If you haven't heard about Conservapedia and their "Conservative Bible Project," then you really should check it out. Their website is here. Plenty of people have blogged about it, so I'll make this relatively short.
Since this is TheologyWeb, I thought I would emphasize a point about the Conservative Bible Project that has been mentioned, but not always stressed enough. The point is this: theology should shape ideology, not vice versa. Especially in the field of bible translation. The difficulty with the methods being used by the folks at Conservapedia is not that they are conservative in their theology. Rather, they have started with their politically conservative ideology, and then used that to dictate how they will "translate" the Word of God. Of course, this happens all the time in our culture. People often twist their interpretations of Scripture to fit whatever political position they've already decided. But it is especially troubling to see this at work in the development of a translation of the Bible.
Several translation projects in the past have been criticized for doing just what the Conservapedia folks are doing: the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, Today's New International Version. And I'm not naive enough to believe that translators' personal and political views don't somehow affect the decisions they make in the translation process. But never before have I seen scholarship take such a subordinate role as it has in the Conservative Bible Project. Perhaps the worst example is the position they are taking on the parables: specifically, they are "explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning ." Full free-market meaning? Whence comes this idea that Our Lord was attempting to demonstrate a "free-market meaning"? This kind of approach is not scholarship, it's propaganda.
One encouraging thing that has happened, as people have been reading about this story, is that conservative and liberal Christians are relatively united in speaking out against the Conservative Bible Project. Almost all of the coverage I have read about the story (and I've read quite a bit over the past several days) has been negative. Conservatives have maybe been even more negative about in their reactions than liberals. I imagine some liberals see this as business as usual for "right-wing" conservatives. However, many conservatives have made it clear that the Conservative Bible Project does not accurately represent conservative evangelicals. As for myself, I'm going to move on after this blog. I am hoping that the whole thing eventually runs out of steam. We shall see...
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October 20th 2009 09:31 AM