Why is it that the religious people who preach on the trains tend to be ill-educated?

[conuly]

Especially when it comes to their religious texts. Now this one was swearing that the Bible said that "Jesus would come back in 2,000 years. Not exactly 2,000, of course...." It says that in the Bible? I thought all it said that Jesus would return "within this generation". I understand that if you want to take the Bible anywhere near literally you have to make "this generation" mean some other generation than the one he was speaking to, which is possible - but I don't see how you can get 2,000 years from that.

And that raises a question - is that 2,000 years from the time of his birth, or his death? Because if it's his death, and we're using the conventional reckoning, then I figure I've got another 25 years or so before I need to worry about this sort of thing. Plenty of time.

Of course, I'm not a Biblical scholar. I almost certainly am missing something - but it's a smaller something than this guy (and no, I don't want answers - I just want the words that will SHUT THESE PEOPLE UP on the train so I can read my damn book for a change).

I think he may've been running a more sophisticated scam, though - he had a woman sitting, nodding, amening, calling him a "man of god" while professing not to know him. When's the last time you saw somebody converted by a street preacher? And he did attempt to collect money several times....

Comments

[rachelkachel]

That site seems to agree with what I know of the differences. NIV is generally accepted to be a very good translation - they looked at many different manuscripts and got as close to the orignal sources as they could.

I like KJV for some things because it's so poetic, though :) I'm more familiar with the Christmas story with its wording, and of course the Lord's Prayer.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

There's too much commentary-disguised-as-translation in the NIV. The editors had a particular world view and theology, and it informed how they rewrote the bible.