In the Beginning was the Correction to our Earlier Report

A mere few centuries after burning people who re-translated the Bible, the Catholic Church is beginning to get an inkling that all is not infallible about some of the texts we have. The Gospels as they stand are translated from various unreliable Greek translations of the rumoured Aramaic rantings of a fundamentalist yokel from Galilee; so one or two errors in transmission might be excusable from any god whose omnipotence is less advertised than Jehovah's. The Pope is concerned about the interpretation of the translation of the translation of a single line of the Lord's Prayer, which specifies that He who created the world, the flesh and the devil is morally answerable for their frailties. The original is lost, and the Greek means something rather different; but "Lead us not into temptation" is unfair to the sky-daddy, since it implies that He who made the human race and allowed Satan to tempt the faithful bears some sort of responsibility for the consequences, and if there is one thing Omnipotence cannot stand, it is being unfairly saddled with responsibilities. The Pope would prefer the line to read "do not let us fall into temptation", suggesting that the Father's conduct towards His children can be explained by neglect rather than deliberate malice, and that He had intended all along to speak in French.