farmerman wrote:I like that term and, sometimes too much knowledge is bad for ones faith, since knowledge demands more and deeper truths and closer inspection of evidence.
Prior to the proliferation of moveable type in Europe, there were rarely copies of the bobble in the vernacular--examples such as Wycliffe's translation show the extremes to which the church would go to prevent canonical scriture from becoming the property of the laity.
Since the Protestant Reformation, the Prods have had only a slightly different take. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, so the trend among Prod extremists has always been to eschew any knowledge which cannot be directly extracted from the bobble, or a very, very few other books--such as Calvin's
Institutes of the Christian Religion. I have often had conversations with evangelical christians who assert that learning is a bad thing. Whether those individuals know it or not, the reason is precisely that which you have described--the possiblity of the pollution of one's devotion to a narrow canonical scripture, which is to be accepted uncritically in the form in which those guarding orthodoxy present it. Many, many years ago (late 1960's) when i began to read about Saul of Tarsus, Origen, Pamphilus and Eusebius--it became clear that the canonical text of the "New Testament" is not reliably the product of eyewitness testimony, and is not even reliably directly descended from whatever form those documents took when first written. Today, there is a world-wide evangelical movement to translate the bible known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators. I don't know that John Wycliffe would be flattered by the use of his name--but it is very likely that such an effort intends to refine orthodoxy and establish it through a "refined" canon. Nearly all attempts at biblical translation have been efforts to "perfect" canonical scripture, and none have been done without a motive to correct errors--the King James version (formally known in England then and since as "the Authorized Version") being one of the most well-known "corrected" versions (very much influenced by Calvin's Institutes and the Calvin-Zwingli translation--despite James' instructions and committees).
It is rather hilarious, though, because religious orthodoxy relies upon a contention of the inerrant character of canonical scripture. The concept of correcting a canonical scripture sails too close to the concept of error in the previously held orthodoxy--and religious authority is never comfortable with that. In the case of King James, quite the religious scholar when he could tear himself away from his boyfriend's embrace, he asserted the "Bishop's Bible" then in use in England was unsatisfactory, and that it should be compared with Greek and Hebrew texts, and other English language versions (Wycliffe's tranlation was completed c. 1380).
I find the consideration of canonical scripture--anyone's--to be very ironic. Science thrives because of a willingness to admit and correct error. Adherents of religious canons cannot admit error, because of the assertion that their scripture is god's word and therefore inerrant. When it has, from time to time, been necessary to review the text of canonical scripture, and make "corrections," orthodox authorities have either proceeded in secret, or have been obliged to do quite a song and dance to explain how the canon can be god's word and inerrant, but still require correction.
