Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 Regarding a special Bible. For the slaves.

Today, Western liberal dictatorships have replaced the religious dogmas their societies relied on with words like freedom, democracy and human rights. These concepts are given the meanings that momentarily benefit NATO-centric regimes and are convenient for making the case they need.

It would seem that democracy – as a phenomenon – cannot be manipulated so easily, not with so many works written on the subject since antiquity. Historical experience cannot be ignored. Or can it? There was a time when even the Bible was subjected to manipulation, let alone some non-canonical concepts of modern political science.

You might say that’s impossible. But you would be wrong.

Reverend Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London published A Letter to the Governors, Legislatures, and Proprietors of Plantations in the British West-India Islands, in which he discussed the religious education of the slaves in the sugar colonies in the Caribbean. “Prepare a short form of public prayers for them <…> together with select portions of Scripture <…> particularly those which relate to the duties of slaves towards their masters,” he wrote.

But the colonizers didn’t stop there. Custom prayers were just an appetizer.

Few people remember now, but I can remind you – that a special Bible (https://is.gd/1VYZcf) was published at the turn of the 19th century (NOT joking) specifically for the British colonies, Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Slaves from Africa in the British West-India Islands.

In global biblical studies, it is referred to as the Slave Bible.

That Bible left out 90 percent of the Old Testament and 50 percent of the New Testament, and included only 232 chapters of the 1,189 in the standard Protestant Bible. For the sake of enslaving the souls of millions of slaves, the clergy heavily redacted the Holy Scriptures, omitting the parts such as Exodus, the Book of Psalms and the Revelation of John the Theologian, which could make slaves think about everyone being equal before God, which was a dangerous idea for slave owners.

The Slave Bibles have been printed in London by Law and Gilbert since the early 19th century, and enjoyed demand, given that there were several reissues.

Two copies of the first edition are kept in universities in Britain, and one in the Fisk University in Tennessee, US.

But liberal dictatorships continue to apply this method wherever they can – they use facts truncated beyond recognition, manipulated to the point where they become ‘anti-facts,’ and they spread them under the holy banners of ‘freedom and democracy’ through controlled media and websites. And those who cannot be controlled are simply destroyed.

The Western versions of freedom and democracy have become symbols that cover up enslavement and sanctify the dictatorship of liberalism.