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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97537385



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.

Perhaps the song of solomon will be an interactive flash file.

And I agree, Crispen. The bible is 'edgy'. Being told you gotta change the way you live your life has always been edgy.

I see little wrong with it as long as the message is there. The problem is, is that the message is left to interpretation. No one has it 100% correct. It could give some people a small taste of the larger picture.

That is true. I still think some times it could be read differently. Those that loiter outside clinics or murder doctors and nurses. The ones that kill homosexuals. These people read the bible differently than you or I do.

Or fight for the Mujaheddin.

I am saying that there are and have been people who do not read the bible, that have a few verses memorized, and base their entire belief (pseudo-Christian) system off of the handful of verses that they cling to tenaciously. Either read and understand the entire book, or not at all. The problems come in when you pick and choose what is a 'more important' scripture. Gives actual christians a bad rep.

And as for Muslims. If a person is a good muslim, they embrace the teachings of Mohammed. His banner teaching was to (in addition to beating your wife into submission) convert or kill any1 who doesn't believe in Mohammed. I wonder how much influence they had from the Crusades, when the knights and whatnot were guilty of my first paragraph.

Because, in Aeson's post, he references a few types of ppl:

These people take a few verses and feel justified in their personal atrocities. Similar to the Knights Templar in the Crusades. That is why i said what i did.

Can you give a specific?  What did the Knights Templar do?  My point is that you are making a vague assumption, out of proportion with the truth of actual history. 


The view you assert is so out of proportion as to be vertually a lie.  Sorry for the offense, I do respect what you have to say but in this case you are repeating something that needs a closer look. 

Your assertion is, that the Doctors provide heathcare for pregnant women.  Certainly, one has only to look at Planed Parenthood's website to know this service exists.  If you take a quick look at what really happens though, the number of abortions or referals to other abortion clinics far out weigh any prenatial care given.  Think about it a minute, if Abortion was outlawed how many doctors would be laid off from those clinics?  How many could stay on doing prenatial work?  If you look at the revenew stream based on work performed, one must realize they are abortion clinics not prenatial care clinics. 

So I go back to my statement, Last year over a million babies were killed, how many doctors killed?

I have to say this offensive statement, not because any doctors should be killed, but because it is a confusion in your mind that Doctors are being killed by fanatics and it just isn't so.  Yet, the illusion that these fanatics are lukering out there seems very real to you. 

In contrast, real death is happening.  A million babies, killed in the womb.  Is this pernatial care?  No, it is non-sense to repeat the prenatial propaganda, in light of a million deaths.   

I don't deny there are a few demented people over the decades.  The reallity of millions of dead babies far overshadows that.  The bad guys are the clinic Doctors, and not some fantasy of a shadow that may be lurking. 

To answer your question, Crispen, I have read many many books on the crusades, and the Knights Templar. To answer that question with more than a sentence would be a large volume of information that I am unwilling to take the time to scribe. But, here is the one sentence.

The Knights Templar swore oaths, were baptized, and commited many repulsive atrocities in the name of Christ.

And about the doctor/abortion thingy. Doctors are NOT required by law to perform abortions, if doing so would conflict with their own code of ethics. So. The ones that do perform these acts of infanticide are dancing with the devil. But, as Aeson pointed out, this topic will find no end. You may find people to enter discussion with you, were you to start a thread of its own? Maybe?