After more than a century of widespread antipathy between Catholics and evangelical Christians, a Catholic with Italian immigrant roots from the industrial Northeast has emerged as the favored presidential candidate among evangelicals, even in states he lost over all, like Ohio and Illinois. On the eve of Louisiana’s primary on Saturday, Mr. Santorum had won a plurality of the evangelical vote in 9 of 16 states, according to exit polls by Edison Research.“Santorum represents a game-changer,” said D. Michael Lindsay, the president of Gordon College, a Christian school near Boston, and an expert in evangelical voting patterns. “His candidacy has the potential to reshape conservative political alignment, securing once and for all evangelical support for a conservative Catholic in public life.”
Mr. Santorum has, in fact, performed far better with evangelical Christians than with Catholics, who have preferred Mitt Romney, a Mormon, in virtually every state. Through a critical reading of the data, Mr. Santorum’s base of evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics could be seen by cynics as a coalition of zealots, held together by intolerance. By another way of thinking, however, his candidacy offers proof of a growing tolerance on the part of evangelical Christians, a willingness to shed ancestral religious prejudices.
What is it abut Santorum that would get these peoples' support? Santorum was best known as a 'right wing" Roman Catholic probably better known for being vilified by the LGTG lobby . But in this poor economy, largely but hardly exclusively the blame of the previous 'Republican' U.S. President Bush 43, where's the legitimate self interest in viewing 'social issues' which are largely with the possible exception of abortion completely outside the preview of government?
Indeed, regarding "life" where are these "Christians" on the various wars overseas with grossly disproportionate and usually misdirected revenge for the events of September 11, 2001? Or on that cigarette-pharma-alcohol protectionist racket of the "war on [some] drugs"? Though relatively few grasp the broader scam of the 'drug war', many do, at least regarding Cannabis/Marijuana
Over 50% public opinion can be found for legalizing Marijuana.
Are not a great many such people concerned about the increasing centralization of powers?
Are not they suppose to be proponents of limited government?
One would think that would translate to support for the 'Republican' Party candidate holding closer to such values: Ron Paul. Yet Paul gets 4th place, with the pair of such "conservatives" of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich between Paul and the previously appointed "frontrunner" Mitt Romney.
Santorum is said to get this support owing to his commitment to "social issues". That he has done better in the 2012 Republican primary than Gingrich flows with the idea of people being disgusted with the latter as a hypocrite for his marital infidelity, in contrast to the remaining three as of March 31, 2012: Santorum, Romney and Paul. Romney is mistrusted as a "moderate" 'etch a sketch' candidate, except perhaps on Cannabis/Marijuana which he defends the status quo of suppressing the plant while being okay with its pharmaceuticalization, while Paul is deemed unacceptable for not being sufficiently pro national security as the mainstream media defines such, e.g. pro unlimited NSA surveilling people's electronically transmitted activities, connected to Federal-Local law enforcement 'FUSION" centers, without any oversight to guard against politically motivated searches and seizures, with a Pentagon agenda including developing and deploying miniature drones- eventually insect sized. Of course both 'social conservatives' Santorum and Gingrich and the 'moderate' Romney promise to be more likely to bomb Iran. And of course, the people are overlooking the flip-sides, e.g. how all of this stuff can back fire badly, that this growing surveillance state, with the blissful disregard of the issue of oversight, all covered over by the lie that the USA is immune to human failings- aka 'American Exceptional-ism'
But like the "Tea Party" or the copy-cat Obama-fan "Coffee Party", this gets thrown out of the window. Rah Rah rally around the flag with little thought. Likewise with much of the "left" with the continuing distraction from the problem of mercantilism by blaming "capitalism" in general. Or anything in general. Over-generalizations about a broad array of things: "drugs" (ironic given a "Coffee" and Tea" parties) "urban freeway" or "fill in the blank" - a prescription likely disastrous- leading to all sorts of missteps and contradictions. For instance- Oppose Obama Care, but somehow fail to question the cigarette-pharma mercantilist drug war. Nor question the USDA/FDA's clearly criminal mercantilist anti customer right to know conspiracy regarding labeling of GMO ingredient, along with the sweatheart exemption from product labeling of the ingredients laws for alcohol and Tobacco products.
