The Bible - now new and improved!

by **crispybits** on Fri Apr 25, 2014 2:02 am

http://www.alternet.org/belief/right-wi ... ive-enough

Liberal bias in the media pales in comparison to what you’ll find in your standard-issue Bibles, according to Conservapedia.com, a kind of Wikipedia for the religious right. The King James Bible, not to mention more recent translations like the New International Version (NIV), are veritable primers of progressive agitprop, complains Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia.com.(His mother, Phyllis, is an activist best known for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment.)

But not to worry. Andy Schlafly’s group is on the case, and they have invited you to pitch in. Well, maybe not you, exactly, but the "best of the public,” whose assistance is solicited in proposing new wording for left-leaning Bible verses.

Don’t know Aramaic, Hebrew or ancient Greek? Not a problem. What they are looking for is not exactly egghead scholarship, but a knack for using words they've read in the Wall Street Journal. They have a list of promising candidates on their website— words like capitalism, work ethic, death penalty, anticompetitive, elitism, productivity, privatize, pro-life—all of which are conspicuously missing from those socialist-inspired Bibles we’ve been reading lately.

In the several years since their translation project was inaugurated, all of the New Testament and several books of the Old have been thoroughly revised. But lots still remains to be done. If you've got a soft spot for Leviticus, the Book of Amos, Lamentations or Numbers, they are all still available for rewrite, so get cracking!

To give a sense of how to go about your own retranslation, here are some examples of changes the editors have already made.

Take that story where the mob surrounds a woman accused of adultery and gets ready to stone her, but Jesus intervenes and says, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone" (John 7:53-8:11). It might have been a later addition that wasn’t in the original Gospels, according to some right-thinking, or rather right-leaning scholars. So the editors have excised this bleeding-heart favorite from the Good Book, and they've also removed Jesus’ words on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

“The simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing,” Schlafly points out, proving that, “Jesus might never had said it at all.”

Another thing Jesus might never have said at all is, “Blessed are the meek.” Change that one to, “Blessed are the God-fearing,” the translation’s editors advise, which is far less touchy-feely than the King James version.

Where Jesus teaches that, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:24) our mentors at Conservapedia recommend that we scratch the word “rich” and replace it with either "fully fed and entertained" or, if you prefer, "idle miser," which have none of the Occupy Wall Street-ish sour grapes of the better-known translation.

When Jesus greets his disciples with the blessing, “Peace be with you” (John 20, 26), the editors cleverly change the wording to, "Peace of mind be with you," so that nobody gets the wrong idea and thinks Jesus was some kind of lilly-livered pacifist.

Likewise where Jesus says, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but to save it” (John 3, 17), they change “world” to “mankind,” so it is clear the Christian savior is not advocating environmentalism here. Hey, you can’t be too careful!

Finally, when Jesus admonishes hypocrites to, “Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye,” the conservative Bible replaces the word “hypocrite” with "deceiver," since hypocrite is often “misused politically against Christians.” Good point!

by **macbone** on Fri Apr 25, 2014 4:00 am

Man, I can't tell if this piece is satire or not.

I do like modern paraphrases of the Bible, though. My favorite is Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch translation from the 1960s that places Jesus in rural Georgia during the 1950s. There's a preview of the PBS documentary of it here: Briars in the Cotton Patch

Some selected quotations from his version of Matthew:

One day John the Baptizer showed up and started preaching in the rural areas of Georgia. “Reshape your lives,” he said “because God’s new order of the Spirit is confronting you. This is what the prophet Isaiah meant when he said,

‘A voice is shouting in the rurals:

Lay out the Lord’s highway

Straighten his roads.’ ”

This guy John was dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket, and he was living on corn bread and collard greens. Folks were coming to him from Atlanta and all over north Georgia and the backwater of the Chattahoochee. And as they owned up to their crooked ways he dipped them in the Chattahoochee.

“Nobody ever uses new, unshrunk material to patch a dress that’s been washed. For in shrinking, it will pull the old material and make a tear. Nor do people put new tubes in old, bald tires. If they do, the tires will blow out, and the tubes will be ruined and the tires will be torn up. But they put new tubes in new tires and both give good mileage.”

Jesus called together his twelve students and gave them control over mean spirits so as to expel them and to heal every kind of sickness and affliction. Now here are the names of the twelve “agents”: first is Simon, who is called Rock, and Andy, his brother; Jim, Mr. Zebedee’s boy, and his brother Jack; then Phil and Bart; Tom and Matt the revenuer; Jim Alphaeus and Tad; Simon the Rebel and Judas Iscariot, who turned him in.

Jesus held a briefing session and sent out the twelve. “Don’t go after the people of the world,” he said, “and don’t enter the black ghetto. Instead go to the deluded racists of the nation. As you travel, preach on the theme, ‘THE GOD MOVEMENT IS HERE.’ Heal the sick, arouse the insensitive, make the outcasts acceptable, expel devils. You received this power as a gift, so share it as a gift. Don’t bother to take any money or travelers’ checks or pocket change, no suitcase, no extra suit, no dress shoes, no toilet kit; for the worker is worth his upkeep. When you go to a city or town, discover who in it is receptive, and stay there till you’re ready to leave. Upon entering a house, introduce yourselves. If the home is receptive, let your goodwill and concern rest upon it. If it is not, then hold on to your goodwill and concern. When somebody won’t be friendly with you or pay attention to your message, leave that home or city and wash your hands of the whole shebang. I’m telling you a fact, Paris and Berlin will have it easier on the Judgment Day than that city.

“How shall I describe this generation? They are like kids playing in the streets and shouting at each other, ‘We put on some rock-and-roll, but you wouldn’t dance; so we put on some funeral music, but you wouldn’t go into mourning.’ For John offered a harsh, rugged life, and people say, ‘The guy is nuts.’ I, the son of man, offered laughter and joy, and people say, ‘Look at that guy. He is a no-good bum who runs around with Communists and peaceniks!’ So, if intelligence can be judged by its fruits, well—!”

“If you want to be a mature man,” Jesus said, “go, sell your stuff, give it to the poor-you will be spiritually rich-and then come share my life.” When the young fellow heard that bit, he walked away crying, because he had quite a pile. Jesus said to his students, “I’m telling you a fact; a rich man finds it extremely difficult to come into the God Movement. I say it again, a pig can go through a knothole easier than a rich man can get into the God Movement.”

Upon hearing this, the students were completely flabbergasted. “Who can make the grade?” they asked.

Jesus looked straight at them and said, “Humanly speaking, this is impossible, but with God anything can happen.”

It was definitely a product of his time. This Conservapedia Bible seems like a complete 180.