Get Your “Tidied Up” Bible Here

The text has been rearranged into four distinct volumes which are presented in an attractive way.

… Greene’s Bible is delivered in “ornate binding” to make the reading experience more pleasurable than rifling through translucent pages.

Each page is laid out according to the measurements of the Ark of the Covenant, with the text left-aligned and each paragraph gently indented.

The laudable aim of the new edition is to encourage people, who would nor normally read the Bible get to grips with it for themselves.

“I think for many people, the word ‘Bible’ has come to mean ‘enormous religious book that I’ll never read’,” Greene said. “Presenting the anthology under the title Bibliotheca is intended to jolt some of those preconceived notions.”

“As a way to offset it’s strangeness to modern readers, I’m replacing the redundant archaisms with modern equivalents (‘thou’ will become ‘you’; ‘doth’ will become ‘does’; ‘sitteth’ will become ‘sits’; etc).”

Sadly, this last paragraph shows that the typographer doesn’t really understand the Bible (and why should he? I don’t understand book design, after all). Those archaisms aren’t actually in the Bible, they are in some of the older English language translations. There is no shortage of translations which use modern English already on the market.

This lack of understanding is reflected elsewhere:

“The literature of the Bible was experienced by its ancient audiences as pure literary art …”

There are examples of literary art in the Bible, though I’m pretty sure that no one has ever described the book of Leviticus in those terms. However, the purpose of Scripture has always been to help people to understand and to come into relationship with the God who inspired it. The Bible is not primarily a work of art.

Yes, I am pleased that someone wants to help people to get to grips with the Bible; that’s a good thing. However, I am not convinced that this project is a good use of resources. I’ll highlight what I see as the key issues:

• There are already plenty of new translations of the Bible available, already. One of these could easily be typeset in a new format for a much lower cost than this project is costing.
• We certainly do NOT need another new translation into English, especially if it is simply using an old translation, with the thees and thous removed.
• £328,000 is a heck of a lot of money. For that sort of sum, Wycliffe could translate the Gospel of Luke and produce a Jesus film in eight languages that don’t have a single word of Scripture, much less lots of different translations like we have in English.
• There are around 900 printed translations of the Bible in English, but there are an estimated 1,919 languages that have no Bible translation at all.

So, if you feel tempted to make a financial contribution to a Bible translation, can I gently suggest that you should give your money to Wycliffe, who will make much better use of it than someone who is producing things in English.

Just a personal note: I’m having a little sabbatical from blogging during July, which is why Kouyanet has not been updated much.