ToHonorObey
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Joined: 2/26/2008
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The original post of this thread was my first in any forum of any form anywhere. It was in anticipation of sparking a debate. Being caught off guard by the volume of responses it received, each touching upon different aspects of the bible in regards to D/s, by so may different minds of different nature, and being unfamiliar with how to select a certain response, put a little square around that, before including it in this response, makes it no small chore to accurately imply my interpretation of not how the bible is the foundation of D/s, but how the spirit that inspired the bible is, and then place that here to of course spark further debate . To begin with, a theory is really not much more than only a thought. So if a person has a thought about D/s then that thought may also be regarded as a theory. Yes, the bible has been severely corrupted and to explain how the spirit which inspired the bible, "god," here is an account of how today's bible came to be. The first hand-written English language bible manuscripts were produced in the 1380's AD by Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian who was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed to be contrary to the scriptures. With the help of his followers he produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe. The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river. One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire. The printing press was invented in the 1450's and the first book to be printed was a Latin language bible. In the 1490’s Linacre decided to learn Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate, he wrote in his diary, “Either this (the original Greek) is not the Gospel… or we are not Christians.” The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… even though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures. In 1496,John Colet, another Oxford professor, started reading the New Testament in Greek and translating it into English for his students at Oxford, and later for the public at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. The people were so hungry to hear the Word of God in a language they could understand, that within six months there were 20,000 people packed in the church and at least that many outside trying to get in. Fortunately for Colet, he was a powerful man with friends in high places, so he amazingly managed to avoid execution.
The great scholar Erasmus was so moved to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, that in 1516 he published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from a half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired which further focused attention on just how corrupt and inaccurate the Latin Vulgate had become. No sympathy for this “illegal activity” was to be found from Rome… even as the words of Pope Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was quite profitable to him" continued through the years to infuriate the people searching for "god." William Tyndale wanted to use the same 1516 Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the New Testament in English for the first time in history. He was so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his native tongue, and he was forced to flee England because of the wide-spread rumor that his English New Testament project was underway, before being caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he had befriended and Tyndale was incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. Myles Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 he printed the first complete Bible in the English language. He went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537, so it took two years to reprint one bible that had already been translated. It was the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. In 1539 Thomas Crammer hired Coverdale to publish the "Great Bible". It became the first English Bible authorized for public use. In 1555, Rogers and Cranmer were both burned at the stake by Queen Mary, who went on to burn reformers at the stake by the hundreds for the "crime" of being a Protestant. In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. The Church of Geneva was determined to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued in exile. The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560. It became known as the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, so that referencing specific passages would be easier. Every chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references so thorough and complete that the Geneva Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible." With the end of Queen Mary's bloody reign, the reformers could safely return to England. The Geneva Bible's marginal notes, which were vehemently against the institutional Church of the day, did not rest well with the rulers of the church, so they finished revising it in 1568. By the 1580's, the Church of Rome saw that it had lost the battle to suppress the distribution of the Geneva Bible and surrendered their fight for "Latin only" and decided that if the Bible was to be available in English, they would at least have their own official English translation. And so, using the corrupt and inaccurate Latin Vulgate as the only source text, they went on to publish an English Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier.
With the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Protestant clergy approached the new King in 1604 and announced their desire for a new translation to replace the version printed in 1568. They knew that the Geneva Version had won the hearts of the people because of its excellent scholarship, accuracy, and exhaustive commentary. However, they did not want the controversial marginal notes (proclaiming the Pope an Anti-Christ, etc.) Essentially, the leaders of the church desired a Bible for the people, with scriptural references only for word clarification or cross-references. This "translation to end all translations" (for a while at least) was the result of the combined effort of about fifty scholars. They took into consideration: The Tyndale New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even the Rheims New Testament. After it's completion in 1611, the Anglican Church’s King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant Church’s Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant Christian churches today embrace the King James Bible exclusively as the “only” legitimate English language translation… yet it is not even a Protestant translation. It was printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by authorities who throughout most of history were hostile to Protestants… and killed them. While many Protestants are quick to assign the full blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that even after England broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500’s, the Church of England (The Anglican Church) continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600’s. Protestants today are largely unaware of their own history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible, which is textually 95% the same as, but 50 years older the King James Version. Nevertheless, the King James Bible turned out to be an excellent and accurate translation, and it became the most printed book in the history of the world, and the only book with one billion copies in print. In fact, for over 250 years...until the appearance of the English Revised Version of 1881-1885...the King James Version reigned without much of a rival. One little-known fact, is that for the past 200 years, all King James Bibles published in America are actually the 1769 Baskerville spelling and wording revision of the 1611. The original “1611” preface is deceivingly included by the publishers, and no mention of the fact that it is really the 1769 version is to be found, because that might hurt sales. So there is a lie right on the very cover before even opening it.
