Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Conservatives rewrite the Bible

I read about this a couple of days ago and thought it was a joke. It's not. The article I'm recommending to you is called Conservative Bible Project Aims to Delete 'Liberal Bias' from the Bible and the story is simply unbelievable - except that it's true:

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

That famous line, attributed to Jesus in Luke 23:34, could well apply to the folks at Conservapedia -- the "conservative version" of Wikipedia -- who have embarked on a project to rewrite the Bible.

In an effort to rid the Good Book of "liberal bias," the group has set up the Conservative Bible Project, which aims to rewrite the Bible from a modern, conservative perspective.

"Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations," the
project's Web site asserts.

And the line quoted above is one of the group's targets for deletion in a truly "conservative" Bible. The "forgive them father" quote "is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible," Conservapedia states.

Yes, I checked the Conservapedia site itself and the project exists and it's serious.

Can you believe that the conservatives want to eliminate forgiveness from Christianity? Mercy!
~~~

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:29 PM

    Perhaps we should just let them enjoy their exclusive little secretive club, which seems to be diminishing daily. I, for one, plan to completely ignore them from now on...they aren't worth the energy.

    annie c

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:39 PM

    What is the point of calling yourself a "Christian" if you edit out the phrases you don't like or agree with? Being "Christ-like" means, implicitly, that you are forgiving... it is a significant message from Christ.
    Classof65

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:37 AM

    If they eliminate forgiveness, they may as well eliminate Jesus.

    These people are broken souls.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Slacktivist has a couple of interesting posts on this. See this blog. The post before the current one talks about the difficulty satirists are having these days.
    For a bit more technical info on a specific passage see here. Anyone who's ever read a critical edition of a medieval or ancient text would appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BTW, these people calling themselves "conservative" is about as accurate as their calling themselves "Christian", or Dick Cheney calling himself a good shot.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "...or Dick Cheney calling himself a good shot."

    Oooh! Deliciously snarky, Tom!

    ReplyDelete

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