After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he saw ‘‘the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased''' (Mark 1:10-11, Revised Standard Version).
Compare that with this new translation:
‘‘A pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God's Spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, ‘That's my boy!'''
There are many such chatty or doctrinally denuded passages in ‘‘Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures'' (O Books), an exceedingly loose New Testament paraphrase by Britain's John Henson, a fundamentalist-hating Baptist.
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