Ruth Gledhill of The Times of London has suffered a rhetorical lashing from an academic who accused her of not understanding contemporary New Testament scholarship. The benighted Gledhill is one of those journalists who seems to believe that words have meaning, and that certain ways of changing words invariably change meaning. So, for instance, Gledhill pointed out that these changes in a British paraphrase called Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures amounted to discarding Paul's opposition to fornication:
King James Version: "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband."
Good as New: "Some of you think the best way to cope with sex is for men and women to keep right away from each other. That is more likely to lead to sexual offences. My advice is for everyone to have a regular partner."
Members of ONE, the sponsoring organization, explain that they:
(1) Promote harmony between Christians.
(2) Participate with others in prayerful activity to establish peace, justice, dignity and rights for all.
(3) Live in a manner that supports sustainable use of the earth's resources.
(4) Challenge oppression, injustice, exclusion and discrimination.
(5) Accept one another, valuing their diversity and experience.
With those goals in mind, it seems that Good as New does not go nearly far enough. With our eyes ever fixed on compassionate service to our fellow human persons, we suggest these further revisions to Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 7. We'll use the hopelessly dated New International Version (Copyright 1972, 1978, 1984) for our base text:
Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man person not to marry be limited for a lifetime to one partner in lovemaking. But since there is so much immorality need for forging erotic meaning, each man person should have his own wife and each woman her own husband find a regular pathway to intimacy and sojourn within it. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's Any woman's body does not belongs to her alone but also to her husband. Any suggestion to the contrary is abhorrent and someday, God/dess willing, will be subject to vigorous prosecution. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. If you're a heterosexual man, do us all a favor and keep your body to yourself, or marry a Stepford Wife, but please don't breed any of those screaming babies from hell. Do you know how tedious it is to be only one row ahead of them on a flight from LAX to Kennedy? Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. For the sake of all that is consistent with justice-love, use a condom.