Italy — Rome Exhibition Traces Bible’s Impact on Culture
Northern Ireland — Alcoholic ‘Inexplicably Drawn’ to Bible House
Icelandic Bible Society Launches Book of Many Covers
Young Chechens Introduced to God’s Word (Russia)
Russia — ‘The Gospel Must Be Preached to All Peoples’
Egypt — Garbage Village’s Sick Find Spiritual Renewal
Spain — Christians Offer the Hope of Jesus to North African Migrants
Egypt — Whole Arabic Bible Now Available on Audio Cassette
Whale symbolises hope for visitors to Germany’s Expo 2000

Rome Exhibition Traces Bible’s
Impact on Culture

ROME, Italy — In a groundbreaking co-operative venture with the Vatican Library, the United Bible Societies (UBS) opened a major exhibition in Rome in July which traces both the history of the printed Bible and its impact on the culture and peoples of the world.

Entitled The Impact of the Word on the World, the exhibition is one half of a two-part tour de force tracing the history of the Bible from the oral tradition to today’s CD-ROM and touch-screen formats. As part of Rome’s celebration of the bi-millennium of the birth of Christ, it is aimed largely at the millions of pilgrims and tourists who will be in the city during the Year of Jubilee proclaimed by Pope John Paul II.

The first ‘half’ of the joint exhibition has been mounted by the Vatican Museum in a separate venue. Entitled Gospels and People, it details God’s revelation from oral tradition to the invention of the printing press. Its display of ancient manuscripts and books culminates in an original Gutenberg Bible.

Advertising

The UBS exhibition, housed in the Palazzo dei Dioscuri, encompasses five colour-coded rooms and picks up the biblical story with the invention of the printing press. While focusing specifically on the impact of the Bible on printing technology and cultural areas such as literature and advertising, the exhibition also displays rare Bibles. These include Latin Bibles from 1462, the first Bible in Italian (1471), and a 1550 edition of Martin Luther’s translation into German, among others.

Revolution

The focus on printing reveals the impact that the British and Foreign Bible Society’s need for Bibles had in the first three decades of the 19th century. Exhibition creator the Rev Alan Jesson explained that the young Bible Society’s order for several thousand Bibles at the lowest possible prices caused a revolution in both the printing and binding trades. Mr Jesson was formerly the Bible Society’s Librarian at Cambridge University Library, home of the British and Foreign Bible Society Scripture collection.

But as well as sharing history, the UBS exhibition also points to the future. Touch-screen computers give visitors an opportunity to learn about the Bible – and try a Bible quiz. Technologies like CD-ROM and Megavoice allow visitors a look at how the Scriptures are being made available to a new generation.

“The Bible is a tremendously complex book,” Mr Jesson explained. “In fact, it’s not one book, it’s a library of books. It began with the oral tradition over 7,000 years ago with people handing down the stories of the Bible, of their interaction with God. Then, as writing developed, the stories began to be formalised, written down and collected. With the 14th century came the beginnings of the demand for the Bible. In the 15th century you had printing, and that continued to develop right up until today, when the Bible is available on computer, on disk and in various other formats.”

Grand

More than 100 guests attended the formal grand opening of the exhibition, which featured greetings by Monsignor Raffaele Farina, Director of the Apostolic Library of the Vatican, UBS General Secretary the Rev Fergus Macdonald, and Italy’s Minister of Culture, Francesco Sicilia.

Also speaking were Mr Jesson, and Maerio Cignoni, Executive Manager of the Bible Society in Italy. The Rev Valdo Bertalot, General Secretary of the Society, hosted the evening. Mr Macdonald told the guests it was “a privilege and an honour for UBS to co-sponsor the exhibition with the Vatican Museum.”

Cultures

“The 1968 agreement with the Vatican opened the door to translation work together,” he said, “and this co-operative work has made a great contribution to helping people relate the Scriptures to cultures. We greatly appreciate our relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Biblical Federation.”

