Excerpt   

The following is the Introduction taken from the Study New Testament for Lesbians, Gays, Bi, and Transgender.

“Is there a man, learned or unlearned, who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands, and perceives that what he reads does not suit his traditonal tastes, break out immediately into violent language, and call me a forger, and a profane person for having the nerve to add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or corrections to them?
It is useless to play the lyre for a donkey.
So great is the strength of established usage that even acknowledged corruptions please most people, for they prefer to have their copies nice rather than accurate.”
Jerome (4th c. AD) 

Introduction.

Generally speaking, many Christians are a judgmental lot and do not approve of women as Church leaders, divorced people, or homosexuals. However, these biases are not supported by the Bible itself. Some may appear to be, due to mistranslation, others are not supported even by that. Many Christians, when shown that a word they thought meant one thing in fact means something entirely different, simply do not wish to know. They prefer to disregard the evidence in order to adhere to their own closely held traditions.

In the New Testament, Jesus railed against legalistic religious leaders, and told us to beware of them. He at no point told us to beware of women as Church leaders, of divorced people, or of homosexuals. And of course he would not, as the New Testament in the original Greek does not speak against these three groups in any way whatsoever.

History.

For centuries, parts of the Church have tried to prevent correct Bible translation reaching the hands of the people. The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in the 1380s AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford scholar. Some years after he died, the Pope ordered his bones dug up and destroyed.

The Roman church executed people found with a Bible written in any language other than Latin. One of Wycliffe’s followers, Hus, was burned at the stake in 1415, and Wycliffe’s Bibles were thrown in the fire. In 1517 seven people were burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church for teaching their children to say the Lord’s Prayer in English rather than in Latin.

  Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450s. The first book ever printed was a Latin language Bible. In the 1490s another Oxford professor, and the personal physician to King Henry the 7th and 8th, Thomas Linacre, read the Gospels in Greek, and was horrified at the difference between the original Greek and  the Latin Vulgate. He wrote about the shocking Vulgate translation of the original Greek in his dairy.
Erasmus was compelled to correct the vastly inaccurate Latin Vulgate. In  1516 he published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. This was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in over 1,000 years. The 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus further focused attention on just how corrupt and inaccurate the Latin Vulgate was.

In the 1530s Martin Luther published the entire Bible in German. Just prior to that Tyndale was forced to flee from England for translating the New Testament into English from the original Greek. In 1525-1526 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language. They were burned as fast as the Bishop could confiscate them. The church declared it contained thousands of errors. People found in possession of one of Tyndale’s New Testaments were burned to death. Tyndale was imprisoned for 500 days and then strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.

Myles Coverdale and John Rogers (alias Thomas Matthew) were followers of Tyndale. They continued his English Bible project. Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 printed the first complete Bible in the English language. However, instead of the original Greek, he translated from Luther’s German text and the Latin. The first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535, and is known as the Coverdale Bible.

In 1537 John Rogers under the pseudonym Thomas Matthews worked with Tyndale on the second complete English Bible. This was the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew. It was a composite made up of Tyndale’s Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535 edition) and Coverdale’s Bible and some of Roger’s own translation of the text. John Rogers was burned at the stake on February 4, 1555, for refusing to renounce his translation work.

In 1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the “Great Bible”. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, and was distributed to every church and chained to the pulpit. A reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Bible read in English. Cranmer’s Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible due to its great size.

King Henry VIII had requested that the Pope permit him to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. The Pope refused so Henry renounced Roman Catholicism and declared that as he was the reigning head of State he was also the new head of the Church. This new branch of the Church became known as the Anglican Church or the Church of England. King Henry took on the role of the Pope. His first act was to annoy Rome by funding the printing of the scriptures in English. This was the first legal English translation of the Bible.