Thhe general public needs to brush up on some history- google "ultramontane".
How did this come to pass?
Obviously the increasing Jesuitical infiltration of the schools and media. Including the establishment of the college fraternity system.
The New York Times article does not go any of those places; instead crediting this man, a Lutheran who became a Roman Catholic:
The road had also been paved for Mr. Santorum by evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, who for decades had tried to define common theological and political ground. In 1994, a panel led by the evangelical activist Charles Colson and the Catholic writer Richard John Neuhaus wrote a manifesto titled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” While acknowledging the divides in ritual and dogma, the document presented them as allies against “a widespread secularization” that “increasingly descends into a moral, intellectual and spiritual nihilism.”
Such top-down efforts coincided with shifts in grass-roots religious life. “In the last 30 years, you’ve had a lot of breaking down of denominational lines within the evangelical community,” said William Martin, a sociologist at Rice University who has specialized in evangelical Christianity. “You had the growth of megachurches that don’t emphasize denomination or doctrine the way evangelicals once did. Catholics benefit from that. And the fear of modernity and relativism that has come with globalization has been a spur to fundamentalism of various sorts.”
International Conference WORLD WAR II, NAZI CRIMES, AND THE HOLOCAUST IN THE USSR DECEMBER 7–9, 2012 National Research University Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russia | |
| | Co-organizers:
In the past decade, three related fields, each interdisciplinary in its own right, have developed exponentially but sometimes in isolation: the study of wartime Stalinism, the study of the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories, and the study of the Holocaust in the East. This conference will bring together the latest research conducted in all humanities and social science disciplines in order to foster new analytical perspectives and cross-fertilization in these and other key areas.
The conference will be conducted in English and Russian. Simultaneous translation will be provided. The deadline for receipt of proposals is May 15, 2012. Participants will be selected and notified no later than June 1, 2012. For more information and for the full call for papers, please visit www.ushmm.org/research/center/presentations/discussions/details/russia-conference/. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/at-elite-colleges-too-much-hubris.html
Re “A Smug Education?,” by Andrew Delbanco (Op-Ed, March 9):John W. Gardner, former secretary of health, education and welfare, observed that our colleges and universities have always had “uncritical lovers” and “unloving critics.”
Mr. Delbanco is a wise, passionate, loving critic of American higher education. He is right to remind the nation’s most distinguished institutions that elite higher education is a precious commodity with moral overtones and that humility and modesty will always be in short supply when selective institutions serve as gatekeepers to social mobility.
For his part, Rick Santorum has chosen the role of an aggrieved unloving critic. His politically charged comments bashing elite colleges and universities as arrogant, self-indulgent indoctrination centers, though fueled by the raw emotions of an unforgiving primary campaign, represent a deeply ingrained, anti-intellectual strain in American life. Such a view ignores the vital public interest played by all higher education institutions in nurturing what Thomas Jefferson called the “natural aristocracy” of talent and virtue.
EUGENE M. TOBIN
New York, March 9, 2012The writer is a former president of Hamilton College.
To the Editor:
I have no desire to dispute Andrew Delbanco’s views of the smugness of the Ivy League, including his employer and my alma mater, Columbia University. But I fear that both Professor Delbanco and Rick Santorum fall into a similar trap: thinking of college entirely as the Ivies or as four-year universities.
At the community college where I teach, hubris exists, but mainly among academic administrators and select faculty members.
The students are too busy trying to make a living, put food on the table, tend to their children and get to the classes that will help make them better people and better workers — no thanks to Mr. Santorum and those of like ignorance who deride colleges as elitist or as indoctrination camps.
MICHAEL GREEN
Las Vegas, March 9, 2012The writer is a professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada.
To the Editor:
There is a potent antidote to Andrew Delbanco’s fears that our most prestigious colleges’ elitism encourages smugness among their students.
If each Ivy League college committed to accepting transfer students from community colleges for 1 percent of their junior classes, privileged students would begin to encounter students from the other 99 percent. Research confirms that low-income and minority transfer students, after being transformed by a community college education, graduate at the same or higher rates than students who began at the same college.
Making transfers a part of the elite colleges would provide living proof that intelligence, drive and achievement are not the sole province of students born with good fortune, but are as alive as the American dream among strivers at community colleges.