While Noah Webster, just a few years after producing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, would produce his own modern translation of the English Bible in 1833; the public remained too loyal to the King James Version for Webster’s version to have much impact. It was not really until the 1880's that England’s own planned replacement for their King James Bible, the English Revised Version would become the first English language Bible to gain popular acceptance as a post-King James Version modern-English Bible. The widespread popularity of this modern-English translation brought with it another curious characteristic: the absence of the 14 Apocryphal books. Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66. The inter-testamental books, written hundreds of years before Christ, called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible, until their removal in the 1880’s. The original 1611 King James contained the Apocrypha, and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha with heavy fines and a year in jail. Only for the last 120 years has the Protestant Church rejected these books, and removed them from their Bibles. This has left most modern-day Christians believing the popular myth that there is something “Roman Catholic” about the Apocrypha. There is, however, no truth in that myth, and no widely-accepted reason for the removal of the Apocrypha in the 1880’s has ever been officially issued by a mainline Protestant denomination. The Americans responded to England’s E.R.V. Bible by publishing the nearly-identical American Standard Version in 1901. It was also widely-accepted and embraced by churches throughout America for many decades as the leading modern-English version of the Bible. In the 1971, it was again revised and called New American Standard Version Bible. This New American Standard Bible is touted by nearly all evangelical Christian scholars and translators today, to be the most accurate, word-for-word translation of the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures into the modern English language that has ever been produced.
So that is one account of how today's bible came to be. Please, be my guest to disprove any of it. "god" acknowledges the existence of other gods and warns against worshipping them. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The words "maybe you shouldn't" do not appear before any of His commandments. His words are commandments, not suggestions open to debate, as far as "god" is concerned. Paul warns against divisions in the "church" The 12 examples of D/s and abuse towards women posted earlier are very inaccurate and corrupted in their detail. Knowing this does not cause me to believe myself be in any way better than the person who posted them, or anybody else for that matter. If my imperfections have amounted to a greater proportion than those of another, then naturally it becomes a more of a struggle for me to overcome those imperfections. We all have imperfections and it is not normally a problem for me to admit mine to anybody, especially a complete stranger who does not directly affect my well being. Pertaining to some of those 12 instances, they are only recordings of what happened, not condonations. In any case, the teachings of Christ refute any hebrew law that approves of violence and abuse in any manner. Each word of the bible is like a link of a chain. If that chain is too cumbersome to use one can remove a link and what is left are two different chains more suitable for it's purpose. Christ says if we break one commandment, we have broken them all, which makes us all equally guilty and at fault. Christ was murdered by the religious leaders of His time. He had won the hearts of the poor with His words of inspiration and His healing powers. If the religious leaders lost their power over the poor, the sick, and the underprivileged, the Romans would have deemed those leaders unnecessary and those leaders would have lost their social standing and then have to work for a living, instead of telling everybody else how to live, and of course, not to forget to tithe. Men had been dominant over women since the beginning of time."god" has been attributed a gender by men because they knew that it was a power greater than them, so to refer to "god" as anything less than male would undermine their own authority. "God" is a spiritual, not a material thing or a living creature that would die if not propigated. Therefore it can not have a gender. Nowhere in the bible does "god" refer to itself as male. We are all genderized in some manner, conditioned to think and behave how our society dictates that we should.Chances are, there were not many women at that time who wanted Christ dead, for He was forgiving of all who believed in His message of salvation, unless of course you mention someone like King Herod's wife, whom Herod stole from his own brother. Christ took the laws and lessons of the Old Testament and presented them in a manner that angered the religious hierarchy, and His message is still continually twisted by that same hierarchy which exists today. The Bible is a christian book, so all the old testament laws and lessons, the letters of the new testament, and the apocrypha, must be taken into context with Christ's teachings or the christian doctrine becomes corrupted . Christ did not teach abuse towards men, women, especially children, or even animals. He preached love, charity, tolerance, and forgiveness, not anger, greed, and hatred. So for anybody to use any part of the bible to further the latter's agenda and not that of Christ's, it is not interpreting the bible correctly, plain and simple. Even Paul wrote instructions to not regard what Paul himself, as an imperfect human, preached, above the words of Christ.
