Conservative Heresy 101: The Conservative Bible Project

Andy Schlafly 

Well it is the New Year and there is no way better to celebrate it than by excoriating the methods of a group of Conservatives who are busily re-writing the Bible according to “Conservative principles.”

These people are the very same people who call Pope Francis a Marxist and condemn anyone who sees the strong message of social justice that is found throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament prophets and the words of Jesus in the Gospels. For these people the issue is not what the Bible says, but how they can get it to line up with their political and economic ideological goals. The Conservative Bible Project  is so bad that even wing nuts like World Net Daily’s editor in chief Joseph Farah said: “I’ve seen some incredibly stupid and misguided initiatives by ‘conservatives’ in my day, but this one takes the cake…there is nothing conservative about re-writing the Bible.”

I may be considered by some to be a Liberal but I do hold Scripture in high regard. Thus although I am very open to good research, linguistics, archeology and other methods to re-examine the texts since time nor discovery knows no limits, I do object to those that re-write Scripture to fit their theological and even more evil their political bias. How someone interprets Scripture in light of their theology, something called Hermeneutics, is within the bounds be it conservative or liberal of whatever theological school. However, re-writing the text to make it say things it does not say is neither scholarly nor is it honest. Unfortunately it is happening and the group doing the greatest to destroy the legitimacy of Scripture is a conservative Christian group with ties to the most extreme elements of the political right in the United States.

I ran across this initially on my friend Joel Watts’ website back in 2009. Joel is a real Bible scholar and his website Unsettled Christianity.com is really good and the site of some very good scholarly debate. (The link to Joel’s article is here: http://unsettledchristianity.com/2009/10/get-the-liberal-stuff-out-of-our-bible/ ) I wrote about it back in 2009 because initially I thought that it had to be some kind of joke. Today I am simply cleaning up that article and making sure that it is still accurate. Sadly it is.

The Conservative Bible Project sounds like something that one might read in “The Onion.”  Unfortunately it is part of the conservapedia.com movement which was founded by Andrew Schlafly. Andrew is the son of Phyllis “I won’t censure my associates who suggest a violent revolution” Schlafly the ancient embittered head of the Eagle Forum.

When I first came across the project I found the whole thing amazing.  I guess that is because I never thought that any Christian who holds to any kind of orthodoxy would “translate” the Bible through a political and economic hermeneutic rather than a theological one.

But this is exactly what the folks at the Conservative Bible Project have done and continue to do.  What they have written is simply so rich in contradiction, irony and mixed with enough hubris and heresy to make it almost as fun to critique as the Jehovah’s Witness New World Translation, if they weren’t serious.

Admittedly the bias of any team of translators shows in any Bible translation, it cannot be helped.  Translators are human and their theological and preferences can be seen in the translation of passages in which they may differ with other camps.  This does not mean at all that any of these folks are being dishonest but rather they are seeking to best interpret the words of Scripture but are guided influenced by their theology and underlying hermeneutic.  Likewise there can be differences due to the translators attempting to communicate the idea and meaning versus trying to make a close word for word translation.  However these translations, excepting the Jehovah’s Witless New World Translation, actually can claim that their translators are attempting to be as forthright as possible in their translation attempt within the limits of their theology and interpretive hermeneutic.

But now we come to the Conservative Bible Project.  This is a brazen attempt to re-write the Bible based on a conservative-libertarian political and economic basis rather than on any kind of theological principle.  The project is shameless as it seeks to re-interpret or exclude passages of Scripture that have been believed as Canonical by the Church since the Canon of Scripture was finalized.  If it is bad for “liberals” to take liberties with the Biblical text it is equally wrong for so called “conservatives” to do so.  So before I keep ranting, which I would like to I will let the creators of this alleged “translation” speak for themselves.  If you don’t believe me the link is here:

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

Before you read any of the rest of this you need to read the prologue to the Conservapedia site and if you need to check the link is here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia 

The Introduction to Conservapedia

Schlafly’s Conservapedia is an English-language wiki-based Web encyclopedia.  Schlafly’s project is written from an Americentric and Conservative Christian perspective. It is anti-science and holds to a Young Earth Creation view.  Schlafly, a lawyer and social studies teacher started it in 2006. Schlafly started the project because he felt that Wikipedia “had a liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American bias.”

The “translators” of the Conservative Bible display an acute sense of distrust and paranoia in the preface to their “Bible.”

“The untaught and the unstable twist [Paul’s letters] to their own destruction, as they also do with the rest of the Scriptures.” 2 Peter 3:16

By this verse, we should not put absolute authority in “official” Bible translators – such as those of “The Message” or “The Green Bible”. Instead, we should translate for ourselves, or in a collaborative effort with others we personally trust.

