Sam Harris

I have been toying with the idea of this project for a little while.  What if we take the Old Testament tales of Israelite conquest of the lands of the Canaanite nations and substitute "Muslims".  This would allow Christians to look at the passages with fresh eyes.  We might also want to replace the names of the Canaanite nations with modern non-Christian nations such as Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, etc.  Just by changing the names, that whole section of the Bible becomes instantly untenable to most Christians.

It might be interesting to do something like this with many parts of the Bible.  Keep the content but shift the context enough to allow the truth of what is actually written there to pop.

I like the idea. When can we see it up on the internet!

I am looking for a good text to start from. So far, the best public domain text I have found online is the World English Bible (http://ebible.org/) but it still contains some “archaic grammar” as they say on their site.  It would be nice to start from something a bit more modern like the New American Standard Bible but if I can’t find anything better, I’ll probably start with WEB.

I was stuck thinking in terms of print, but your question gives me a good idea.  Instead of a static document, I could come up with a word list to search and replace.  Then someone viewing the site could choose from some preset substitutions or provide their own.  My Muslim idea would substitute Muslims for Israelites and Allah for Yahweh.  Others could substitute Vishnu or Zeus.

What I like about this idea is that I can start with just a few substitutions and grow the list of “changed names” over time with suggestions from the community.

Not a bad idea. If we changed God to Science, no one would buy it.