Response to Anonymous Criticism of "Neville Goddard and the Development of the Gospel from Mistake to Correct"

I received a useful criticism in the comments section of "Neville Goddard and the Development of the Gospel from Mistake to Correct" (http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2013/07/neville-goddard-and-development-of.html). I couldn't release the comment because of conflicts in its scripting (it apparently had been cut from one format and pasted into blogger's format). It was an "ESI" -- an Evangelical Standard Insult from Anonymous.

Said Anonymous:

"I just hope by now that you’ve been committed like the nut-job Neville Goddard should have been. How can any of you believe that garbage and interpret the Bible like you do with a straight face? You twist and turn it to however it feels good to you. I can only hope that your wife talked some sense into you, that is, if she hasn’t left you already. I’ll pray to the REAL God in Heaven for your soul."

I could reply snidely to Anonymous, but I see a jewel in his vitriol. He says, "How can any of you believe that garbage and interpret the Bible like you do with a straight face?" That is just the thing, Mr. Anonymous, that you do not understand: you do not have a Bible. I got onto this kick about twenty years ago CORRECTING MY BIBLE. You've got a study Bible, no? Are there not hundreds of margin notes in it correcting and explaining the text? My favorite is The Companion Bible edited by Ethelbert Bullinger. The margins are more than the columns of text. It is King James Version, which is known to have several hundreds of errors and mistranslations. When I read it, my mind automatically accounts for those errors and, with Bullinger's margin notes, corrects my reading.

As Bullinger notes in his Appendixes, the Hebrew text has been edited so that even an accurate translation still is not what was originally said  (see, e.g., app. 30-33). The Sopherim changed it because they didn't like the original's theology! Taking some of Bullinger's observations to Strong's Concordance's Hebrew Dictionary and New Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance, I found that much of the Bible, though it says what it means, does not mean what it says. That is because we take what it says WRONGLY.

If you will read some books by Jews, you will find that they do not read the Bible like we do. I am talking about books by Rabbi David A. Cooper and Aryeh Kaplan. Come on, you've got a computer -- you e-mailed me. Look up Baal Shem Tov and search out what Jewish Rabbis say about the oneness of God. Their Bible is not your Bible. Their heads do not see the same things you see BECAUSE YOU HAVE GOT THE WRONG BIBLE. And you have a bunch of church doctrines you read the Bible by that are made up out of a bunch of fantasies based on a bunch of things that the Bible really does not say.

I can interpret the Bible like I do with a straight face because I am making the effort to find the real Bible and translate it and interpret it the way it was written and meant. I am not twisting and turning it; it is twisting and turning me!

Don't take my word for this. Victor Alexander happens to be a native speaker of modern Aramaic who studied ancient Aramaic and cuneiform writing, the basis for ancient Hebrew and the Aramaic of the first century Israel.
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Says Alexander:

"It's mind boggling that there are so many variations in the Bible Text as translated. Aside from all the possible reasons why the Scriptures were mistranslated over a period of two thousand years, there is the unanswered question: how could so many translators have looked at the same verses and come up with totally different interpretations? There is this, that no one has mentioned before: the translators didn't know the original languages well enough, they didn't grasp the poetic elegance, they lacked translating skill, and the task of translating so much text overwhelmed them.

"I come up to verses everyday that I say to myself, 'They just didn't know what this meant.' Sometimes the translators didn't understand a certain idiom or expression. Other times, they simply made up something that may have sounded good in the language they knew well -- the language into which they were translating.

Sometimes the translators came pretty close to the meaning, but usually it is clear that they didn't know the original languages and relied too much on Greek and Latin. (http://www.v-a.com/bible/  June 4, 2015).

Also from Alexander:

"The translation you find on this website is not only different in a few passages; there are differences in every sentence. There is at least one word in every verse that has been translated differently by the Western translations from the Greek and Latin. If you look at these differences you might conclude that they are superficial, that the meaning is still the same; but this is not the case, and there are many reasons why this is the case.

"The first reason is that as Christians certain phrases and doctrines have been drilled into our heads. There are all the beautiful hymns and the marvelous sermons preached on certain concepts that have become second nature to our faith. There are lyrics and music that have warmed our hearts for years. There are doctrines that have sunk deep into our spirit. And there is all the fellowship that we share with our members in the congregations we have attended for decades. The weight of all these teachings are impossible for most people to shake loose.

"This is why the Ancient Aramaic Scriptures do not reach the great majority of Americans and the English language speaking people of the world. At best my translation project reaches only a handful of people everyday. I know that there is at least one word that has been mistranslated in every sentence of the Scriptures, but how can I present all the wrong translations of every passage of the Bible? Many of my supporters have asked me to choose a few of these passages -- maybe the critical ones -- and write about them. This I have done, but the result is still nothing; most people just ignore a few differences. There are millions of differences between the translations of all the churches already. So the few differences that I present are simply ignored or chalked off to 'Okay, what else do you have to tell me?'

"Here it is one more time: when you change one word in every sentence of the Scriptures, over the years these words take on a different meaning. Every translation into other languages magnifies the errors. The new interpretations of the Scriptures produce new denominations. The sermons that are preached by these denominations multiply and the end result is a gigantic divide in theological matters. This is how the Roman Catholic Church split from the Orthodox Church, and later how the Protestants split from the Catholic Church. Now we have four hundred and fifty different translations of the Bible in English alone.

"This is the dilemma I'm facing now. How do I make it known that the Scriptures are preserved in the Ancient Aramaic language of the time of Eashoa Msheekha, and that if we go back to these Scriptures we will be able to read the original writings of the Apostles? I have translated the New Testament and some of the Books of the Old Testament. I'm translating the Book of Proverbs now. I invite you to read my translations as I post them online, and purchase the Books I have published so far. I will continue despite the difficulties of reaching people on the ever expanding universe of the Internet. This is my mission" (Emphasis mine -- Steele). (http://www.v-a.com/bible/AAC/AAC-blog-1.html  Mar. 31, 2014).
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So you see what I am saying, Anonymous, that you do not even have a real Bible? You have never even seen one. You may ardently believe the "bible" you have, but IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE INSPIRED SCRIPTURES FROM REAL GOD IN HEAVEN that you are going to pray to for me (thank you very much, though, for the thought). Your concept of Him must be in error because the Bible you learn about Him from is nothing but error. THAT is why you should want to get a better version of the Bible and with it consider what the Rabbis and "nut-jobs" like Neville Goddard and I write so you can understand it. I hope you do not think I'm doing this for my health. At 3:40 AM?!