Conservatizing The Bible

All translations of the Bible are influenced by theological assumptions and convictions that sometimes obscure rather than illuminate earlier meanings. For example, the Latin word for sacrament was no way to render the Greek word for mystery, and our understanding of both the sacraments and the mysteries of the faith have suffered as a result. Or, a gender neutral translation of the Bible, such as the New Revised Standard translation’s marketers purport it to be, runs roughshod over the understanding of masculinity, feminity, and divinity that the supposedly shameless patriarchal renderings from the past are falsely believed to obscure. For most readers, though, theological intrusions into the translation process are too difficult to detect to be offensive.

Not so, however, with another kind of translation effort that is going on today, with perfectly straight faces on the part of its promoters. It goes by the name of the Conservative Bible Project, and the envisioned outcome is a complete fix of the Bible by clearing up imprecisions both in the original languages and in the English language, as a way of eliminating so-called biases that from the beginning have tilted the biblical message left-ward. There is nothing subtle about this project. It is designed to be not just mildly offensive, but painfully offensive as well, to liberals who allegedly have been about the business of highjacking Jesus to their cause from the beginning.

Methodologically, the Conservative Bible Project is preposterous on the very face of it. The commitment to eliminate every vestige of liberalism from the Bible means that the translators must already claim to know in advance how to render every particular passage, no matter what the plain meaning of the passage itself (a principle supposedly sacrosanct to all true conservatives) may be. An example: Luke 23:34, Jesus’ petition to God from the cross to forgive his crucifiers because they do not know what they are doing. Apparently, the Conservative Bible Project will take this passage out, partly because it appears in none of the other Passion Narratives and therefore may not reflect Jesus’ own words. This in itself might be a justifiable move, so long as the principle that informs it is applied everywhere else. However, we would then lose five of the other seven last words, not to mention Jesus’ bread of life sermon and a bunch of other good stuff besides. But the key consideration for the people running this project is that Luke 23:34 is --- are you ready for this? --- a favorite passage of liberals, because it shows Jesus in a liberal light. Good God Almighty, save us. I offer this as a petition and not as a curse.

To be more liberal-minded toward the Conservative Bible Project, though, something which all conservatives most surely deserve --- whether they want to admit it or not --- liberals sometimes take a back alley assault approach to the scriptures too. Even though I continue to admire what Thomas Jefferson tried to do by re-writing the Bible for the Age of Enlightenment, I also find his presumptuousness in undertaking it little short of appalling, and many of the results of his efforts disappointing and irritating. And as for the Jesus Seminar’s recent efforts to produce a Fifth Gospel by taking votes on what from the other four and the Gospel of Thomas ought to go into it, well --- be still, my soul might be another petition worth sending up.

There is certainly nothing new about taking liberties with organizing the ancient texts of Scripture. By the 140’s, the messing around had already begun, with the Marcionite faction in the Roman church proposing an early version of the Christian canon in terms of parts of Paul’s letters and of the Gospel of Luke, and nothing else. Because the God of the Jews was an evil God, or at least a very weak one, Marcion appears to have believed, not only did Jewish scriptures have to go, but with them every Christian book that in any way depended upon them, and every passage even in Paul and Luke that made Jesus out to be a faithful Jew (which, in fact, he was). What remained from Marcion's peculiar paring down was a very short Bible, a God of love and not of justice, a wholly spiritual and not physical Christ, a denunciation of physicality itself as evil, and an ascetism that could make even a Desert Father beg for relief.

It is hard to see how a conservatizing of the Bible is going to help very much in overcoming the suppposed negative effects that liberalizing the Bible has had in the life of the church. More helpful still would be an approach that allows the holy and gracious God of the Bible to be holier than the Bible itself is and more gracious than doctrinaire theologies will ever be.