BLESSED ARE THE CONSERVATIVE IN BIBLE TRANSLATION
(Associated Press)
"The Gospel of Luke records that, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus showed his boundless mercy by praying for his killers this way: 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'" Apparently to conservatives, this benevolent Jesus simply doesn't fly. They view this individual quote as an attempt by liberal translators to instill their views on the Bible (despite, as the article point out, it being in nearly every translated text). However, as any theological scholar will tell you, an attempt to reword Scripture by a group of amateurs is not to preserve, but to bend the Bible to their whimsy. That is not what religion is about -- tweaking what has been established because it's not to your liking. If Jesus is too benevolent for you, I don't think it's the Bible's fault. "This is not making scripture understandable to people today, it's reworking scripture to support a particular political or social agenda," said Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Translations of this magnitude are not something to be taken with a grain of salt -- it takes an educated scholar years upon years to master something as heady as a scripture translation. To seize it and attempt to rework it is an arrogant attempt at re-writing tradition simply because it doesn't suit you.
Link to story at msnbc.com:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34270487/ns/us_news-faith/?GT1=43001
No comments:
Post a Comment