HOBE SOUND, Fla. – Have you ever seen a Holy Bible that actually says, "Thou shalt commit adultery" instead of "Thou shalt not?" Now's your chance.
A collection of rare Bibles, some more than 600 years old dating back to the 14th century is now on display this week at the Hobe Sound Bible College in this South Florida town.
An original page from the King James translation of the Bible from 1611 on display at the Hobe Sound Bible College in South Florida. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
Among the collection is the so-called "Wicked Bible" of 1632, which is a King James translation that has a prominent mistake in the Seventh Commandment of the famous Ten Commandments. It wrongly omits the word "not," and shows the instruction as "Thou shalt commit adultery."
Benjamin Crawford of the Bible Heritage Foundation points to the fine print of the Seventh Commandment in the so-called "Wicked Bible" of 1632, which wrongly declares, "Thou shalt commit adultery." (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
"Regardless of beliefs or background, this exhibition will be fascinating to those who love history and the stories of those who shaped it," said college spokesman Paul Stetler. "These artifacts profoundly impacted the history of the English-speaking world."
Usually kept in a bank vault in Indianapolis, the privately owned collection of 22 items is rarely displayed for public viewing, and the artifacts are all original first editions, with no copies or facsimiles.
This exhibition celebrates the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible, but there are Bibles on display that pre-date the King James Version by hundreds of years, one by John Wycliffe who began translating the New Testament into English in the early 1380s.
"John Wycliffe was one of the very first to translate the Scriptures from Latin into English," said Stetler. "It's a handwritten manuscript. It's extremely valuable and extremely rare. There are only five of this particular Bible in existence. Three of them are in museums, two of them are in private hands, we get one of them."
Also on display is the Tyndale New Testament from 1536, a translation by William Tyndale, another man to put the ancient text into English. For his efforts to try to get the common man to understand the holy writ, he was put to death by Church officials. Catholics say authorities were merely looking to prevent any private individual from publishing his own translation of Scripture without the approval of the Church.
A page from Acts of the Apostles is displayed from the William Tyndale New Testament of 1536. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
The public can also see Thomas Cromwell's Great Bible from 1541, which was commissioned by King Henry VIII when he created the Church of England by separating from the Roman Catholic Church.
Other translations include the Coverdale Bible, the first to be printed in English rather than written by hand, and the Geneva Bible of 1560, which is the first Bible to be divided into chapters and verses, and the version the Puritans favored when they first came to America in the early 17th century.
The Old Testament Book of 1 Kings is displayed from the Geneva Bible of 1560. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
Experts in biblical history are on hand to provide mini-lectures about details of the development of the Bible through the centuries, much of which was far from a love-filled endeavor.
"Some of these Bibles were literally paid for by blood," said Stetler. "William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible. John Wycliffe was pursued up until his death. They were not able to catch him before he died of natural causes, but they did get their last little dig in by digging up his body and burning his ashes and casting them in the English Channel.
"Of course in those days, in the eyes of the Church, if you were not buried in consecrated ground, that meant that your soul was damned, and so they were trying to damn his soul. That's how strongly they felt about preventing the Bible from being in the hands of the common people. They wanted the Bible to be kept in Latin so that they could maintain their monopoly on truth.
The John Wycliffe Bible, the first handwritten translation from Latin to English dates back to the early 1380s. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
"Thank God there were people who were willing to even shed their blood to see that that was changed, to see that we could have the Scriptures in English. Really when you think about it, politically it is significant because it gave birth to the rise of individual freedom that has led to American democracy, and of course spiritually, it is tremendously significant."
During a speech about the history of the Bible this weekend, David Gordeuk, chairman of the ministerial department at Hobe Sound Bible College, said he's continually amazed by the strong sentiments many have when it comes to Scripture.
"Why is it that there was so much and there continues to be so much reaction – in some cases positive and some cases very negative – against the Bible? It's still happening. What is it about it that makes some people so antagonistic?" he asked.
"I would suggest one thing about it is its truth claims. The Bible does claim to be the truth. ... There is power in the Word itself. Thank God for it, and thank God for the preservation."
