genuinegirly

Have you heard about the Conservative Bible Project? This seemed like a joke when a friend mentioned it, but I guess it's not!

What do you make of this new interpretation of the old classic?
If you're interested in a bit of perspective on the matter, here's an article about it from the Associated Press - LINK -
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The assumption that every scholar has a liberal agenda bothers me. I suppose I should laugh shrug it off as yet another quaint example of the poorly-educated conservative movement bashing academia.

Ok, it's an interesting concept. But why not gather a group of educated conservative minds to translate the Bible, then see if you come up with something different than the accepted modern translations? Making the project an interactive wiki cheapens its validity.

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rahl

God is a liberal...NOOOOOOOO

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Hektore

Because it's got nothing to do with an accurate translation of the Bible. It's about making the Bible say what they want it to say.


Like that hasn't been done to death already.

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Charlatan

The fact is that the Bible has been written and re-written many times. It has also been translated into many languages.

Within the canoized Bible there are contradictory voices. For example, did Moses lead his people through a shallow "sea of reeds" or did he part the Red Sea. Both versions exist side by side in the Bible on your shelf. It is a direct result of different editorial schools having a go at the text of the stories over time.

Other parts have been reinterpreted through translations produced by translators with a specific world view. Calling Mary a Virgin came from a particular translation. In the original language it's meaning is closer to young girl. In some of Paul's letters, current translations are used to defend keeping women out of the clergy because Paul says, Don't let the women teach. With more complex translation and context, we can see that Paul is talking about a particular group of women that have been lead astray by false prophets (even then they had charlatan's roaming about taking people's money... of course you could also look at it as Paul trying to silence to competition).

In the end, the Bible's meaning is fluid.

While I find it laughable that a conservative group is going to twist it to make it say things that will make them feel better, I am not going to lose sleep over it.

People are going to make of the Bible what they will.

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Lindy

I agree that not every scholar is a liberal. Additionally, not every liberal has a "liberal agenda." It could also be argued that even if true, it merely reflects society as a whole. On the other hand, such stereotypes do not arise out of a vacuum. If I had to push the L or C button for for each of a hundred professors, and the button got stuck on "L" my score would probably be higher than if the button got stuck on "C."

It would probably also vary by discipline. There would probably be more liberals in a group of a hundred sociology professors than in a group of a hundred finance or physics profs. Nothing scientific here, just my gut feeling based on the academics I've known personally.

Likewise, Not all NBA basketball players are of African descent. But that would be the way to bet. And not all NBA head coaches are white. But that would be the way to bet.
Prediction: Someone will say that "educated conservative minds " is oxymoronic.

Lindy

dippin

Unless the current translation was done in the last 30 or so years, then whether or not scholars today are mostly liberal is irrelevant. In fact, the interesting question is not whether today's scholars are mostly liberal, but why they've become so. You would see that it was the definition of conservative that changed more than what scholars believe. In fact, the key policy tenets of today's conservatives are based on what was trendy among academics 30 years ago.

rahl

By having to reinterpret the bible, you invalidate the notion that it was written through divine intervention, that is to say that God didn't write it himself but he guided the human hand. This will end up pissing alot of people off and most likely be denounced by the pope

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dippin

He won't be denounced by the pope because the Catholic position has been that the bible is inspired by god, but not written by god. The bible as written by god doctrine is a relative new phenomenon linked to pentecostalism.

telekinetic

You think the people doing this give a fuck what the Pope thinks about it? If Rush Limbaugh says it's ok, it must be OK!

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twisted no more

Wes Mantooth

Yeah I heard about this a few months ago and quite frankly I find it as funny, sad and pathetic today as I did then.

Really though talk about circular logic. The fundamentalist use the bible as the main source for their agenda...but good god, awful lot of liberal ideas going on in that book now that we think about it...No problem, lets just use our agenda to rewrite the book we derived our agenda from in the first place and problem solved!

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Canine

They just need to run the entire Vulgate through Google Translate, proofread it for grammatical correction, and bam, the bible is translated without a liberal agenda and we have another great Google product.

