Passed along in email today (a day on which
two brand new saints were created) was a
NYTimes column
by Nicholas Kristof. If nothing else -- and I think there is more that
is worth considering -- the lead is worth the price of admission.
WITH Easter and Passover freshly behind us, let’s test your knowledge of the Bible. How many mistakes can you find:
Noah
of Arc and his wife, Joan, build a boat to survive a great flood. Moses
climbs Mount Cyanide and receives 10 enumerated commandments; for all
the differences among religious denominations, the Ten Commandments are a
common bedrock that Jews, Catholics and Protestants agree on.
Sodom and his wild girlfriend, Gomorrah, soon set the standard for what not to do. They are turned to pillars of salt.
The
Virgin Mary, a young Christian woman, conceives Jesus immaculately and
gives birth to him in a Jerusalem manger. Jesus, backed by the Twelve
Apostles and their wives, the Epistles, proclaims what we call the
Golden Rule: “Do one to others before they do one to you.” The Romans
repeatedly crucify Jesus — at Cavalry, Golgotha and other sites — but he
resurrects himself each time.
Christianity
spreads through the gospels, which differ on details but all provide
eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s life from birth to death. Finally, Rome
tires of throwing Christians to lions and becomes the first country to
adopt Christianity as its religion. The Bible is translated from the
original English into countless languages.
So
how many errors did you spot? There are about 20 mistakes, which I’ve
listed at the end of this column, and they reflect the general muddling
in our society about religious knowledge.
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