Publishers have found a niche — a big one — for stylized Bibles inspired by pop culture. Almost anything goes. How do you sell a really old book that 91% of households already have? You can’t update the content, or get the author on Oprah. But you can make the look sizzle. If pink and shiny sells a purse, why not a psalm?
“A lot of people read the Bible because it’s obligatory, something to keep God off their backs,” says Paul J. Caminiti, a vice president. “We’re looking to turn them into Bible lovers . . . so it becomes part of the warp and woof of their being.”
Content
>You cannot update the content
You can’t?
Here is an update to the content and it is done in pink: The Message Remix: The Bible In Contemporary Language/Hypercolor Pink
Defining what “content” is can be tricky
A story like this is messy. The Message is not necessarily a change to biblical text. In more than one respect it is regarded as a paraphrase rather than the usual translation like the New Revised Standard Version.
Notwithstanding the disputes over the canonicity of the texts sometimes referred to as “The Apocrypha”, the only way to update the content is to effectively add or subtract from what is given. Interpretation and translation are matters that have been issues over the years. Look in a public library’s religion section and you may find quite a few commentary books from different perspectives. Those commentaries are interpretation. Different translations like the New American Standard (very literally translated, very hard to read in English) and the New Revised Standard Version (translation by committee which primarily spoke Engish) do exist.
Now if someone said the book of Mark should be dropped or that one ending to it is the definitive one that is a different matter. Such is a very old issue dating back to the time when Marcion walked the Earth. Marcion’s updating of the text helped bring about the notion of canonicity. Marcion’s view of what was the proper part of the Bible was rather quite restrictive as it was. The dispute he caused led in the end to the discussions of canon that kicked off at an early council which my memory fails me as to the name and I cannot reach my Everett Ferguson texts at the moment either.
Perhaps I have said plenty now.
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Stephen Kellat, Host, LISten