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Willravel

Genesis 1:

1 In the beginning, about 6,000 years ago, Reagan created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of the GOP was hovering over the waters.

3 And Reagan said, "Let there be a free market," and there was such a market. 4 Reagan saw that the free market was good, and He separated the market from the government. 5 Reagan called the free market "capitalism," and the government he called "socialist." And there was capitalism, and there was socialism—the first ideological divide.

6 And Reagan said, "Let there be an expanse between the economic classes to separate rich from poor." 7 So Reagan made the expanse and separated the undeserving, lazy poor from the wealthy above it. And it was so. 8 Reagan denied he favored the wealthy and would hear nothing more of it. And there was crony capitalism, and there was traditional capitalism—the second ideological divide.

percy

Phhhtt,...the Bible. That is so 300 AD.

girldetective

It bothers me too when scholars are suggested to be liberals.
As if liberal were a bad word.
Education=liberal?

Im all for education.
Who wouldnt be?

What are the project's authors suggesting when they argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes. How would they like their God to be seen? All warring and scary? And arent those platitudes the ones that have been espoused for thousands of years, around the world, by many great men who are now worshipped because they had the foresight to see humanity in relationships?

What the hell is going on?

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Wes Mantooth

In all fairness, despite what I wrote above, this really isn't a conservative movement so much as its a small faction of "out there" conservatives. Its being done by the fine folks at conservapedia...which, if still as bad as I remember it from a few years ago, is every bit as ridiculous as the notion of writing a conservative bible.

While I do find it very odd that so many christian fundamentalists completely ignore almost every "liberal" aspect of the bible, I'm not sure that the vast majority of them support this.

I could be wrong though.

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levite

This seems just sick to me. If the Bible says something that appears to be problematic to you, you need to find ways of interpreting it with exegetical philosophy. But you can't just arbitrarily change the text of the Bible because you have issues with it. If that's how you're going to solve problems then you might as well just convert to another religion, or invent a new religion, because that's essentially what you're doing.

And as for altering the Christian Scriptures, frankly (though I shouldn't say it-- not being a Christian myself), it seems outrageously full of chutzpah to change a series of texts centering around a guy who deliberately walked around with the dregs of society, preaching about the value of all people, the need for peace, and how you should spend all your time and money taking care of the poor; so as to remove the liberal references and make religion more palatable to a bunch of xenophobic, bigoted rich people and wanna-be-rich people who want their government to support warfare, but not aiding poverty or providing health care....

But maybe that's just my Jewish ignorance of Christians showing through....

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Absence, because it doth remove
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Poppinjay

Andy Schlafly sprung from the loins of the beast Phyllis Schlafly. He's a big supporter of the home school movement, and taught 58 kids in a home school class.

Which, how is gathering all those kids and teaching them at the same time "home school"? Sounds more like just "school".

At any rate, the whole family claims to be part of the conservative movement. In actuality, they are very in favor of legislating a Christian lifestyle and using the government to enforce it.

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roachboy

this amuses me to no end.
it seems that what these folk want to do really is make jesus into a blunt-talking asshole, so less himself and more like, o i dunno, dirty harry.
i couldnt find any indication that there was a translation in the sense of going to original sources. my sense from a bit of research is that they're using the king james version as their "original"
and what they're interested in is making a new version that is purged of alot of this forgiveness and redemption stuff. more hell-fire and exclusion. i imagine it was difficult for alot of fundies to have the kind of Neurotic Problem alot of them seem to have with ILLEGALS and other persecuting agents and be abjured by jesus to love others and forgive them.
best to erase jesus to save jesus from himself.

there's a wiki that i found which appears to be the conservative bible project.
sadly there's no texts up yet.
i was kinda excited to read the clint eastwood jesus.
yes i was.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Poppinjay

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

roachboy

thanks poppinjay.
the "translation" is from king james english into cliff notes english basically.

its hilarious.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

filtherton

I think everyone should have their own, interest-specific bible. I want to read a bible where all the original characters are replaced with characters from Lost. Or Gilligan's Island. Or the late 90s west coast gangsta rap scene.