Based on the exhibition, the UBS Communications Services Department is producing a video for use by national Bible Societies to promote their work. To be available at the UBS World Assembly, it will emphasise the work of translation and will be especially appropriate for Catholic audiences. The UBS exhibition in Rome will be open until November. (WR 353/14 - 9.00) [PHOTOS]

Icelandic Bible Society Launches Book of Many Covers

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — A gang of leather-clad motorcyclists delivering a parcel of books to a bishop in a public square in central Reykjavik got a new paperback Bible off to a noisy flying start this summer.

The stunt was part of an elaborate and creative promotional campaign, combining advertising, public relations and photo opportunities, aimed at obtaining maximum publicity for the Bible Society’s latest production, the Icelandic Millennium Bible.

Three days before the launch, advertisements had gone up on a large number of poster sites next to the city’s bus stops. Carrying intriguing and enigmatic headlines such as ‘Being loved is no easy matter’, ‘We also miss what brings us pain’ and ‘The delusion of scepticism is that it does not doubt itself’, they bore large photographs of fashionable but ordinary-looking twenty-somethings and a few sentences of copy exploring the minds of Bible characters. The strapline on each poster reads, ‘The Bible is about you’.

On sale at Shell and BP filling stations and reported to be selling well in bookshops, the new paperback Bible represents a bold attempt to widen the readership of the Scriptures.

As a well-known pop group played to a large crowd in Vegamot square, the Bishop of Reykjavik, Karl Sigurbjörnsson, took delivery of the new Bibles, said a few words and handed a copy to Jon Gnarr, a comedian popular on television and particularly identified with the younger generation in Iceland.

Outdoor

The effect of the outdoor elements of the promotion, plus the press conference held nearby on the same day, brought approval from Icelandic Bible Society General Secretary Jón Pálsson.

“It was a sunny day and journalists from all the media were present,” he said. “One cameraman sat on one of the motorcycles and took pictures of the whole event which was shown on the TV news that evening. I was called for three interviews on the radio.”

Bold

The Society also commissioned some theology students to write press articles commenting on the advertising campaign and at the end of the launch month, June, it ran a full-page newspaper advertisement, paid for by a corporate sponsor. He said they had hoped to be able to place more sponsored press advertisements, but had ended running them as posters.

On sale at Shell and BP filling stations and reported to be selling well in bookshops, the new paperback Bible represents a bold attempt to widen the readership of the Scriptures. Moreover, in an effort to emphasise the breadth of the Bible and also to offer purchasers a choice, the Bible Society will be printing its paperback with no fewer than five thousand different covers. So far it is available in just five.

The idea behind the strapline, ‘The Bible is about you’, is to stress the idea that the Bible tells stories of individuals, describing the difficulties they deal with and their embrace or rejection of God, and to show that the stories are just as relevant to people living today as they were many thousands of years ago.

“We want people to look at the Bible as an interesting book which is worth reading and to take it up as part of their daily life,” says Mr Pálsson. “Changing people’s attitudes [to it] will take some time and I am sure that this new concept and new look to the Bible will help us reach that goal.” (WR 353/16 - 9.00) [PHOTOS]

Young Chechens Introduced
to God’s Word

MOSCOW, Russia — Thousands of Chechen refugee children in the North Caucasus will receive Scriptures this summer through a distribution project organised by the Bible Society in Russia (BSR).

Responding to a call by its main partner organisation in the Caucasus – the Kabardino-Balkariya Christian Charitable Society (KBCCS) – the BSR has provided five thousand children’s Scriptures for distribution among young Chechens attending summer camps.

The Scriptures arrived in the Caucasus on June 16 and will be distributed to the children by Bible Society staff members, together with churches and para-church organisations.

The camps, which run from May to September, are situated in picturesque mountain surroundings in Kabardino-Balkariya – a republic in the far south of the Russian Federation. Organised by the federal government, the summer camps will give the Chechen children a much-needed holiday and provide them with health care.

Hurting

The camps also present an ideal opportunity to introduce these hurting children to the Word of God, according to Pavel Popilin, BSR Information Officer, who visited one of the camps in May to assess the children’s Scripture needs. Travelling with Pavel Pogodin, head of the KBCCS, and a group of local Christians, Mr Popilin took with him 50 children’s Scriptures.

“Most of the children we met at the camp had lost parents, relatives or friends,” said Mr Popilin. “They have had too much sadness and suffering in recent years.”