GAIL O. MELLOW
President
LaGuardia Community College
Long Island City, Queens, March 9, 2012
None mention the very system of shadow government pervasive in practically every college- that of "Fraternities" with their emphasis on one's ability to get drunk and agreeable to absurdity for that ticket to get ahead.To the Editor:
Andrew Delbanco says “the charge that elite college culture encourages smugness and self-satisfaction contains, like Mr. Santorum’s outburst, a germ of truth.” A germ?
Has he ever been to a sports event where one team is an Ivy League school and its entire student section engages in the chant “Safety school! Saaaaa-fety school!” at the opponents?
STEVEN J. GRUBER
Glenshaw, Pa., March 9, 2012
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_faces_of_fraternalism.html?id=IJeFAAAAMAAJAnd yes, Santorum belongs to a college fraternity:The Faces of Fraternalism is the first comparative sociological study of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Brooker focuses on the very similar and highly unusual social policies of these three regimes. He uses the term "fraternalism" to describe their unique social policy of attempting to instill in a modern society the primeval type of social solidarity found in clans and tribes, and known to sociologists as "mechanical solidarity." He describes the implementation of this policy by examining the three national or racial solidarity-building cults-National Socialism, Fascism, and State Shinto--and the dozens of indoctrinating organizations used to propagate them. This original examination throws fresh light on the efforts of three major twentieth-century powers to create and maintain social solidarity, and will enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of fascism.
The faces of fraternalism: Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/rick-santorum-frat_n_1312924.htmlSo the real message of Santorum is not an honest one against elites but rather being one while pretending otherwise
excerpt-Long before he was a leading presidential candidate who had assumed the identity of a culture warrior, Santorum was just another fraternity brother at Tau Epsilon Phi. "He wasn't so outspoken," Vondercrone says. "It seems to be his identity in the race right now. I didn't think of him as that way ... We talked about sports, our classes."
He says Santorum regularly attended the house's Monday night "low-stakes" poker games that included watching "Monday Night Football." He remembers Santorum smoking cigars. And drinking beer. Santorum was an "all-year" sports fan, Vondercone recalls. He was a Pittsburgh fan whether it was the Pirates or the Steelers.
Here is a reply for you Troy... feel free to respond to John. He resides in canada
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Barbaro <johnny.barbaro@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 3:10 AM
Subject: Re: "KING" (OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION) JAMES VI/I & THE ROMISH CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S WAR ON THE REFORMATION'S GENEVA BIBLE & ITS' ANTI-TYRANNY MARGINAL NOTES
To: AVENUE OF LIGHT <avenueoflight@gmail.com>
I guess this guy hasn't heard of Gail Riplinger. Its really funny the only bible version that seems to be attacked constantly is the King James. The foot notes in the Geneva bible were what man interpreted scriptures to mean. All these that attack the KJV always start on the character of King James himself. I would be very careful with this writers rambling on in his attack on the KJV. Notice he is giving you facts and nothing to back it up. He says new versions are just an update of the KJV. Should we take that to the bank, who is this guy. One of thee or the one greatest deception is to destroy the word of God. Does he know how much the new versions have eliminated and added to God's word. This is not an attack on the Geneva and I believe that it was God's word without being touched by the great whore. The KJV is the just the finished product of the English language. Luke 24: Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. Only Christ gives understanding, not foot notes, not new versions or commentaries and dictionaries. Not even the KJ. Seek the truth and the truth will set you free. Free from what? I let you make that decision yourself. Thanks for my say. In Jesus Christ. jb
On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 10:54 PM, AVENUE OF LIGHT <avenueoflight@gmail.com> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: TS <troy_space@me.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 9:50 PM
Subject: "KING" (OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION) JAMES VI/I & THE ROMISH CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S WAR ON THE REFORMATION'S GENEVA BIBLE & ITS' ANTI-TYRANNY MARGINAL NOTES
To: "TS - troy_space@me.com" <troy_space@me.com>
"KING" (OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION) JAMES VI/I & THE ROMISH CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S WAR ON THE REFORMATION'S GENEVA BIBLE & ITS' ANTI-TYRANNY MARGINAL NOTEShttp://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/igb.htm
The Geneva BibleAn Introduction to the Geneva BibleFor the last three centuries Protestants have fancied themselves the heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans, the Calvinists, and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. This assumption is one of history's greatest ironies. Today's Protestants laboring under that assumption use the King James Bible. Most of the newer Bibles such as the Revised Standard Version are simply updates of the King James.