For Bible junkies, the exhibition has a special bonus. If you've ever wanted to own a piece of an original King James Bible, actually loose-leaf pages from the archaic text are being offered for sale for $250 per page.
Though there's no entrance fee for the event which runs from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, donations are accepted to help offset the cost of insurance and security for the ancient documents. Another exhibit with the King James Bibles is planned to take place in Chicago next month.
David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh have broken and covered this story from the beginning. This is a story that hits home for me as Arizona is my home state and I have personally witnessed the destruction of south Phoenix and the border.
What is happening on the border is nothing short of treason and this looks to be yet another case of ATF tyranny.
They have documented an ATF operation that has allegedly let high powered weapons into Mexico. David will be appearing on The Intel Hub Radio this Sunday at 5pm est to discuss this breaking story.
David has written a Journalists Guide to Project Gunwalker. Be sure to check David’s article on his site daily as he will be updating it as more information is released. I am posting this part of the article to get the information to our viewers so be sure to check back to the original article for the updates.
The following is a summary and time line of articles appearing on the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog and Gun Rights Examiner, reflecting original reporting on the developing “Project Gunwalker” story by Mike Vanderboegh and myself. That’s the purposely ironic name I assigned it, a parody of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s “Project Gunrunner,” and it refers to allegations by whistleblowing ATF insiders that:
ATF management was allowing potentially hundreds of semiautomatic firearms to be walked across the Mexican border in order to pad statistics used to further budget and power objectives.
Mexican authorities were kept in the dark, and protests that they should be informed were overridden, first by the Phoenix ATF office, and ultimately by higher-ups in Washington, DC.
A gun used in this operation was involved in a December 2010 incident in which a Border Patrol agent was killed.
The original allegations were posted on CleanUpATF.org. Vanderboegh and I, who have a history going back years of documenting allegations posted there, and pressing for congressional hearings to investigate the claims, were both contacted independently by various ATF insiders claiming to have corroborating information and documentation.
Mike vetted his sources and I used my contacts to help validate that my informant was who he represented himself to be. Mike and I did what we could throughout our separate and coordinated investigations to test and corroborate what was being told. We also had a small circle of behind-the-scenes consultants, including firearms designer Len Savage, and a few other knowledgeable advisors, all with contacts and informed insights of their own, and all of whom have earned our trust over the years.
Our primary goal was to help arrange for protection for our sources, and quickly, as retaliation was feared. Because the allegations involved higher ups within the Justice Department, the added protection afforded by separation of powers was sought. Through various contacts and machinations that are documented in the following timeline, the whistleblowers came under the protective umbrella of Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Committee of the Judiciary.
Our secondary goal was to push this story outside our limited spheres of influence and into the “mainstream press,” so that it would be problematic to ignore or bury things. Again, making this happen has been an ongoing struggle, but we’ve seen the first cracks in the dam. The following time line will bring journalists just getting involved with this story up to speed by walking them though it, from its genesis to where we are today as major media outlets finally begin to take notice and get involved.
By way of a FAQ, two seem to be recurrent:
Will you have your sources contact us?
and
Will you provide us with copies of documentation?
The answer to both is “No.” The reason is one of protection. You will need to observe official proceedings and develop/consult sources of your own.
Here’s what’s happened so far, at least what I can publicly disclose:
This post will be regularly updated with new links, so those interested in having a one-stop resource to keep up with Mike and my posts should bookmark it and return to keep apprised of new developments.
HE was the 14 year-old boy tipped for sainthood after his mysterious death in a Mexican village in 1944.
As the local Catholic priest lay dying, devout Witold Orlowski prayed for days to God to take his life instead.
Incredibly, the previously healthy boy died a few days later – and the stricken priest made a full recovery.
Witold was laid to rest with a hero’s funeral and was tipped for sainthood for the Mexican ‘miracle’.
Now more than 60 years later he is at the centre of an extraordinary court case, which has seen a British Catholic priest effectively accused of body-snatching.
Wojciech Jasinski, 40, has been charged with illegally exhuming Witold’s remains from a Herefordshire graveyard. They were later secretly reburied.
