There's been a recent push in the last 50 years or so to feminize God and to "liberalize" the Bible (for lack of a better word) in some of the translations (obviously, angering some Christians - many of which don't understand the original OT texts). HOWEVER, in most cases, the feminizing of God is taking place in the OT and supports the original Jewish text which flips out God references as both feminine and masculine. Christian churches even use certain Hebrew words for God which are feminine in nature and don't even realize it. It was the early Catholic church that really pushed for a masculine version of God, but most reasonable thoughtful Christians are going to say God is neither male nor female, and such a thing shouldn't shake a person's faith.

There are other references throughout the text (specifically the New NIV - I think - translation that came out recently) that some Christians would deem have a "liberal" slant due to its changes. Many of them allude me right now.

Most thoughtful Christians have never considered the issue of translations which is sad actually. With that said, most Christians don't understand how the NT came to be, and how the OT came to be. It's when you start understanding the history of the OT and NT that you have to start reconsidering your faith, and it's no longer solely blind faith, but one that has conflicts and contradictions.

I'm not going to respond specifically to the blog post because it's posted by folks who just don't get any of what I said, and have ulterior motives in mind.

Jordan .

That's kind of harsh. Scriptures use the masculine terms Father and Son in descriptions of the Trinity, as would be expected in any illustration of an abstract idea at that time.  Nothing implies any God is male or female in a human way.

By the way, the Catholic Church is unique in recognizing Mary as the Mother of the Church.  http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p123a9p6.htm

However, the Torah often flips the masculinity of God back and forth depending upon the scenario and prose being used at that time. For example, "Shechinah" is feminine and yet refers to God.

My intention was not to be harsh here, but I tend to think that most Christians who have considered such things (thus the word thoughtful) would agree that God is a spirit, and is neither male nor female. Which is what I intended by that statement. Us categorizing God as one or the other is easier to "stomach" but the reality, IMO, is beyond our nature to understand.

Jordan .

In regards to translations, a book by New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman,  Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, discusses the field of textual criticism of the Bible, and why scholars have found some 200,000 differences among the 5,700 known New Testament manuscript fragments.  Ehrman describes the early Christian environment as one where the books that would later become the New Testament were copied by hand, often by amateur scribes who made errors, altered texts to downplay the role of women in the early church, to try to unify the different portrayals of Jesus in the gospels, and to counter "heresies" such as Gnosticism.  Another book, by Neil Douglas-Klotz, Blessings of the Cosmos:  Wisdom of the Heart From the Aramaic Works of Jesus  speaks to the fact that Jesus' native language of Aramaic has a much greater range of meaning than a simple word-for-word translation.  To quote Douglas-Klotz " In the tradition of midrash, a prayer, blessing, or sacred saying can have an obvious, surface meaning, as well as meanings that might be called allegorical, psychological, and cosmological...The point is not whether everyone who heard Jesus recognized all of these levels of meaning, but rather that they were there for those "who had ears to hear.'"

I think if you were to look at the Conservative Bible Project's site   (http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project)   you would have to conclude that they also have "ulterior motives in mind".  For instance, Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent and Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning and Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."  This last one flies in the face of what Douglas-Klotz states about "an old tradition connected with Semitic languages like Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, whose 'root-and pattern' system of meaning allows one to hear themes and connections between words, much as one would hear the themes and variation offered in Indian or jazz music.  In this regard, a 'word-for-word' translation would not communicate even a fraction of the live 'music' present in the text".  What disturbs me the most about the Conservative Bible Project is it seems to be more interested in the conservative vs. liberal struggle, creeds, and dogma, than about spirituality and religious experience.

They would say the same against the liberal slant of some of the translations. One could argue that the choices made by some of the "liberal" translations were due to political reasons. I don't care one way or the other. I think people get hung up too much on translations. When someone does an in-depth Biblical study, they really should use multiple translations, especially focusing on the amplified version which helps flesh out keywords.

The thing is that I agree with the vast majority of your post. Aramaic and old Hebrew both have much more meaning to their words and choice of words than we can even begin to understand today. That's why any translation lacks the true substance of what Jesus may have said. But we aren't just talking about the words of Jesus in 4 Gospels. There's 50+ other books and letters that have been written and transcribed multiple times. The Torah is probably the most reliable translation of all the books because of the expertise that the priests had to have to translate it.

"Ehrman describes the early Christian environment as one where the books that would later become the New Testament were copied by hand, often by amateur scribes who made errors, altered texts to downplay the role of women in the early church, to try to unify the different portrayals of Jesus in the gospels, and to counter "heresies" such as Gnosticism. "

I think we need to identify "earl Christian movement" a bit better - are we talking pre-325 or post-325? The early Catholic Church in the 300s when working on the canon really did a number on some of the books, as you allude to, going as far as killing people for trying to protect the heretic books. Many of the books they deemed unreliable or not inspired by God were some of the most popular books by early Christians (pre-325) and were often buried to protect them.

The last part of Mark proves what scholars were trying to do. The oldest texts of Mark don't have the last few verses in the book, but were added to bring a conclusion to the book. Even the style of the writing changes in those verses - it's pretty obvious.

The thing we have to keep in mind is that the early Christian church had mostly oral tradition and letters from amongst other members. Gospel X probably was passed around quite a lot and was probably the most used book at the time until at some point disappearing as the narrative books were created, and the oral tradition and stories were finally written down. Pieces of X were taken and slowly it was no longer necessary.

X was probably the most accurate of all the Gospels - some suggesting it may have been written during or shortly after Jesus' life.

Jordan .

What was that?

I think it was, blessed are the cheesemakers.  

What's so special about the cheesesmakers?  

Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.