Teresa Nielsen Hayden on Why Burning the Iraqi Museum was a Disaster.

Why it's a bad idea to burn old libraries -- April 21, 2003

She happens to mention The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles as an old document found in an old library.

That inspires this digression. The document is very interesting church history and has some interesting implications. It is the very first religious instruction manual and many churches today have different practices.

Surprisingly, it also condemns abortion. Jesus, as a rabbi, probably would have believed the soul entered the body with the first breath. Getting an unvarnished greek translation of the Bible is great as most of the language is simple and beautiful and free of centuries of buildup of different meanings. "Spirit" or "soul" in modern Bibles is "breath" in the original Greek, "sin" is "mistake", "heaven" is "sky", etc. The Bible is better unvarnished, not necessarily good, but better.