That Wikipedia article is most interesting, but when push comes to shove, Mousethief is essentially right.

Fundamentalists may think they believe in the fundamentals of their religion, but among Christian fundamentalists—perhaps a better word would be "literalists"—that generally consists of believing that the Bible is the literal word of God, i.e., there really was a Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were real people (therefore, evolution is the work of the Devil), Moses really did part the Red Sea, Mary really was a virgin, and on and on ad nauseum.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Bible knows that it was assembled pretty arbitrarily from a vast number of old scrolls and manuscripts, and that the selection of what's in and what's out was based on the beliefs and prejudices of those putting it together. But once all that was decided, there was the reproduction of it—copying it. Since a great deal of the copying was done by hand by scribes in monasteries (this being long before the invention of the printing press), often the scribes, or more frequently, the abbot or the local bishop, would make changes in the texts to reflect their own ideas.

Then come the various translations (back and forth between Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and into local [vulgar] languages). In the King James version, which is generally considered by most Christian fundamentalists and literalists to be the One True Bible (the translators being inspired by God), many words and passages were altered to reflect the viewpoint of the king and of the aristocracy in general. An example is that the translation from the Aramaic (which is the language that Jesus spoke), the word in the Lord's Prayer is "forgive us our debts" (or "sins"). This was changed to "forgive us our trespasses" because the aristocracy wanted to establish "trespassing" or poaching on their lands as not just a crime, but a sin against God.

These points are not just my half-assed ideas. They come from theologians and Bible scholars who are trying to get a clear view of the Bible's history and composition, and are trying to ferret out such things as what Jesus most likely actually said (a monumental task!) rather than words that might have been put into His mouth by various translators and self-appointed editors.

Pastor Shannon Anderson of Seattle's Central Lutheran Church once held up a copy of the Bible and said firmly, "This is not the Boy Scout Manual. It is a book filled with questions, not answers!"

This, in response to the fundamentalists and literalists.

I imagine the same holds true for interpretations of the literature, myths, and legends of all religious beliefs.

As Joseph Campbell so wisely said, "Where religious believers go wrong is when they assume that their mythology is literal, historical truth."

Don Firth

P. S. When I was a kid (ten-ish or so), we had some neighbors whose children were not allowed to go to movies as the rest of us kids were. Radio was also forbidden (no "Lone Ranger," no "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy," no "I Love a Mystery"). No Sunday comics either. Dancing was a sin. And music, other than hymns, was also forbidden. And they weren't allowed to come out and play on Sundays.

Somehow, their parents had got all of this out of the Bible (though where the Bible mentions movies or the Lone Ranger radio program, I've never been able to find).

The rest of us kids could hardly believe what we considered to be the cruelty of their parents. We pitied those kids.

By the way, some of us did go to Sunday School. But not at the same church our neighbors went to.