Bible Illuminated: The Book
Monday, November 3, 2008 Labels: Bible 4 commentsFirst published in Sweden last year, "Bible Illuminated: The Book" is a glossy fashion magazine-style publication. Parent company Illuminated World has released the Bible in the United States. The New Testament version will be released this month, and the Old Testament possibly in March 2009. In the U.S., the New Testament is being sold on Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site, as well as at bookstores such as Barnes & Noble Inc and Gift and Bible.
While I have been referred to as "too traditional", this is not your normal Bible. It contains pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Angelina Jolie. When will people recognize the sovereignty of God and stop trying to market the Bible? Here are some quotes from an article.
A photo of a man on fire opens the Book of Revelation. And laid across a two-page image of gasoline spilling from a pump is the quote that begins: "The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast."
"In general, Bible publishers have always been creative but now they are scrambling to meet a culture where people are moving away from print reading," said Paul Gutjahr, an English associate professor and religious studies adjunct associate professor at Indiana University.
"In a visually literate, advertising-skeptical age - how do you grab people's attention? Mixing the biblical text with Angelina Jolie doesn't surprise me."
Larry Norton, a former publishing executive and president of Illuminated World, said sales of "Bible Illuminated" in Sweden, where an estimated 60,000 Bibles are sold each year, reached 30,000 in its first year. The company is hoping for similar success in the U.S. The book even found a strong secondary market in secular sales.
"We are living in the age of increased secularization and distance from traditional religion," said Robert Hodgson, dean emeritus at the Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship, which is responsible for the translation and quality control for the American Bible Society.
The society licensed the rights to the Good News version of the Bible to Illuminated World.
"It's about new points of entry in a modern world that is not ready to open its doors and windows to the traditional word," Hodgson said.
Bible Illuminated is not affiliated with any religion or church. Why would Gift and Bible sell this?...money? As for me, I will no longer shop at Gift and Bible.
FULL ARTICLE
Bible Illuminated Website
Good luck buying books in the future. I feel pretty confident in saying that Family Christian Stores and Christian books.com will be selling it in the near future.
What the crap, is it made by Time Magazine?!
The only cool new Bible I've seen is the graphic novels that turn the Bible stories into samurai manga stories. I think it's supposed to be just the imagery, rather than the content itself, with Jesus being portrayed as a kind of wandering warrior-sage Son of God in the model of a ronin samurai.
After poking around bibleilluminated.com for a while, I think the publishers are earnest and NOT out to make a cheap buck. And so help me, but I think the magazine itself looks like it's worth browsing, if not buying.
It's just photography, guys. They're not pressing an agenda, they're not warping the text. No reason to boycott one of the stores that sells it.