Has anyone seen The Green Bible?

[laconicsax]

http://greenletterbible.com/

I was at an event at a bookstore today and the shelves with the numerous versions of the Abrahmic god's infallible word were right next to me. A version printed on recycled paper with soy ink caught my eye and I flipped through it. Any passage that mentions any aspect of the environment is in green, and I mean any aspect. Genesis 1:6-9 supposedly speaks of "God's care for creation" because it talks about the waters.

Almost as baffling as the study Bible that claimed that Jephthah didn't offer his daughter up as a burnt offering because she spent two months bewailing her virginity and not her life.

Anyway, I guess you learn something new every day.

[CrispyQ]

1. When the conservatives re-write the Bible they will take those parts out.

;)

Conservative Bible Project Cuts Out Liberal Passages

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html

[laconicsax]

2. Probably not most of them.

You'd think that a Bible billed as highlighting the calls to environmentalism would also highlight passages that the Conservapedia edit would cut, but the passages highlighted are highlighted simply because they mention air, earth, water, vegetation, or animals.

For example it cites this passage from Genesis 1 as promoting an environmental agenda:

⁶And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. ⁷And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. ⁸And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. ⁹And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

I'm not sure I see the call to environmental activism.

[and-justice-for-all]

3. If they are really going to be 'raptured' away....

then there is no need for them to do that.

things like that signal to me, that they are not secure in their beliefs and hold doubt.

religion is teh stoopud.

[vixengrl]

4. As to Jephthah's daughter, I've always seen a bit of a parallel

with Iphegenia--the sacrifice of a daughter is pointed to as "Look, there's a dreadful thing we used to do--aren't we glad we don't do that anymore?" But just like the tragedian retconned to have Iphegenia resurface at Aulis so as not to make Agamemnon a thoroughgoing bastard, I wonder if the hope that the addition of an "or" in there (as in "give to God, or offer as burnt sacrifice" which leaves the possibility of the poor girl just being a pre-Christian nun of sorts) --or a choice of bewailing virginity as opposed to life, is proffered as an "out" to let a hero not be a devil.

For a morbid pass over the subject, and this is still true from what I understand even in really strict Islam today, many cultures have had a taboo against slaughtering virgins. Is it possible that, in order to make her ready for sacrifice--a certain "preparation" was required? (An abominable thought--but a possible explanation--bewailing her virginity, lost.) Or, possibly, depending upon the demands of the sacrifice, her desireability may have stemmed from being "pure." In which case, if that were me, rather than bewail my virginity, I might have went looking to get it, erm, "sorted".

I suppose I could be more interested in the greenletter version of the Bible, but there are vegetarian Bibles and even so help us Conservative Bibles. As Blake might've said, "Thou readest green, or Red State, where I readest white." That man is a steward of creation could be found in any event, and is a more sensible interpretation than Ann Coulter's "Take it, rape it," model. (I think there was a parable about a shrewd steward of his master's debts, who bargained to at least get paid measure for measure--I'm not much of a Bible-scholar. But I think the notion of man as the gardener and tiller, not the sucker-up of resources, is kind of a theme in the Bible.)