Of all the terrifying trends under the umbrella of Mr. Trump, the rise of Christian Nationalism is the most sinister and dangerous. It is a descent into the vortex of anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-enlightenment leading to a society run by dominant males and subservient females.

In a country of 300 million people with access to modern medicine, terabytes of data, and instant worldwide communication, a significant number still believe in signs, astrology, magic, angels, and Biblical abiogenesis.

These fundamentalists, preying on these dark ages beliefs, would drag us back into the era of witchcraft and demons with their medieval philosophies.

Their authority for such a philosophy resides in a book translated from ancient languages to Greek, Latin, German, and English, with hundreds of versions and conflicting translations of the text. And keep in mind that for most of the period since the first written versions of the Bible were translated into Latin, the lingua franca of the church, it was a sin punishable by death to translate it into a language anyone outside the clergy could read.

And when these Christian Nationalists offer Mr. Trump as the one to battle the rise of this mythical Anti-Christ, it goes beyond the hysterical to tragic.

Trump is the least likely of any to be an example of Christian piety or defender of the faith. Even if he had the good fortune to be around during the time of Jesus Christ and heard him speak, his only chance at entering heaven would be to ride one of the crosses in the back row. Redemption by way of good timing rather than a shining paragon of the faith.

Which leads me to wonder why people fail to see the contradiction in that story. If we assume the circumstances of the crucifixion to be accurate, those two criminals on the crosses in the back row didn’t need to seek redemption, didn’t need to repent, didn’t need to do anything but have the good/bad fortune to be crucified at the same time as Jesus. Hmm.

But putting Mr. Trump and other contradictions aside for the moment—oh, that I wish that to be possible—let’s look at this authority.

The version of the Bible most people are familiar with, the King James Version (KJV), was a product of, wait for it, political intrigue. James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, needed to shore up his power with the ardent Scots, who hated the English Catholics, and with the other various factions.

Meanwhile, the Protestants created their own version in the Geneva Bible. And in an interesting side note to the history of the Bible in America, it was the Geneva Bible that accompanied the Pilgrims to America.

Here’s the same passage in the KJV and Geneva Bible.

Isaiah 7:14 1599 Geneva Bible
¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel.

KJV
¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Not a lot of difference, but how can the inerrant word of God be different depending on who is doing the translation?

Just for fun, here’s a version from the Orthodox Jewish Bible.

Yeshayah 7:14
14 Therefore Hashem Himself shall give you an ot (sign); Hinei, HaAlmah (the unmarried young virgin) shall conceive, and bear Ben, and shall call Shmo Immanu El (God is with us)

Here’s the same verse in the New Revised Edition Anglicized Catholic Edition

Isaiah 7:14
14 Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

Now here is where it gets interesting. The whole virgin thing has a glitch. In the original Hebrew, the word in the verse is “alma” which means young woman. Other words represent “virgin” such as “betulah.” Why is “alma” translated as ‘virgin’ in most versions, you might ask? And why do we call him Jesus instead of Immanuel or Shmo Immanu El?

Again, the politics of power and control.

The Catholic Church in 451 A.D. was the dominant force in the known world. There were factions and disagreements, so a meeting was called to resolve and consolidate the faith into one doctrine. The Council of Chalcedon.

You may have heard about an earlier meeting, the Council of Nicaea, which resolved the issue of the dual nature of Jesus. At the time, some believed God to be eternal and Jesus to be created by God, also eternal but only from the point of his creation. The Council at Nicaea said nope. Jesus and God are the same; thus, the beginning of the Holy Trinity, or at least leading to more creative interpretations to concoct that myth.

By 451 A.D., more heretics began teaching conflicting doctrines, an intolerable situation to Rome, thus a more refined explanation arose from this new council.

1. God the Father almighty and in
2. Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord,
3. who was born of the holy Spirit and the virgin Mary.

“These three statements wreck the tricks of nearly every heretic. When God is believed to be both almighty and Father, the Son is clearly proved to be co-eternal with him, in no way different from the Father, since he was born God from God, almighty from the Almighty, co-eternal from the Eternal, not later in time, not lower in power, not unlike in glory, not distinct in being. The same eternal, only-begotten of the eternal begetter was born of the holy Spirit and the virgin Mary. His birth in time in no way subtracts from or adds to that divine and eternal birth of his: but its whole purpose is to restore humanity, who had been deceived, so that it might defeat death and, by its power, destroy the devil who held the power of death. Overcoming the originator of sin and death would be beyond us, had not he whom sin could not defile, nor could death hold down, taken up our nature and made it his own. He was conceived from the holy Spirit inside the womb of the virgin mother. Her virginity was as untouched in giving him birth as it was in conceiving him. ” The Council of Chalcedon – 451 A.D.

The reality of an eternal God and of Jesus —the key to everlasting life —was the source of the Church’s authority. John 14:6 (KJV) “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Her virginity was as untouched in giving him birth as it was in conceiving him.

The Council of Chalcedon – 451 A.D.

But some thought of Jesus and God as separate. The council put an end to this heresy. “Whilst remaining pre-existent, he begins to exist in time.” More illogical contortions to prove the impossible.

But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the needs of religious abhorrence of earthly pleasures. Jesus could not be tainted by such things.

“By an unprecedented kind of birth, because it was inviolable virginity which supplied the material flesh without experiencing sexual desire. What was taken from the mother of the Lord was the nature without the guilt. And the fact that the birth was miraculous does not imply that in the lord Jesus Christ, born from the virgin’s womb, the nature is different from ours. The same one is true God and true man. … Her virginity was as untouched in giving him birth as it was in conceiving him. The Council of Chalcedon – 451 A.D.

And the subsequent translations of the Bible were molded to fit the doctrine.

If one wants to submit a document as evidence in court, one must prove both its origin and authenticity. We have hundreds of court cases trying to interpret the language of the Constitution, and that is in the original English.

Why would any modern nation, or world for that matter, choose to ignore science and enlightenment and base a society on a book of questionable origin, with myriad interpretations, and modified over the millennia by organizations with a stake in the results?

Because it’s in the Bible?

P.S. Another interesting tidbit. The American Standard Edition of 1952 used the words “young woman” instead of “Virgin.” It took the fundamentalists until 1978 to get it changed. Biblical politics? Who knew?