Sunday Thoughts

So... normally I write more about what things mean to me on this day, and maybe that's where this'll end up... but my topic today is not a verse or idea from the Bible, but rather, the actual whole Bible. To be specific, it's about the project to rewrite the Bible that some of my non-existent readers may've heard about lately, spearheaded by Conservapedia. I say "rewrite" rather than the word they use, "retranslate", because, frankly, they're planning on putting some stuff in I don't remember from any version of the Bible I've ever read, including the KJV.

I don't think anyone would accuse the KJV of having a liberal bias, but I'm pretty sure, for instance, that there aren't any instances in the KJV of Jesus talking about Free Market values, something the Conservapedia project wants to make sure are there. I'm not going to get into a whole rant about the concept of Prosperity Christianity, but "Express Free Market Parables"—one of the mandates of this project— pretty much falls into that realm. The KJV—which Conservapedia believes could be a good starting point—still contains Matthew 6:19-21 and Matthew 19:21-24, for instance, and all of Luke 16, which basically boil down to talking about how earthly wealth isn't as valuable as Heavenly wealth and how concentrating on the former takes away from the latter.

Conservapedia also seems to object to the NIV translation of Luke 23:34 as including the phrase "for they do not know what they are doing", because, they claim, the persecutors of Jesus did know what they are doing. The KJV reads "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Now, I'm okay with the argument that the KJV version connotation is a little different, because it does read a bit differently to me, as well; the KJV sounds more like "they don't realize what they are doing", whereas the NIV version sounds more like "they haven't even considered what they are doing". But the basic message isn't that vastly different, and the fact that they make a point of it in a document mainly concerned with broad strokes instead of specifics seems odd.

And that's the word I'd use for the whole thing: odd. The sense I really get is that they're saying "There are things we believe that the common modern translations of the Bible don't support [and never mind that the older versions don't support it either], so let's rewrite the Bible to support those things." Because... while clearly I recognize that the Bible can be (and is) interpreted somewhat differently by different people, my feeling is that this is ultimately because humans, including those who wrote the Bible, have an imperfect understanding of God. When it comes to those of my beliefs that I'm not sure are supported by or in congruence with the Bible, I struggle with them, and try harder to understand how I can reconcile them or think about whether or not I might even want to (or can) change those beliefs. But never have I thought "Therefore, the Bible obviously was mistranslated, because it doesn't mesh with what I think my religion is about."

I can't help but wonder if what they really want is a different religion altogether.