Saturday, November 12, 2011

Bible Repackaging

Don't feel like reading? Listen to the audio below. Running Time 3:40.

Today is 'Somethin' Saturday' and this IS somethin'!

I want to look at "The Illuminated Bible: The Book"

I'll try and explore why I not enamored with 'the Illuminated Bible' designed to look like a magazine.


Firstly the nick name for the bible is the 'Good Book'. This repackaging has dropped the word 'Good'. Not drastic, but interesting I thought.

My issue is not that It uses the Good News Translation. I think over all it is a helpful translation - it is being called a paraphrase now, it is an easy read, it was my favorite bible as a kid (Annie Vallotton's illustrations rock!). Particularly helpful to me is the translation's rendering on Romans 7:15-25. So why should I bag a bible version that 'illuminates' a passage I was struggling to understand in the New King James Bible!? Well I don't. The only real niggle I have with the GNT is the word they replace 'blessed' with - I don't like the word 'happy'. The word itself is not horrible, indeed I like being 'happy', but in the context of scripture 'happy' loses something of the divine about the word 'blessed'.

But I'm going off on a tangent. I'll bring it back.

So apart from that, I'm not bothered with The Book's choice of translation. It makes sense in fact. As I said it's an easy read. Excellent for a format like a magazine.

What I found myself thinking about regarding this repacked New Testament - is how sternly should we take the verse '...do not conform to the ways of the world...'? Is taking the bible and glossing it up like a mag conforming to the world? Or do we need to keep bibles up with the times? Georgia Knightly an advocate of another repackaged bible the 'Green Bible' ( printed on recycled paper with soy ink and a sustainable linen cover ) is quoted as saying "Anything that gets people to read the Bible is a good thing." Sounds perfectly acceptable. But then, what I would say is that no matter how you fancy up a bible's outward appearance, and the message inside has not been tampered with, then a person bent on living their own life will not be changed by explosive graphics and shiny pages.

It is naive to think that making the bible classy, will change the heart of a man or woman, only Holy Spirit opening the eyes of an unbeliever can do that, only agreeing in faith that Christ died for our sins, so that we can be made righteous before God  can do that.  So why do we insist then, on helping God, by making Godly things more world-like?


Thoughts? Comments?




The other thing that seems to bug me in the logo. It's probably me over-thinking things.  The logo represents the eye I assume, and reminds my of the eye in the pyramid.

Another observation - the placement of their eye-con is strategically placed on the teen's eyebrow. It uncannily resemble eyebrow rings - it can be said about this product that it is cleverly designed! And indeed very modern.

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