The irony is that none of the groups named in the preceding paragraph used a King James Bible nor would they have used it if it had been given to them free. The Bible in use by those groups until it went out of print in 1644, was the Geneva Bible. The first Geneva Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was first published in English in 1560 in what is now Geneva, Switzerland,* William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other luminaries of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively.
Until he had his own version named after him, so did King James I of England. James I later tried to disclaim any knowledge of the Geneva Bible, though he quotes the Geneva Bible in his own writing, As a Professor Eadie reported it:The irony goes further. King James did not encourage a translation of the Bible in order to enlighten the common people. His sole intent was to deny them the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible. The marginal notes of the Geneva version were what made it so popular with the common people.
The King James Bible was, and is for all practical purposes, a government publication. There were several reasons for the King James Bible being a government publication.
First, King James I of England was a devout believer in the "divine right of kings," a philosophy ingrained in him by his mother, Mary Stuart. 2 Mary Stuart may have been having an affair with her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, at the time she conceived James. There is a better than even chance that James was the product of adultery* (G.P.V. Alerigg Jacobean Pageant p.6.). Apparently, enough evidence of such conduct on the part of Mary Stuart and David Rizzio existed to cause various Scot nobles, including Mary's own husband, King Henry, to drag David Rizzio from Mary's supper table and execute him. The Scot nobles hacked and slashed at the screaming Rizzio with knives and swords, and then threw him off a balcony to the courtyard below where he landed with a sickening smack. In the phrase of that day, he had been scotched. 3
Mary did have affairs with other men, such as the Earl of Bothwell. She later tried to execute her husband in a gunpowder explosion that shook all of Edinburg. King Henry survived the explosion, only to be suffocated later that same night. The murderers were never discovered. Mary was eventually beheaded at the order of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. 4
To such individuals as James and his mother, Mary, the "divine right of kings" meant that since a king's power came from God, the king then had to answer to no one but God. This lack of responsibility extended to evil kings. The reasoning was that if a king was evil, that was a punishment sent from God. The citizens should then suffer in silence. If a king was good, that was a blessing sent from God.
This is why the Geneva Bible annoyed King James I. The Geneva Bible had marginal notes that simply didn't conform to that point of view. Those marginal notes had been, to a great extent placed in the Geneva Bible by the leaders of the Reformation including John Knox and John Calvin. Knox and Calvin could not and cannot be dismissed lightly or their opinions passed off to the public as the mere dithering of dissidents.
First, notes such as, "When tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage," (Note i, Exodus 1:22) really bothered King James
Second, religion in James' time was not what it is today. In that era, religion was controlled by the government. If someone lived in Spain at the time, he had three religious "choices":
1. Roman Catholicism
2. Silence.
3. The Inquisition.
The third "option" was reserved for "heretics," or people who didn't think the way the government wanted them to. To governments of that era heresy and treason were synonymous.
England wasn't much different. From the time of Henry VIII on, an Englishman had three choices:
1. The Anglican Church.
2. Silence.
3. The rack, burning at the stake, being drawn and quartered, or some other form of persuasion.
The hapless individuals who fell into the hands of the government for holding religious opinions of their own were simply punished according to the royal whim.
Henry VIII, once he had appointed himself head of all the English churches, kept the Roman Catholic system of bishops, deacons and the like for a very good reason. That system allowed him a "chain of command" necessary for any bureaucracy to function. This system passed intact to his heirs.
This system became a little confusing for English citizens when Bloody Mary * ascended to the throne. Mary wanted everyone to switch back to Roman Catholicism. Those who proved intransigent and wanted to remain Protestant she burned at the stake - about 300 people in all. She intended to bum a lot more, but the rest of her intended victims escaped by leaving the country.
A tremendous number of those intended victims settled in Geneva. Religious refugees from other countries in Western Europe, including the French theologian Jean Chauvin, better known as John Calvin, also settled there.
