Conservative Edit of Bible Follows Time Honored Precedents

"I don't know if it's real," my friend Laura said, "but some conservatives have decided to edit the Bible. I sent you the link." She started laughing, and I laughed too. Over the next few days more friends sent articles about the Conservative Bible Project. All asked the same question: Is this a spoof or is it legit? Andrew Sullivan, who linked the project subtitled his post: "Not an Onion Headline."

On the face of it, editing the Bible to remove liberal bits is ludicrous. It's makes liberals want to gloat and jeer and to point out all of the ridiculous ways the religious right works to rewrite history. It makes a lot of Christians cringe. Wrong reaction, from both. When conservatives squawk about the Bible having been twisted along the way by political bias, our first response should be -- they're right. My own guess is that they don't know how right they are -- or they might not have opened this particular can of spaghetti.

The Conservapedia team thinks that the bible was corrupted by political processes. What they don't seem to realize is that it was created by political processes. Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus: Who Changed the Bible and Why, is about how the Bible got altered after it was assembled. That's the corruption part, and it is fascinating. But the Bible didn't take its current form until a series of Fourth Century committee meetings. It couldn't get corrupted until somebody negotiated what was in and what was out. These meetings had winners and losers, and some of their decisions were argued about for centuries. Even before the meetings, before a "Bible" existed, it was shaped by politics because the community that created the Bible was shaped by politics.

In the early centuries of Jesus worship, there wasn't one Christianity; there were several -- all competing with each other in a marketplace of religious ideas. Some Christianities believed that to be a true follower of Jesus one had to convert to Judaism and keep the law. Some believed Jesus was so divine that he wasn't human, but simply a deity assuming human form. Some believed that he was an eon, a being from another order sent to rescue human-shaped beings with a hidden spark. These Christianities are now called heresies by the winners, but at the beginning each perceived all others as heretical.

It is no accident that the winning Christianity was the form of belief in Rome, the seat of the empire. The church is Rome had access to money and trade routes and eventually the emperors. Hence Roman Christianity became orthodoxy -- "right belief." It became "catholic," meaning universal. It became the parent of literally hundreds of Protestant Christianities and grandparent to American variants like Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and Evangelicalism. (Tangent: If you like Rush, check out this trippy video of religions including Christianities splitting off from each other.)

One political factor at play was that for Christianity to claim the empire it needed to assume a form that was compatible with empire. It needed to be hierarchical, able to accommodate the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and willing to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. No hair shirts in the wilderness and vegetarianism. No getting the tip of your willie nipped and foregoing pork and seafood. No pacifism or generalized abstinence. No giving away that second shirt or practicing communalism. All of these are forms that Christianity has taken, and they just never managed to capture the mainstream. When in Rome, do as the Romans.

So come back to the Conservapedia guys. At first pass, they seem tremendously naive. They appear to know little about how ancient texts get analyzed and authenticated by modern scholars. (See lower criticism, higher criticism.)* But in their unsophisticated and brazenly ideological approach, I think they hit gold. They struck to the heart of what a sacred text has been ever since humans began writing down their ideas about gods: a living document, shaped by competition among cultures, ideas and power structures. I say they should run with it.

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*Biblical scholars these days rely on linguistics, chemistry, and a host of minutia to make best guesses about when and where a text was written and the number of authors. For example, the kinds of idioms used give hints about the native language of the writers. Cadence can tell us whether the words were originally handed down via oral tradition. Ink and paper qualities can help to date a manuscript or identify a forgery. We now know, for example that most of the New Testament books weren't written by their assigned authors, and that they actually reflect the competition among First Century Christianities.

 

 

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Comments

[ArthurTwoShedsJackson]

Valerie,

What do you think about this idea: the fundies should call back the aprocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) from the bullpen and back into the "Bahhbul."

I mean, the IGT features a lilbaybeejeeesus that only Schlafly 'n son types could love: Early in IGT, a child runs into lilbaybeejeeesus, who retaliates by speaking a cur$e, and immediately the child collapses, blank-as-a­-doornail. When adults confront him, he speaks another curse, blinding them all. When Joseph reprimands his lil man, lilbaybeeejeesus fires back: "I am not thine. Vex me NOT!"

I think Schlafly 'n son should correct the "leeebrul" decision to remove the IGT and add it back to the baahbull, pronto! The IGT captures the true essence of a reactionary, vindictive, vengeful "son o' man" the righties have been longing for!

[rf dude]

When the going gets tough - burn a few heretics at the stake or somethin'...

[JohnFromCensornati]

I'm on board. I re-write it all the time.

