Blessed are the conservative in Bible translation

[admin]

Here they go changing the bible again to the liking of the modern times. In another few hundred years bible will be nothing like the original if they keep at it.

Source

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The Gospel of Luke records that, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus showed his boundless mercy by praying for his killers this way: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Not so fast, say contributors to the Conservative Bible Project.

The project, an online effort to create a Bible suitable for contemporary conservative sensibilities, claims Jesus' quote is a disputed addition abetted by liberal biblical scholars, even if it appears in some form in almost every translation of the Bible.

The project's authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.

"Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it's professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible," said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project's online home.

Spoiler: read on...

Experts who have devoted their careers to unraveling the ancient texts of the Scriptures, many in long-extinct languages, are predictably skeptical about a project by amateur translators.

"This is not making scripture understandable to people today, it's reworking scripture to support a particular political or social agenda," said Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., who calls himself a theological conservative.

Religious publishers already provide an alphabet soup of Bible translations for a range of theological outlooks, from the King James Version (KJV) to the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and beyond. The most widely used traditional translations were overseen by scholars who are considered the best minds in conservative Christianity.

"The phrase 'theological conservative' does not mean that someone is politically conservative," said Schlafly, who lives in Far Hills, N.J.

This liberal slanting, Schlafly argues, ranges from changing gendered language — Jesus calling his disciples to be "fishers of people" rather than "fishers of men" — to more subtle choices, like the 2001 English Standard Version of the Bible, which uses "comrade" and "laborer" more often than the conservative-friendly "volunteer."

Contributors to the project aren't arguing on ideological grounds alone. The discussion forum on the site is full of discourse on Greek grammar, along with arguments long familiar to Biblical scholars about the history of certain passages.

Take the famous passage from Luke: the Conservative Bible Project omits it not only because it's "a favorite of liberals," but because there's some dispute over its authenticity, based on the manuscripts it appears in.

Jones, the professor, said while some early Greek manuscripts omit Jesus' words, others include them.

"There are so many factors to consider when looking at that, but here it gets boiled down to 'liberals put it in,'" he said. "You've got people who are doing this who have probably never looked at an actual ancient manuscript."

In some ways, the Conservative Bible Project reflects an ancient debate over Scripture. The Bible as it's known today more or less took final shape in the 4th century after hundreds of years of debate over which books were canonical.

The debate flared up again during the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther fruitlessly yearned to cut the Book of James because of its fairly explicit contradiction of his belief that salvation could be attained by faith alone.

"People have always done this with the Bible," said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. "Virtually everyone in a mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic church in the United States is reading a doctored version of the Bible."

Jenkins is referring to the Revised Common Lectionary, a selection of biblical texts read in worship services that amounts to about a third of the full text.

Schlafly's project is distinctive, though, because non-experts collaborate Wiki-style on the Internet to produce their version.

"The best of the public is better than a group of experts," said Schlafly, whose mother, Phyllis, is a longtime conservative activist known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Jones says the project is a misguided effort to read contemporary politics back into the text.

"Ironically, there's a long tradition of the liberal twisting of scripture," Jones said. "Scholars have rightly deemed those translations illegitimate, and this conservative Bible is every bit as illegitimate."

The Bible's roots in a dizzying variety of ancient manuscripts require a lifetime of dedication to master, said the Rev. Frank Matera, a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America.

"There's a little Italian proverb, 'Every translator is a traitor,'" Matera said. "Most Bible translations are usually done by a group of scholars, precisely so they can balance out each other. It's not something that everybody can do."

[Fayax]

Whats with all the hoopla about rewriting the bible again and again. Soon it will read like a novel and lose all its uniqueness. Might as well ask the greatest writers to rewrite the bible and choose the best version that reads like a movie script.

Source
Translating the Bible is no joke. But what's in a political 'translation'?

By James F. McGrath James F. Mcgrath   – Mon Dec 7, 4:00 am ET

Indianapolis – The Bible, it turns out, is too liberal.

At least the Conservative Bible Project thinks so. The group has set itself the task of "translating" the Bible in a more conservative way, so as to eliminate liberal "misinterpretations" and prevent liberal "misconstruals."

This is not a joke. Consider Conservapedia, the conservative perspective Wikipedia site that features this translation project.

When it first started, it was difficult to tell if it was an authentic conservative phenomenon or a parody along the lines of "The Colbert Report." Attempts to parody an extreme group often simply end up resembling an even more extreme, possibly very fringe, but equally real group.

But it has become clear that what looks like an attempt at satire is a real project proposed by people who don't seem to grasp the irony of their endeavor.

Now, with similar irony, the Conservative Bible Project plans to replace text in the Bible, which is often open to more than one interpretation, with new text that will be in accord with how the members of the project interpret the text; in some cases, what they think it really ought to say even though it doesn't.

Don't get me wrong: "Rewriting" the Bible has a long and illustrious heritage, one that begins within the pages of the Bible itself.

The book of Chronicles retells the stories found in the books of Samuel and Kings. One Gospel retells stories found in another. There have been Midrashes that expand, Targums that paraphrase, and Gospel harmonies that combine multiple stories into one big story.

There is plenty of precedent for taking biblical material and doing creative things with it, and one could even argue that it is "biblical" to do so.

But when people set about to radically rewrite the Bible and call it "translating," or deny that what they really are doing is rewriting the Bible, it's misleading and dishonest. Where in the past we have seen debates over the meaning of the Bible, we may see less healthy and educational communication on it as various groups begin to forgo discussion and adopt a Bible "translated" to suit their needs. Of course, in one sense this has always been done – but not usually to the extent that the Conservative Bible Project proposes.

Perhaps most important is that the "Conservapedia Version" of the Bible isn't what it claims to be in one particularly important respect: It is not a translation. Translation involves rendering a text in one language into another, not rewriting existing translations so as to make them say what you want them to, without any knowledge of the languages in which the underlying texts are written.

A good example is the discussion on the Conservative Bible Project page about whether the manager in Luke 16:8 should be referred to as "shrewdly dishonest."

Spoiler: read on...

The discussion on the Web page suggests that he should rather be considered "resourceful," a "better conservative term, which became available only in 1851." No mention is made of what the actual Greek term might mean, much less of whether relevant linguistic parallels or cultural evidence might provide clarification of the Greek term's meaning.

The meaning of words in the underlying languages is simply ignored, and the "translators" make clear that their interest is to make the English text mean what they believe a conservative Bible ought to mean.

The fact that the Greek text in the same verse explicitly calls the manager "unrighteous" or "unjust" is likewise never mentioned. It seems that for a project like this, all one has to do is "translate" that word as meaning something else, and the problem is solved.

Why not go even further and add a parable in which Jesus praises employers who pay their workers as little as possible, or one that extols Caesar Augustus for not providing universal healthcare, while they're at it?

These "translators," if they are serious about what they are proposing to do, are exalting themselves above the Bible and, from the perspective of conservative Christianity, above God.

If nothing else, the project illustrates the fact that "conservative" and "Bible-believing" are not the same thing, despite what you'll often hear.

James F. McGrath is an associate professor of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis.

[Jake]

Translations should always to be done from the source and done very conservatively. Translation from translations end up having a totally different meaning from the original.

[Miss KnowEverything]

I agree Mr.