re: #199 Sol Berdinowitz

Basically, only idiots look on it as something to be taken literally. That only leads rational people to reject it outright, which is not the point, either.

The Reverend Shelby Spong makes a good case for the latter in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, and also makes a convincing case that St paul was a repressed, self-loathing homosexual, which goes a long way in explaining why Christian fundamentlists ahve such a hard time dealing with teh gey.

Spong is an interesting bird and there are some good arguments in his books but I preferred “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time” and other works by Marcus Borg. Just fits my style more than Bishop Spong’s in your face “I’m a Bishop and an Atheist” attitude. On my Christmas wishlist is Borg’s newest “Evolution of the Word” on the historical writing of the NT with a special focus on the order the books were written in from 1st Thessalonians first to 2nd Peter as the last.