[Nishnabe]

What Prickliest Pear said. The originals were written in a style of Greek that argues against anyone who was first generation Jewish follower of Jesus, as were all the apostles, writing any of them. Paul was never a witness to the living Jesus otherwise he would have trumpeted such. He appears on the scene first as someone who checked the coats of those who stoned Steven, the supposed first Christian martyr. Paul becomes the poster boy for the Gentile version of Christianity because it supported the idea that Jesus own family and the Jewish followers were wrong, and that visions of Jesus were more powerful than personal knowledge. As to the new translation? I have not seen if they intend to excise these "liberal leanings" from the King James Version in English, or the originals in Greek. Excising the original Greek version would likely destroy the whole point fo the message, but then everyone knows Jesus was a Republican and personal friend of Ronald Reagan and George Dubya, those pesky visons again.

[Paganus]

"The originals were written in a style of Greek that argues against anyone who was first generation Jewish follower of Jesus"

Not so clear with Matthew, whose Greek is pretty bad in places. He was a "tax-collector" so a workaday knowledge of Greek would have benefitted him more than, say, fishermen. Although it is true that the tradition preserved by Papias explicitly says that Matthew preserved the sayings "in a Hebrew dialect," and that everyone else then translated them as best they could. It is, after all, the gospel "according to Matthew," not "Matthew's" gospel.

[kwinter]

I say they should run with it too!

It won't be any more or less credible than any other version!

[JohnFromCensornati]

I have published a version where I've edited out all of the nonsense, but nobody has ever seen it.

[Mriana]

I took out all the violence, bigotry, hatred, barbarism, cannibalism, misogyny... um... yeah... very little of it was left. I'm surprised Thomas Jefferson has much less of his own rewrite after he was finished.

[Mriana]

That was suppose to "much left" not "much less".

[Joel Watts]

Please don't label these people biblical conservatives. They are far from it. Real biblical conservatives are taking it on:

http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2009/10/get-the-liberal-stuff-out-of-our-bible/

http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2009/10/conservapedia-completely-unbiased/

Oh, and did you catch the fact that the creator of Conservapedia is Andrew Schlafly...the son of Phyllis Schlafly?

http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2009/09/phyllis-schlafly-endorses-bloody-revolution-columnist-plans-for-armed-coup/

[Tostada]

Very nice, Valerie. I've been thinking about this subject for the past couple of days getting ready to write a post on the subject of "the American Taliban". I hate to think of what they'll come up with in their version, but it should be interesting.

[Renderfalls]

You may want to do some more historical research, espcecially relating to the authorship of various books of the Bible. While the authorship of Hebrews was thought to be Paul, but later it became unclear who the original author was, this is not the case for the rest of the books of the New Testament. There is clear biblical, historical, and araeological evidence for the proclaimed authors of the letters of the New Testament being who they claim to be (no where in Hebrews does the author claim to be Paul, for those of you who are wondering.) Yes, several scholars have suggested that the style of writting seems different in some letters, but that was often because the type of letter or concern addressed in the letter was different. For a modern day example, a doctor who writes a letter to a patient, then a letter to his wife, and then to a fellow collegue will show different literary characteristics and different vocabulary between the three letters, and this has been shown in modern day literary anaylsis of the writtings of people alive today. The style of literary content is more flexible then some scholars give it credit for.

[PrickliestPear]

Hogwash.

There is NO archaeological evidence for anyone who wrote anything in the New Testament, at least if you know what "archaeological evidence" means.

Furthermore, to say that "several scholars" have disputed Paul's authorship of some of the letters attributed to him is highly misleading, and it is not simply because of differences in style. That Paul did not write 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus is held by the vast majority of scholars, and a substantial majority would say the same about Ephesians and Colossians, and possibly 2 Thessalonians.

Your analogy about the doctor writing in different styles for different audiences is flawed because most of the letters in the NT were written for the same type of audience.

You may want to do some more historical research, especially relating to the authorship of various books of the Bible.

[Paganus]

Thank you.

[Paganus]

For those interested, I would also recommend Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason.

[vlm1948]

I think most of us were non-plussed by the simple fact that Conservatives are usually the ones who claim the Bible is invioable and here they are re-writing it. Who'd a thunk?

[Valerie Tarico - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, that is the irony. I suspect that these guys still think it's the inviolable word of God -- it's just been violated and they are going to set things straight.

[Mriana]

I'm wondering what happened to the verse that says not one iota of it should be changed? It is interesting they are going against the literal word of that statement. If the Bible is the literal word of God, then why are they going against that?

Right now, with all the different sects of the past- Gnostic, Docetic, Hermetic, Marcian, Cathar, etc, what this will be called? Conservatic? I still think these people are insane, but if they want to create a new form of Xianity that looks almost like the Quran... I think I like Bishop Spong's idea of a new reformation better. It is more humanistic.

[OmegaZ]

Bravo!!!!

[BachelorJohnnyCool]

Thank you. People who think the Bible is the literal word of God need to learn about its history and the political and social influences that shaped it. "Misquoting Jesus: Who Changed the Bible and Why" is a wonderful book, and Bart Ehrman makes a point of wondering why there is no record of the "original" scriptures that came directly from God. He maintains that if something so important ever existed, we would know about it.