Holy Crap. No, Seriously. HOLY Crap.
I have no stinkin’ idea why we didn’t see this coming. I should’ve seen this. It had to happen. I’m sorry I have to blindside you with it.
The religious right is rewriting the Bible.
Andrew Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly’s (a name that causes cold shivers in any woman who was there in the 60’s) son has decided that the Holy Bible, The Good Book, is far too damn liberal.
No, no, no, no … I am not kidding you.
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.
So, he’s getting together folks to help him re-translate it.
We have examples:
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.”
You mean they knew what they are doing – kinda like you, Mr. Heretic?
Yeah, and because Jesus was all about nurturing grudges.
… 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.
Because Jesus really didn’t throw the moneychangers out of the temple.
My question is this: where are you going to put the part about stocking up on ammo, Mr. Schlafly? And the part about Kool-aid being good for you?
Thanks to Elizabeth Moon, great finagler of the Captcha, for the heads up.
And while they’re at it, why don’t they remove the part about Jesus feeding folks with the loaves and fishes? Sounds like welfare to me…
1I wonder if Matthew’s “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren” will now be followed by “It be for their own good so they don’t become moochers”
2Holy Gohmertz and a Boatload of Cruz! The fringe of the evangelicals kicked Christ out of the Bible and His church. Didn’t see that one coming, while waiting for them to put the Christ back in Christian. Guess that’s telling Fox “news” where to stuff their manger.
3I can’t agree with much of anything Schlafly or his hateful mother have to say, but the Pericope Adulterea is very widely suspected of being pseudographical, although some believe it is Johannine. And you thought lawyers had jargon. One of the main proponents of the idea that this story is a forgery is Bart Ehrman, who hardly strikes me as a righty.
4When you think you’ve heard it all, they come up with a new one to induce gap-jawed incredulity.
“Keep Christ in Christmas”? How about “Keep Christ in Christians”?
If Jesus started preaching his stuff on their streetcorner, they’d be the first ones looking for stones, and then for a big cross to nail him to.
5Don’t be too surprised if there is a suggestion that the New Testament” should be excised as too liberal. Bring back the Old Testament”. So much richer in vengence, righteousness, and mysogeny.
6I think Schlafly and Conservapedia need to do a quick, yet thorough, re-reading of the Book of Revelation … specifically Revelation 22:18-19 which reads thusly:
18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
These morons are messing with the Big Guy … let the plagues begin!!
7I know that republicans think that they are God’s gift to the world but…….
I thought that the bible was the literal word of God according to the religious right.
So what they, conservatives, are saying is that it is NOT the word of God but open to interpretation?
Are they going to talk about lethal injection instead of stoning?
And as long as they are opening the good book up for a re write, I bet they will change the Commandments about lying and adultery.
Then they can go to bed at night with a clear conscience.
And if they can change the word o
8Looks like Mammon finally trumped Jesus with these crazzzies.
Good Grief.
9First, anybody who refers to the “original” bible is ignorant. There are over 3,000 remnants of various pieces of the Bible extant, some mere fragments, and NOT ONE is identical to any of the others. The “original” Bible was assembled 300 A.D. Can you image US guys, in the year 2076 writing about what the founding fathers thought?
PS “No stinkin’ idea.” Too good.
10They were writing about what the founding fathers thought in 1788, they even wrote a lot of it down.
11I knew the right was going to have to kick Jesus to the curb sooner or later.
12“Do not let your hearts be troubled …” folks have been editing on the text of the Holy Bible for … we forever! Thomas Jefferson was such a fan he edited out all the parts that didn’t pertain to Jesus and published the result as the Jefferson Bible. (And I really like TJ, no real criticism here.) There’s a “breeches” Bible because some one or the other wanted to make sure all Adam and Eve’s privates were covered with much more than just a fig leaf. So in that text A&E wore “breeches” of fig leaves. And so on until today, when you have the Message, a fairly modern translation. Of course nothing matches my sainted mother’s edition with all Jesus’ direct quotes in red. 😉
13Whatever happened to the INERRANT, INFALLIBLE _WORD of GOD_ that was hammered into us little ole Southeren Baptist chilluns??? Why there is a seminary type skool just outside Memphis founded on just such an idee because the SBC was too liberal (!!!). Telebangelists of all stripes and persuasions other than SBC have been trying to out-conservative each other and the SBC for years over this very issue. NOW what are they saying about it? I’ve heard not one word against Brother Andy as of yet.
Just for fun — there is a radio station in western North Carolina whose call letters are WKJV. That would be W King James Version for the uninitiated. http://www.wkjv.com/ Yep, they believe the King James translation is the ONLY translation. All them others are heresy.
