The American Jesus
Conservapedians have already translated over 10% of the New Testament: 1093 out of about 8000 verses. Participate in the Conservative Bible Project by translating the Conservative Bible while this project is still young!
That’s the headline proudly published at the right top of the front page over at Conservapedia, an online encyclopedia (ala Wikipedia) composed of articles written from a conservative viewpoint. The headline excerpted above is linked to a project that Conservapedians simply call the Conservative Bible Project. The Conservative Bible Project’s main goal is to create a truly conservative Bible by creating a translation that is free of liberal bias, wordiness, emasculation and the general dumbing down of the Old and New Testaments.
Conservapedians propose to do accomplish this goal by adhering to the following ten guidelines.
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: Providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias.
2. Not Emasculated: Avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity.
3. Not Dumbed Down: Not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level.
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: Using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: Combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census.
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: Applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: Excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story.
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: Crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels.
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: Preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”
Conservapedia’s ten guidelines are beyond fascinating. There is so much to say regarding all ten points. There are so many questions that could use answers from Conservapedians. Fascinating! So fascinating, in fact, I think each of these ten guidelines deserves an individual post. These will be published over the next few days in chronological order, of course.
Until then, I’ll simply offer the three examples of what Conservapedians refer to as “liberal corruption of the Bible.” Again, these corruptions raise so many questions that demand further clarification of the Conservapedian understanding of biblical inspiration and interpretation.
First Example – Liberal Falsehood
The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34: “Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.
Second Example – Dishonestly Shrewd
At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.
The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”. The manager was praised for being “resourceful”, which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term “resourceful” in its entire translation of the Bible.
Third Example – Socialism
Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians.
For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.
The three examples of corruption cited above are mind-boggling. Again, there are so many questions; I’ll be asking big questions over the next few posts concerning this whole strange event. ‘Till then I’ll ask two very, very basic ones: 1. Do Conservapedians even care about the original meanings of the Greek words written in the manuscripts, or are they just changing words as they see fit, and as their national idealism leads? 2. Do you really believe that this is the very first time some group of ideologues decided to “adjust” the text and meaning of texts in the Bible? Do you really think that this is the first time anything like this ever happened?
These are definitely strange days in which we live. Think about it: American social and religious conservatives are editing the Bible because they think it would read better without the so-called “liberal-biases” and “liberal corruptions.” Conservatives?!? What in the hell is going on out there?!?
Related posts:
Same old, same old.
I better shut up as a non-american, but I was reminded of this picture I saw yesterday: http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/10/09/and-the-internet-wins-again/
I guess I’m going to have to go do a word search for it on YouVersion or something, because I just cannot remember a single verse that uses “comrade.”
Kent Leslie mentioned yesterday that they want to remove the whole adulteress story. It really is inconvenient. Unfortunately, there are a lot of other stories they are going to have to remove in order to get rid of the stain of complete forgiveness of sins. It’s just not the only one …
I’m not sure these folks even understand that the Bible was originally written in a language other than English … King James 1611 English. I wonder what they would do if they found out that the chapter and verse breaks were done ad hoc by a priest as he rode around the country-side on horseback?
I think I need to stop now …
The real irony is that they don’t seem to really care about the earlier Greek (I won’t say ‘original’ but my point should still be clear). For instance, their primary source is the KJV and not Greek texts. The only time they seem to appeal to the Greek is when they wish to excise some text which they believe gives a ‘liberal’ interpretation. If one is what one eats (or in this case, reads), perhaps the Conservatives are all closet Liberals!
Most of the -ism out there read the bible in a way that makes sense and doesn’t conflict with their system of thought. I find it amazing that the conservapedians are actually going re-write the bible so it works for them, for real…I mean that is a pretty bold move!
It is both unbelievable and laughable the lengths that some people will go to to put their political agenda above the God they claim they believe in.
http://digg.com/u1E4zP
An exceedingly liberal approach to translation such as they have chosen is really counter to conservatism. But then again, US conservatives sort of hijacked the term to mean something other than what it historically meant.
In an abstract form, this is incredibly hilarious… in a real life form, folks are being led astray, and some are going to be hurt as a result. That’s not cool at all.
Is this for real?????????????? This is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Some people need to get a life!!!!