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I think discussion of the Cotton Patch Version should be its own topic, not just interspursed in the New Anabaptist Traditional Text Bible Project thread.

JohnH wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 7:38 am

JimFoxvog wrote: ↑Thu Jan 08, 2026 10:04 pm

JohnH wrote: ↑Thu Jan 08, 2026 8:28 am

Except replacing Jew and Gentile with White and Black is a completely bogus change. For example, "white people" have never been God's chosen people, that God called to be set apart from black people and not to intermarry with them.

"Completely bogus" seems an exaggeration. The cultural attitude of superiority of the Jew to the Gentile closely parallels the attitude of the Southern White Culture toward the blacks. The call to understand our kinship and equality remains the same. I don't think anyone reads the Cotton Patch version not realizing that there has been a translation in culture. Like "The Message", the Cotton Patch Version gives insight into the meaning and application of the scripture, but shouldn't be used as a sole resource.

Disclosure: I was a member of Jubilee Partners for over a decade. Jubilee was a daughter community of Koinonia Partners, founded by Clarence Jordan, the author of The Cotton Patch Version. I visited Koinonia a number of times, and Koinonia folks visited us. Clarence was working on his cotton patch version of John when he died, so we just have three gospels, Acts, and the Epistles. Clarence didn't think the cotton patch approach would be useful for the apocalyptic message of Revelation.

It would seem to distort the message of the New Testament to say that “for if black people have shared in white people’s spiritual blessings, they owe it to white people to share with them their material blessings.” Or “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the white person, then to the black person.”

Particularly since black people were amongst the very first converts, and nearly all white groups of people didn’t convert for hundreds of years later.

The Romans passage actually reads,

For I am not bashful about the great story, since it is the power of God bringing new life to anyone who takes part in it, whether he be first a white man or a Negro."

Here is a longer preview of the text of The Cotton Patch Gospel: Paul's Epistles from Christianbook.com:
https://g.christianbook.com/g/slideshow ... exc_dp.jpg

Like The Message, I think this helps bring the words to life in a current setting. I certainly wouldn't use it to base doctrine on, but it helps understand the basic ideas and how they relate to current life.

I'm not a fan of this. The Scriptures weren't written to us, or to Southern United States people, but for us, while to people in the context of the first century AD, and producing a paraphrased version as if it was written directly to us in our modern context seems to risk treating Scripture too flippantly and irreverently, and might be an illegitimate shortcut to actual understanding and relevance of the Scriptures - with a lot more interpretation than a normal translation and acting as if we can avoid the hard work of understanding Scripture in its actual context.

I've never heard of it but I would give it the weight of something like CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters or Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress. Stories are captivating and powerful but in the end just stories.b

Yes, one needs to read it with care. It's a mixture of Bible stories closely based on the Greek text but translated into a different time and culture, and straight translating into modern vernacular. For example, from 1 Atlanta, chapter 13:

Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not envious, nor does it strut and brag. It does not act up, nor try to get things for itself. It pitches no tantrums, keeps no books on insults or injuries, sees no fun in wickedness, but rejoices when truth prevails. Love is all-embracing, all-trusting, all-hoping, all-enduring. Love never quits.

Seeing the same ideas in different words helps me think about it better sometimes. Familiar words can become rote and unthinking.

In other words, it’s not a Bible at all.

Now if you had been the man held up by the gangsters, which of these three—the white preacher, the white song leader, or the black man—would you consider to have been your neighbor?” The teacher of the adult Bible class said, “Why, of course, the nig—I mean, er … well, er … the one who treated me kindly.” Jesus said, “Well, then, you get going and start living like that!”

It’s a gross distortion of the actual gospel.

JimFoxvog wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 9:19 pm Yes, one needs to read it with care. It's a mixture of Bible stories closely based on the Greek text but translated into a different time and culture, and straight translating into modern vernacular. For example, from 1 Atlanta, chapter 13:

Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not envious, nor does it strut and brag. It does not act up, nor try to get things for itself. It pitches no tantrums, keeps no books on insults or injuries, sees no fun in wickedness, but rejoices when truth prevails. Love is all-embracing, all-trusting, all-hoping, all-enduring. Love never quits.

Seeing the same ideas in different words helps me think about it better sometimes. Familiar words can become rote and unthinking.

I was only 19 when I first purchased a copy, then sent it back for a refund, and I haven't read anything from it since then. But I would say that for me, reading the Scripture in another language does for me what you say above, and that's still the actual words of the Bible. I think that it's alright to make applications like this, but they are still lacking the real OT background. (As far as I can recall, the copy I had was only the NT, and I suspect that was all that was ever produced.) I didn't recall that the writers had consulted any Greek text in order to do it, and I cannot imagine how that would have even been necessary, to produce something that is by its very nature so far from the real Scripture. To be sure, as a translator for an isolated tribal language there are elements of this idea - transferring the real Biblical characters into the receptor culture - that are attractive, but it is not translation at all, and not even a "paraphrase". We 'translate' the Bible stories into the culture we live in by living out the teachings of the real Scripture in real time, real life.

Clarence Jordan, the only writer involved, worked directly from the Greek. He didn't finish the New Testament and was not a Hebrew/Aramaic scholar, so didn't do anything from the Old Testament.

It was published as four volumes.

Originally published separately in 4 vols.:

The cotton patch version of Matthew and John, 1970;

The cotton patch version of Luke and Acts, 1969;

The cotton patch version of Paul’s Epistles, 1968;

The cotton patch version of Hebrews and the general Epistles, 1973.

from https://biblia.com/api/plugins/embedded ... OTTONPATCH
which has more excerpts.

Neto wrote: I was only 19 when I first purchased a copy, then sent it back for a refund, and I haven't read anything from it since then.

I am curious why, because it combines scripture with story telling? I am developing (in my head) a children's book where the text is only the beatitudes from the sermon on the mountain and the pictures do all the work of storytelling and showing it in action. I was inspired by reading library books to my children from authors like Peter Spier and Steven Kellogg where the text is simple and the pictures tell the real story, sometimes even showing what is not in the text at all.

barnhart wrote: ↑Sat Jan 10, 2026 8:47 am

Neto wrote: I was only 19 when I first purchased a copy, then sent it back for a refund, and I haven't read anything from it since then.

I am curious why, because it combines scripture with story telling? I am developing (in my head) a children's book where the text is only the beatitudes from the sermon on the mountain and the pictures do all the work of storytelling and showing it in action. I was inspired by reading library books to my children from authors like Peter Spier and Steven Kellogg where the text is simple and the pictures tell the real story, sometimes even showing what is not in the text at all.

It was my 19 year old self. But I think I would still have the same assessment of it, because it represents itself as Scripture itself. It would be good, however, to reread the forward from the book itself, before making any judgmental statements. I think that if someone created a 'modern epistle', like "To the Believers at Atlanta", integrating Biblical teaching and concepts from all over the New Testament into a letter that speaks today's language, and directly to today's issues and settings, that would be fine. There could be footnotes or endnotes that give Scripture references for the concepts represented. It's the representation as actual Scripture that bothers me. But again, to be fair, I would need to see what sort of 'disclaimers' are printed in the forward.

(I think it's also fair to say that it was written for a specific time, a time that is no longer really our time and place. Yes, there are still 'racial' issues in our society, but my impression is that it's not the same as it was in the 70's.)

It's almost quaint in how quickly it's gone out of date, unlike the scriptures themselves that continue to resonate 2,000 years later, including when reading a 500-year-old translation.