The New Commodified Version (NCV) is a creative misreading of selected passages of the Bible.  Various mainstream translations and paraphrases of the Bible are used in its creation.  Anyone with access to the more popular translations can determine easily enough which is most relied on for the rendition of any particular NCV passage.

Very little of the biblical text is changed.  No phrases or lines are added.  Instead, word-for-word substitution is employed.  Take for instance the use of divine names.  The word "LORD" is replaced by "Market."  "Holy One" becomes "Wealthy One" or "Prosperous One." These substitions are on the whole consistent across different passages.

Substitution in other cases is necessarily less consistent. "Bloodthirsty men" becomes "terrorists" in Psalm 139, which seems an honest enough reading in and of itself, but the phrase is quite rare.   The more common phrase "the wicked" become "the poor" in some cases, but consistent application would render the misreading so polemical as to detract from the poetry of the biblical text.  Place names are given US equivalents as far as possible: "O Israel" becomes "O America," "O Jacob" becomes "O Washington" and so on.  When in doubt, priority is given to rendering a liturgically suitable misreading en lieu of a sing-song consistency.

Triumphalist Yahwist poetry renders itself to an NCV misreading most easily because our commodified culture has prescribed the Market with precisely those qualities that the deuteronomists ascribed to Yahweh.  This is indeed unfortunate for Yahweh, who worked quite hard to secure these attributes for himself alone.  But the deuteronomists’ Yahweh is welcome to challenge Market to a show down, as he did with Baal, Moloch, and many others.  More pointedly, the editors refuse to take responsibility for Yahweh’s negligence in protecting his own intellectual property.  We only report what we see.  If he is unwilling or unable to challenge Market on this front, we suggest he (and his followers) contact the proper authorities, and not our small office, with their complaints and suggestions.

It is of course possible to perform an NCV misreading on any number of biblical genres in addition to Yahwist hymns, and the editors suspect deuteronomist and gospel narratives would be the most popular choices.   There are two reasons why they have chosen not to do so at this time. 

One, narrative passages tend to present fewer opportunities for the word-for-word substitution that is the halmark of the NCV.  Thus, narrative misreadings lend themselves to less bang for the buck, so to speak. 

Secondly, unlike triumphalist Yawhist hymns, deutoronomist and gospel narratives, more often than not, are already texts in marked opposition to Market.  Little can be gained except either a ham handed redundancy or a facile inversion of meaning.  This is not, in the view of the editors, very much fun.

First and foremost, the editorial committee of the NCV seeks to create through its biblical misreadings a descriptive marker of the implicit and explicit theology of a rapidly growing movement of contemporary spirituality.  The editorial committee welcomes suggestions of candidate texts for future misreadings, which can be sent care of the owners of this website.  Practitioners of this spirituality (and others) are welcome to use these text under certain restrictions.

Sincerely,

Editorial Committee, New Commodified Version, Inc.