This for 'someone' of 'rank' where we were in another thread and I dint get to

[marylandblue]

19. We are all the beneficiaries of our murderous ancestors

And the text itself is transmitted, altered and reinterpreted by a tradition that claims authority over it. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox claim you can't actually read and understand the text without the authorized interpretation. It's really only Protestants that claim to read Scripture alone, but they don't really do that either. Then some secular readers taking cue from the Protestants try to read it the same way, but now with a secular understanding. But we can't do it either. We are really just taking educated guesses. We don't know who actually wrote most of it, when they wrote it and how it might have changed before being finalized.

So if one wants to keep a tradition alive without the murderous parts, does that still make one a murderer too?