In the beginning, Dre said "Let there be light." and, fuck yeah, bitches, it was alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll goood.

I want to read bibles written by PhRMA and the American Council of Pork Producers. Jesus didn't bring Lazarus back from the dead via a miracle, he did it via a miracle drug. And he wasn't crucified for going against the socio-political status quo, he was crucified for trying to get people to eat pork. In fact, he died so that we all might enjoy a tasty slice of bacon now and then and we owe it to him to support our local factory farms.

Baraka_Guru

Yes, wasn't England under James I a bastion of liberalism? One could even say the King James Bible is the first evidence of a liberal media, no?

Finally!

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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MSD

I've been saying "There is no God but Dre, and Snoop is his prophet" for years. There actually was an ebonics bible translation back in the '80s

GreyWolf

Don't disagree with your analysis at all, but the description of the sea of reeds and parting the Red Sea ARE consistent. At the time of the writing, the northern end of the Red Sea was much shallower and narrower (it is still shallow today, but was much more so in Biblical times, and most likely was characterised by stretches of reeds along the shores).

The mistaken reference to young girl or maiden is Mary Magdalene, not the the Virgin Mary. The concept of Mary's virginity was added to appeal to the pagan earth goddess worshipers and make Christianity much more palatable to them. The mistranslation of the Aramaic word for young girl/maiden used to describe Mary Magdalene as prostitute was more politically inspired to prevent the competing followers of Mary from gaining the upper hand.

The idea that there were internecine quarrels amongst his followers shortly after Jesus' death is anathema to many Christians, but is pretty much a matter of historical record. Even the claiming of Ann (John the Baptist's mother) recognising Mary as carrying the true Messiah was inserted to establish his primacy over John and justify the bloody disputes between the followers of Jesus & John.

What you have with the Bible is a work that, Divinely inspired or not, has been used to promote the political aspirations of different groups for centuries. Why shouldn't the Conservatives of our day have their shot at it? Will it really change whether or not Christ was divine?

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Derwood

And lo, let he who hath suffered great the rigors of poverty look not unto the rich to be redeemed. Nay, let him pulleth himself up by his bootstraps and be rugged.

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Frosstbyte

That's as far as I needed to read. Anything stemming from anyone related to Conservapedia.com is intellectually and morally bankrupt. That website is run by people who have no interest in anything that's actually going on in our universe and seek instead to rewrite history and ignore any form of science in order to suit their own goals. They're a joke and a travesty, and, in fifty years, may they not even be important enough to be a footnote in our historical record.

Ourcrazymodern?

"Father, forgive them..."

...not knowing is more uncomfortable for some.

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Halx

I simply laugh at everyone who thinks this book is important.

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Daniel_

The book is important because the people that follow the book make it important.

I do not BELIEVE what is in it, but I recognise that many others do, and it informs their behaviour. Therefore it is important. Nuts, but important.

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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Baraka_Guru

Well it is important, really, if you consider that a large group of people believed in it widely for centuries, and it wasn't until the 20th century that a significant number of those people started to question it and discard it entirely. It has sociohistorical value.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Ourcrazymodern?

Which is certainly not eroded through continuing interpretations.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

Lindy

In the 1920s some people said Mein Kampf wasn't an important book.

Lindy

dlish

i dont agree with some of its teachings, but it does have many parables that you can draw upon. That coupled with the fact that many of the worlds nations incorporate parts of this book into their system of government, is enough to give it respect. Therefore it is important to many people across the world irrespctive of what you believe.

i dont laugh at it in the same way that i dont laugh at buddhism or hinduism as a system on which i base my life or lifestyle.

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Poppinjay

Grey Wolf nailed it. Must have taken the same classes as me.

So therefore I align myself with his statement and all else is tomfoolery at best, TERRORISM at worst. j/k. It's a sensible approach for those of us who were religio-raised.

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

MSD

Because there's no way something that's the basis for the beliefs of almost half of the world's population is important.

ColonelSpecial

Has this group ever gone into a bible store? There are hundreds of versions of the bible. I am sure there is a more conservative bible out there already made.

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