It’s gonna be interesting to see how all this plays out. Who has the popcorn concession? I do think we are going to need beverage stronger than soft drinks. I know I am.
14The Bible is the literal word of God.
No, wait, it’s too liberal, let’s retranslate it.
The Pope is infallible.
No, wait, not this one ’cause he seems too liberal.
We believe in the 2nd Amendment as the Founding Fathers intended.
15Except for the part about “well regulated.”
When the Revised Standard Version of first published I heard a conservative commentator say, “If the King James Version was good enough for St. Paul it’s good enough for me.”
Ignorance has no limits.
16@RA: when dealing with the babble our GOP brothers and sisters sometimes spew, I have discovered Wild Turkey really helps. After a couple sips, gulps, etc, I begin to not care that I don’t understand what they say. Your mileage may vary.
17Hang on, they think the KJV is too liberal? The one that was commissioned to support the Divine Right of kings?
18They already did that (Francis Schaeffer, Koop’s good buddy). A second time? Well, due to Moses’ dropping them, the Ten Commandments did get written twice, but this is NOT the same thing.
19I take it this is not the gay Schlafly that Phyllis isn’t too enamored with.
20The infamous Bush aide who did the “we create our own reality around here” bit was just the tip of the iceberg. From time immemorial, the M.O. of the loony extreme right has been to ignore reality, make up their own idiot ideas and call them “facts”, and to wallow in delusion, while all the time whining that their opponents “don’t understand” and “can’t face reality”.
There is nothing so sad and dangerous as someone who is contemptuous of reality and insists that their fantasy world is the only truth. This is the legion of nut cases that America is afflicted with now, and their pursuit of raw political power is taking this nation down the tubes.
21In Luke 20:9-10: (The parable of the workers in the vineyard) it reads “Then He began to tell the people a parable: “A certain man planted a vineyard, and entrusted it to unionized farmers, and left the country for a long time. When it was time for harvest, he sent one of his servants to the union farmers, instructing them to gather and give him the harvest. But the farmers beat the servant, and sent him away empty handed. ”
(In between these verses, the owner sent his son.)
V. 15-16 “So the union threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What, then, should the owner of the vineyard do to the union? He will come and bust the union, and hire others to work his vineyard.” When the people heard this, they said, “God forbid!””
A little anti-union bias there, seems to me.
In the Magnificat, it quotes Mary (Luke 1:53)
“He has fed the hungry with the best foods, and the miserly he sent away empty-handed. ” while the usual translation it is the rich that were sent away empty.
Forms of the word miser (miserly, etc) seem to be substituted for “rich” in several places.
22Well, finally. Somebody needs to dictate policy to that wimpy-ass Autarch of the bible, and get Him off his butt about all the slackers out there. Schafly and his crew of Teabagging Conservapedia editors are just the ones to do it.
Remember folks, when you need to give policy to God, there’s nothing like reactionary crazy.
23No surprise there. The repugs selectively quote and interpret only the Old Testament.
24They obviously avoid the life, message and teachings of Christ. How else could they explain sticking it to the poor, unemployed, sick, elderly and injured veterans? They argue that this is a Christian nation, but in no way want us to act like it. Hypocrite is synonymous with Republican.
Well, dang, I guess Jesus was just a liberal kinda guy. Rather than going to all the trouble of rewriting, wouldn’t it be easier to just say that He would have been a republican if the GOP would have been around at that time? Maybe Jesus knew not what He said.
25@ Henry Ridgeway: I read a few weeks ago that the first of the gospels was Mark, which doesn’t include the story of the nativity, so if we’re going to try to get back to the earliest surviving parts, I’m thinking we can stop worrying over the Christ in Christmas because the earliest gospel didn’t have that story….
26Marcia–Hopefully the first plague will be the plague of Democratic Representation (at both the state and federal levels)
27Years back, in a course on the historical roots of the Gospels, we learned that the story of the woman taken in adultery, etc. had not been found in a manuscript earlier than a few centuries later (I forget which.) However, it was pointed out that we have very few (and at most one or two) complete versions of any of the Gospels from within 200 years of the time they’re talking about, and a number of resources were destroyed over the years that might have had alternative lines of descent…the original compilers (be they Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or someone who had known them) probably had more material than they used.
