Wednesday, October 07, 2009

The new Conservative Bible

Here's another unhelpful way to mix politics and religion... work is beginning on new translation of the Bible to reinforce a politically conservative viewpoint.

Here's an example of the changes it makes:

"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."

It will also:

"Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning."

"Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story"

Ugh...

Thanks Richard.



3 comments:

Drek said...

It would be helpful to point out that this is not a new translation of the bible. Rather, they're just taking an existing KJV and altering the phrasing to fit their politics. Including, in one fascinating instance, debating whether a good word to replace "damsel" is "bimbo". So, referring to this as a "new translation" is giving it waaaaay too much credit, as it makes it sound like they're actually going back to a pre-English original text and working their way forward.

This kind of thing is pretty typical for Conservapedia, which of course doesn't make it less bizarre.

Doing Better Than I Deserve said...

Just because liberals tend to want to re-write history & mis-interpret scripture doesn't mean that conservatives should stoop to the same tactic.

This is a bad idea.

Jay Livingston said...

I'm all for bimbo. But does getting rid of the adulteress parable mean that we won't be able to talk about casting the first stone? (Not important for the sinless, of course. But the rest of us need to know.)