Much to the chagrin of heavy metal bands everywhere, a recent retranslation of the New Testament has identified the Devil's number as 616, and not 666 . Apparently the Devil has been hanging out in Grand Rapids with Elvis all this time, lazing on the back porch and drinking "pop".

Specific theological debates aside, this is one of the issues I have with treating ancient texts as dogmatic fact or basing a belief system around them. No matter how true the middle man tried to be to the intent of the author, the receiver is never going to be left with the exact same ideas that the original messenger intended. The game of historical telephone is exacerbated by dead languages, mistranslations, honest mistakes, and middle men intentionally warping things for their own purposes. If any link in the chain is fallible, you cannot truly have 100% faith in the end result.

Three thousand years from now, expect to see people worshipping dung because of misrepresentation of the "Shit Happens" bumper sticker.