@Leadfoot,
Leadfoot wrote:
If a God wanted a book to provide guidance for those who believed in him (she, it, them - as you prefer) then certainly he would be capable of making it applicable to men of any age or culture.
I don't think that would work. No matter how the God in question would go about it, he/she/it would still have to deal with a human contemporary language to transcribe his/her/its words to paper. Even if this act was not done by human intervention, but was performed by the God in question itself, said scripture would still of necessity be read by contemporaries in order to learn the edicts put forth and in turn preach to the followers of this God.
And by the very act of interpreting, you take words from their pages and charge them with a subtext of your own cultural morals, values, and beliefs. So when this interpreter is ready to preach to the masses, the words chosen will undoubtedly make sense to these contemporary followers within their own cultural norms and values. For instance, for millennia slavery was an entirely normal and acceptable concept. This in turn would mean that all edicts or parables about such subjects as servitude, servants or even a household, would for the people of the time hold connotations of slaves and the way they are, and ought to be, treated. Nowadays, not so much.
But the real kicker lies in the translations of the scripture in other languages.
Every translation will dilute the original, since it's a translation done by an individual with his/her very own cultural baggage.
So even if the original scripture was in fact handed down by a God, and its words would transcend temporal and geographical boundaries in order to elucidate universal truths, these will be lost in the very first translation made.
