Read 'The Scariest Verses in The Qu'ran'

All the way to the bottom, read Tia Lynn's "The Scariest Verses in The Qu'ran!!!"

[H/T: Mainstream Baptist]

Tony Cartledge skins the 'conservatized' Bible

We have little regard for Andy Schlafly's "Conservative Bible Project," and Tony Cartledge, an associate professor of Old Testament at Campbell University, has less.

He gives the project a fair and thorough review, concluding:

It should be apparent to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that Schlafly's project will produce nothing more than a radically biased rewriting of the Bible slanted toward an extremely conservative political point of view and designed to reinforce that particular worldview. The One who inspired the scripture needs no re-interpretation of divine revelation.

Read the entire piece here.

Conservative blasphemy project (CBP)

Robert Parham at Ethics Daily systematically strips Andy Schlafly's Conservative Bible Project (CBP) of pretense, unmasking one false assertion after another, drilling unerringly down to its core hypocrisy:

Regrettably, Schlafly hasn't allowed the Bible to speak to him — a well-worn Christian practice of studying a text, seeking to understand its message and searching for how to be faithful to the word. He is less interested in listening to the Bible than making the Bible record his voice.

Exactly.

Grand Theft Jesus (again ...)

Andy Schlafly's self-promotional ploy the Conservative Bible Project seeks to transmogrify sacred text to political ends.

Part of Schlafly's ConservaPedia, this attempt at grand theft Jesus has been derided by the Christian and conservative (1, 2, 3, 4) -- although we could find no reaction from Southern Baptist Convention right-wing heavies like Richard Land. Although BaptistLife.com's Bruce Gorley weighed in, along with pastor Jim Evans of Auburn First Baptist Church in Auburn, Ala., and others. As well as skeptics like Ed Brayton.

Yet even Religion Dispatches cannot tell us today, "Whether or not Biblical inerrantists accept the idea that Andy Schlafly and other like-minded individuals are the true guardians of the original meaning . . . ."

Uh huh. In this case, we will risk contradiction and call that one a FAIL.

In a story which struggles not to burst into laughter, Shawna Richer of Canada's Globe & Mail quotes Schlafly's explanation for the effort:

The trouble is, new translations of the Bible are done by professors at liberal universities who overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Their political bias seeps into their translations and we felt it necessary to counteract that with one that uproots and eradicates any liberal bias.

In an interview with Canada's The Star, Schlafly's favorite “liberal” passages were Jesus saving an adulteress from being stoned in John 7:53-8:11, and Luke 23:34, in which Jesus asks God to forgive his crucifiers, “for they know not what they do.”

Claude Mariottini, professor of Old Testament at independent Northern Baptist Seminary, writes:

If conservative Christians make an effort to rewrite the Bible in order to present a conservative translation as an effort to eliminate liberal interpretation of Biblical texts, then such a translation will violate every hermeneutical principle used by Bible translators in their effort to give the reading public a translation that is faithful to the original intent of the Biblical writer.

James McGrath, associate professor of religion at indepedent Butler University in Indianapolis, said "the translators don't appear to have any knowledge of the text's original meaning:"

If it's an attempt at humor, it's hilarious, but I have a sinking feeling it's something else – that conservatives are realizing the Bible does not always serve their interests, something the rest of us have known for some time.
But some element of humour should be part of a healthy response to this, because there's a danger that taking it too seriously gives it credibility it wouldn't otherwise have.

Glo [not an endorsement]

Because it seems interesting, a preview of the Glo Bible:

Scholarly Tempest, meet Creation teapot

Broken News: Old Testament scholar says proper translation of the Hebrew says God created man, the animals, etc ... but the heavens and earth already existed.

Prof [Ellen] Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.
She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".
The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"

She's a serious scholar but as J.F. Hobbins observes at Ancient Hebrew Poetry, her basic findings are hardly new. Her interpretation is interesting, and we'll see how her fellow scholars respond.

Otherwise, Richard may have temporarily stretched a mind or two, and that's good, but the earth has been neither shaken nor stirred.

Fundamental consideration

In Ethics Daily Baptist pastor Jim Evans wrote of Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.:

Mohler would likely argue that it's impossible to believe in Jesus without first believing in the Bible. The problem here is the simple fact that for the first 1,000 years of the history of the church, the Bible was hardly available to believers. Jesus was experienced in preaching, in fellowship and in the ordinances of the church. It's only been since the invention of moveable type that the printed word became the primary source of revelation.

Is Evans not saying that American Fundamentalism and Inerrancy are too new, historically, to support some species of sweeping claims? His entire piece is here.