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The 100-Minute Bible
gets wide media attention
 UNITED
KINGDOM — An edition of the Bible designed
to be read in just 100 minutes succeeded in catching plenty of attention
in the British media on its launch in September.
The 100-Minute Bible, produced
by a small publisher in Canterbury, distils Scripture into a pocket-sized
book just 58 pages long. In coverage running to half a page, The
Times reported that it included “useful maps” locating
Sodom and Gomorrah, showing where the 12 tribes lived and how far it
was from Nazareth to Bethlehem. There were “useful bullet-point
chapter headings such as ‘Jacob and his family’, ‘Jesus
begins his ministry’ and ‘Further resurrection appearances’”,
it added.
The Daily Telegraph noted that
the four Gospels appeared as a single narrative in contemporary language.
While listing the genealogy, the law books and the Song of Songs as
being among the omissions, it noted that “all the familiar Old
Testament stories are there”.
Whether the stories are still “familiar”
to today’s younger generation, however, seems doubtful.
Current affairs
The Bishop of Jarrow, the Rt Revd John
Pritchard, was a consultant on The 100-Minute Bible. Interviewed
about it on BBC Radio’s flagship current affairs programme Today,
he said, “If you talk to young people, most haven’t a clue.”
Referring to a recent survey, he said that 56 per cent of the general
public did not know what happened at Easter.
Heart of our culture
“We’ve got to get this story
back to the heart of our culture,” he said. Defending the new edition
as “not meant to be the finished article,” he added, “I
hope this is just a stepping stone; that people say, ‘I like this
story – I want to know more.’”
 The
novelist and religious commentator Rhidian Brook thought that it would
be “helpful to the online generation” but added that compressing
the Bible had brought problems. Whereas the Bible used poetry, proverbs,
psalms, stories and songs, the “flat monotone” of The 100-Minute
Bible lacked the beauty and complexity of the original, he said.
Poetry sacrificed
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph,
its ‘author’, the Rev Michael Hinton, explained that “the
poetry has been sacrificed for the sake of clarity, so that it is accessible
to everyone from the age of 10 upwards.
“We have concentrated on Jesus and
the chronology of his ministry, because he is the central figure in
the Bible,” he said.
The publishers have printed more than
11,000 copies of The 100-Minute Bible for distribution to churches
and schools. It costs £3.00. (WR 397/15 - 11.05)
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