Oh my God — literally. Conservapedia is trying to produce a “fully conservative translation” of the Bible — although “translation” seems to be a misnomer, since they’re apparently going to start with King James and fix it, rather than go back to the original texts.
getting to the best parts, read some commnet postings...
I’m waiting to see how the parabel of the “Good Samaritan” is re-written to express its “full free-market meaning” to avoid financial responsibility for the health care of others.
— M. Nelson
These are people who know God’s will far better than God.
— Jan Baer
I especially like guideline number 7:
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Remember Jesus’s rage against the temple merchants? How dare Jesus think that free-market competition at the temple did not end up with the best goods and services at the temple mount!
— edkw
Overheard in Texas, in my youth: “If the King James version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it’s good enough for you.”
— James
In this the version where Jesus is a supply sider and marries Ayn Rand?
— rp
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for capital gains tax reductions.”
-Republican Jesus
— Al R.
In this new version of the bible, Jesus asks the lepers what health care plan they’re on before he cures them.
— Tim
They will probably add how to protect the big corporations, how Christ favors no taxes, how there are no climate problems and many more :)
— Chris
A version prepared at the behest of an absolute monarch is too liberal for these guys. That says alot—about them!
— MinuteMan
Every time scripture is edited or re-written through the prism of man’s political worldview, we become subtly more and more aware that it is only man’s political worldview that has indeed ever been dictated as scripture.
— Valpey
Of course they’re going to put their own spin on it. I wonder how many people will look at their efforts and say “Right!, now bring me the real book.”
Due to the vagaries of life I’ve had occasion to learn a bit of Greek & Latin (mostly for taxonomic purposes) & amused myself at one point in that endeavor by reading the New Testament in both languages. The KJV may have bits wrong here & there, but not THAT wrong.
I feel that their attempts at “improving” will just obfuscate matters more … but I guess obfuscate is what they do best.
— Fred in Colorado
Yet another piece of evidence that the words “conservative” and “conserve” having nothing to do with each other.
— Bryan
Uh, there aren’t any “original texts.” A great deal of biblical scholarship is about trying to get as close to the originals as possible, but this is still a pretty long way in terms of time and iterations of the texts. For example, see Bart D. Ehrman, MIsquoting Jesus, for a popular account of the scholarship by a top scholar. Richard Elliott Friedman does something similar for Hebrew scripture.
Needless to say, the conservative agenda is beyond ridiculous from a scholarly point of view. It is purely propaganda for their curious ideology, which shows little in the way of historical roots.
— Tom Hickey
There are theological reasons to take a KJV update approach. Part of the mystique of the KJV was that it was an “inspired” work, allegedly produced with God’s direction and guidance, much as the Torah, while recounting events which its author according to tradition (Moses) could not have known but was allegedly inspired in writing from the prior oral and fragmentary tradition. A similar process blessed the finalization of the Biblical canon.
Skeptics, myself among them, have doubts about the usefulness of this approach, but it dos have some theological merit and precedent — many of the first vernacular Bibles were derived not from original sources, but from St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation, and many more recent vernacular Bible translations (often partial) into lesser spoken languages outside Europe have used the KJV as a source.
Conservatives also have a barrier to working from the original sources. Most people today who have done the academic work necessary to read the texts in the original languages are, like most academics, more libeal than the Evangelical Christian laity. In contrast, the KJV translaters were, by contemporary standards, more theologically conservative.
Indeed, it is the direct access to the Bible that the KJV made widely available is one of the forces that made it possible for marginally educated evangelists, first in the Methodist movement and then in the Second Great Awakening that created what we know call Evangelical Christianity in the South in what had previous been the most secular part of the U.S. Fundamentalism in Christianity, with its strongy Biblical and literalist focus, is to a great extent a rejection of the gloss that more educated scholars put on Christianity through doctrine.
— ohwilleke
The bible may have been rewritten, but not a blatant attempt to change it so all that peace, love and forgiveness stuff can be toned down. These people are scary crazy.
— chris
Well, let’s see how that one develops. Self-proclaimed God’s lawyers usually end up being evil. We might be in 2009, but there are plenty of Inquisitors and Crusaders out there, not to mention a few KKK die-hards.
A former professor of religion suggested to me some 20 years ago the following scenario.
Jesus comes down to earth again, this time He visits New York City. He wants to see His Church. He opens a phone book at a public phone booth, looks for a church and surprise!, there are plenty of choices. “Where do I begin?”, Jesus says. He continues, “There are all sorts of churches with all sorts of names, all of them Christians. I think they mean by that that they are spreading my teachings and the love of our Father, but which one is my Church?” After a few weeks in the Big Apple, Jesus begins to wonder, do they all love God? And if so, why don’t some of those churches talk to each other? Why do some of their Christian followers simply hate each other so much?
