Wing whackaloons at Conservapedia have a new project they're working on: Re-translate the Bible to meet their standards.
The Bible, you see, is just too darn liberal.
So they're re-working it.
Among other things, they want to avoid emasculating it with unisex, "gender-inclusive" language;
to explain Jesus' "economic parables with their full free-market meaning";
to remove liberal falsehoods such as "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", and
later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the whole "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" bit;
and to get rid of socialistic terminology, such as "comrade", "laborer", and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker", they note).
(H/t to PZ Myers at Pharyngula)
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: The Bible is too liberal!.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/16403
Well the Bible has been translated many, many times and some translations actually already are "more conservative". It's dumb but any translation they put out won't receive any credibility for Biblical scholars.
As for the gender neutral language, I don't know if I just grew up hearing a particularly gender neutral version or what but I thought Jesus was a woman until I was 12. For serious.
I'm pretty sure 50% of Conservapedia's contributors are stealth trolls.
At least 50%.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/02/fun_with_conser.html
And people wonder why I believe the Bible is full of shit. If people are seriously considering altering the Bible so fundamentally today, do they not think that never in a previous time did the translators sit there and decide to write the Bible the way they wanted? I'm Christian but I will never in my life take the Bible and go "This is the word of God and we should follow it to the T" because it is in fact that word of men and is faulty. It disgusts me that people are openly talking about this and I'm sure no Christian on that site is like "Hey wait, why are we trying to 'fix' the Bible?"
Which makes me think of Firefly and River trying to fix Shepard Book's Bible. 'Cause if you really believe in the Bible you know damn well it doesn't need fixing.
Poo, I was trying to stop the page so I could fix something I wrote but I was too slow, lol. I was gonna change "and I'm sure no Christian on that site is like" to "I wonder how many Christians on that site are like" 'cause I don't want to say that all the Christians on that site are all for changing the Bible. I'm sure (or would hope at least) that many are as angry as I am at the thought.
So yeah, oops to my slowness. :x
Too funny! Before I clicked I was expecting the link to go to an Onion article.
I thought this part was hilarious:
- identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as "government", and suggest more accurate substitutes.
Because government is a pro-liberal tool. Your stripe are showing... o.O
I'm afraid Jesus isn't exactly a Republican.
I'm sick of people insulting my faith. This is just one more example of how the evangelicals are not doing what they are supposed to. What happened to separation of church and state. My bible will not be changing to surround the republican agenda
I still think Conservapedia is a very, very well-done parody.
And I will continue to think that, lest I lose faith in humankind.
The first thing that is commented about is kind of a valid complaint. Not the "emasculating" part, but it is true that the Bible's authors were quite sexist, and sexism is a very essential part of the Bible. To try to minimize that sexism is really taking away a very large part of traditional Christianity.
The rest of it is a little lulzy. Those issues can be solved with reading the freakin' Vulgate or the Greek texts.