So first there was this. How to respond? Nope. By "editing the Bible" these people could mean "changing an ancient text so it's more convenient for you" or maybe even worse, "bowdlerizing the text for cheap political purposes."
Come on, the guy in HuffPo blatantly advocates excising things that he personally finds objectionable. That's not really editing. That's doing actual violence to the integrity of the text. Dude's a professor of writing; you'd think he'd grasp this basic point, but noooooooooo. And unless he's got a real command of the ancient languages in which the Bible is written and can read them in any meaningful scholarly way, then he can shut his socially superior piehole, because just mucking about with (often bad) modern English translations is a waste of time if you're really talking about editing/bowdlerizing/whatever.
Oh, I am totally making my rant/argument from the standpoint of a student of history and language and literature. I'm not opening the can of religious worms. I'm also pretty darn sure that I don't have to in order to make my point about capriciously changing a historical literary document (really a collection of documents) to suit your current mood. People, even rather famous people, have tried this little tack before. Anyway, why do I also get a nagging feeling that this current proposal is yet another a not-too-subtle potshot at the traditional Church both Catholic and Protestant and its opposition to various progressive crusades? Christians these days make such easy targets.
Whatever. I also have a counter-proposal: how about, in the spirit of this self-proclaimed ecumenical religious open-mindedness and desire to elide uncomfortable passages in ancient texts, you also advocate "updating" all other ancient religious texts of every other creed? How about "editing" the Koran? Cutting out all the bits you personally don't like? Any takers?
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