by Lynn Neary
Morning Edition, December 4, 2008 · Two new Bibles targeting a young, hip — even secular — audience are hitting bookstores. One is a slick, illustrated version of the New Testament; the other is an environmentally friendly edition that takes advantage of the popularity of the green movement.
A Peek Inside 'The Book'
First, the flashy coffee-table Bible: Dag Soderberg, a secular Swedish advertising executive wondered why so few people actually read the "good book," so he set out to make it more appealing, with glossy photos and magazine packaging. The resulting publication is an illustrated version of the New Testament called Bible Illuminated: The Book.
"A coffee-table magazine is read by the many everyday, everywhere," explains Soderberg. "This is a way to make [the Bible] as available as any other magazine."
If you didn't know this was a Bible you might think The Book was a "goth" magazine, or perhaps something you'd find in a doctor's office. The front cover is a close-up of a translucent green eye, caked with black makeup and staring eerily from the page. On the back is a photo of a faceless figure wearing a black hooded sweat shirt.
Inside, photos of celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono and John Lennon are interspersed with pictures of heroic figures like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. A veil-covered African woman holding a young child illustrates the story of Mary and Jesus. Images taken from the news — both jarring and poignant — radiate a message of social justice.
United Methodist minister and Hacking Christianity blogger Jeremy Smith says The Book is meant to provoke discussion.
Smith points to the series of images that run in conjunction with a quote from the Book of Revelation. The quote reads: "The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast ..." The photographs show post-Katrina New Orleans, a four-page spread of an animal slaughterhouse in Nigeria and, finally, a picture of a man pumping gas.
"They are interpreting this with some very political and edgy and — honestly — some disorienting imagery," says Smith.
Though skeptical when he first heard about the book, Smith says he found many of the images compelling. But equally compelling, he says, is another new Bible that takes a completely different approach.
The Green Book
With its beige cloth cover, embossed with a picture of a green tree, The Green Bible is the embodiment of simplicity. Inside, passages that refer to the environment are highlighted in green.
Smith says the book catches people's attention: "I took it to a Bible study and set it down on the table and people looked at it and said, 'What is that?'"
Mark Tauber, the senior vice president at HarperOne, which publishes The Green Bible, says that the book is important in both form and function.
"The actual form of the Bible, we think, is a green product," he says, noting that the entire book is made of recyclable materials. "Then in function, it performs the function of helping people be better stewards, if you will."
Smith points out that while The Book seeks to begin a conversation, The Green Bible wants "to add to the conversation."
"Did Jesus say anything about recycling? Did God care what we do with the earth? These are the existing conversations that are emerging that I think The Green Bible contributes to," says Smith.
The book is drawing attention in secular venues, including the Earth First Web site, where bloggers offered unusual praise, which Tauber paraphrases as: "Those crazy wacko religious people ... if you have to believe there is something beyond this life, this is probably a good Bible for you to read."
"It was this backhanded compliment from people not known for being so friendly to people of faith," says Tauber.
Both The Green Bible and The Book are aimed at the young. But Soderberg says that when the illuminated Bible was published in Sweden, it appealed beyond its target audience. In fact, he says, the publisher expanded the market by almost 50 percent in a year.
And Soderberg says there is no question that a new conversation about the Bible is under way in a lot of unexpected places.
He says he's seen people in offices that are very strict talking about the Bible, "because everybody flips through this magazine. ... That's cool."
And an illuminated version of the Old Testament is in the works. Soderberg says it will be published in the U.S. in the spring of 2009 — just in time for Easter.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97537385
Two New Bibles Preach A Hip, Eco-Friendly Gospel
by betterdaze 21 Replies latest watchtower bible
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betterdaze
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BurnTheShips
environmentally friendly edition that takes advantage of the popularity of the green movement.
A green Bible? Didn't the Witnesses try that once already?
BTS
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snowbird
Maybe this is a way I can get my g'kids interested in the Bible.
I look forward to the Old Testament coming out in Spring 2009.
Sylvia
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daniel-p
That's funny, because the Bible is one of the chief reasons people have for so long rationalized the degradation of the environment, by "subjecting" it to their utilitarian purposes.
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BurnTheShips
That's funny, because the Bible is one of the chief reasons people have for so long rationalized the degradation of the environment, by "subjecting" it to their utilitarian purposes.
Your connection is tenuous, at best. BTS
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betterdaze
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
That's not tenuous, BTS, that's Genesis Chapter 1.
~Sue -
undercover
the other is an environmentally friendly edition that takes advantage of the popularity of the green movement.
They could be even more "green" and quit wasting paper to print the shit...
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snowbird
Sue, I don't see anything in those verses that Man could use to rationalize his, as Daniel-P puts it, degradation of the Earth.
Subduing and degrading are poles apart, imo.
Sylvia
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BurnTheShips
That's not tenuous, BTS, that's Genesis Chapter 1.
I see nothing that is non-eco friendly in that passage. Perhaps you can explain it for me. If anything, it is a case for stewardship.
Also, while you are at it, please tell me, betterdaze, in what way were pre-industrial Christian civilizations less environmentally friendly, than say, imperial China, or feudal Japan, or pre-Colombian civilizations such as the Aztecs Incas or Maya? Care to back up the allegation with real historical evidence? If the Bible led to environmental degradation, then we should see a greater degree of this due to it in societies that adopted it as a sacred text. Also, when we look at more modern explicitly non-Christian industrial societies such as Soviet Russia, or China, are they any more eco-friendly due to a lack of lineage in the Judeo-Christian tradition?
BTS
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mavie
I welcome the Green Bible. There is a new generation of evangelicals growing up who read Genesis chapter 1 as direction to manage the Earth sustainably.
Of course I would prefer the Bible is totally out of the equation, but if this gets a large number of evangelicals to recycle and think 'green' it's a good thing.