…and now we are going to get another “new and improved” translation, with its self-proclaimed experts, interpreters, and, unavoidable, eventual earth-bound gate keepers. LOL!
Sadly, churches are like Cable TV or Satellite Dish: hundreds of options, some boring, some entertaining, some great, some disgusting, some profitable, some bankrupt, some center-left, some center-right, some extreme-left, some extreme-right, some open-minded, some close-minded, some egalitarian, some working-class, some ecumenical, and some just happen to be the right place for your heart! Professor, dealing with non-eternal economic matters is far more easier, safer, and educational than giving an opinion in an over-saturated field where every one with his or her bible feels like that they have Nobel Prize from God in religion interpretation.
Let’s stick to the numbers please. Thanks! I will pray for that.
— ANSFA
How can you change the literal words of God? Either the conservatives believe the bible is the word of God or they don’t.
If they do believe that then they are desecrating God’s words. Where are the OTHER conservative religions objections to this?
So it looks like what many of us have been saying, and illustrated by so many conservative scandals, that some conservatives use the bible for political gain when it suits them and ignore it when it doesn’t.
Now they are making a conservative “politically correct” version of the bible. Where’s the outrage? Hey PC police why are you ignoring this?
Hey Fox “News” where’s your “war on the bible” 24/7 coverage? Just think of the reaction if the liberals did this!
— J.H.
There’s King James and there’s whatever they are using. Judging from the excerpts I have seen, this is not the elegant King James version, possibly the Gideon Bible. Doesn’t ultimately matter since the point is to create a politically correct “Bible” of a modern GOP conservative slant. The whole idea is hilariously ridiculous especially since what we know of Jesus (Isa) is that he was a pretty radical guy who would be utterly condemned if he showed up at a Republican (or even “moderate” Democratic) gathering nowadays.
— Jim Tarrant
It’s a wiki project, which means that people are going to decide God’s will by popular vote.
It’s much easier to follow the rules if you write them yourself, I guess. What I don’t get is why they need a religion at all if they’re just making it up.
— Jennifer
After that lot have finished with the bible there is no chance that the meek will be inheriting the earth.
— Richard
“Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio”
Because Conservatives have such a low word-to-substance ratio, just listen to one of Sarah Palin’s 90 minute speeches…
— Scott MacGregor
I assume that they will “clarify” God’s opinion on public healthcare options.
— Viktor
This is what George Orwell would have called an “ideological translation”
— Laurence
In the beginning, was the word… Reaganomics. And the Lord sayeth, it is good.
— Shane
I’d have to agree with nyet, based on what I’ve read from Ehrman, this is nothing particularly new. Whether part of an organized group effort or the work of an individual’s intent or error, the Bible has been undergoing revisions of varying levels of impact throughout its history.
It’ll be fascinating to see what they do…
— Rob Milcik
There are no original texts of the Bible. That’s the problem with it. We have extent copies of the originals that do not agree with each other. If only there were one canonical “original draft” of that darn book, I feel many lives would not have been wasted through the centuries.
— Joe J.
If they start from the King James Version I hope they keep the unicorns.
— AgnosticOracle
This one is seriously funny...
We are all sinnners. We need the Bible and other books that tell us of Gods and their relatives so that we may know how to live our lives.
Many parts of the Old Testament sound rash and foolish at first glance, but on further study become clear, especially in the movie versions.
The books about the return of Jesus are particularly interesting because, as they have been interpreted, one may enter the kingdom of heaven by simply accepting Jesus as one’s savior and be taken–actually removed from one’s clothes–with him into Heaven.
It is not clear to me where that is, but perhaps I would know more about it if I had studied the Bible more critically. If it is someplace like west Texas, I am not sure I would want to go. On the other hand if it is more like Nice or Carmel-by-the-Sea, then I would think of getting clothes after I arrived.
There are a lot of wars and murders and people killing their brothers and people being crucifiied. Frankly, it was scarier than the soldier’s manual you receive when you enter the military. But not so boring.
There is a real problem with the Bible, and not only with Jesus and his Dad, but with all biblical stories from all faiths, and I have read some, and a few very intensly as a young man…the Greek and later the Roman Gods…pretty much cousins you might say. Famlies very similar. But very, very entertaining Gods. They actually “get it” about being Dieties. It’s about the fun times…and good, solid revenge.
But the problem with any of those stories is that I don’t know what the hell they want me to do. The Hindus contradict the Buddhists and the Shintos contradict the Christians and the Muslims contradict the Mormons.
