I recently read Bart D. Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, which is basically about how the original texts used to make the Bible are long since lost and what we have today has been even more edited. Perhaps the most interesting of the additions Bart mentions is this from the Gospel of Mark:

⁹When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. ¹⁰She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. ¹¹When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.

¹²Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. ¹³These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.

¹⁴Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

¹⁵He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. ¹⁶Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; ¹⁸they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

¹⁹After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. ²⁰Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Four of the five signs of believers highlighted are relatively common... evangelical churches are famous for their faith healing, demon out-casting and speaking in tongues, and even relatively more dangerous snake handling has its adherents... but the drinking poison seems to have less of a take-up - apart from Jim Jones anyway.

“As a Christian, I follow Jesus for his teachings of love and tolerance; it is people like you who make me sick, I hope you die in a lake of fire and get your eyes pecked out by crows, so that you may go to hell and exist for eternity in a lake of fire getting your eyes pecked out by crows.”

FSM HateMail

Got the full text of this in the email this morning. 1) I'm not a Christian so you're hardly going to sway me that the Bible is futzed. 2) I don't really think you can argue the Quran is correct based on quotes from the Quran. 3) The Muslim version of Bevets?

Two weeks to the day - almost to the hour - after an attack that did kill... either these five are dumb as bricks or dumb as bricks and fooled into thinking these weren't real bombs.

“Issac, also known as Osman Hussein, was questioned in a Rome jail for three hours in the presence of British investigators.

"He knew there were explosives, but it was just to make noise, not to kill," Issac's lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, told reporters after the questioning. "It was just for show and was not intended to hurt anybody."”

London bomb suspect says aim was to scare, not kill - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

With all four of the failed bombers seemingly captured, I'm hoping we can get their reasoning behind their actions. Sadly, I fear it could be similar to that of Mohammed Bouyeri who killed Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh for, in his interpretation, insulting Islam. After explaining how he'd do the same again if released, Bouyeri spoke to van Gogh's mother:

“I don't feel your pain. I have to admit that I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because you're a non-believer.”

He added: “Maybe you could find some consolation if the maximum sentence is given.”

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