The Bible: unalterable "word of God" has been altered many times, idiots!

Anybody stepping out on the street, watching television, or reading the newspaper has seen them. The "blessed" proclaiming with the certainty of the hypnotized that the Bible is "the unalterable and unfallible word of God." If you take these Christ robots at face value, they spout that the Bible's every word is the same as when the All-Mighty proclaimed them. Not quite.
I don't hate to break it to you, but the Bible has been altered (deliberately and unintended) many times since complete versions containing both the New and Old Testament came out in the 5th century. In fact, when the first complete editions came out for usage in Roman churches, the Bible had already been substantially altered from it's original source material. The reasons are varying: mistranslations, the testimonies of the four apostles had been in spoken form for several hundred years before they were written down (oral histories become more inaccurate with the passage of time), and politics. Then the devations multiply once the Bible starts being translated from Latin into other languages, or re-written for domestic political reasons (the King James version, which is the most popular Protestant Bible in current usage, is a prime example of this).
The first question to deal with is "what exactly is the Bible?" It is composed of two major books: the New and Old Testament. The Old Testament is essentially the Hebrew Torah. It has the least amount of devations due to the fact that the source material is still extant. Even this has been the cause of confusion; with the most famous example being the old folk fable being the misconception that Jews had horns (the most spectacular manifestation of this is the statue of Moses in the Sistene Chapel). This is no joke, this belief carried well on into the 20th century.
So how did this misconception come about? A mistranslation is to blame for this one. Moses means "Great Light" in Hebrew. The forces of history were such that Aramic Greek became the language of commerce and government in the Eastern Medditerrean by 250 BC. In Aramic Greek, the word for light also means horns. Thus by the time the demand came around for translation of the Torah into Latin, the versions used to translate from were the Greek texts, not the original Hebrew. Thus Latin Bibles had Moses exuding great light and horns. Thus came about a common folk fable that was earnestly believed by a great amount of the "faithful" for over 1500 years.
Meanwhile, the New Testament is essentially the oral histories of four of Jesus' apostles. Due to the fact that for the first 300 years of its' existence, Christianity was a periodically persecuted cult. Thus the resources necessary to commit the four apostles testimonies to writing was generally not available. In fact, they were not until the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire (something that evangelical Christian community of the USA wants to do now). Even then, it took the newly legitimized Catholic Church over fifty years to reconcile all the versions of the gospels flying around the Empire; which was the subject of furious debate that at times turned into street riots. Needless to write, political considerations (kissing up to the Roman state and legitamizing the edict that the Bishop of Rome was the undesputed leader of the Christian World) came into it and out came the first version of the Latin Bible.
Around this time, a political development within the Roman Empire laided the groundwork for the split between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. Emperor Constantine's move of the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople. Thus the Bishop of each respective city claimed that they were the "true" head of the Church. This split remains unsolved to this day.
The other great Biblical "muddying of the waters" was the Protestant Reformation. The translation of the Bible into the respective languages of the lands in which it was being preached opened a can of worms that the Catholic Church had been trying to prevent for centuries. Before this, the Church had claimed (and still do) they they were the sole interpretors of the Bible. That's no suprise, clerics of most religions across the globe claim this vital and lucrative power for their own as a matter of course. The Reformation allowed the powers-that-be at the time to alter the "word" for their purposes.
The most clear example of this is the King James Bible. It was re-written specifically to be spoken from the pulpit, thus sounding authoritative to the masses of 17th century England. Anyone who has ever translated anything knows how dillutive such work is. The Bible is no exception.
Thus whenever I hear from some self-rightious Bible-thumper that the "Holy Book" he or she is holding is the "unaltered word of God," I am reminded that the book that person is holding has been translated at least four times from four different languages, and re-written at least three times to fit the political whims of the day. Whenever I have bothered to point this out to the "faithful", all I get is either a blank stare followed by an afirmation of blind faith, or am called any variation of "blasphemer!" Not once has any of them attempted to engage in a rational debate of the facts regarding the origins and evolution of the Bible. Perhaps they don't want to face any sort of doubt regarding their faith. After all, blind faith is a lot easier than the uncertainity of how and why we are here in the first place. "If God did not exist, it would be necessary for man to invent him" Voltaire.

Here I go!?!?

Welcome. I have decided to add my two cents to whatever I feel like writing about & put it out there for whomever cares to read it. I suspect some of you might find the name of this blog, "Vibrations from the Black Hole," a bit familiar. You would be correct. It is also the name of a column that I have written about "soccer in general & the LA Galaxy in particular" for quite a few web sites: MLS Review, Soccerspot, The Hitchhiker's Guide, etc., over the years of MLS' existance. I do not plan to discontinue that endevor.
I just desire for a forum to expand upon what I did in those past columns without editorial oversight or the need to stay within the confines of soccer. As for the potential for confusion, please allow me to offer the following: stay informed and up to date and the confusion stops. It will also allow to touch upon subjects that prior editors (ten and counting) doing their job in protecting the site's interests would not allow me to deal with. I have more interests than soccer, but that is the majority of my writing that is out in cyberspace; and I wish to expand the subject matter.
When it comes to my writing, I am a complete ham and absolutely enjoy reading my words out in public space. Anything that I feel like writing about is fair game; and I know that what will come out will enrage a substantial portion of the readership. That's fine, if you don't like and don't want to read it, click off! Don't try to ban it as way too many Christian fascists (they would be Muslim if I was writing from the Middle East) are presently emboldened to do as their as poster boy currently occupies the White House.
Among the subjects that I plan to cover is: politics, music, dogs, comics, relationships, history, religion, society, and the ways obvious and not in how they intersect, plus any other stuff that comes to my attention and demands that I blog about it. It should be fun.