International Outrage Over Denmark's Fake Bible: Time to Discard It
by Petra Heldt • May 4, 2020 at 5:00 am
This misleads the reader twice. Once, the Danish Bible Society statement dodges the truthful assessment that the word "Israel" was omitted or replaced in the Hebrew Bible in 9% of its occurrences and in the New Testament nearly completely. By omitting any distinction between the two parts of the Bible the statement claims that it mentions "Israel" scores and scores of times in the translation. Second, the statement inflates the word "Israel" with "Israelites." Again here, the analysis of the critique has been side-stepped. The accusation has not been against the replacement of "Israel and the Israelites," but against the replacement of "Israel."
The word "Israel" has an extended history of three thousand years, the word "Israelites" of less than one thousand years. These two words are of unequal measure and had not been joined together in the critique.
After a spectacular denial of the crime of which the Danish Bible Society has been accused internationally, it finally admits to it. But it does not sound like repentance.... While any translation has to wrestle with the transportation of meaning and culture of a text from one language to another, the extraordinary decision of the Danish Bible Society staff to deprive their readers of some of the key points of the Christian faith is mind-boggling.
Above all, the Danish Bible Society separates Israel from its Land. Apart from other key issues of the faith, it denies the reader the knowledge of the intrinsic connection between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and between Israel and its Land. It falls in the trap of which the Apostle Paul warned, "It is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you" (Romans 11: 18). Its version of the Bible robs the Christian faith of its Jewish roots. It presents a new story of the Christian faith. Its maker is the Danish Bible Society.
No one seems to be in the know about this translation of the Bible. Is it possible that the superfluous mistranslation of the Bible was an initiative of the General Secretary of the Danish Bible Society, Birgitte Stoklund Larsen? Did her office raise the money? Where from? Who is profits from this initiative? If not her, who then?
For Christians and Jews, the Bible is serious. Any tampering with its words, above all with the word Israel, is unacceptable and rejected unequivocally. The attempted murder of Israel, from time eternal until our day, is too real to let people play, whimsically, with its land, its people or its name.
The misrepresentation of Holy Scripture by the Danish Bible Society (DBS) has been met with a crescendo of international protest demanding the withdrawal of the falsified Bible.
The March 2020 Danish Bible, for the secular Danish reader's easy reading, has omitted or replaced the word "Israel" in all but two places of the more than 60 Greek occurrences in the New Testament and in 9% of the Hebrew Bible.
Protests started on April 21 with the Danish author Jan Frost, who, in a video, first revealed the changes and took the Danish Society to task for them.
On April 26, the Bible Society of Israel (BSI) issued a gracious but unambiguous statement asking to "take measures to correct" the translation: