How do you alienate Christians and make a mockery of conservatives in a single act? Undertake a new Bible translation! The Conservative Bible will allow you to read the Bible without those annoying liberal verses such as these:
- John 7:53-8:11 We all know Jesus wouldn’t have stopped a good stoning. You’d think he actually had some use for sinners, or something. Clearly an addition of ACORN.
- Luke 23:34 Forgive them? I don’t know how anyone could read the bible and think that Jesus praying for forgiveness of those who are persecuting Him is at all consistent with the text. He probably said something more like “Strike their children and their children’s children with blindness.”
- Luke 16:8 OK, so they are leaving it, but the dishonest servant is to be praised as resourceful rather than shrewd. Got to leave out that negative connotation associated with someone who just ripped off his master to win himself friends.
- We also know that no one but a communist would use the word “comrade.” There are three verses in Judges that need editing. I think Obama must have had plants in the committee to write the English Standard Version, just to warm us up to his radical socialist agenda. I speak no Hebrew, but my Strong’s tells me the word used there can also mean “lover” or “husband.” Much better person for Gideon to be talking to about his dreams.
- John 1:1 The use of the word word is too complicated for conservatives. It will be re-worded as truth. Strong’s must have been influenced by those liberals as well, because it doesn’t even give “truth” as a possible translation of logos. It is all about thought and reason and expression. But we wouldn’t want anyone to think too hard about what it all means or they might become communists.
- Isaiah 9:6-7, Isaiah 22:21 and 2 Peter 2:10 What’s this nonsense about the government being on His shoulders? Those translators were getting all to cozy with government. And 2 Peter 2:10 is downright obnoxious. “Despising government” should not be in the same list of sins as presumptuous, self-willed and uncleanness.
- Oh, and by the way, the Hebrew and Greek were inadequate for Christ to explain what He really meant in numerous places, so we need to take the liberty of expounding upon His rough attempts at speaking using the accurate rhetoric of the modern American conservative movement.
While we are at it, I think we should set up a new missions board. I am afraid that the subtext of Jesus as the way the truth and the life has taken on far too much importance in the field and has begun to overshadow the god of American capitalism.
Hat Tip: Caffeinated Thoughts
Actually, this can’t be nearly so bad as the “magazine” Bible featuring pretty girls on the cover and “inner beauty” tips inside.
Talk about your translation bias! This makes me think that we should all be noble searchers of the Scriptures… examining every translation to see if what is said is true. If I had more time, I would love to learn Hebrew and read the Old Testament in its original language and not worry about translating ancient ideas into English at all. After all, this is the book the Bereans were studying.
Mrs. C, I didn’t know anything about a magazine Bible… Weird!
I’ll stick to my King James Version in English. I was given given a Living Bible and had to put it down when Abraham mad a deal with God; sorry, that just was a little to much for me.
Interesting topic, thanks for posting.
But Mrs. C, didn’t you know that all that stood between teens and a deep, renewing faith was the packaging of the New Testament?
And my thoughts exactly, Julie. The thing I thought funny is that they are going into it announcing their bias and intent to change everything to fit their bias. Translation bias isn’t generally so overt and intentional. Like Shane on Caffeinated Thoughts said it’s “like the Jesus Seminar except run by conservatives who know nothing about Biblical translation & interpretation.”
Y’know, I was chuckling at first glance on this. A site called “Conservapedia” does Bible translation? Looks like some staffers from The Onion have been reading Orwell again…
But I’m starting to suspect that this is not, in fact, actually a parody (or rather, not an intentional one). Which is disturbing.
“Specialty” Bibles, though, have been a staple of American culture for nearly as long as we’ve been a nation. If conservatives want a Bible of their own, they could try the Jefferson Bible. The Patriot Bible, Green Bible, Scofield Study Bible, The Message – there are a lot of options. Maybe Scot McKnight could help us find an appropriate translation tribe.
Yeah, Conservapedia had the same general effect on me when it went up. But it was started by Andrew Schlafly of Eagle Forum. And I don’t mind those bibles…they don’t fundamentally change the text. We have the Patriot Bible, which I felt a little strange about when I got it but it was on clearance and I needed something that could be marked heavily while I teach my son to read. The little stories they’ve included actually are interesting, but they don’t modify the text itself to fit their interpretation.
I have mixed feelings about this. I wonder what they mean about studying the history of the KJBible. Do they mean how King James added a homosexual reference to it (two men shall be in one bed…) or perhaps a pagan holiday where it should say “passover”? I wonder if they plan to study what kind of life King James lived as well. When I study the Greek it sure sheds light on a lot. We really need to trust His Holy Spirit to speak his truth to us, he never lies. When he said His Word shall never pass away, HE is the Word and He will never pass away. The written word just keeps getting more and more corrupted. I wonder what they think of the Complete Jewish Bible and how it took out several key verses about grace and replaced them with living by the Torah.
As many times as this has already happened in history, I’m really not surprised. After all, the bible we have today is the biased translation of the people who edited it before.
We were just talking about the Jefferson Bible the other day! No supernatural events, including miracles, the virgin birth and the resurrection. So I doubt conservative dominionists will be going for that, don’t you?
Where is the evidence that the deleted verses are inauthentic? Is it because the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John were written down after the other two Gospels? By that logic, we should eliminate EVERY story mentioned by St. Luke and/or St. John and not by the other two Evangelists. Idiotic…
My word, this is hilarious if it weren’t rather sad…as you said at CT, hard to believe this is for real. Wow.