That is where they begin, with their own translation of scripture, a smearing of other translators and the hubris that only they can be trusted.

The following is the article about the Conservative Bible Project taken from Conservepedia verbatim. I have made no edits and even included their hyperlinks.  I begin with their underlying presupposition which comes from their “notes” section. I had to highlight the last part because it shows the depravity of the thinking of these people. It all come their website. I didn’t make it up.

Why They Are Doing this

1. The committee in charge of updating the bestselling version, the NIV, is dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook. As a result, the revision and replacement of the NIV will be influenced more by political correctness and other liberal distortions than by genuine examination of the oldest manuscripts. As a result of these political influences, it becomes desirable to develop a conservative translation that can serve, at a minimum, as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning in future versions.

1. ↑ Additional less important guidelines include (1) adherence to a concise and dignifying style, such as use of “who” rather than “that” when referring to people and also use glorifying language for the remarkable achievements and (2) recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well.

The rest of the article follows:

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

• lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity
• lack of precision in modern language
• translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.[1]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]

1. 1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. 2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. 3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
4. 4. 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”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. 5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. 6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. 7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. 8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. 9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. 10. 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.”

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

Benefits to participants include:

• mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
• mastery of the English language, which is valuable
• thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
• benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

Possible Approaches

Here are possible approaches to creating a conservative Bible translation:

• identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as “government”, and suggest more accurate substitutes
• identify the omission of liberal terms for vices, such as “gambling”, and identify where they should be used
• identify conservative terms that are omitted from existing translations, and propose where they could improve the translation
• identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as “word” in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as “truth”

An existing translation might license its version for improvement by the above approaches, much as several modern translations today are built on prior translations. Alternatively, a more ambitious approach would be to start anew from the best available ancient transcripts.

In stage one, the translation could focus on word improvement and thereby be described as a “conservative word-for-word” translation. If greater freedom in interpretation is then desired, then a “conservative thought-for-thought” version could be generated as a second stage.

Building on the King James Version

In the United States and much of the world, the immensely popular and respected King James Version (KJV) is freely available and in the public domain. It could be used as the baseline for developing a conservative translation without requiring a license or any fees. Where the KJV is known to be deficient due to discovery of more authentic sources, exceptions can be made that use either more modern public domain translations as a baseline, or by using the original Greek or Hebrew.

There are 66 books in the KJV, comprised of 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses, and 788,280 words.[6] The project could begin with translation of the New Testament, which is only 27 books, 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, and less than 200,000 words.

Retranslation at rate of 20 verses a day would complete the entire New Testament in about a year. With 5 good retranslators, that would be an average of only 4 verses a day per translator. At a faster rate of 20 verses per day by 5 good translators, the entire New Testament could be retranslated in less than 3 months.

First Example – Liberal Falsehood

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:[7]

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

Second Example – Dishonestly Shrewd

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”. The manager was praised for being “resourceful”, which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term “resourceful” in its entire translation of the Bible.

Third Example – Socialism

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.

Advantages to a Conservative Bible Online

There are several striking advantages to a conservative approach to translating the Bible online:

• participants learn enormously from the process
• liberal bias – and lack of authenticity – become easier to recognize and address
• by translating online, this utilizes the growing online resources that improve accuracy
• supported by conservative principles, the project can be bolder in uprooting and excluding liberal distortions
• the project can adapt quickly to future threats from liberals to biblical integrity
• access is free and immediate to the growing internet audience, for their benefit
• the ensuing debate would flesh out — and stop — the infiltration of churches by liberals pretending to be Christian, much as a vote by legislators exposes the liberals
• this would bring the Bible to a new audience of political types, for their benefit; Bible courses in college Politics Departments would be welcome
• this would debunk the pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today

References

1. ↑ The committee in charge of updating the bestselling version, the NIV, is dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook. As a result, the revision and replacement of the NIV will be influenced more by political correctness and other liberal distortions than by genuine examination of the oldest manuscripts. As a result of these political influences, it becomes desirable to develop a conservative translation that can serve, at a minimum, as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning in future versions.
2. ↑ Additional less important guidelines include (1) adherence to a concise and dignifying style, such as use of “who” rather than “that” when referring to people and also use glorifying language for the remarkable achievements and (2) recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well.
3. ↑ The NIV has supplanted the KJV in popularity.
4. ↑ For example, in 1611 the conservative concept of “accountability” had not yet developed, and the King James Version does not use “accountable to God” in translating Romans 3:19; good modern translations do.
5. ↑ For example, the English Standard Version (2001) does not use the word “gamble” anywhere in translating numerous references to the concept in the Bible.

