I honestly am not flaming, I GENUINELY do not understand how someone could ridicule (maybe too strong of a word, but bear with me) the Christianity of someone who isn't willing to accept every single detail of the Bible as literal truth. No one is a true Biblical literalist on all of the laws and things, so to me you are all just drawing the line at the point that makes the most sense to you ... as am I.
Well, speaking as a non-religious person, there's the exasperating observation that the sort of believers we are discussing are able to critically examine and reject certain truths when it suits them, and then arbitrarily turn off their critical faculties when the evaluation of a religious truth becomes too much of a threat to their sense of self. But to be fair I think that is a very human flaw which all of us have somewhere.
To my mind, a holy book of divine revelation having mistakes or myths or teachings which can be considered morally wrong in it
is an absurdity in itself.
The "mistranslated" talking point has always seemed stupid to me too, especially since we still have the Bible in its original languages so if people think something in it is mistranslated they can always just check other translations or consult people who can read Hebrew and Greek and translate it themselves. It's not like the Sanskrit Canon where like half of it only survives in the form of Kumarajiva's translations into Chinese.
Okay, but (leaving aside all of the other problems in manuscript transmission) Jesus likely didn't speak Greek, or at the very least not the polished and discursive Greek we read in the Gospels. So even sticking to the original languages of the text one has to assume there is some kind of translation issue to be considered...
if one believes we are reading the authentic sayings of Jesus somewhere.
And of course, we know that translators have 'given their spin' on certain passages in ways which have profoundly influenced subsequent theology written in those languages. Luther was famous for this: I'm not a theologian so feel free to correct me, but I understand that e.g. Karl Barth was very much reading Paul through Luther, and much of that has to do with how he interpreted the meaning of certain obscure Greek terms as they were translated in Luther's Bible.
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