What I see the use of this example in “Conservapedia” being is salting of the mine–yes, non-right-wing scholars have said this, and discussed it, and thus including it is an attempt to legitimize by association the rest of the argument that *all* the Bible needs re-translation into modern corporate-speak. Which is baloney. Study continues, and should continue, and every new ancient manuscript that bears on the age of specific passages, or offers insight into the meaning of debated passages, should certainly be examined carefully to suck all the meaning from it. But the existence of a passage in the canon that is, quite possibly, not original to that Gospel (and whose source is not known, thus making it an open question whether it was written de novo at the time of its first appearance, or whether it was copied in from something else equally old) does not mean that liberals were corrupting the translation process. This isn’t the only such disputed/debated passage: we’re also pretty sure that some of the letters attributed to Paul weren’t written by Paul.
But the right wing is so untrained in real logical thinking that they are very likely to believe that one or two disputed passages bring the whole thing into doubt. They don’t know how to think; they don’t know how to estimate expertise; they just know how to be bobble-head dolls.
And sneer. They’re very good at sneering.
28Oh, for goodness sake! Seems to me to be the inevitable outcome of the odious prosperity gospel so prevalent these days. And, as night follows day, once you get yourself a load of prosperity, you don’t want to have some nagging squish (Jesus) on your case, do you? Well! Do you!?
29If Jesus Christ were alive today to see what you’ve done to his Church, he’d turn over in his grave.
30So now it has a few mistakes. How about that infallibility thing? This is a textbook example of the Greek word Hubris. Too bad Zeus isn’t around to zap them.
31Is this article current?
I remember hearing about this project awhile back, and hilarious though it might be, the Talk Page doesn’t appear to have much on it dated after 2012. I will confess I did not look that hard though, I felt my IQ points dropping as I scrolled down the page.
The “Rich Issue” (actual title) is addressed about 2/3 of the way down. I stopped there.
32I would be extremely interested in seeing a serious theologian’s (Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman) take on any screenshots of that talk page. I wonder what they would think of the “Bearing Arms” and “Kill vs. Murder” paragraphs.
(I am easily amused.)
33Zeus is zapping them, Robin Frazier. Deny as they will science and global warming, the Frankenstein-storms are a message they prefer to neglect.
What say the GOP and Tea Bag baggage car about the latest train wreck of exploding crude oil? Degraded infrastructure, bad idea, or WTG it’s all about homosexuality. So, they accept that gays are stronger than their god, or GF[G] gohmert, it’s the aging infrastructure combined with lethal product.
The Tea Bags have already kicked Christ out of the Bible. God had better watch his step, before the Tea Bag give Him the boot.churches .
34Some think that the story of the woman taken in adultery was authentic but it made the copiers nervous which is why it is not found in some manuscripts and found in different places in others. Remember the Bible was copied by hand until printing came along much later.
One thought about the story itself that I can’t resist adding: The act of adultery takes two people, but they only brought the woman and under their law both were equally guilty. Someone asked, Where was the man? and Another answered: He ran out the back door and grabbed a stone.
35It’s worth reading sections of this to see what they’re up to: http://conservapedia.com/Genesis_1-8_%28Translated%29 It contrasts KJV with their “translation” with commentary to the side. Some of the commentary has to do with legitimate questions of Hebrew scholarship, some of it is stretching meaning out of shape a bit, some of it is outright fantasizing and fiction, and some of it is attempting to misapply a shallow understanding of science that a smart third grader can see through. Past that, some of the commentary is simply outright nuts.
There’s no nice way to say it. These folks are not rational; they’re rationalizers who aren’t even very good at it.
36I went to conservapedia and looked around. They admit that the earth orbits the sun, but that’s about it. Did you know that if you believe in evolution it’s because you have been bullied?
37@Micr — I have been known to dilute my spring water with Maker’s Mark. We used to live not far from their distillery in Loretto (near Bardstown), KY. Yes, my mileage has varied. 😉
38Aw, hell! Lets just skip the part about all the thousands of translations of the different parts of the bible which is still be translated as we gather here by the river . . . the beautiful, beautiful river . . . that flows by the throne of Matthew Schlafly. And lets jump to the part about the fact that one of Phyliss’s little boys actually came out of the closet some years ago. Karma is really something!
39Being Phyllis Schlafly’s son is it’s own punishment. I can think of few thing worse to wish on anyone.
40But hasn’t the far right been rewriting the Bible since around — oh, I don’t know, maybe the Council of Nicea?
41Holy crap and OMG! Sounds like something from the Onion, it’s so ridiculous.
42Thanks once again to you Juanita and all the other funny and brilliant people who post here.
This, my friends of the Truth, is Revelations coming to reality. Chapter 13. These people are part of the “Wild Beast” that had 10 horns and seven heads and the seven heads had blasphemous names. Pay attention to verses 3-8.
43Council of Nicaea, 2013. If it doesn’t work for your worldview, change it.
44