USian conservatives rewrite the bible (no spam)

[fable]

Yes, it's true. You can read about it here. It's a work in progress, but these are people with a record of achievement (however you may regard the results). My favorite goals of theirs are:

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God." Yeah, there's nothing more liberal or wordy than those crypto-Commie King James scholars that keep using Jehovah, Lord God, etc.

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer..." Of course, we all remember that exciting passage in Corinthians that includes, "As for Titus, remember that he is a partner with me, and is my Soviet comrade and fellow travel in my labours for you."

And best of all:

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.

Presumably this means Jesus' comment "It is simpler for a camel to go through the eye of a a needle, than for a man of wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven," will be replaced by the more accurate "Covet wealth and let greed guide you."

Oh, the joy.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Damn you Fable...heard about the Project a few days ago but I was just looking at that very page and wanted to post it myself but it shorted out my brain from sheer stupidity. Ah well...remember kids, the true path to historical textual authenticity is in rewriting your own holy text using recent terminology to suit your short-sighted contemporary biases...um, I mean ideologies. Can't wait to see what they make of Jebus and the moneylenders.
I for one would really like to see the missing "This book is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental" page restored, but that's probably a bit too accurate.

[jklinders]

As if translating so lengthy and important a work is not problematic enough!! There are sections of the Bible that would curl the hair on my head from reading them carefully enough as it is without a right wingnut spin placed on it.

The conservative movement i Canada is getting pretty stupid too. From what I am seeing the Gambanshee community may be the last bastion of sanity left in a few years. Maybe we pool together and get a bomb shelter...

[Tricky]

So, how does this change that the Bible is already the most rewritten book in history?

[Fljotsdale]

Well, Tricky... I wouldn't say the most rewritten. The most translated, maybe. The most 'let's ignore this bit because it doesn't fit current mores', certainly. The most 'we can't let this bit be included because it doesn't fit what we want the public to believe (original compilers of the various bits attitude, that), also certainly. And the most 'let's ADD this to make bloody sure the public believe in OUR ideas, even if the actual original writing doesn't say so - it SHOULD have done!', Yep!
But not many versions actually re-written, I think. Unless you count the Book of Mormon as a rewriting... and the various 'modern', easy language paraphrases, such as The Good News Bible...

[QuenGalad]

Could someone explain to me what are the Powerful Conservative Terms? I can hazard some guesses, but i'd really like to know. And why is 'lord' better than 'lord god'?

[Vicsun]

This is a great idea. After they have rewritten the bible, they can cite the newly re-written bible in support of their ideas which they have used to re-write the bible. I, myself, have many a times considered writing a holy book of my own, which I would always refer to whenever my integrity is questioned.

[fable]

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuenGalad Could someone explain to me what are the Powerful Conservative Terms? I can hazard some guesses, but i'd really like to know. And why is 'lord' better than 'lord god'?

Hey, QuenGalad. Been a while.

I suspect, for example, the conservatives want to replace "witches" in the passage about not suffering witches to live with "non-Christian," for example, even though there weren't any Christians back when Exodus was being written. But witches simply isn't strong enough a term, and polytheists isn't powerful enough on the attack to qualify as Conservative. So non-Christian, it will have to be. That's the nice thing about rewriting old books with an eye to ideology. Your imagination's the limit, and it's always fun to remake your deity into your own image.

As for "lord" being better than "lord god," this is all about framing issues, after all. The Very Serious wingnuts behind this project want to make the point stick that liberals are intellectuals, and in the US, intellectual has always been a dirty word outside those progressive urban areas teeming with vice and depravity, such as New York City and Boston. By claiming the bible needs to be fixed because of liberal and intellectual input, these people are only playing to an audience that is truly international in its origins--you can find them among the wealthy 19th century English classes, and among the Dutch in the 17th century, for example, sermonizing that gathering wealth is a sign of religious value, and proof of their god's love. It all plays into a desire to turn their religion into an icon for their own values, and a slur on the values of others.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuenGalad Could someone explain to me what are the Powerful Conservative Terms? I can hazard some guesses, but i'd really like to know. And why is 'lord' better than 'lord god'?

