September 2005

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article, Christianity in a nutshell: Britain's '100-Minute Bible'. This new Bible boils down the whole of Scripture to about 60 pages, with the goal of giving the reader a chronological understanding. The publisher and writer, an Anglican clergyman, also kept the focus on Jesus Christ: the gospels take center stage and the Old Testament, Epistles, and Revelation are packaged as pointing to and following up on Jesus. The title comes from the format: 50 sections that can be read in about 2 minutes each.

Sounds like a cool project to me, though critics complain that such an abridgement removes the variety of styles and genres in the Bible. One critic remarked, “What’s next? Downloading sermons from iTunes?” Obviously, this guy doesn’t know that plenty of people are taking sermons with them as mp3s or subscribing to religious podcasts.

You can read a sample, the Sermon on the Mount, on the 100-Minute Press site.

Tagged as: Christian Science Monitor, sharing-the-faith