on The Conservative Bible Project
Dec. 5th, 2009 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishBy now I assume you've heard about the the Conservative Bible Project, in which Conservapedia is a attempting to create an English translation of the Bible, based on the King James' Version, that reflects their own cultural values.
According to Conservapedia, most translation have the following problem
* lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
* lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
[T]he third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate. (See note)
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.
I might note though, that the reason that a lot of these committees are made up of academics and the well-educated is that, frankly, Ancient Greek and Hebrew are not spoken languages and most people who are truly fluent and educated in their uses are academics and scholars. If you can find me a captain of industry who regularly publishes articles on the language of the New Testament, I would be glad to meet them.
Conservapedia goes on to list Ten Guidelines for their version of the Bible. (I wonder where they got the number...? :D)
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)
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. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent;[4] Defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction[5] by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[6] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
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. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
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. 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."
I'm late to the party here, I know. Most of the articles on this have gone up in early October. I hope you'll forgive me, but my need to goof off during finals have lead me to this topic.
Setting aside my personal distaste for a number of the Guidelines mentioned here, I find myself not terribly surprised by the ideas behind this project, only by fact that they actually came right out and said it. More often the Conservative angle towards religion is one that pays the Bible plenty of lip service while contorting Scripture towards their own ends, so it seems like this project is just more of the same.
Here's why I'm not worried:
-It's not going to get a lot of support from the faithful. The sheer audacity of the project, which calls for a group effort by biased individuals with little expertise in their subject, serves to discredit it among religious traditions that consider the Bible to be infallible. Members of those Christian traditions that don't consider the Bible infallible seem likely to be put off by the politics of the revisionists before anything gets written down. That lack of common acceptance is going to hurt the idea before it even gets done, much less published.
-It's not going to get a lot of support from scholars. Disregarding, for the sake of argument, the liberal bias of the academic world (on which subject Stanley Fish has a fascinating article "Political Correctness Revisited"), I doubt that the Conservapedia blanket interpolation of modern political divisions onto the historical situations of the Bible's composition and compilation are going to knock the socks off of anyone in the field, no matter how red their state is.
-I want to read it. I'm kind of intrigued at what might come out of it. The Bible is a common point of cultural reference for a great deal of Western culture, even if the decline of mandatory familiarity with it has fallen by the wayside of cultural values.
This strikes me as a kind of a collaborative fanfiction project- a subculture claiming and reshaping a point of (what they consider to be) the dominant culture to fit their own cultural needs and points of diversion. Reading the finished book (if there ever is one) and doing a close comparison to the purportedly 'liberal' will probably produce a few really interesting papers, if someone can get a political scientist and a New Testament scholar to work together on it. My Greek's a little rusty, but I'm always up for a good translation comparison.
According to Conservapedia, most translation have the following problem
* lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
* lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
[T]he third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate. (See note)
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.
I might note though, that the reason that a lot of these committees are made up of academics and the well-educated is that, frankly, Ancient Greek and Hebrew are not spoken languages and most people who are truly fluent and educated in their uses are academics and scholars. If you can find me a captain of industry who regularly publishes articles on the language of the New Testament, I would be glad to meet them.
Conservapedia goes on to list Ten Guidelines for their version of the Bible. (I wonder where they got the number...? :D)
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)
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. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent;[4] Defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction[5] by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[6] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
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. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
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. 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."
I'm late to the party here, I know. Most of the articles on this have gone up in early October. I hope you'll forgive me, but my need to goof off during finals have lead me to this topic.
Setting aside my personal distaste for a number of the Guidelines mentioned here, I find myself not terribly surprised by the ideas behind this project, only by fact that they actually came right out and said it. More often the Conservative angle towards religion is one that pays the Bible plenty of lip service while contorting Scripture towards their own ends, so it seems like this project is just more of the same.
Here's why I'm not worried:
-It's not going to get a lot of support from the faithful. The sheer audacity of the project, which calls for a group effort by biased individuals with little expertise in their subject, serves to discredit it among religious traditions that consider the Bible to be infallible. Members of those Christian traditions that don't consider the Bible infallible seem likely to be put off by the politics of the revisionists before anything gets written down. That lack of common acceptance is going to hurt the idea before it even gets done, much less published.
-It's not going to get a lot of support from scholars. Disregarding, for the sake of argument, the liberal bias of the academic world (on which subject Stanley Fish has a fascinating article "Political Correctness Revisited"), I doubt that the Conservapedia blanket interpolation of modern political divisions onto the historical situations of the Bible's composition and compilation are going to knock the socks off of anyone in the field, no matter how red their state is.
-I want to read it. I'm kind of intrigued at what might come out of it. The Bible is a common point of cultural reference for a great deal of Western culture, even if the decline of mandatory familiarity with it has fallen by the wayside of cultural values.
This strikes me as a kind of a collaborative fanfiction project- a subculture claiming and reshaping a point of (what they consider to be) the dominant culture to fit their own cultural needs and points of diversion. Reading the finished book (if there ever is one) and doing a close comparison to the purportedly 'liberal' will probably produce a few really interesting papers, if someone can get a political scientist and a New Testament scholar to work together on it. My Greek's a little rusty, but I'm always up for a good translation comparison.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 02:52 am (UTC)"The Greek phrase πνευμα αγιος (Pneuma hagios) literally means "Holy Breath." However, πνευμα also means a class of being not having a body, and usually having a certain amount of power. "Divine Guide" is descriptive of the function of this Entity."
Buh?? A non corporeal being = Spirit and in the ancient mind a person's spirit or soul = breath... I'm alternately amused and horrified. /nit-picky translation rant
This is Anna, btw. There are people on my lj friend list that I don't remember who they are... So yeah, just identifying myself. I hope you are well and that you are enjoying things (despite finals time). I'm procrastinating from writing my personal statements for my grad school apps with all this. Hehe...
no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 05:13 pm (UTC)Finals time is actually not eating my soul too much. I have one paper pretty much dead and the other, which was freaking me out more, several other people for that class don't seem really worried about it. It's probably two or three days of hard work, and I have a week left to spread it out- I'll be fine.
Where are you applying for grad school? And is it for classics or for theater or for what?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:41 pm (UTC)Glad to hear that all is manageable. Perhaps not pleasant, but manageable... It's all you can ask for sometimes.
I'm applying to U. Michigan, Brown, and U. Penn for archaeology PhD programs. After that I'll probably apply to U. of Iowa for an information and library sciences masters program as a back up. They have a really good history of the book concentration. I WILL be in grad school next year, by hook or by crook...