Listen, I’m glad to do what I’m told, when I’m told, where I’m told to do it. I am nothing if not a good toady. I was a pretty good soldier. Followed orders. Never quite court-martialed. But I don’t know which of all these thousands of different immutable truths is immutable.
And now we’re going to have a new version by the same guys that brought us two wars, a mild Depression or a severe Recession…take your pick….and want to deny health care to my granddaughter…which won’t happen as long as I, too, have a gun. A new version of their idea of truth and beauty…fried chicken, NASCAR fumes, shooting up grade schools, high schools and deciding that all college students should be armed so we can have a total shootout there?
If that’s the new bible, I’ll stick with Zeus. If you disobeyed him you were literally toast.
— Joseph O’Shaughnessy
i can't stop laughing...
In a way, there is precedent for this nonsense. The King James Bible, for all its masterful English prose, is itself not a translation, but merely a “version.” It is a revision of translations such as the Geneva bIble, which had too many notes about the evils of kings. The difference between the King James and the (proposed) King Rush versions is that the KJV was not trying to correct political apostasies in the text.
— rbh
Serious, serious...
If it is a non-profit-work it will be much easier to revise the King James then to start from the beginning.
Easier, but both also lazy, non-scholarly, and unreliable. We’re not talking Sumerian, here, we’re talking about competency in something realistically achievable: koine Greek for the New Testament, Hebrew for the Old Testament. And, if I understand them correctly, they’re not interested in the OT, so that means only competency in koine Greek. (Though there’s a substantial number of transliterations from Aramaic and Hebrew into Greek in the NT, so any true quality translation would require fluency in those languages, as well as a fluency in the relevant cultural history.)
But, putting that objection aside, there’s also the problem that the King James version is not a very reliable translation. With regard to the New Testament, anyone with a small degree of competency in koine Greek today can read the texts which were its base and find numerous translation errors. This is because scholarly competence in classical Greek at the time of the KJV was not that high, for a number of reasons (mostly, though, that they had far fewer texts available from which to derive fluency and a consequentially much smaller body of reference works).
It’s also worth mentioning the Early Modern English, in which the KJV is written, is an archaic and unfamiliar dialect of English for most modern speakers and requires a certain degree of fluency in its own right. Just as many contemporary readers misunderstand Shakespeare (e.g., “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”), many contemporary readers misunderstand KJV text.
Given this, then a “re-translation” of the Bible beginning with the KJV will compound its unreliable translations with misunderstandings of its text.
It’s hard to imagine a more incompetent supposedly scholarly project. There is no excuse for this sort of thing. Many American evangelicals learn some koine Greek—it’s not asking very much for the Conservapedia folk to attain even the barest minimum competency for such a project.
— Keith M Ellis
The Conservative Bible Project calls for explaining Jesus’ parables about money as “free market parables.” They do not list any examples; however, I would counter that there are no “free market parables.” All the parables that include an illustration of money are of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, how Christians are to think about God and treat each other as children of God, or are about stewardship. Although Jesus commends giving liberally (sorry, just couldn’t help myself) and with generosity, he is not giving a Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman seminar on investing or economics. In fact, his anger and rampage over the money changers in the Temple is an example of Jesus condemning unchecked and unethical free market practices.
The Christian Bible Project plan and intent, however, is far more dangerous than just spinning a passage to suit their ends. What they propose is tantamount to presenting another gospel. Hans Kung, the preeminent German Catholic theologian, in his book, The Church (Verlag Herder KG, 1967) says this is schisma of the worst kind:
“When the expression “heresy” is used in the New Testament, not in a neutral sense meaning “school” or “party”, but in a definitely negative sense, it implies something more than the word “scisma”. . .which indicates a “split” in the community based above all on personal quarrellings. “Heresy means a fellowship which questions the whole faith of the ecclesia by presenting “another gospel” (cf. Gal. 1:6-9), and which is therefore in opposition to the ecclesia (p 315).”
Heresy? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the authors of this version walk perilously close to “presenting another gospel” discounting 2000 years of scholarship and orthodoxy.
Dr. David Waggoner, PhD
http://www.extremethinkover.com
TSG (#100) writes:
“Does that mean they are going to edit out the New Testament?”
Edit it, not edit it out. There are a few parts that can stay, e.g.:
Luke 3:14: “Be content with your wages.”
Matthew 20: 15: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?”
Mark 4:25: “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.”
But from the OT, some things will have to go, such as all that those pesky prophets said about justice to the poor, too copious to do justice to in this comment. But one chapter I like is Micah 3, in which oppression of the poor is likened to cannibalism.
Then there’s Proverbs 21:13:
“Who stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.”
— miriam
i don't think they are serious... OMG! They are.
19 Dec 2009 (ROD 17th Anniversary)