Mary died and was succeeded to the throne by her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth. The Anglican bureaucracy returned, less a few notables such as Archbishop Cranmer and Hugh Latimer (both having been burned at the stake by Bloody Mary). In Scotland, John Knox led the Reformation.
The Reformation prospered in Geneva. Many of those who had fled Bloody Mary started a congregation there. Their greatest effort and contribution to the Reformation was the first Geneva Bible.
More marginal notes were added to later editions.* Daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She became queen in 1553 after her brother, Edward VI, died.By the end of the 16th Century, the Geneva Bible had about all the marginal notes there was space available to put them in.
Geneva was an anomaly in 16th Century Europe. In the days of absolute despotism and constant warfare, Geneva achieved her independence primarily by constant negotiation, playing off one stronger power against another. While other governments allowed lawyers to drag out cases and took months and years to get rid of corrupt officials, the City of Geneva dispatched most civil and criminal cases within a month and threw corrupt officials into jail the day after they were found out. The academy that John Calvin founded there in 1559 later became the University of Geneva.
Religious wars wracked Europe. The Spanish fought to restore Roman Catholicism to Western Europe. The Dutch fought for the Reformation and religious freedom. England, a small country with only 4 ? million people, managed to stay aloof because of the natural advantage of the English Channel.
The Dutch declared religious freedom for everybody. Amsterdam became an open city*. English Puritans arrived by the boatload. The 1599 Edition of the Geneva Bible was printed in Amsterdam and London in large quantities until well into the 17th Century.*At the time Geneva, was a city-state. Geneva did not become part of Switzerland until 1815.King James, before he became James I of England, made it plain that he had no use for the "Dutch" rebel who had rebelled against their Spanish King.
Another of the ironies left us from the 16th Century is that freedom of religion and freedom of the press did not originate in England, as many people commonly assume today. Those freedoms were first given to Protestants by the Dutch, as the records of that era plainly show. England today does not have freedom of the press the way we understand it (There are things in England such as the Official Secrets Act that often land journalists in jail.)
England was relatively peaceful in the time of Elizabeth I. There was the problem of the Spanish Armada, but that was brief Elizabeth later became known as "Good Queen Bess," not because she was so good, but because her successor was so bad.
Elizabeth died in 1603 and her cousin, James Stuart, son of Mary Stuart, who up until that time had been King James VI of Scotland, ascended the throne and became known as King James I of England.
James ascended the throne of England with the "divine right of kings" firmly embedded in his mind. Unfortunately, that wasn't his only mental problem.* In those days an "open city' was one in which the inhabitants were allowed to believe in or print what they preferredKing James I, among his many other faults, preferred young boys to adult women. He was a flaming homosexual. His activities in that regard have been recorded in numerous books and public records; so much so, that there is no room for debate on the subject.
The King was queer. The very people who use the King James Bible today would be the first ones to throw such a deviant out of their congregations.
The depravity of King James I didn't end with sodomy. James enjoyed killing animals. He called it "hunting." Once he killed an animal, he would literally roll about in its blood. Some believe that he practiced bestiality while the animal lay dying.
James was a sadist as well as a sodomite: he enjoyed torturing people. While King of Scotland in 1591, he personally supervised the torture of poor wretches caught up in the witchcraft trials of Scotland. James would even suggest new tortures to the examiners.
One "witch" Barbara Napier, was acquitted. That event so angered James that he wrote personally to the court on May 10, 1591, ordering a sentence of death, and had the jury called into custody. To make sure they understood their particular offense, the King himself presided at a new hearing (which could hardly be called a trial) and was gracious enough to release them without punishment when they reversed their verdict.
History has it that James was also a great coward. On January 7, 1591, the King was in Edinburgh and emerged from the toll booth. A retinue followed that included the Duke of Lennox and Lord Hume. They fell into an argument with the laird of Logie and pulled their swords. James looked behind, saw the steel flashing, and fled into the nearest refuge which turned out to be a skinner's booth. There, to his shame, he "fouled his breeches in fear." 5
In short, King James I was the kind of despicable creature honorable men loathed, Christians would not associate with, and the Bible itself orders to be put to death. 6
Knowing what King James was we can easily discern his motives.