Befriended

Camp leaders told Mr Popilin that a group of teenage Christians from a nearby town had befriended the young Chechens and told them about Jesus and the message of hope in the Bible. The children responded positively to these young Christians, and camp leaders noticed a change in their behaviour.

“The leaders said that this year the children from Chechnya were behaving like ‘little angels’, whereas in previous years they had arrived like ‘real bandits’, full of anger, wanting to destroy everything in their path,” said Mr Popilin. “Today, these young Chechens were not frightened of strange people – they studied us with great interest and asked us questions.

“But as they spoke, memories of home and loved ones came flooding back, and their eyes filled with tears. It was unbelievably difficult for us to find words to console them,” Mr Popilin added.

“We offered the children illustrated Scriptures – The Gospel Story and Bible Stories – and told them about Jesus. Our lively conversation even caught the attention of the boys playing football, and they came and joined in.”

All the children wanted a copy of the Scriptures but some of them could not read. Mr Popilin devised a Russian language test to find out who the best students were, and then arranged for those who were good at reading to help others to read their new Scriptures.

Disciples

“We very much wanted all of them to learn about the Lord,” said Mr Popilin. “Even if they do not eventually become disciples of Christ, perhaps they will not be against him and his followers.”

About ten thousand Chechen children will have attended summer camps in this region by the end of September. At least half of them will receive Bible Society Scriptures, and all will have the chance to hear about Jesus from Christian volunteers working in the camps.

“The volunteers bring sports gear, musical instruments and books to entertain the children but, most important of all, they bring smiles and human kindness, which have been in such short supply at home in recent times,” said Mr Popilin. “The children can ramble along the mountain paths without the fear of stepping on a mine, admire the snow-capped peaks and enjoy the silence and pure air.

Memories

“We hope that when they return home the young Chechens will take with them warm memories of days spent in the mountains, and that the books we have given them will remind them of our visits and conversations about Christ.

“Then possibly a new generation will grow up in Chechnya who will not see Christians as their enemies. There are a lot of prejudices which divide us but these can be quietly overcome by human contact. And it is better to do this in childhood when hearts are not filled with bitterness and harsh anger.” (WR 353/17 - 9.00) [PHOTOS]

Garbage Village’s Sick Find Spiritual Renewal

Around 30,000 people live in the garbage settlements on the outskirts of Cairo, where they make a living collecting and manually recycling 600 of the 2,000 tonnes of waste produced by the city every day. Life is hard for the garbage collectors, many of whom work long hours and live in unsanitary conditions. However, with a growing church – in fact, boasting the largest church in the Middle East – and a regeneration program run by the government, the people of Garbage Village have hope for the future.

These are the words of one of 60 seriously ill people from Cairo’s Garbage Village who recently spent a time of spiritual renewal and fellowship at two Christian camps. The camps were in beautiful surroundings on the shores of the Bitter Lakes, which form part of the Suez Canal network.

Organised by Rebecca Atallah, wife of Ramez Atallah, General Secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt (BSE), the camps ran from May 23 - June 6, and offered a rare opportunity for the village’s chronically ill people to enjoy the outdoors and participate in Bible study.

Hard work

Mrs Atallah, who is a volunteer at St Simeon Coptic Orthodox church in Garbage Village, has been running camps for the past 15 years, raising funds through friends.

“The camps are the hardest work I do all year, and I often feel way out of my depth,” said Mrs Atallah. “But in terms of opportunities to bless and love disadvantaged people of all kinds, I cannot think of any greater.

“These people are lovely to give to because they appreciate everything so much,” she explained. “Due to their infirmities, they seldom get out of the village, or even out of their homes, and of course they never get the opportunity to travel, swim or eat so well.”

As well as encouraging the participants to enjoy themselves, the camps also have a more serious aspect.

“Remembering that four people who were at this camp last year have since died, we really prayed that God used this time for spiritual renewal and change, as well as for fun and fellowship,” said Mrs Atallah.

Delight

Bible studies were led by Soad Ibrahim, wife of Father Samaan Ibrahim, spiritual leader of the Garbage Village Christians. Bible Society Scriptures, including booklets about Old Testament characters, and Scripture cassettes in colloquial Arabic, were distributed to participants at the camps, who received them with delight.

