Biblical Manipulation: Twenty Facts Your Pastor Does Not Want You To Know.

Few Christians seem to know much about the text they hold dear. They rely on their pastors to provide them with “knowledge.” However, their pastors, who have studied the Bible for years, often give them only “devotional” messages from the Bible, selectively choosing passages that allow for modern interpretations. The messages these pastors present are designed to simply make their congregations feel good, which keeps them coming back, and the money rolling in. As a result, Christians know almost nothing of the textual history of their religion, from how the bible came to be, to historical aspects of Jesus’s life.

This book attempts to communicate some of the information these pastors are leaving out--information like the fact that Jesus dies on different days in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, or the fact that the famous story of the woman taken in adultery was a late addition to the text. We show some of the way the Bible has changed, and continues to change through the modernization of translation. We take a close look at what hidden information scholars have known about for hundreds of years, and pastors are taught in seminaries all over the country but forget about as soon as they get their credentials.

The book is intended to be a fast-paced, interesting read. It attempts to communicate scholarly knowledge in everyday language. Chapters give a small amount of “raw” facts to whet readers’ appetites for more. The book eschews scholarly jargon. Readers might find the information will get them thinking about how the Bible was put together and why certain aspects of the Bible exist at all. Mostly readers might begin to question why they’ve never heard of this information after attending church for many years.