Right wing dementia marches on apace …
So said Mark Shea in his blog when he commented earlier this month on a new bit of lunacy from the religious right in the US: an attempt to create a “conservative” on-line Bible free of the influences of the committee responsible for updating the best-selling New International Version of the Bible. These folk are:
Professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook.
The NIV, for example, will soon change the sex/gender identities to more appropriately used terms today. It will change passages such as “sons of God” to “children of God”. Male references won’t be completely removed, but general statements that could be more inclusive, and argued to be more accurate, will be revised.
What modern Bibles lack is a dollop of good, old-fashioned right wing bias
This is just the sort of thing that The Conservative Bible Project, the brainchild of a bunch of loonies over at Conservapedia, is dead against.
Those behind the dotty project claim:
In the United States and much of the world, the immensely popular and respected King James Version (KJV) is freely available and in the public domain. It could be used as the baseline for developing a conservative translation without requiring a license or any fees. Where the KJV is known to be deficient due to discovery of more authentic sources, exceptions can be made that use either more modern public domain translations as a baseline, or by using the original Greek or Hebrew.
There are 66 books in the KJV, comprised of 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses, and 788,280 words. The project could begin with translation of the New Testament, which is only 27 books, 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, and less than 200,000 words.
Retranslation at rate of 20 verses a day would complete the entire New Testament in about a year. With 5 good retranslators, that would be an average of only 4 verses a day per translator. At a faster rate of 20 verses per day by 5 good translators, the entire New Testament could be retranslated in less than 3 months.
One example of something that might be expunged from “liberal” versions of the Bible is “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 English Standard Version, 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.
Another example is “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.
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 12th, 2009 at 9:06 am
This is going to present something of a dilemma for good Christian folk like Sister Talitha and myself. Whilst quite horrifiedby the socialist, left-wing, liberal, wishy-washy ideology behind so many recent "translations" of God's Holy Word, we are loath to tamper with the inspired words of the King James Version, handed down from generation to generation from time immemorial, as you well know. ("If the Authorized Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me!") Although a more conservative translation of the Bible, more in line with true Christian teaching, would have much to commend it, we will have to look very closely at the proposed project before giving it our imprimatur!!
October 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
To be consistent, will they also remove all references to heterosexuality from 'their' version of the Bible?
After all, as I've patiently explained to Christian nutjobs for years, heterosexuality did not exist until the late 19th century, when it had to be invented by a psychologist in order that he could define what homsexuailty wasn't!
Therefore any suggestion that anyone anywhere in the Bible might have been a hettie should be removed. In fact, not to do so would probably be blasphemous!
October 12th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Anyone in for some tongue in cheek voluntary help for these people? Could be fun!
October 12th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Meddling with the inerrant word of God? A plague on both their houses!
October 12th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I must say I was greatly amused by the use of the word "socialistic", but, lo and behold, it is actually in the dictionary! Whatever next, I wonder – "Christianistic" and "translationism"?
October 12th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
A few suggestions for the American right-wing loony authorised version…
'Blessed are the warmongers, for they shall inherit the scorched earth, though not get many Nobel prizes.'
'And a woman taken in adultery was brought before Jesus, who took called her a total slut, then took up a big stone and killed her with it. And there was blood and brains, like, everywhere, man!'
''What is truth?' said Pilate, for he was European and like, intellectual, and probably totally gay.'
October 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Isn't there something akin to a copyright on the Bible, at the end? Something like:
22:18 I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book.
22:19 If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.
Heh. Whoops!
D
October 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
According to a comment on ProudAtheists, a woman called into an American radio show and asked why Jesus didn't tell people to get a job and a haircut! I know this is only hearsay, but, sadly, it is only too believable, and here we have the golden opportunity to put into the mouth of the Master maxims which will be of REAL relevance to people living in the modern age!! If comedians would only visit these pages, what a wealth of new material awaits them!
October 12th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Exactly what I was meaning, valdemar, only your comment was not visible when I made mine! "Whosoever is the most self-righteous amongst you, let him cast the first stone"!! Once again, I can envisage hours of fun being enjoyed with this one!!!
