Tom McGee's Blog

A lot of virtual ink is being spilled over the latest wigged-out idea of the wingnut right. It turns out, and who’d have thought, that the Bible is too liberal. Indeed, even the King James version of 1611 is positively infected with liberal notions of forgiveness, sharing, and um, a lot of other stuff they find inconvenient.

You can read all about the project here, and even see the, ahem, work they’ve done so far. I noticed the other day that no one had touched the Old Testament or Revelations. I wonder how the latter will stand up to their avowed aim to “Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid … unnecessary ambiguities ”

Beliefnet: “More seriously, the insane hubris of this really staggers the mind. These right-wing ideologues know better than the early church councils that canonized Scripture? They really think it’s wise to force the word of God to conform to a 21st-century American idea of what constitutes conservatism? These jokers don’t worship God. They worship ideology.”

My own contribution to the criticism of this wacked-out mission is this: The misbegotten author of this whole Conservapedia edifice (God have mercy on his soul) is Phyllis Schlafely’s twisted spawn Andy. In reference to sourcing the original languages of the parables (Greek), he accepts that it’s not only permissible but necessary to change them so that they express one very specifically worded meaning.

I don’t agree that “if some concept was not adequately expressed in Hebrew or Greek it cannot be adequately expressed in a translation into another language.” Parables, for example, transcend inadequacies in language and it is fully possible to take a parable written in a simplistic language and express it more fully in a richer language.

A conservative Bible uses the richness provided in part by conservative language to fully convey the concepts. The original Greek and Hebrew may help sometimes, or they may be inadequate. “Logos” in the beginning of John illustrates this point, as the term is merely the best the Greek has to offer. “Truth” as fully understood and used today, as developed and popularized by the conservative movement (it’s rarely used by the Left), is a better term to convey the concept.

By “express it more fully” it’s perfectly obvious that what he means is, “make it say what I want it to say.” And am I really supposed to believe that the language of Homer, Plato and Aristotle is “simplistic,” isn’t “rich” enough to convey a complex story? Or that the language of Pythagoras and Euclid didn’t have a word for “truth,” so they had to substitute “word” instead?

This would be a good time for a semi-blasphemous profanity, but I’ll restrain myself. I’d hope that the messy collision of religion and right-wing politics can’t get any worse than this, but I’ve been wrong before.

It’s enough to make me appreciate “the Catholic Church’s large and bovine imperturbability and slowness to be moved by stupid cultural frenzies, fevers and fashions.”

At least two pieces of scripture are slated for removal altogether. One is where Christ on the cross says, “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” The other is the story from John about the adulteress who is about to be stoned, and Jesus intercedes for her.

The former reflects, quite frankly, a certain pointless cruelty; Schlafly et al claim that, “yes, some of them did.” One could easily retort, “they did? They knew they were murdering the actual Son of God?” I kind of don’t think so.

The latter reflects of course that old standard thread of the old-time religion, an absolute terror of female sexuality. Of all the people that cannot be forgiven by a bunch of pro-life zealots it’s a woman who has recreational sex. If you’re the kind of person who could bomb a clinic, you’re not going to accept a story like that.

Even Jesus isn’t allowed to be tolerant in their world.