Religion

of the bible, we open a case of cans of worms. We get apologetics, eisegesis, fanciful forays into dubious linguistics, and much, much more. One can find a host of people who pontificate on the meaning of any important passage in the Bible. Each one of them brings to the discussion his or her own biases, education or miseducation, and interpretive imagination.

It's an amusing thing to do - looking at various writers talking about the same passage. It's also time-consuming and, in the end, unsatisfying. There is no unity in it. Each self-styled scholar has some ax to grind and some point of view to maintain.

What happens, in most cases, is that people find their favorites among Bible "experts" and return to those people to answer their questions. Christianity has split again and again into countless denominations based on those various interpretations of what is suppose to be "god-given truth."

Christianity cannot even agree on what is a correct translation into English or other languages. It's a self-perpetuating business to come up with the next "inspired" translation, and teams of scholars labor to produce the definitive version.

It would be laughable if only people did not take all of this so seriously. They do, though, and I cannot see any end to the splintering and arguing over what should be the most basic part of any religion - it's scripture.