Monday, June 11, 2012

Piles of skulls

On some non-religious message board or other, people were talking about versions of the Bible, a rather surprisingly respectful conversation for a secular message board, really, and somebody posted a link to Why I Am King James Only. Now, there's a lot of silliness to nit-pick, and I wouldn't do that. It could all be waved off with a simple, "Anglocentric, therefore irrelevant to Christianity as a whole." What piques my interest is this bit:
The King James Bible is totally free of any Roman Catholic intrusion. The Vaticanus was found in the Vatican Library in 1481 and the Sinaiticus was found in a garbage can in St. Catherine’s Monastery in 1844. St. Catherine’s is the monastery where they have skulls piled high in a room and even have a skeleton of a dead monk hanging on a door. Would God really consign His word to such an evil, macabre place?
Well, let's ignore that St Catherine's is Orthodox and not Catholic, since the author likely doesn't care about the distinction. The author here is precisely wrong. His version of Christianity is false because they don't have piles of skulls lying around. I would even go so far as to state that piles of skulls are a conditio sine qua non of true religion. Surprisingly, this does not eliminate very many religions, only the newer ones, like this particular brand of crytpo-Gnostic Baptist. We need other criteria, of course, otherwise, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

That said, these two services are important and you should be familiar with the texts: Office at the Parting of the Soul from the Body and [Oh dear, I was going to link to the Office for the Burial of the Dead, but orthodoxinfo.com seems to have taken it down?].

5 comments:

Eric said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric said...

The KJV Only crowd ought to cuddle up tight with the Orthodox, given their common love for the Majority Text and adherence to archaic English.

Erik said...

wait, do you know where I can get a pile of skulls?

Anonymous said...

Erik:

It's always best to roll your own.

-ns

Mr. G. Z. T. said...

Easiest method is to inherit them. Unfortunately, if you're starting your own religion, you can't inherit any. In that case, NS's suggestion of rolling your own is the only way to go.