In the 1550s, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was sympathetic to the reformer refugees. Among those who met in Geneva were Myles Coverdale and John Foxe (publisher of the Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham. With the help of theologians John Knox and John Calvin, the Church of Geneva set out to produce a Bible. The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560. It became known as the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, for the purpose of finding passages easily. There were extensive marginal notes and references next to every chapter. This was a first. The Geneva Bible remained more popular than the King James Version for many decades. It was the first Bible taken to America, and was the Bible of the Puritans and Pilgrims. The Geneva Bible has been out of print since 1644.

At end of Queen Mary’s reign, the reformers were able to return to England. The Anglican Church, now under Queen Elizabeth I, allowed the printing and distribution of Geneva Bibles. However, the notes were strongly against the Church. It was decided to have a new Bible produced which did not have these bothersome notes.  In 1568, a revision of the Great Bible known as the Bishop’s Bible was introduced. It did not become popular.

In 1582, the Roman Catholic Church decided to have an official Roman Catholic English translation. Instead of translating from the original Greek, they used the corrupt Latin Vulgate. This version became known as the Rheims New Testament.

Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. Clergy approached the new King in 1604 and announced their desire for a new translation to replace the Bishop’s Bible. James was none too happy about the notes which disparaged kings. About 50 people made a new translation, heavily using several other translations rather than translating from the original Greek. They relied heavily upon translations:  Tyndale’s New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, the Rheims New Testament, and they relied heavily upon the Latin Vulgate. The King James Bible was printed in 1611. It is often called “The Authorised Version” but it was never actually authorized by the king or the church. It was an Anglican version printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by the very people who opposed Protestants and in many cases ordered their execution.

The King James Bible produced by the Anglican Church took decades to overcome the Protestant Church’s popular Geneva Bible. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church persecuted Protestants throughout the 1600s. John Bunyan who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress was imprisoned by the Anglican church for the crime of preaching the Gospel. The Puritans and the Pilgrims who left England for America rejected the King James Version and took with them the Geneva Bible.

In the 1880s the English Revised Version become the first English Bible version to become popular after the KJV times. This was also noteworthy as it was the first time that the 14 Apocryphal books were omitted. Up until the 1880s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books rather than 66. The original 1611 King James Version contained the Apocrypha, as did all the earlier Bible versions. The Apocrypha has only been missing from the Bible in the last 120 years.

The Bible in Modern Times.

Many people are not aware that most available Bible translations are backed by denominations or specific ideological groups. Certain members of the USA “Religious Right” have successfully controlled the availability and content of some Bible versions. In 1997, lobbyists applied considerable pressure to the publisher (Zondervan) of the New International Inclusive Language Bible (NIVI) which was published in England, not to release it in the USA. The NIVI’s crime? To translate gender language accurately; for example, to translate the Greek word meaning “person” by the English word “person” instead of the traditional “man”. The lobbyists alleged that it was “tampering with” God’s Word, and “misquoting God”.

In 2001 the Religious Right lobbied to prevent the New Testament translation known as Today’s New International Version (TNIV) being used by three major denominations. Their own national Christian bookstore chain refused to sell it. The lobbyists have been spawned mainly by the anti-equality for women organization The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) which is allied closely with the Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention’s giant bookstore chain Lifeway Christian Resources is the parent of Broadman and Holman Publishers which publishes the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Lifeway bookstores refused to sell the TNIV. Of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, said he was excited “if for no other reason than we will have a major translation we can control.”

A number of the same lobbyists were members of the Translation Committee of the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible, a direct market competitor to the TNIV. The ESV had on its board of advisors several people who were signatories against the TNIV immediately upon its release. It is worth noting that the ESV was released only shortly before the TNIV. The ESV was published by Crossway Books, the President of which, Lane T. Dennis, was one of the original CBMW Council members and later on the CBMW Board of Reference. Crossway Books publish many books by CBMW members.

