Only A Matter of Time
Oct. 6th, 2009 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleThis was just too incredible to let go by without a post.
If you follow my LJ regularly, you know that I've posted about how conservative Christians really should stop calling themselves "Christians" because they're not following the teachings of Christ. Well, they've solved that little problem. No, they're not getting in line with Christ...they're getting Christ in line with them.
They're rewriting the Bible.
Yes, you read that correctly. Conservapedia, the conservative-skewed (and often reality-challenged) alternative to Wikipedia has taken up the task of rewriting the Bible to reflect modern-day conservative values instead of those "liberal biased" Christian values. Among other things, their "Conservative Bible Project" will be focused on:
Emphases mine. You see, the problem with the Bible we have now is that it's just a bad translation with a liberal bias. All that stuff about loving thy neighbor and taking care of the least among us and how impossible it is for the rich to get into the kingdom of heaven and blessed are the peacemakers is nonsense based on a biased translation. The new and improved conservative Bible will reflect real Christian values. You know, like free-market economics. Personally, I'm very interested in finding out what "powerful conservative term" will replace a word like "peace."
Look, I know Conservapedia is pretty much a joke except to a relatively small segment of the population but nevertheless...the gall. The absolute gall of these people.
And if anyone tries to tell me that this is the same as just "updating" the Bible with more modern, accessible language or gender-inclusive pronouns...don't. Okay? Just don't.
If you follow my LJ regularly, you know that I've posted about how conservative Christians really should stop calling themselves "Christians" because they're not following the teachings of Christ. Well, they've solved that little problem. No, they're not getting in line with Christ...they're getting Christ in line with them.
They're rewriting the Bible.
Yes, you read that correctly. Conservapedia, the conservative-skewed (and often reality-challenged) alternative to Wikipedia has taken up the task of rewriting the Bible to reflect modern-day conservative values instead of those "liberal biased" Christian values. Among other things, their "Conservative Bible Project" will be focused on:
> "Providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias"
> "Using powerful new conservative terms as they develop...updating words which have a change in meaning, such as 'word', 'peace', and 'miracle'"
> "Explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning"
> "Not dumbing down the reading level" but then again, "preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio"
Emphases mine. You see, the problem with the Bible we have now is that it's just a bad translation with a liberal bias. All that stuff about loving thy neighbor and taking care of the least among us and how impossible it is for the rich to get into the kingdom of heaven and blessed are the peacemakers is nonsense based on a biased translation. The new and improved conservative Bible will reflect real Christian values. You know, like free-market economics. Personally, I'm very interested in finding out what "powerful conservative term" will replace a word like "peace."
Look, I know Conservapedia is pretty much a joke except to a relatively small segment of the population but nevertheless...the gall. The absolute gall of these people.
And if anyone tries to tell me that this is the same as just "updating" the Bible with more modern, accessible language or gender-inclusive pronouns...don't. Okay? Just don't.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 01:13 pm (UTC)The NIV is a translation from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Masoretic text, and the Samaritan Pentateuch for the Old Testament and several Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The translations were done by interdenominational teams of biblical scholars from colleges, universities and seminaries, with a specific aim of avoiding any sectarian bias.
And on a less nit-picky but still incredulous note: the original Scriptures were written by "regular people" as well as those who were more educated. As the intended audience was/is the general public, it is already written pretty much an average man-on-the-street reading level - you'd have to *work* at dumbing down an actual translation. This objection to accessible language smacks of all the old arguments against translating the Bible from Latin into English to prevent the "common man"'s access.
[/ soapbox ]