Completely unmooring itself from culture, tradition, and Christian religion, modern conservatism has now declared that all English-language Bibles are too liberal for their pinched little right-wing Pharisee hearts. Now they want to their own, more politically-correct-for-them translation.
One of their many qualms? They object that Luke 23:34 never appeared in the original Bible and was planted there nearly 2000 years ago. Which probably has some kind of internal logic for them — they imagine themselves believers in Jesus; they can’t imagine forgiving anybody themselves; therefore the words the dying Jesus said in the Gospels about forgiving those who trespassed against him has to be some kind of socialist typo.
Sadly, if the words were inserted this was done as early as the 2nd Century AD, and the sentiment, if not the words, were echoed by other early Christian martyrs including St. Stephen. It’s always seemed enough of a stretch to claim conspirators planted a birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements for Barack Obama in Hawaii in the 1950s. It’s completely out of control to imagine those same conspirators getting to Iranaeus, or the authors of the Diatessaron. But some ‘wingers seem willing to give it a go.
Not to put too fine a point on it but the King James Bible wasn’t too liberal for my great grandfather. He, after all, didn’t just contribute to but edited The Fundamentals or The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth. Published between 1910 and 1915 the 99 essays in 12 volumes are widely considered the foundation of — and source of the name for — Christian fundamentalism.
(Above) Flyer pasted into the back of my great-grandfather’s working Bible indicating a series of sermons he was undertaking to publish under the title "Fundamental Truths." The publication later became the foundation of what came to be called Christian Fundamentalism.
For the record, and for ‘wingnuts so used to playing "gotcha" they’ve completely stopped thinking, "liberal in spirit" meant something very different in 1910, and while the flyer says he was from Booklyn he was only the minster in the largest church there. Wingnuts will be genuinely pleased to learn he was born in North Carolina, on his slave-owning parent’s pre-Civil War farm.
(Above) Page of my great-grandfather’s working Bible turned to St. Luke 23:34. On the opposite page are notes for a sermon he gave called "The Tragedy of the Cross." Contemporary conservatives dispute Luke 23:34 as too liberal (and also, I’m guessing, insufficiently anti-semetic) and so they’d like to strike this line from the Bible. Which is kind of ironic considering my great-grandfather doesn’t seem to have considered it the least bit problematic. Indeed, on the facing page it’s item #1 (“of prayer: ‘father forgive’”) in his notes on the sermon, a recitation of the classic seven sayings of Jesus on the cross.
The irony does not elude me that a sex blogger would be castigating conservative politicians for heresy, blasphemy, immorality, and rejecting the words out of Jesus’s mouth. And certainly I’d be a hypocrite if I waxed nostaligic for the sort of “the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” theology that inspired the original fundamentalists. But this is too much.
It was bad enough a few years ago when at least locally some of the more conservative churches dropped all charitable outreach (what my grandparents called “good works”) because it conflicted with their political beliefs. That they now want to rewrite scripture itself to suit their ideology is perilous not only for their movements, and not only for their faith, but also for where they might be choosing to spend eternity.
Not to put too fine a point on it, if modern wingnuts have a problem with the Bible used by the original Fundamentalists they claim they’re only following maybe they need to think, hard, about exactly what their intentions really are. And where they’re leading.
Submitted by 3234 (not verified) on Thu, 2009-10-08 14:23.
Not to mention that the King James bible was itself essentially a conservative revisionist version. Now, granted, conservatives in 1611 probably weren't exactly the same as modern ones. And they added lines instead of subtracting them. But it was pretty much the same thing - Jesus was too much of a rights-loving rabble-rouser, so they had to blunt his message.
This isn't anything new. Throughout history, some versions of the bible have been written by impartial priests and scholars poring over much older versions and documents and trying to preserve as much of the original meaning as possible, and others were subtly or blatantly rewritten to reflect the culture and prejudices of the times.
Submitted by 3234 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-10-09 23:11.
According to my NIV Study Bible (which is a pretty "liberal" translation), it is true that "some early manuscripts" omit the line "Father, forgive..." Whether that means it's a later addition, or just some early copyist(s) left it out is unclear.
However, just erasing Luke 23:34 leaves them with a host of other problematic passages in the Gospels. For example, Luke 23:40-43 (in which a repentant criminal on a neighbouring cross receives forgiveness). Trying to erase forgiveness from the Gospels would leave nothing left! These people are like the Pharisees whom Christ castigated.
Submitted by 3234 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-10-10 23:22.
I'm wondering what they're going to do with the Book of James.
Submitted by 3234 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-10-12 19:01.
It's a side point, but: Pharisees existed outside of Christian history/ mythology. As someone descended from them (i.e. Jewish), I'd prefer my ancestors not be used as a synonym for hypocrisy.
I know it's a common usage, but still :)
Submitted by 3234 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-10-12 21:16.
The intention was not to use Pharisees as a synonym for hypocrites, but rather to refer directly to Jesus of Nazareth's criticism of religious hypocrisy. If we step back from the claims about Jesus' divinity, his role as regards the behaviour of the religious leaders of his time was effectively similar to Martin Luther's role in challenging the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church in the 16-17th Century CE. Why did I choose Jesus' criticism instead of Luther's? Because the people whose behaviour are the topic of discussion place a lot of weight on the value of his words (to the extent that where those words are inconvenient, they feel the need to change them...) Given this, it seems more valuable to say that they are hypocrites in the words of their own Messiah than in the words of some later figure.
(Oh yes, and it's also possible to use the Prophets of the Hebrew Texts ('Old Testament') to make a similar point about religious hypocrisy)
***
As an aside: in strict linguistic terms, this is a case where punctuation is important: "the Pharisees whom Christ castigated" (what I said) is a different statement from "the Pharisees, whom Christ castigated" (with a comma). In my statement, Christ is only addressing some Pharisees, and they are a good match for the modern hypocrites; it allows there to be other Pharisees (presumably not hypocrites) whom Christ did not address. The second says that Christ was definitely addressing all Pharisees. The presence or absence of a ',' makes a lot of difference to meaning.