“We found that many agencies over the years had broken away from the original meaning of the Greek and Hebrew text.”

“That will be a new translation with better fidelity to the original text.”

Don’t be so disingenuous. The Conservative Bible Project home page clearly states that the goal is to eliminate “liberal distortion”, and yet the base text that the project is working off of is the King James Bible.

The KJV is not the work of “liberal scholars” who were aiming to distort the meaning of the original Latin and Greek text, so unless there’s an admission that the KJV itself is riddled with liberal bias, the would be no reason to change it – you’d just use that instead of later versions.

The very obvious fact that the exercise is called the CONSERVATIVE Bible Project admits the agenda outright – not accuracy, not clarity, not an updating for contemporary vernacular, but to recast the KJV to make it satisfy whatever test of “conservative” the editors decide, with Schlafly being the ultimate editor. (Note that it was Schlafly himself who thought the use of “bimbo” was an improvement until the mocking got to be too much).

If the goal was to solicit public input to render the original Latin and Greek into a better rendition more in line with the original text, then the website should present the original Latin and Greek text, not the KJV text, and anyone qualified to do the translation would be free to do so.

This is about spinning, not translating, plain and simple, and it also implies something else. How can you simultaneously claim that, for you, the words and message of the Bible are an unchanging constant while simultaneously participating in a project that re-interprets this text to be whatever a bunch of people on the internet decide it should be? Reinterpreting the Bible to conform to your socio-political view doesn’t seem appropriate.

So the KJV is inadequate and needed to be improved? And while it’s impressive that your language skills enabled you to work with the original text, you have to acknowledge that the project uses the KJV as the base version that needs fixing. I doubt that Schlafly or 99% of the other contributors used anything but the KJV text provided.

It’s also worth noting that you provided no copies of the Greek/Latin text to allow others to review your work. Guess they can assume you’re perfect in every case, or look up the sources on their own and hope they used what you did.

More to the point, I believe Schafly edited out entire passages like the Adulteress Story that were in the KJV. This leaves only 2 possibilities: that the KJV does not reflect the inspired, inerrant word of God, or that the editors on your project have deliberately redacted parts of what has been accepted for hundreds of years as canon scripture written through God’s guidance.

I wasn’t stating that the KJ Commission was working under divine inspiration, although from what I’ve read they took their work very seriously, and prayed for guidance in “getting it right” since they understood that the outcome was meant to be accepted and used as God’s Word.

A far different level of seriousness and reverence for the original Greek and Latin is being held when words like “bimbo” are added, or “union-busting” is inserted into parables.

MY point about your source work was not to infer anything secretive on your part. My point was that if the goal is to create a new rendering that maintains the highest possible fidelity to the original Greek/Latin content, then your project should have put the oldest, most authentic Greek, latin or Hebrew text on the left, rather than using a Medeival translation of them as the starting point. Common sense tells you what happens when you use a translation of a translation to create a new translation, when it comes to fidelity against the original. You wouldn’t rely on your “best of the public” to perform surgery on you, but you have no problem with random strangers on the Internet rewriting your most sacred text?

Regarding the Pericopa Adultura, I find it incredibly ironic that in this instance you’re looking at a lack of hard/historical evidence to justify a simple New Testament passage consistent with Jesus’ philosophy as authentic, while steadfastly defending Old Testament accounts that require you to redefine properties of the physical world rather than accept the ample naturalistic evidence against them.

I did a little reading on this, and found a balanced assessment of the issue at this link:

link to theology-today.blogspot.com

It notes that St. Augustine theorized that this passage was likely authentic, but suppressed in early renditions out of fear that it would be taken as condoning adultery (which it obviously doesn’t since Jesus says “…and sin no more”.) Augustine’s believed it was later restored by scribes looking to return to the authentic, original text, and the presence of this passage in at least one very early Greek version seems to add validity to Augustine’s theory. More on that can be found here:

link to bible-researcher.com

So we come full circle to today, where you and your colleagues are sitting as self-appointed guardians over what God’s word is or isn’t supposed to be, with the prime litmus test being whether the output conforms to your worldview properly or not. And who’s the final arbiter of that text? As far as Conservapedia goes, it’s Andrew Schlafly, because if you disagree with him often enough or strongly enough you’re out, expertise in ancient languages or not. Conservapedia and the Conservative Bible Project are not meritocracies – they are “Do what Andrew Shlafly approves of or you’re out because it’s HIS wiki”-ocracies.

All of this is a tangent from the topic of this essay, but please – don’t talk about God’s word and the Bible being your unchanging constant and ultimate source of evidence when you’re an acive member of a project to recast the Bible to your way of thinking, and dropping the parts you don’t feel are authentic for a lack of evidence.