James ascended the English throne in 1603. He wasted no time in ordering a new edition of the Bible in order to deny the common people the marginal notes they so valued in the Geneva Bible. That James I wasn't going to have any marginal notes to annoy him and lead English citizens away from what he wanted them to think is a matter of public record. In an account corrected with his own hand dated February 10, 1604, he ordained:That a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek; and this to be set out and printed without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of England in time of divine service.James then set up rules that made it impossible for anyone involved in the project to make an honest translation, some of which follow:1. The ordinary Bible read in the church, commonly called the Bishop's Bible to be followed and as little altered as the truth of the original will permit.Or, since the common people preferred the Geneva Bible to the existing government publication, let's see if we can slip a superseding government publication onto their bookshelves, altered as little as possible.2. The old Ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz. the word "church" not to be translated "congregation," etc.That is, if a word should be translated a certain way, let's deliberately mistranslate it to make the people think God still belongs to the Anglican Church - exclusively.3. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.James didn't want those pesky marginal notes cropping up, not even once. That was fine for the common herd, but not for James' own bishops. Many of their writings and sermons alluded to the Geneva Bible and its marginal notes decades after the King James Bible was published.
The bishops had good reason to be confused. They needed those marginal notes. James had just obliterated a procedure that kings and governments had used for thousands of years. Because words and phrases quite often had several meanings all important state or royal decrees, treaties, and agreements contained marginal explanations or commentaries in order to remove all doubt from the mind of the reader. In the 16th century those marginal notes were called "glosses." Today the members of the legal profession use almost the same system in the form of footnotes and case cites.
The King James Bible was finally printed in 1611. It was not technically a translation. What the flunkies employed by King James did was revise and compare other translations of which they simply plagiarized about 20% of the Geneva Bible. ** Translations from one language to another almost never come out word-for word identically.In their New Testament translation, the King James "translators" didn't even revise and compare. What they did was simply copy – almost word for word - William Tyndales' 1525 New Testament. At the time of his translation Tyndales' New Testament had been labeled as "seditious material" by Henry VIII and copies discovered on ships reaching English ports were confiscated and destroyed. William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, even went so far as to buy all the copies he could get in Europe in order to destroy them.
Tyndale was hounded from London to Cologne to Worms. He settled in Marburg under the protection of Philip, landgrave of Hesse. Nobody messed with Big Phil.
Philip didn't care what anyone thought. If he felt like telling the emperor to "stuff it," he did. If neighboring royalty wanted to rumble, Philip showed up with troops. If Philip decided one wife wasn't enough for him, he just took another one. In March of 1540, after Martin Luther and other prominent Protestant theologians had expressly approved polygamy according to the Scriptures, Philip became Europe's best- known bigamist.
Unfortunately, even Philip couldn't cope with treachery. Tyndale was betrayed by his personal Judas, Henry Phillips. He was tried for heresy, condemned, strangled at the stake, and his body afterwards burnt.
It is interesting to note that the Geneva Reformers- men such as John Calvin - expressed opinions in the marginal notes that would be simply unacceptable to the "scholars" of today. For example, the passage in Genesis 12:2-3, that reads:"And I will make of thee a great nation, and will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.I will also bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."Our ministers today tell us this refers to Jews. That isn't the way the Geneva translators understood it:Twentieth century scholarly works, such as the Scofield Reference Bible, published by Oxford University Press, hold that the 38th Chapter of Ezekiel refers to an invasion of Jerusalem by Russian armies leading the Northern European powers. John Calvin and his cohorts, who annotated the Geneva Bible, understood it a little differently:
Signifying all the people of the world should assemble themselves against the Church and Christ their head. 8The Reverend Scofield and his fellow "scholars" hold up Satan as some sort of boogey-man. The Geneva translators, as in Psalm 109:6, simply translated the word, "adversary." In Mark 8:33, Christ said to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan." The Geneva translators understood exactly what the word meant and apparently didn't figure anyone else would be dumb enough to equate Peter with the Evil One. On that, the Geneva and King James translate the word the same.
