It’s easy to ignore the Conservative Bible Project when there are so many Bibles out there tailored to your specific need. Last week, you could’ve had President Obama on your Bible cover (the website took the offer down).
But while The Green Bible highlights earth-friendly passages in green, The Tennessean finds that the Conservative Bible Project takes translation to a new level, taking out two sections.
One is the long ending of Mark’s Gospel, which includes verses about snake handling and the story of the woman caught in adultery. Neither is found in most of the oldest Greek manuscripts used to translate the Bible. Schlafly says that adultery story, in which Jesus says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” should be cut because it portrays Jesus as being soft on sin.
“It’s a liberal addition, put in by people who wanted to undermine the reality of hell and judgment,” he said.
The story of the woman caught in adultery, known as the “Pericope Adulterae” and found in John 7:53-8:1, has troubled scholars for some time. Most Greek manuscripts have the story but not the oldest manuscripts. St. Jerome included it in his Greek New Testament, which was used as the basis for the King James Version of the Bible. Modern translators put a footnote or bracket around the story, pointing out the questions about its origins. But none removed the text.
Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert and Salon take a few jabs at the project. Colbert’s fans inserted “In the beginning, Stephen Colbert created the heaven and the earth,” which was edited back out.
Back to The Tennessean‘s story, Bob Smietana shows how the Conservative Bible compares to the New International Version and the King James Version (KJV).
For example, Mark 10:25 (KJV) says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” the Conservative Bible substitutes “a man who cares only for money” for rich man.
“I don’t think Jesus is saying, ‘Let’s all be lazy so we can get to heaven.’ That’s not the message. And, if you translate the word rich as simply rich, some people are going to get the message that ‘I am going to be lazy so I can get to heaven easier,’ ” says Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia and son of Phyllis Schlafly.
Conservapedia’s guiding principles are: Framework against liberal bias, not emasculated, not dumbed down, utilize powerful conservative terms, combat harmful addiction, accept the logic of hell, express free market parables, exclude later-inserted liberal passages, credit open-mindedness of disciples, and prefer conciseness over liberal wordiness.
What do you think of the project?