The foremost lobbyists are members of the secretive organization Council for National Policy (CNP) which is hostile to the idea of separation of church and state, and lobbies against the Equal Rights Amendment. The CNP enjoys tax free status, and plans the strategy for the Religious Right. Among its members have been Christian Coalition founder and The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood founding member Pat (Marion) Robertson; founder of Focus on the Family James Dobson; founders of Concerned Women for America and members of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Beverly and Tim LaHaye; John Ashcroft, the Bush administration’s former Attorney General; Ed Meese, the Reagan administration’s Attorney General; Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed; the U.S. Taxpayers Party founder, Howard Phillips; Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt; Christian Reconstructionists (who favor the death penalty for abortionists, homosexuals, uncontrollable teenagers, among others) including Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony. 

It is disturbing that the very group which arguably has done more than any other in history to control the availability and content of Bibles is one of the most politically powerful groups. Nevertheless, there are various reasons why errors in word meaning continue to be promulgated in Bibles.

Word meaning.

For centuries, the meanings of numerous New Testament words remained unknown, thus translators were left to guess. In the late 1880s and again in the mid 1970s, large amounts of papyri and inscriptions were discovered. These impacted our knowledge of word meaning in the New Testament to such a degree that scholars labeled the finds “sensational” and “dramatic.”

The papyri were written at the time of the New Testament, and touched upon all aspects of life, comprising everyday private letters from ordinary people, contracts of marriage and divorce, tax papers, official decrees, birth and death notices, and business documents. Large numbers of previously uncommon words found in the New Testament now appeared commonly in everyday documents as well as on inscriptions, and so mysteries of word meaning were solved. (This has nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls.)

       Yet nearly every New Testament translation of today follows the traditional translations of the earlier versions, which were published centuries before the evidence from the papyri and inscriptions revealed to us the meanings of numerous New Testament words.

In 1895, the celebrated German scholar Deissmann published a large body of papyri, and between 1914 and 1929 Moulton and Milligan published documentary (“documentary” or “non-literary” meaning papyri and inscriptions) vocabulary in eight volumes in their Vocabulary of the Greek Testament. Although this was an enormous advance, Moulton and Milligan still had no entry for about 17 percent of New Testament words. Of the words they did include in their lexicon, there were 800 words for which they did not list documentary attestation. Due to ongoing discoveries, the work was out of date before the last volume had been published. Nearly every recent New Testament dictionary and concordance is based on this old work while some are based on work prior even to that of Moulton and Milligan.

       Recent discoveries of word meaning have revolutionized our understanding of words which appear in the New Testament, but sadly, this scholarship has been largely ignored by Bible translators. Several thousand Greek inscriptions and papyri were published for the first time, or reissued, in 1976. In that year alone, 15 volumes of recently discovered papyri were published. Light was thrown on a large number of words previously unattested. Finds are ongoing: several thousand new inscriptions come to light each year. In the last two decades, four thousand inscriptions have been found at Ephesos alone.

    These discoveries have been largely overlooked by Bible translators, despite greatly exciting New Testament scholars and lexicographers. Laypersons and a significant number of Bible translators alike are unaware of the main body of scholarship as it is tucked away in technical academic journals. Thus the dictionary work we see in today’s New Testament translations follows Tyndale’s translation of 1534 and the King James Version of 1611 with a disregard for modern evidence for Greek word meaning. 

      For centuries Matthew 11:12 (for example) caused problems for translators, and left readers wondering why heaven should suffer violence or be forcefully seized by people. Only in recent years was it discovered that the sentence is full of technical legal terminology of the time. The actual translation is, “From the time of John the Baptizer until now, Heaven’s Realm is being used or even robbed by people who have no legal right to it. This stops those who do have a legal right to it from enjoying their own property.”

The word arsenokoites in 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 has been assumed to mean “homosexual”. However, the word does not mean “homosexual”, and its range of meaning includes one who anally penetrates another (female or male), a rapist, a murderer, or an extortionist. When used in the meaning “anal penetrator”, it does not apply exclusively to males as the receptors, as it was also used for women receptors. The word does not appear in any Greek literary source until the poets of the Imperial period. This late occurrence is most significant as  the Greeks wrote at length on male-male sexual relationships.

