writes of are there to seen and admired; the various buildings and artefacts are there to be visited and seen. Even the church in Roslin village, with its links to Knights of St John, is there. It is left to us to decide if we believe his story of hidden secrets and shady figures. If his book was an attempt to damage the Catholic Church, he failed, it’s still as strong as it was. What his book did do though, was to make him loads of money. Which brings us back to root of all evil.

Today’s photo …

Me, by Jan.                  

Today’s funny …

Manager: We want you to leave on medical grounds.
Employee: But I'm fully fit.
Manager: I know, but we're sick of you.