Supply-side Bible on the Way

Isn’t it enough that the extreme religious right has replaced the real Jesus with Supply-side Jesus to justify their dogma of fear, greed and intolerance?  Apparently not.  Next on their agenda is to rewrite the Bible to strip it of references of such horrid things as forgiveness and obligation to the poor.

...According to Conservapedia, there is no "fully conservative translation" which properly meets their guidelines, so the project is much needed. Among other things, they want to:

• Better explain how certain parables actually promote free market ideology, because apparently the actual language of the Bible doesn't do a very good job of that.
• Exclude certain, "later-inserted liberal passages." Given that there is a great deal of dispute among Bible scholars over what was original language in the ancient texts and what wasn't, it will be fascinating to see what passages make their list as "later inserted." I have some guesses.
• Identify pro-liberal terms in existing translations such as "government" and just get rid of them. It's great how you can solve these inconvenient problems so easily.
• Conversely, of course, identify conservative words and phrases that have been mysteriously omitted from existing translations, and figure out cool ways to stick them into the Bible stories.

Some of their examples are fun, too. When Jesus says, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," they are quite suspicious. That quote only appears once in the Bible, they say, plus it sounds way too liberal - it must be wrong. I guess they'll just define that as "later-inserted." And then there are certain words that just appear way too often, like laborer and labored - apparently, they will just get rid of/re-translate stuff like that, too.

Now there are no suggestions about what this new translation might do with all those inconvenient references to the poor - feeding them, housing them, justice for them, etc. There are several hundred of those, so you would have a lot of editing to do to get rid of all that, or make it more "free market oriented." And if you just got rid of it entirely by ascribing it all to "later insertions," you would have a noticeably thinner Bible. And all those references to peace-making, the rich having trouble getting into heaven, etc.- all that would have to go, too… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

The extreme right already bases much of their doctrinal error on poor translation in existing Bibles.  For example, logos and graphe, two unrelated words in koine, are both translated ‘word’ in English.  Logos refers to Jesus (and the Word became flesh), while graphe means writings, and is generally taken to refer to Scripture.  Now what conservative Christianity has done is to interpret “word” as the Bible in all cases, thus mistakenly imputing all the attributes of God to a book.  Now please don’t think I’m trying to push any faith at you at all.  Your faith is your business.  The religious right makes their faith my business only because they are trying to legislate cramming it down my throat.

The Supply-side Bible should prove most entertaining.  I guarantee that Supply-side Jesus will love it!