When we are born we are dependent on others for survival. Throughout our lifetime, our five senses record everything we come into contact with in whatever way, into a portion of our brain which then causes us to react in the manners that we do. As we grow, we become less dependent on others and develop our own desires, while learning what we can have, and what we cannot. One thing we are all subject to is death, there is no avoiding it. We all will submit to death. From the very first form of life, all life, collectively speaking, until now and beyond, has either died or will die. All this life had to have originated somewhere, as our own laws of physics dictate than something , anything does not just pop out of thin air. Something, some force created life. If there wasn't a "god'" how could the cause of this debate have originated? Nothing has not ever, nor will it ever equal anything else but nothing. No more or no less, no matter what kind of math or science is used. In older times, if a man wanted to marry a certain woman he would have to pay her family a dowry, some could consider that as being sold into slavery. And yes, men were sold into slavery as well. Who is wrong, the man who pays the dowry, or the family that collects it? They both are. Obviously, the slaves had to be recompensed in some manner, however small that was, or they would not have been able to sustain their life, not much differently than how an enormous portion of the world lives today. Not too long before that, the strongest, fastest, most intelligent male could have any woman he wanted by dragging her out of her cave she was in at the behest of all the others. That doesn't work today, one must lure her out by her own free will. We all are born with gifts. If we are born with a gift of dominance, until we learn to use that gift, we dominate nothing. A man can be the best guitar player in the world, but not until he learns the chords, and it still could take years to develop his technique. So we learn how to develop our own perception of dominance so that our own free spirit is not restricted, chained to subjection. If we want to achieve the highest degree of dominance possible in our minds, it makes sense to me that the knowledge and understanding to enable that would come from the highest most powerful, and as the second poster on this thread put it, unimpeachable force. The higher up that ladder of dominance one is, the more below wishing to take it down. What is one of, if not the most widely used explanations by drug addicts, alcoholics, hardened criminals, and so many others with detriments, however large or small, for having been able to change their ways and improve their quality of life? Christ. That seems to me to be a little more than just a coincidence. We tear things down and say this is as small as it gets, until somebody comes along and proves us wrong. We shoot rockets into space further than anybody, until somebody comes along and shoots one further. All done with information gathered by those before us. For some, D/s is a recreation, for others it is a passion that can not be restrained by walls or created on a computer screen. My belief that the spirit of the Christ, which has undeniably inspired many men to devote their lives to, and be brutally murdered for only printing His message of love and freedom on paper so the world would not forget His experience of hanging on the cross, is the true spirit of the "god" that created everything. If this "god," which is Christ, is the creator and supreme ruler over all, then all are subject to His final decision, the ultimate degree of dominance, the supreme ruler and creator of everything dominant and submissive. It is not my desire to "dominate" anything other than the forces which restrict my own free spirit, and then to lure that one special woman with the equally "submissive" spirit, out of her cave and into the light that shines on me, not you. You have your own light if you choose to turn it on. If we happen to experience that same light together, then that can only be a good thing. It was not my intention to judge anybody, or put anybody down, and if that happened, then you allowed it to. Whatever happens behind closed doors is nobody else's business. Once those doors are opened, it becomes everybody's business. And if anybody actually makes it to the end of this post, regardless of who you are, or what you believe in, you have made it all worthwhile for me to write it. Thank You.
These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love it's own, but I have chosen you, therefore the world hateth you. John 15:17-19
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