Bible Retranslation Project

Basic Information

The Bible Retranslation Project is a project at the Conservapedia which aims to "re-translate" the Bible - that is to say, to alter specific words and phrases which the contributors feel are no longer appropriate as modern language has "devolved". However, it is more likely that they are doing this to make the Bible conform better to their political biases[2].

Examples of suggested alterations include[1]:

• "Government" would be replaced with "kingdom", as government "now means officials paid by mandatory taxes and accountable to a democratic vote".
• "Peace" would be replaced with "tranquility", as peace "now means an absence of war".
• "Rich" would be replaced with "miserly", as rich "now refers simply to one with many possessions, and this verse is sometimes misapplied to justify laziness or even socialism".
• "kill" would be replaced with "commit murder"¹, as "in Biblical times, as today, the bearing of arms to defend ones family and society was the hallmark of civilisation. The commandment referred to unjustifiable homicides - murder and manslaughter - rather than advocating blanket pacifism, as many Leftists today interpret it."

Sources

Bibliography

1. Particularly revealing snapshot of the project page

2. Commentary on the project at another site

Game and Story Use

• While this reads like a joke - and, indeed, this project never really got off the ground - rewriting historical texts to fit prevailing political trends has a rather long tradition - and in times before mass communication or even the printing press, such frauds could remain undetected for a long time - or perhaps even supplant the originals.
  • Another prominent example of this kind of blasphemy would be the nineteenth century habit amongst members of the "temperance" movement of misusing the Roman word for contract tax collectors (publicanii) … who were generally in bad odour in New Testament times and the English word 'publican', meaning 'one who keeps a public house'.
• Attempts like this could lead to splinter religions as different groups "re-interpret" their holy texts in new ways.
• Despite this sort of thing, there are continual ongoing projects to make genuine translations of the Bible for those that are currently denied access to the word of God in their own language. In some cases this has needed the creation of improvised written forms for languages that didn't possess one in the past.

Footnotes

1. This is actually legitimate - but no for the reasons cited by the BRtP: like most languages, Hebrew has a variety of words for "kill" with varying moral weights and the work used in the commandment is retzach, meaning wanton destruction or unjustified killing - therefore less neutral than a generic "kill".