The cognate verb appears in the Sibylline Oracles ii.73  me arsenokoitein, me sukophantein, mete phoneuein, where it is in company with committing extortion and committing murder. Pseudo-Macarius Aegyptius, Homiliae spirituales IV 4.22, stated that the people of Sodom sinned greatly and did not repent, and “created the ultimate offense in their evil purpose against the angels, wishing to work arsenokoitia upon them”. Aristides said that the Greek gods commit murders and poisonings, adulteries, thefts and arsenokoites in the context of rape. The 6th c. astrologer Rhetorius Aegyptius used the term as women with the receptors: “arsenokoites (of women) and rapists of women.”

Relevant Knowledge.
    

E.D. Hirsch stated, “To grasp the words on a page we have to know a lot of that isn’t down on the page.”[1]  The reader’s context determines how a certain passage will be understood. Linguist specialist in Bible translation, Ernst-August Gutt, explained contextual implications with this example.[2]
Mother: “What’s your new teacher like?”
Daughter: “He rides to school on a motorbike.”
If the daughter liked men who rode motorbikes, the mother would know that her daughter liked the teacher.
However, if the daughter did not like men who rode motorbikes, the mother would know that the daughter disliked the teacher.

Yet if the reader read without context the question by the mother and the answer by the daughter, the reader would not know whether or not the daughter liked the teacher, and in fact, the reader could well assume that the daughter was not answering the mother’s question. Some context would be necessary for the reader to arrive at the correct conclusion.

As would be expected, the original writers of the Bible did not supply extra information to their readers when such context was well known to their readers.  It was simply unnecessary. Gutt states, “Returning to Bible translation, it is obvious that in many cases the cognitive environment of the target language audience shows very little resemblance to that of the original audience.”[3] He continues, “One of the most surprising facts about modern Bible translation is that this major barrier to successful comprehension is given very little attention… The fact that differences in background knowledge are likely to cause major comprehension problems for the modern reader are rarely mentioned.”[4]

Dr Gutt even suggests warnings should appear in the prefaces of Bible translations. He states, “They are also important, to alert them to the possibility that even seemingly clear texts may actually have quite a different meaning, due to differences in background knowledge. This possibility of misunderstanding is, in some ways, more serious than that of obscurity, since obscurity will be noticed, but misinterpretations often go unrecognized.”[5]

Contexts of certain Biblical passages have come to light only in recent times, and the contexts have shown the original interpretation, and thus traditional translation, to be gravely wrong.

For example, in Matthew 19 the Rabbis asked Jesus about his interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1. The context, discovered only in recent years, was that there were two different Forms of Divorce available at the time. The “Any Matter” is a technical term from Jewish divorce law, a Form of Divorce introduced by the Rabbi Hillel. The other Form of Divorce, divorce on the ground of “General Sexual Immorality”, was available to both men and women, both of whom were able to divorce the partner on the specific grounds based on Exodus 21:10-11. This traditional type of divorce was becoming rarer by the start of the 1st c., being replaced by the “Any Matter” divorce, which was for men only, and popular as no grounds had to be shown and there was no court case. For an “Any Matter” divorce, the man simply had to write out a certificate of divorce and give it to his wife. By Jesus’ time, the “Any Matter” was the more popular form of divorce, but the rabbis were still arguing about the legalities of it. The disciples of Shammai were particularly opposed to it.

Matthew 19:3-8 has been mistranslated giving the impression that Jesus was asked the question, “Is it ever legal to divorce?” and he answered, “No, except on the grounds of sexual immorality.” This is not the case. Jesus was asked if it was legal to divorce on the grounds of “Any Matter” and he answered, “No, only on the grounds of ‘General Sexual Immorality’”. In other words, he was disagreeing with the “Any Matter” form of divorce. Jesus certainly was not saying that at that time, or in the time to come, people were never to divorce except on the ground of sexual immorality.

