  In discussing the way that more often than not, Othello has been performed "in a cut text", editor of The Arden Shakespeare's Third Edition says: "...the expurgation of Shakespeare's plays tells us much about the history of taste and about the history of misunderstanding Shakespeare, less about the strengths and weaknesses of the plays as we see them today.
" Ironically, it is arguable that the cuts made through the years to plays like Othello, though done with the intention of somehow improving the play, have only served to lessen the author's intended impact on the audience. I began thinking of this "cutting" concept in relation to the Text of the Bible. First, the "Jefferson Bible" came to mind. Thomas Jefferson thought the life of Jesus to be the most exemplary moral example. However, living in the age of Enlightenment (and near the front end, in fact) he couldn't resolve the tension between the age in which he lived, and the original Gospel document's portrayal of the Supernatural. His "Bible" which omitted miracles, including the Resurrection, successfully castrated the moral potency of the life of Jesus. Nevertheless, it was a display of history; the history of "taste" and the times surrounding the birth of our nation.
Another example of such castration can be seen in various Christian cults who nullify the Trinitarian concept found in Scripture. Though not stated explicitly as such, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is implicit throughout the New Testament. To say "implicit" even seems to me to be a severe understatement. Again, the extreme rationalism (though some still maintain the Supernatural, unlike Jefferson) which pervaded the times during which Mormonism and other splinters developed their doctrine, again spoke to, and in fact instructed that doctrine.
It was as if they stated, "The Trinitarian concept cannot be explained, therefore there must be another, more rational explanation for what is found in the text. " Both of these examples are specific, but there are less overt "cuts" in the text by evangelicals today. We emphasize certain Scripture stories while deemphasizing others. We dwell and harp on certain truths because of our rational inheritance, but we neglect other concepts and ideas - some which may be even more important to dwell upon. Why, for instance, such an insistance and exclamatory presentation of evil abortion, while simultaneously, the same evangelicals are hardly heard to whisper about the environment and the evils done to this aspect of God's creation? Both of these have Scriptures which announce their importance loudly. Or, why such emphasis on sexual sin, such as homosexuality, while at the same time a din akin to rice krispies married with milk is heard relating to social ills and injustices? I am not clamouring for a shift in which issues gain importance, but rather for equal time. Abortion is evil.
So is the abortion of pine trees when done in the name of corporate greed. Homosexual, physical relations are clearly not permitted according to Scripture (though I'm starting to question monagamous, civil unions which exclude sex), but neither is ignorance or inaction relating to the poor in wealth. I propose, like the author of the introduction to Othello, that our history of chopping up the Bible for our own cultural purposes says more about the taste of the times in which those cuts occured, than it does about the strengths and weaknesses of the Canon.
We may impetuously exclude what we like from Scripture, either by infrequency or actual verse exclusion, but we must remember that the relevance of revelation remains only when we strive for an even reading of the text and equal time for all of God's concerns - whether apparently relevant to us as local individuals or not. All the world is indeed a stage, and it IS a tragedy of Othellian proportions when the players (we) pick and choose which lines to recite and which ones to omit. 