The remains were eventually recovered by police and have now been officially reburied at Fawley Court in Oxfordshire.
The 17th Century mansion had been owned by Father Jasinski’s Polish religious order, the Marian Fathers, for many years.
But it has since been sold and is now the home of glamorous philanthropist Aida Hersham and her partner, Marks and Spencer heir Patrick Sieff.
Fr Jasinski appeared at Hereford Magistrates Court on January 10. The case was committed to Worcester Crown Court where he will appear on May 3 for a plea and case management hearing.
The priest was unavailable for comment last night and colleagues said he is currently in Rome, visiting the Vatican on official Church business.
Fr Jasinski was arrested last year after police received a complaint that Witold’s remains were missing from his grave at St Raphael’s Convent in Bullingham, Herefordshire.
The late teenager’s cousin, Zbigniew Mantorski, is believed to have travelled from Poland to visit the memorial site, which had long been a place of pilgrimage for Polish Catholics around the world.
He is alleged to have been told the remains had been moved to Fawley Court, but when he arrived there he could find no sign of them.
Fr Jasinski is accused of digging up and moving the 14 year-old boy’s remains from the convent around October 2009.
The convent was later sold for housing.
West Mercia Police has headed the police investigation.
It is understood they recovered Witold’s remains at Fawley Court and arranged for them to be officially reburied at the sprawling mansion – in his late mother’s grave.
Our amazing pictures show the sombre occasion when members of the Marian Fathers’ Catholic congregation gathered to pay respects to the would-be saint.
Officers from Thames Valley Police, on behalf of West Mercia Police, attended the ceremony which included a service by a Polish priest.
The remains had been originally buried in a rusty metal box in Bullingham.
But after being recovered by police they were transferred to a modern, child-sized coffin and laid to rest in the grave of Witold’s mother, Zofia Orlowski.
Workers from Woodgrange Park cemetery in Newham, London, were asked to perform the exhumation prior to the reburial.
A spokesman said: “We exhumed the box to check that there were remains in it.
“Someone from the local health authority was there and five or six members of the family attended. A Polish minister did a proper service and we reburied the boy with his mother. Her grave is marked with a stone.”
Mrs Orlowski arrived in Britain in 1953 and is understood to have brought the box containing Witold’s bones with her.
She was apparently terrified that she would not be allowed to bring the remains into the country and so evaded customs on her arrival.
They were later buried in the grounds of St Raphael’s Convent. Witold was given a full funeral and buried “a bit like a saint”, according to sources close to the Marian Fathers’ community.
Mrs Orlowski moved to Oxfordshire in the 1960s and later worked at Fawley Court, when it was a Polish boy’s school.
She died in 1995, aged 90, and was buried in the mansion grounds.
Mystery surrounds the death of Witold, whose family had been hit by tragedies even before his death.
He and his relatives had fled Poland at the start of the Second World War and his father and sister died of typhus as they travelled through Ukraine and western Siberia.
It is unclear how Witold died, although one theory is that he may have contracted tetanus. But Polish Catholics believe he should be made a saint and it is understood they have approached the Vatican about a future Beatification.
A source said: “Witold is an enormously important part of Polish Roman Catholic history. The stories passed down the decade are that he saved a priest’s life by sacrificing himself to God.
“The story goes that the local priest in the Mexican village became very sick, and was believed to be dying.
“Witold went to the local church and prayed to God to take his life instead of the priest’s. The community was very devout, the priest was at the heart of the community, and it was feared that his death might destroy the community.
“The boy is said to have stayed at the church for two or three days, constantly praying for a miracle to save the priest. A few days later the boy died, while the priest made a miraculous recovery.
“Witold was buried in the village like a hero. He was apparently made a ‘saint-in-waiting’.
“He’s highly regarded by the Polish Roman Catholic community, not just in this country but all over the world. It’s long been hoped that he would be made a saint one day and in this devout community, his remains are sacred and very important.”
Vinny Bolina, spokesman for West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service, confirmed that Wojciech Jasinski had been charged with one count of removing a corpse from a grave, between 2008 and 2010.