In another example, Romans 1 and Jude have been said to speak against homosexuality. However, the “flesh of different kind” was referring not to homosexuality but to “The Watchers” (angels) coming to earth and “whoring after” human women. This is well documented in the apocryphal literature.

2 Enoch speaks of those who “went against nature” and “who boast of their wicked deeds, stealing, lies, calumnies, envy, rancour, fornication, murder, and who, accursed, steal the souls of men, who, seeing the poor take away their goods and themselves wax rich, injuring them for other men’s goods; who being able to satisfy the empty, made the hungering to die; being able to clothe, stripped the naked; and who knew not their creator, and bowed to the soulless and lifeless gods, who cannot see nor hear, vain gods, who also built hewn images and bow down to unclean handiwork.” In similar language in Romans 1, Paul speaks of those who “exchanged God’s truth for the lie, the idol, and worshipped and served the creation other than the Creator.. the females exchanged natural sex for what is other than nature. And the same goes for males too. The males got rid of natural sex with the female and burned with their mutual yearning – males producing indecency with one another, and as a result got what was coming to them for their mistake. They didn’t think it fit to acknowledge God, so he gave them an unfit mind, to do things that are not appropriate. They have been filled with every kind of wrongdoing, evil, greedy grasping behavior, malice - full to the utmost with jealousy, murder, quarrels, deceit, nasty dispositions. They are people who give out information, whether true or false, which is detrimental to the character or welfare of others. They are slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of bad deeds. They are not obedient to parents, they don’t have intelligence, they do not keep covenant, they do not have natural affection, they do not have mercy.”

Jude speaks of angels who did not uphold their own office, and that God has held them with eternal ropes down in the gloom. In the next sentence Jude says that “just like these” Sodom and Gomorrah “who went after different flesh” serve as an example of those who undergo punishment in the eternal fire. Jude quotes 1 Enoch in verses 14-15. 1 Enoch 6-10 states that 200 angels came to earth, lusted after human women causing “defilement” and producing progeny. The Book of Jubilees 5 sets out the punishment by God upon these angels. 2 Enoch 10 states, “And (they)… showed me there a very terrible place, and there were all manner of tortures in that place: cruel darkness and unillumined gloom, and there is no light there, but murky fire constantly flaming aloft, and there is a fiery river coming forth, and that whole place is everywhere fire, and everywhere there is frost and ice, thirst and shivering, while the bonds are very cruel... This place is reserved for those who sin against nature.” Note the words “sin against nature”.

The Testament of Naphtali 3.3.4-5 states that the women of Sodom had sex with angels, who “changed the order of their nature, whom also the Lord cursed at the flood, and for their sakes made desolate the earth, that it should be uninhabited and fruitless.” Note the term “changed the order of their nature” which is similar to Jude’s term, “went after different flesh” and to Paul’s statement, “for the females exchanged natural sex for what is other than nature. And the same goes for males too,” in Romans 1:26.

The context in Romans 1 and Jude is angels having sex with humans, as well as committing other crimes. In fact, the context cannot be more obvious in Jude 6-7, “6 And as for the Messengers who did not uphold their own office but deserted their own places, he (the Lord) has held them firmly in eternal ropes down in the gloom, waiting for the Judgment of the Great Day. 7 Just like these, Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the surrounding cities, which in a similar way committed porneia and went after different flesh, serve as an example of those who undergo punishment in the eternal fire.” 1 Enoch 10 says the main angel who was responsible for abandoning his office in this way was bound hand and foot and cast into in darkness where he would remain until the Great Day of Judgement.

Note the “just like these” in verse 7. Jude is spelling it out very clearly, Messengers (angels) did not uphold their own office, are held with ropes in darkness/gloom, and just like these, Sodom and Gomorrah went after strange flesh (angels having sex with human women). This is most certainly nothing to do with homosexuality: it is not even anything at all to do with sex between human beings.

