sotto voce

From your experience, what would you say are the chances of people without the connections of the Gideons giving Bibles to schoolchildren, even without comment?

anethema

This is a reply to the thread not AC's specific comment. The history of the dissemination of the bible goes back to Luther and Wycliffe. Anyone making an historical argument needs to know that before 1470ca.ce. any commentator such as us would have no!!!!! idea what they were talking about. Is that the RCC's fault? Hell yes! Anyone (Aquinas?) who was kind of smart and knew latin could become either an apologetic or a heretic. It didnt matter to the great unwashed.

andrewcriddle

I'm honestly not sure what you are asking.

If you are implying that people giving out Bibles to children are usually seeking to spread Christianity then I agree.

Andrew Criddle

sotto voce

It's plain enough English.

Usually?

andrewcriddle

Well Richard Dawkins appears to want to make Bibles available to children, and IIUC he is not seeking to spread Christianity.

Andrew Criddle

sotto voce

Well noted.

gurugeorge

Of course the KJV Bible should be available. Dawkins is quite right about its value as a literary work.

And also, from the other point of view, it's precisely from the point when the Bible became widely available in native languages that the decline of Christianity in the West started. For it then became possible for rational people of all walks of life to compare notes on what was previously only available to people with a certain type of education.

When the Bible was in a dead tongue that only the highly educated could read, the rational people among the masses could only wonder at its contents (based on what their priests told them).

But as soon as the Bible is subject to rational scrutiny, its archaisms, inconsistencies and nonsenses become evident. Any intelligent child should be able to make up their mind fairly quickly upon reading the Bible, that it's a beautiful translation of an ancient religious literary text that is really not worthwhile as a guide to life, except insofar as it coincides, in a pithy way, with what we already know is good anyway.

The truth shall out.

sotto voce

Not like that.

Sheshbazzar

To be fair and democratic, the Bible, at least in its most popular versions should be available in school libraries for those who desire to read or examine it.
After all, believer or not, they are going to be spending the rest of their adult lives being affected by the controversies and practices that its content engenders.

But 'available' does not imply that every student ought to be suppled with a copy, or that outside religious organizations be allowed to proselytize through mass distributions of their versions.
The school Bible's provided should be those selected by the Library organization that selects and supplies all other school library materials, with the number of copies made available suited to the size of the school.
And to prevent abuse by religious opportunist, be limited to a quantity that does not exceed the number of copies each available of, say, the library's next half dozen most popular and in-demand books.
And as an afterthought, provide that an equal number of the sacred texts of other non-Christian religions be made equally accessible.

The reality here is that any child or individual that wants a Bible, can quite easily attain one of their own simply by requesting such from almost any local church, religious organization, or individual Christian.
This I know from experience, as I have at various times received free Bible's from each of these sources. In fact, at age 63, I am holding in my left hand while I type this, one such Bible given to me, as recorded in my childish handwriting on the flyleaf, in 1960.

But the Bible simply being available in school libraries is not what the religious agitators want.
They have a stated political agenda that will be best served by flooding our schools with Bible's and then creating religious controversies that will boost the Bible into being the primary textbook employed within the grade-school classrooms.

In other words, There is a planned political agenda afoot of implementing a Christian version of an Islamic 'education' only with the Bible replacing the Quran, to produce a generation of Christian religiously indoctrinated yet appallingly ignorant masses so that they can validate their political claims that The United States of America is a 'Christian Nation'.
God, if there be such, pity anyone who is not a Christian if they are ever permitted to carry out that agenda.

sotto voce

Schools' RE departments select for their students the translation best suited to their purpose. In Britain, where a very strange and increasingly unpopular geek politician has unprecedentedly interfered, where the increasingly despised and undemocratic Dawkins has interfered, the usual selections are the GNB (Good News Bible) on account of its easy readability yet accuracy, the NRSV (on account of its association with the Church of England) and the NIV (because it is the global best-seller, for good reasons). Children already have Bibles far better than the KJV for RE, and the Bible is not part of the curriculum in English, and never was; so these improper 'government' gifts will eventually gather dust in basements, eventually being tipped out by bemused janitors.