He confirmed the priest is due to appear at Worcester Crown Court for a plea and case management hearing on May 3.
Fr Jasinski was unavailable for comment last night.
A representative for the Marian Fathers said the case was ongoing and could not comment further.
I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but please keep a lookout for dangerous ideas disguised as innocent ones. I spotted a dangerous idea about two weeks ago, and it was hiding in plain sight on this page.
The idea came from Curtis Mitchell. He said our elected officials should carry out their duties with a primary emphasis on the will of God. Mitchell said our politicians should pray loudly to Jesus Christ, beg for mercy and forgiveness, and ask God for direction in all matters that come before them (presumably including matters of public policy). Furthermore, our politicians should do it on live television, he wrote, adding, “They lead, we follow.”
Mitchell’s idea seems harmless, but it opens the door to theocracy, a dangerous form of government with leaders who exercise power with claims of divine guidance. In a theocracy, a citizen who dares to confront his leaders is also confronting God and is therefore regarded as an infidel who must be set straight, ignored or punished. Modern theocracies include Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican.
Mitchell wants more morality in politics, to which I say amen. Yet his letter raised a red flag when it implied our elected officials should follow God’s instructions on how to run the government.
The American government gets its power from the will of the people, not the will of God. Mitchell’s letter demonstrates how a dangerous idea can smuggle itself into good intentions. We should stay alert for things like that.
Recently I found myself explaining to a group of surprised friends from Protestant and secular backgrounds that, despite being educated in the Catholic faith up to the sacrament of confirmation at age 14, I didn't read the Old Testament until I was assigned it in a college literature course. Traditionally, the Catholic Church did not encourage its congregation to read the Bible; we had the priests to explain it to us. In fact, the church once took such a dim view of the idea that, in 1536, the English reformer William Tyndale was tried for heresy, strangled and burned at the stake, largely for translating the Bible into English for a lay readership. Tyndale House, a major American Christian publisher, is named after him.
Though I'm no longer a believer, and in principle I support the notion of adherents to a religion familiarizing themselves with its scriptures, it sometimes seems like the old Vatican had a point.
Recently I found myself explaining to a group of surprised friends from Protestant and secular backgrounds that, despite being educated in the Catholic faith up to the sacrament of confirmation at age 14, I didn't read the Old Testament until I was assigned it in a college literature course. Traditionally, the Catholic Church did not encourage its congregation to read the Bible; we had the priests to explain it to us. In fact, the church once took such a dim view of the idea that, in 1536, the English reformer William Tyndale was tried for heresy, strangled and burned at the stake, largely for translating the Bible into English for a lay readership. Tyndale House, a major American Christian publisher, is named after him.
Though I'm no longer a believer, and in principle I support the notion of adherents to a religion familiarizing themselves with its scriptures, it sometimes seems like the old Vatican had a point. In his new book, "The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book," religion professor Timothy Beal describes all the angst and doubt that Bible reading provoked in him during his youth, as well as the frustration many American Christians experience as a result of their own encounters with the book. This doesn't prevent them from buying truckloads of the things -- Beal notes that "the average Christian household owns nine Bibles and purchases at least one new Bible every year" -- but actually reading them is another matter. Beal believes that's because today's Christians are seeking a certainty in their holy book that simply isn't there, and shouldn't be.
"The Rise and Fall of the Bible" is a succinct, clear and fascinating look at two phenomena: what Beal calls "biblical consumerism" -- in which buying Bibles and Bible-related publications and products substitutes for more meaningful encounters with the foundational text of Western Civilization -- and the history of how the book came to be assembled. The latter story, albeit in a severely mangled form, came as a revelation to many readers of Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code." Beal, who teaches an introductory course in biblical literature at Case Western Reserve University, estimates that more than half of the students who come to his classes know more about the Bible from Brown's conspiracy-crazed potboiler than from "actual biblical texts."