Traditions with no basis in fact.

Faulty traditions abound in the Christian community. Some of these have arisen from mistranslation, but some have not. The following traditions demonstrate the ease with which one can be misled by religious tradition alone. The popular belief remains that there were “three” “wise men” and that these people visited Jesus as a baby in a manager. However, the Bible does not mention the number, and in fact states that they visited Jesus in a house. (History tells us that Jesus was around two years of age at the time.) At no time does the Bible, in any translation, suggest or imply that the “wise men” were present soon after Jesus’ birth. Further, not one Bible version states the number “three”; this is purely unfounded tradition based perhaps on the number of different types of gifts, not even number of gifts. In another instance, there is much talk and speculation in some of the Christian community as to who the “Antichrist” could be, despite the fact that there is no mention of a single “Antichrist” figure anywhere in the Bible. The word only appears in the First and Second Letters of John, only briefly, and is identified as those people (plural) who do not agree that Jesus the Anointed One has come in human form. The word is not mentioned in Revelation. These misconceptions are all based on correct translation, so it is not surprising that misconceptions based on mistranslation are perpetrated. Turning to translation matters, in what is surely to be seen as censorship, the word Magos is translated widely as “wise man” in the context of the young Jesus, “sorcerer” in Acts, and “astrologer” in Daniel.

Many modern translators have followed the KJV, whether directly or through the lexicons (dictionaries). For example, the word paidarion in John 6:9 is translated as follows: “lad” (KJV, NKJ, RSV, NAS), “boy” (NIV, PME, Weymouth, TNIV), “small boy” (JB), “little boy” (Amplified). Yet paidarion can mean “slave”, “young (free) man” “young (free) woman”, “child”, “girl”, “manservant”, “soldier”. All these meanings have been well attested in the Septuagint alone. There is no evidence for the exclusive term “lad” or “boy”.[6] The lexicon BAGD’s (the predecessor of BDAG) entry disregarded the evidence from the Septuagint, and ignored BGU 2347.3 where paidarion is clearly shown to be an adult man. BGU was published three years earlier than BAGD.

Deliberate Changes.             

     The NKJV, NIV, TEV, Phillips Modern English, RSV, Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible and the Living Bible changed the female name Junia to a masculine name. The KJV, NJKV and Living Bible changed the female name Nympha to a masculine name, and changed “the church that is in her house” to “the church that is his house”. The NKJV reversed the order of “mother and brothers”. The NJKV and KJV reversed the order of Priscilla (woman) and Aquila (man) when the couple was presented in a teaching context. The KJV, NKJV and Tyndale Bible added the words “a man” to a sentence about a woman being in a position of responsibility, and the Living Bible, New English Bible, Phillips Modern English changed it to a word to include both genders.
      Theological bias has influenced Bible translators to err from the text in other ways. For example, the straightforward and simple Greek sentence of 1 Cor. 11:10 which simply states that a woman ought to show her own authority on her head has been completely altered in most Bible versions to state that a woman must wear a covering (the word “veil” does not appear in the Greek) to show she is under a man’s authority. The Greek sentence does not mention a man or husband.
            The translations of most New Testament versions are based on a lack of understanding of Greek word meaning and display a disregard for published academic research which shows passages in earlier translations to be wrong.

[1]
              E. D. J. Hirsch, Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1987, p. 3. Quoted by Gutt, below.
[2]
              Ernst-August Gutt, “Relevance theory and translation: Toward a new realism in Bible translation.” Paper presented at the 2004 International Meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature, 25.-28.7.2004, Groningen, Netherlands, pp. 3ff.
[3]
              Ibid., p. 11.
[4]
              Ibid., p. 13.
[5]
              Ibid., p. 14.
[6]
              For further reading, see commentary in G.M. Simpson, A Semantic Study of Words for Young Person, Servant and Child in the Septuagint and other early Koine Greek, Sydney, 1976, pp. 95, 182f.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 October 2007 )