Conservative Christian Editors, "Literalists," Work at Making the Bible Politically Correct



There was a kerfuffle a year or two ago among conservative Christians about a new Bible that eliminated gender. That is, it took out references to God as being of a male gender and other such changes. Conservatives said this was changing the "word of God" and was terrible. It turns out conservatives, those who claim the "word of God" never changes, do quite a bit of rewriting the Bible themselves. They have the same objective, in some cases to make it less offensive in contemporary times and in other cases to make it conform to their own views as to what it should say.

One of the devious ones came from realizing that if ancient leaders in the faith had slaves it implies it's OK to have slaves. So, someone came up with the bright idea for the Bible to call slaves "bondservants." Thus, ancient religious leaders did not have slaves as we used to believe, they had something different, "bondservants." 

And the there were problems with that fictitious scene at the cross where "the Jews" shouted for Jesus to be killed. Bad image for Christians there. They needed to fix that. So, the new version of the scene refers to "Jewish leaders" or "religious leaders" not the broader population of Jews. 

The Gideons have their own take on what the faith says and what the Bible should say. Because they buy so many Bibles they were able to pressure a publisher into altering the Bible's message to fit their own.

The word "homosexuality" now appears in many Bibles even though the word did not exist until the 1950's. Be using it today the impression is left it is a word that comes from an ancient word.

While this practice could be called simply being politically correct, it has been assigned a more expensive word, "trasitvity." This is the practice of altering ancient writing to fit the preconceived ideas about what people want it to say. 

I recall my grandfather who come to the U.S. from Sweden telling my parents the Bibles in the U.S. were a lot different than the Bibles in Sweden. What was different in his mind I don't know.

The point is, it is not true "the word never changes." It has changed and will continue to change to fit the changing market.


[Gideon Bible]

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