A doctor was present at the camp to provide emergency medical care. This year, however, only one of the participants experienced serious health problems during the camp.

Fainted

“One of our campers, Mallak, is a very sick 40-year-old man who gets kidney dialysis three times a week,” Mrs Atallah said. “Last year, he fainted while in the water and was unconscious for some time. This year by the second morning he was very sick and feeling in need of dialysis.

Big smile

“We started discussing ways to return him to his hospital in the city but decided we should first pray with him. A group of us did this, and the next thing we knew Mallak was walking around with a big smile on his face. He thoroughly enjoyed the next 24 hours. Praise God!”

Every year Mrs Atallah also runs a camp for girls and young women, and a camp for disabled children. (WR 353/19 - 9.00) For previous articles about Garbage Village, please see World Reports 282/5, 292/14, 324/22 and 337/18.) [PHOTOS]

Christians Offer the Hope of Jesus
to North African Migrants

by Geoffrey Stamp

ALGECIRAS, Spain — The six people who died in a ferry collision south of Gibraltar recently were part of a unique migration involving hundreds of thousands of North Africans – a migration that offers a special opportunity for sharing God’s Word among people often eager to receive it.

Each year during the summer holidays, the main southern ports of Spain, France and Italy are crowded with migrant workers returning to North Africa to spend the holidays with their families. Every year a large group of Christian volunteers give up their holidays to reach these migrant workers with the Gospel.

Human migration

At the height of this human migration, thousands of cars line the roads leading to the ports. Extra ferries are laid on by the ferry companies and the waters between southern Europe and northern Africa become a busy shipping channel.

For many of the workers, the gifts of Scripture are their first encounter with the Bible. Among the agencies organising the outreach are the Bible Societies of Spain, France and Italy. The others include Campus Crusade for Christ, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, Operation Mobilisation, Gospel Missionary Union, Arab World Ministries and Youth With a Mission.

Privileged

“This is a wonderful opportunity to introduce people to God’s message of forgiveness, peace, hope and salvation contained in the Bible,” said Al Stahl from Campus Crusade, co-ordinator of the distribution in southern Spain, based in Algeciras.

“Because it is so difficult to distribute the Holy Scriptures in parts of northern Africa, we are privileged to have this opportunity to reach North African families with the Bible. Often these Scripture packets are given as gifts to friends and members of the extended family, thus having an impact on the women and children as well as men,” he said.

Besides the Jesus film and a New Testament, the packs offered to the Maghrebi, as the North Africans are collectively known, contain Bible Portions for children, an audio cassette on the life of Christ and information about Christian broadcasts which can be heard across North Africa. There is also a response form, with which people can sign up for a basic Bible correspondence course designed to help them understand the material they have been given.

Journeying

Volunteers come from all over the world to help with the summer distribution. This year some 1,100 young people are journeying to the ports of these three European countries to take part in this United Bible Societies-supported program.

“Last year we distributed more than 155,000 packs,” said Mr Stahl. “In most cases the authorities allow us into the port area and generally up to 50 per cent of those travelling by car are pleased to receive our gifts while waiting for the ferry.”

This year one volunteer helped a man who was struggling with his luggage and then offered him a packet of Scripture.  The man put down his bags, took the packet eagerly and kissed it.

He told the volunteer: “I work in Spain. My family lives in a large city in Morocco. My son came through here two years ago and received a gift like this from you. As a result we have all come to know Jesus Christ.”

The two ferries that collided on Sunday July 16 had run into some bad weather in the straits of Gibraltar. A north-bound ferry carrying trucks tore a large hole in the hull of a south-bound passenger ferry just out of Algeciras. Six people were killed and 18 injured of the 290 passengers on board. Three of the dead were children.

“This tragedy, which could have been far worse, highlights the urgency to get the Scriptures into the hands of these people,” said Mr Stahl.

“We never know what may happen, whether it be the accident-related deaths of individuals or the sudden closing of this incredible door of opportunity due to other causes. The fact that lives are being saved for eternity motivates all that we do here.”

l Former UBS Chief Editor Geoffrey Stamp is a freelance journalist based in England. (WR 353/20 - 9.00)