Oh no @Fable, it's much better than 'witches' unto non-Christians. Here are the conservative terms they're talking about as linked to on the Wingnut Bible page in question - don't read the page while drinking coffee unless you fancy having to clean it from your keyboard/monitor.
For a fun drinking game have a shot of whisky at any ad hominem ConTerm, a shot of vodka at any ConTerm that may reasonably be thought not to be specifically Conservative, and down a beer at any term from the works of George Orwell. Make sure you don't have to drive anywhere afterwards.

As for the Lord VS Lord God shortness thing, it's purportedly towards conciseness over librul wordiness, though I suspect it may also have something to do with polysyllabic words likely being a bit difficult for a lot of the Con Bible's target audience. On an unrelated note, did you know homeschool is amongst the many Powerful Conservative Terms listed?

[fable]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper Oh no @Fable, it's much better than 'witches' unto non-Christians. Here are the conservative terms they're talking about as linked to on the Wingnut Bible page in question - don't read the page while drinking coffee unless you fancy having to clean it from your keyboard/monitor.

Missed that. You know, that list is infinitely more stupid than anything I thought they'd be capable of in my wildest dreams. But then, I can't say I've really paid much attention to the British National Party, the French National Front, or the Amazing Twit That Is Silvio Berlusconi.

Quote:

As for the Lord VS Lord God shortness thing, it's purportedly towards conciseness over librul wordiness, though I suspect it may also have something to do with polysyllabic words likely being a bit difficult for a lot of the Con Bible's target audience. On an unrelated note, did you know homeschool is amongst the many Powerful Conservative Terms listed?

Yes, that's pretty much my take on their anti-intellectualism. I wonder that they don't include "outdoor plumbing," "revenuers," "union scum," "furriners," and "death in your twenties" among their preferred phrase matter.

[galraen]

Just read the list that Ode to a Grasshopper linked to, quite funny really. I take it the site is the work of The Harvard Lampoon; after all no real Christian fundamentalists would cite Isac Newton, the well known heretic, at the top of the list, and Kipling right underneath it. Unless of course they happen to be a bunch of uneducated, pig* ignorant, loony toons!

* Apologies to pigs, what did they do to deserve being associated with Anti-Christian conservatives. They must be Anti-Christians obviously, after all it was the capitalist bankers that JC threw out of the Temple, not liberals!

[QuenGalad]

Gosh. Good thing i wasn't drinking anything indeed.

So basically they're doing a remake of the bible to suit the modern audience? Like with all those old movies that get new special effects, or asian films remade with white actors? This is actually quite funny. For all those centuries they were doing everything to prevent even thinking about their holy book as - loosely speaking - a work of fiction, and now they're treating it just like that

@Fable, thanks for the welcoming smile. I'm currently being absolutely thrashed by life and thought i could find something positive around here. Was not mistaken

[Fljotsdale]

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuenGalad Gosh. Good thing i wasn't drinking anything indeed. So basically they're doing a remake of the bible to suit the modern audience? Like with all those old movies that get new special effects, or asian films remade with white actors? This is actually quite funny. For all those centuries they were doing everything to prevent even thinking about their holy book as - loosely speaking - a work of fiction, and now they're treating it just like that @Fable, thanks for the welcoming smile. I'm currently being absolutely thrashed by life and thought i could find something positive around here. Was not mistaken

Come and have a ((((HUG)))) in here. This is a nice cosy place to be.

[jklinders]

This thread and it's links are doing a marvelous job of showcasing democracy's greatest strengths and weaknesses. It's greatest strength is that everyone who is a citizen has a say in how it works...it's greatest weakness is that every citizen including populist uneducated and willfully stupid wackjobs like the folks behind this project has a say.

I think I need a drink.

[Dottie]

I think the best thing about this is that in an effort to make a new bible translation that does not suffer from "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one" they have decided to translate from KJV.