For anyone with more than a passing familiarity with biblical history, however, the historical portions of "The Rise and Fall of the Bible" will be old news. The thing is, many Americans -- especially those raised in the less reflective Christian denominations -- know nothing about how the Bible was compiled. That's why so many of them were amazed to learn from "The Da Vinci Code" that the Old and New Testaments are assemblages of texts written at different times by different authors, most of whom were not eyewitnesses to the events they describe. In Brown's crackpot version, the Emperor Constantine gets cast as the arch-villain, ordaining that conservative texts be officially canonized, while more politically radical (and less misogynistic) works got kicked out of the scripture clubhouse. The real story is even more unstable than Brown's inaccurate potted version, with dozens of official and semiofficial variations (including or excluding certain marginal books) produced in the centuries after the death of Jesus.
The bestselling New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, who, like Beal, was raised in a conservative evangelical family, has written in greater depth on early Christian texts; that isn't really Beal's purpose. Ehrman became an agnostic, but Beal is still a Christian, and with "The Rise and Fall of the Bible," he wants to argue against the common perception of the Bible as God's infallible handbook on how to live, "totally accurate in all of its teachings" -- a view, incidentally, that nearly half of all Americans (and 88 percent of "born again" Christians) claim to believe. Beal is the sort of Christian who doesn't want to raise his son to "think that creationism is a viable alternative to evolutionary biology or that homosexuality is sinful," but he is as skeptical of liberal attempts to simplify the Bible as he is of the more predominant right-wing reductionism. He would rather see his co-religionists embrace the fact that the Bible is full of contradictions and inconsistencies and come to regard it not as "the book of answers, but as a library of questions," many of which can never be conclusively resolved.
Some of the most interesting chapters in "The Rise and Fall of the Bible" explore the world of Bibles created for specific subcultures and needs: the manly Metal Bible and Duct Tape Bible, kicky handbag/Bible combos and special editions geared toward teenagers, African-American women and so on. These can contain as much as 50 percent "supplemental" material, "explaining" the scripture according to the taste of the intended audience. Then there are Biblezines, publications in which articles about how to grill steaks or talk to girls (in the case of a Biblezine for boys) share the page with biblical quotations. Well-meaning older relatives give this material to young Christians, hoping it will make the Bible itself seem more "readable." Beal thinks the kids just wind up reading the articles and skipping the quotations. He compares Biblezines to the "sweeter and more colorful roll-ups, punches, sauces and squirtable foams that I buy for my kids' lunches" in lieu of the unprocessed fresh fruit they refuse to eat. At least you can tell yourself you're giving them fruit.
Even more insidious, in Beal's eyes, is the trend over the past couple of centuries away from word-for-word translations of the Bible and toward "functional equivalence" and "meaning driven" translations. These considerably fiddled-with versions iron out the wrinkles and perplexities in the ancient texts and nudge them closer toward the advice, directives and "values" so many people expect from their Bible. Beal argues that the Bible industry resorts to this sort of thing precisely because the Bible doesn't offer cut-and-dried guidance -- or Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, as one popular modern acronym would have it.
Much like the professor who assigned the Old Testament during my sophomore year of college, Beal would prefer that people read the Bible as if it were a work of art -- that is, as a text permitting multiple interpretations and as a spur to further thought and self-examination rather than as the last word on all of life's enigmas. Or, as he rather fetchingly puts it at one point: "This is poetry, not pool rules." His approach is, of course, more congenial to nonbelievers than the conviction that the Bible describes historical facts and constitutes the "inerrant" word of God. Still, even an optimistic secularist may find it difficult to credit Beal's prediction that his way of reading the Bible is just about to catch on, big time.
Beal thinks the current boom in biblical consumerism amounts to a "distress crop," the last great efflorescence of the old authoritative ideal before people move on and learn to embrace biblical ambiguity. I'm not so sure. Craving the certainty and absolutism of fundamentalism is a fairly common response (across many religious faiths) to the often terrifying flux of modern life. If certitude is the main thing American Christians are seeking when they turn to the Bible, then they're unlikely to tolerate, let alone embrace, Beal's "library of questions" model. You can learn a lot about how the Bible was created in the past 2,000 years, and about the many strange forms it has taken in the present, from "The Rise and Fall of the Bible." But where it's headed in the future is a mystery much harder to solve.
