OK. There is a lot of stuff to reply to, so I will quote none of it. I hope I cover everyone's questions, but if I miss something let me know.
Several of the rules were created specifically for The Bible. Some people thought the rules were designed to rule out the Bible as a selection, some people asked me to disallow it. I really didn't want to make a Bible rule, so I tried to write the rules in such a way that I could address it when it came up (almost inevitably as the first pick).
In reality this has played out exactly as I expected and planned for. So let me clear things up.
If you would like to choose "God" as the author, that is your decision to make. If the "voters" disagree you'll get punished in the winner selection. However, someone did bring up a point that I did not think of. Does this eliminate the Quran, the Book of Mormon, etc? Let me come back to that. To me, a very non-religious person who has never read a page of the Bible, the work "The Bible" refers to all of the books covered by the Christian faith. They are, in a way, a series. I suppose I should have made a rule that says "only one book from a series can be used." I considered it, but could not think of a series that had many different authors. Let's make this an official ruling that any book froma series discounts that series. This should somewhat clear up the whole Bible issue. As for which edition to use,I believe Chief Rum got this right. The wording of the rules is meant to assume there is one true original edition of a work. Translations (such as the King James Bible) are just reprints of the original (maybe a Direcotr's Cut, if you will). Authorship and categorization are up to the person making the selection, so I'm fine with Chief Rum's choices.
Having said that, we still have the issue of religious texts that are not followed by the Christian Faith but are meant as continuations of the Word of God. Honestly I'm not sure how to handle those. I'm tempted to cover those under the "one book in a series" rule that I just created. If that seems wholly unfair, please let me know. As Wade mentioned, my intention was that if someone chose "Exodus" the next person could not choose "Levidicus". I thought it possible that someone would choose one "story" from the Bible and that would close out the Bible for everyone.
It's possible this argument will cover other books, but I don't want to think about it and mention them, because they may be on someone's list. I suppose in a way I have made a set of "Bible Rules" rather than discounting the bible altogether. However, I don't see how we can have a lively debate about the Bible as literature if I disallow it.