James did not stop at censoring the Bible. He carried his "divine right of kings" to the point that he dissolved Parliament. That institution was to James simply a convenience he needed to raise money for his endless pursuit of pleasure and depravity. When Parliament balked at his requests for money James dissolved it Magna Carta and the liberties of Englishmen were mere frivolities in the mind of James. As an illustration of the loathing and contempt Christians of that era held for the government of James I, it is interesting to note that after the first bitter weather in New England, when half their number were dead, not one of the Pilgrim survivors wanted to be taken back to the England of James I aboard the Mayflower.
James' oldest son died and his second son, Charles, ascended to the throne after the death of James I, Charles also believed in the "divine right of kings." By 1642, English patience was at an end and civil war erupted. By 1649, the English Parliament had had enough of Charles, who apparently believed that one of his "divine rights" was to sign agreements and then break them any time he felt the urge. Charles was beheaded. Oliver Cromwell took over the government.
Oliver Cromwell, of Celtic and Welsh ancestry, made the same basic mistake that James I and his son, Charles, made. Cromwell believed, as James had professed to, that governments were for the common wealth (good) and not the common will. He tried to legislate moral codes that very few could handle. The prisons overflowed with his critics. During his invasion of Ireland, he slaughtered enough women and children to fill entire graveyard& Cromwell died in 1658. The English had had quite enough of his form of government and acquired another king, Charles II.
The last run of Geneva Bibles was printed in 1644. That was the year John Milton was invited to instruct the English Parliament on the actual teachings of the Bible regarding divorce (it was allowed). What Milton understood that none of our modern "experts" seem to was that "He who divorces his wife and marries another," was not a prohibition of divorce, it was a prohibition against throw-away people. As John Milton in his On Christian Doctrine and Martin Luther in his essay on Deuteronomy 21:15 pointed out, having more than one wife was Scriptural. You just weren't supposed to throw them away when you got bored with them.
Four years after the last Geneva Bible was printed, the Thirty Years War (the last of the great religious wars of Europe) ground to a halt. Millions had died. Germany was so depopulated it took her two centuries to recover. The Reformation had survived. It didn't survive for long.
After several generations of English speakers grew up without the stabilizing influence of the Geneva marginal notes, the "interpret it any way you want" school of thought came into fashion. The "charismatic" movement was in full swing by 1730.
A few men here and there tried to show people what the religion of their ancestors actually was. A man named Ferrar Fenton published his own translation of the Bible in 1906, complete with a history lesson at the beginning of each set of books in the Bible. Another man named George Lamsa wrote "Idioms of the Bible Explained," and tried to show the errors of the modem scholars. They were drowned by the works of others.
Of course, there were those that went the other way. A backwoods preacher, Noah Fredericks, wrote a book titled, Pilgrim Ships, in which he claimed the people of the Old Testament came from outer space, Moses's rod was an electronic control used to open a fortress (mistranslated, "rock"), Elijah introduced a path for current to flow from the ionosphere to the ground in order to fry two platoons of Ahab's infantry, and other theological positions that will probably never be taken seriously by anybody (unfortunately).
During the 16th Century and the one preceding it, the Spanish Empire, a colossus larger than the Roman Empire, had been unable to stamp out the Reformation with the world's finest and most well equipped armies. The Spaniards needn't have bothered. What the armies of Catholic Spain were unable to make a dent in, one sadistic sodomite, James I, did with a pair of censoring scissors.
The Reformation, and the blood of millions who fought for it, apparently went for nothing. Protestant churches of today hardly resemble the churches of the Reformation.
Today's preachers study the Scofield Reference Edition of the King James, a volume that contains marginal notes that would seem no more accurate to John Calvin and John Knox than Mother Goose. The blind are once more leading the blind. This reprinted edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible is probably the last sputtering flame of the Reformation. The works of John Milton, John Calvin, John Knox, George Buchanan, William Tyndale, and the rest can still be found on the shelves in the public libraries. Such works are checked out by uninterested college students on an average of about one volume every ten years, no one in today's churches reads them.Michael H. Brown - 1988Footnotes:1 Luther A, Weigle, The English New Testament, P.24. [back]
2 Otto J. Scott, James I, Passim [back]
3 lbid [back]
4 Ibid, p. 212 [back]5 Ibid, p. 211 [back]
6 Leviticus, 20:13 [back]7 Genesis 12:2 note c 1599 Geneva Bible [back]
8 Ezekiel 38:7. note e 1599 Geneva Bible [back]
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