1. ↑ http://www.biblebelievers.com/believers-org/kjv-stats.html

1. ↑ Quoted here from the NIV.

Wow! That was a lot of fun huh?  The fun continues sports fans, here are the guidelines that they list for their project are below and the link is here, again I make no edits: http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible

The Conservative Bible is the product of the Conservative Bible Project. This is uniquely built on two bedrock principles:

• online translating using the collaborative wiki software improves the final result if guided by good rules
• the rules guiding this translation are to use and be informed by conservative insights and terminology

To the best of our knowledge, this project is the first to utilize either of the above principles in translating the Bible.

Here lists the 66 books of the Holy Bible to be translated in this project, with the ones having links already being works-in-progress:[1]

A Warning from the Conservative Bible Project Editiors: 

It is very important to translate the Bible correctly. As it is written, “I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city described in this book” (Revelation 22, 18-19). See also Deuteronomy 4:2 (Conservative Bible): “Do not add to the word that I command you, and do not subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.”

And yet there’s more…

Sorry that part was so good I had to highlight it.  In light of what you see next you have to love the quotation out of Revelation that they use in the passage above.

I love irony, that’s why some of my clothes go to the cleaners and the rest are permanent press.   I think they’ll need to get some plague insurance and maybe even get their tickets ready for their all expense paid trip the Lake of Fire Resort and Eternal Time Share.  Just so you can read a few of their “translations” in John’s Gospel I have pasted them here.  If you need to see them the link is here:  http://conservapedia.com/John_1-7_%28Translated%29

In the beginning was Truth, and the Truth was with God, and the Truth was God. (John 1:1)

And the spirit was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only child of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

And from Mark: http://conservapedia.com/Gospel_of_Mark_%28Translated%29

“I have baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Divine Guide.” (Mark 1:8)

The intellectuals watched Jesus to see if he might catch and accuse him of healing on the Sabbath. (Mark 3:2)

The intellectuals then fled from the scene to plot with Herod’s people against Jesus, and plan how they might destroy him. (Mark 3:6)

Furious, the intellectual classes wanted to seize him, but feared the public; they knew this parable was directed at them. They gave up for now and walked out. (Mark 12:12)

Final thoughts

So just a cursory examination shows that though they are serious that this cannot be taken seriously as a real translation, but it should if it ever comes to fruition be condemned.  Liberal or Conservative this kind of behavior is repugnant. I wonder what Pugs have to do with it anyway, but this is dangerous stuff.  It represents a paradigm shift in how some Conservatives who at one time could be counted on to have a high view of Scripture now do great violence to the text.

Their motivation could not be any more crass, to buttress an American centric ultra conservative political and economic ideology by re-writing the Bible.  This shows incredible hubris on the part of these guys first to make these assumptions and then to recommend removal of parts of the Bible that they deem objectionable because the verse is only in one Gospel.  Likewise the use of “powerful conservative words” is only understood by their definition of such terms found here: http://conservapedia.com/Essay:Best_New_Conservative_Terms

Putting it kindly these guys are hacks.  They are so fearful of anything that they don’t agree with that they have to re-write the Bible to make it fit their ideological beliefs. They are fundamentally dishonest in their approach.

I do think it is funny that they rename the Pharisees as “the Intellectuals.” That is rich.  Likewise referring to the Logos as “the Truth” is really taking liberties with the text to say the “Spirit being made flesh” does violence to the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, as does calling the Holy Spirit the “Divine Guide.” That last part actually sounds a little “new age” to me.

At the same time if these guys were not deadly serious it would be funny as hell.  As I initially noted when I first read about it I thought it had to be some sick joke put out by a satire publication like the Onion.  I had some conversations with Joel and some of the other guys commenting on his site and find this simply amazing.  The link to his article and the comments is here:  http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2009/10/get-the-liberal-stuff-out-of-our-bible/

Anyway, the topic did energize me just because of its malignancy as well as the fun I had with it.  As you guys know I’m pretty much a want everyone to get along. I am an Old Catholic with strong middle of the road Anglican Ethos valuing Scripture, Reason and Tradition. I happened to graduate from a pretty solid Southern Baptist Seminary.  That means that for Andy Schlafly and his bunch I’m definitely on the Highway to Hell so I’d better change my default ring-tone on my cell phone to it just to remind me of where they have me going every time someone calls me.

Peace Baby and Rock on,

Padre Steve+