Philip Hart wrote: > >And as far as I understand (elements of) Christianity only recently came >to the view that 0) Xians should have a personal unintermediated >interaction with the text 1) in a particular language 2) in a literalist >way. > > Ummm, no, no, and no. Back in the day, the Bible selections read at services were the only pieces that *were* in the language of the congretation. In the Reformation, Protestant services did head towards being entirely in the language "understanded of the people", and there was more interest in the Bible being taken home and studied--but this would have been impossible without the printing press. In fact, the lack of ready copying facilities is what tended to keep the Bible in the hands of the clergy. The Church of Rome certainly did its own bit of literalist pigheadedness--viz Galileo, so this is not a new concept. What has made certain branches of Protestantism so noxious lately has been; A), a tendency to interpret the Bible literally and without reference to the various underlying literary forms, such as letters, laws, myths, and histories; B), the notion that the Bible *in and of itself* without reference to tradition or scholarship is all that is necessary for religious understanding, (This leads to people saying "If King James English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"); and C), an undue emphasis on the legalisms and bloodthirstiness of the Old Testament, as applied literalistically and with preference for texts that support certain prejudices and phobias. The folks that condemn homosexuality are perfectly willing to eat lobster or wear blended fibers, even though those are both condemned with equal harshness. HTH Mia