Thursday, December 3, 2009

Please Just Be Fair to the Original Text

It appears that we will soon have another English bible translation. Unfortunately, this one is yet another with theological/political bias. To read about this, click here.

Several modern translations lean to the left theologically and/or politically (for example, the TNIV and NRSV). Now there will be another - except this one swings to the opposite extreme - too conservative.

It is entitled the Conservative Bible Project. The project's on-line home is Conservapedia.com.

According to Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a critic of this project, "This is not making scripture understandable to people today, it's reworking scripture to support a particular political or social agenda."

Dr. Jones goes on to say, "Ironically, there's a long tradition of the liberal twisting of scripture. Scholars have rightly deemed those translations illegitimate, and this conservative Bible is every bit as illegitimate."

Here is my plea: if you are going to translate scripture, PLEASE be as fair to the original text as is possible. I realize we all carry biases and should be aware of these. However, we ought to, as best we can, just let the original languages speak for themselves.

Maybe this is another reason why we should become at least familiar with the original languages (I have really got to brush up on my Hebrew!!)

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