The NSA-FBI Bible

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

The NSA – FBI Bible

A survey by The American Bible Society suggests that 41% of Americans read the Bible on their Orwellian Telescreens.

Well, maybe.

Who says that a text beamed Scottie-like into that little plastic box in one’s hands is the / a Bible?

A telescreen Bible (maybe it’s a Bible) makes worse an existing problem: in a free nation, anyone can label any old book lying around The Bible and sell it as such.  If, say, five folks get together for an informal Bible study, they are likely to bring with them five different texts said to be the Bible – King James Version (with the English canon of 1611 or the smaller canon more common in this country?), New King James Version, NIV, RSV, or Douay-Rheims (and then Douay-Rheims or Douay-Rheims-Challoner?)?

If the five individuals bring to their group study printed Bibles, each one can be sure of this – the Bible he (which here is gender-neutral) owned when he went to bed was not changed overnight.

If the five individuals bring to their study their Orwellian Telescreens with the Bible as – may God forgive us – an app (or is that App or even Saint App?), they cannot be sure that the words have not been changed since last they accessed the text.

Of course it can happen.

When one of the first e-reader-thingies was available, the company and a literary agency inadvertently made a contract error over the purchase of a certain novel.  The X-Treem E-Game X-Beyond-E-Normal E-Reader E-Company (whatever) withdrew the novel from thousands of Orwellian Telescreens quicker than you can say “Harry Potter has cooties.”  The thousands of people who had bought the book were refunded their money, and life went on.

The point is that a service provider possesses the power to make any book, or all of them, disappear completely from your telescreen.  If the provider can do that, then modifying the text is even easier.

When you open a physical copy of a Bible you have owned for years, you can be sure of two things.  One is that everyone else at the table will tell you that you have the wrong Bible, that what you need is the New Intercontinental Revised Inter-Something Else Brotherhood Fellowship Bible, endorsed by Bob’s Publishing Company of Old Chowdertown, Massachusetts.  The second matter of which you can be sure is that nothing in that printed Bible has changed since you acquired it.

With an electronic Bible, you cannot be sure of that.

Another matter is that when you read a few verses in a printed Bible, the occasion is solely between you and God.  When you read a few verses of a Bible (maybe it’s a Bible) on your Orwellian Telescreen, then it’s a matter among you, God, and whoever else may choose to listen in on the World Wide Party Line: the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, or that strange individual down the road.

Not important, you say?  It could be.

A common piece of advice is to evaluate a problem according to the Bible: a cranky employer, an ethical issue in the workplace, your prodigal son, anything.  If you look up relevant sources on a moral issue on the Orwellian Telescreen, you make your query open to everyone on the planet at any time, for everything floating in the aether is stored in multiple computers.  Your search is not going to go away.

It may not be of use to anyone now, but it will be of use against you when someday you apply for a really high-up job, stand for state congressman, propose a business loan, or are accused of any affront listed in the increasingly large catalogue of thought-crimes (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579040671355619380.html.).

The Orwellian Telescreen is not the Garden of Eden, but there are real serpents lurking behind the electronic leaves.

And besides, reading a printed Bible makes it easier for your friends to tell you that you’ve got the wrong Bible.

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