October 12th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Conservapedia is more like a parody site, it is such a pile of excruciatingly biased sludge. The fundies who run it actually seem to believe that presenting anything they wish as 'true and verifiable' and outside 'personal opinion', equals fairness and neutrality just because you don't get that on Wikipedia.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
On the other hand, maybe a reliable translation from the originals (original what? I hear you ask) might actually upset a few fundies. As did the scholar who reckons that Genesis didn't say their god created the earth. Who knows what fiddling's gone on? After all, even the divinely immutable koran has been messed with.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
How funny that the passages that are giving these people such problems seem to involve mainly the Gospels: ie the teachings of the supposed founder of their faith (the clue's in the name: CHRISTianity!). Of course, this just highlights the REAL problem. Christianity has precious little to do with either the Jesus of the Gospels, or any of the other early First Century teachings (Essene, etc.) which were incorporated into them. (If "Jesus" actually spouted all that then I'm a Chinaman!) What they are actually following are the teachings of a lunatic named "Paul", who, in similar fashion to Mohammed, some years later, was trying to "marry" two conflicting ideologies – in this case traditional Judaism and the teachings of more modern teachers, who had completely different ideas! No wonder there is conflict in the Bible!!
October 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
My earlier comment has disappeared already, but here's another: "The wise man built his house upon the rock, but the foolish man bult his house upon Northern Rock"!
October 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
My earlier comment has disappeared already, but here's another: "The wise man built his house upon the rock, but the foolish man built his house upon Northern Rock"!
October 12th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Not only that, Brian, but there's the whole vexed question of which of the dozens of books which have been CLAIMED to be inspired are actually included in the Bible. Some of them, especially from the New Testament era, contradict much of what is accepted as orthodox Christian doctrine! (The Koran's no better either. Years ago I thought that at least Mohammed had sat down and written a coherent body of work. How wrong I was!!)
October 13th, 2009 at 1:51 am
How about they just whittle it down into one line that will encompass their general mindset:
Kill everybody you don't like and take all their money.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Buffy, that is a perfect summary of the bible.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
The Koran of course adds: "then kill the people you do like but who beleive in a slightly different version of islam to you. Then blame 'the west' for it"
October 14th, 2009 at 3:12 am
Conservapedia is insane. I say this as someone who has watched them for a while now (over a year, dunno exactly how long; it's like a trainwreck, you can't look away).
It's not a wiki, even though it puports to be. The head guy (creator and head admin, Andrew Schlafly (yes son of Phyllis Schlafly)) commands and people obey. If they don't obey, they get banned, for 5 years. Bannable offences include talking about points in an article instead of just making them (Andy thinks that talking too much is a sign of liberalness) and spelling hell with a little h (rather than H), another sign of liberalness.
It's very, very important to point out that Andrew Schlafly is not a christian, nor he is a conservative. Andrew Schlafly is Andrew Schlafly. He claims that he is a christian and a conservative, but his definition for christian and conservative is literally "what I am". If you disagree with him, even slightly, you're not a christian, and certainly not a conservative. Anything not conservative is "liberal" and therefore to be hated.
He also thinks that *everything* has been corrupted by liberals, from history to mathematics. For example, he thinks that the claim that Leif Erickson discovered America before Christopher Columbus is a liberal lie to reduce Christianity's standing in the world. He thinks that Einstein's theory of relativity is the same thing as moral relativity (simply because they both have the word relativity and he is literally too stupid to figure out the difference, and refuses to change his mind). He will make up statistics on the spot (sometimes just as a general ballpark figure but mostly as a fact), and then quote himself as a reliable source for those statistics at a later date.
I kinda went off topic here but Schlafly is a fascinating character. Anyway, my main point is, this bible will be neither christian nor conservative. It will be The Bible According to Andrew Schlafly, and reading it will be like peering into the abyss of madness. If he ever finishes it. Which he won't. He tried before and gave up.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Conservapedia is, indeed a joke, but do other readers of this blog ever visit FreeThoughPedia?
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Main_Page
October 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Conservapedia is, indeed a joke, but do other readers of this blog ever visit FreeThoughtPedia?
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Main_Page