Is $75 Too Much for a Bible?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday, everyone.
00:00:07.320 | A podcast listener named Matt was one of several listeners
00:00:10.520 | who emailed us to ask us about a new Bible
00:00:12.920 | that's trending online.
00:00:14.680 | Matt asks, "Pastor John, what are your thoughts
00:00:16.800 | "about the new four-volume Bibliotheca Bible,
00:00:19.460 | "which costs $75?
00:00:21.460 | "Do we need aesthetically and artistically pleasing Bibles?
00:00:24.900 | "What are the benefits and what are the drawbacks?"
00:00:29.080 | - I think the most important thing for me to say
00:00:31.880 | is that I love the Bible.
00:00:34.120 | Under God, it is the most precious possession
00:00:37.640 | that we have in the world, yes,
00:00:39.520 | even more precious than other people.
00:00:43.640 | And therefore, I support its distribution everywhere
00:00:48.640 | and by every means that preserves its accurate meaning
00:00:53.720 | and does not sin in the construction
00:00:57.760 | or the distribution of it.
00:00:59.320 | That's my overarching passion.
00:01:02.240 | Yes, get the Bible into as many hands
00:01:06.040 | in this world as possible in a faithful translation
00:01:09.660 | in as many forms that will be helpful to people
00:01:12.840 | and not undermine the meaning or the truth of the Bible.
00:01:17.320 | Now, this project, Bibliotheca Bible,
00:01:20.220 | is a project to put the Bible into four volumes
00:01:25.160 | with no verse or chapter numbers on beautiful paper
00:01:29.920 | in beautiful bindings with the ASV,
00:01:33.280 | American Standard Version Translation,
00:01:35.440 | which was published in 1901 and is characterized,
00:01:38.860 | everybody knows, by a very formal literalism.
00:01:43.860 | I say literalism because it is pretty wooden.
00:01:48.360 | It is going to have the these and thous taken out
00:01:51.960 | with the corresponding verbs updated.
00:01:55.360 | The copyright has expired on that text,
00:01:57.480 | so it's in the public domain,
00:01:59.160 | which is what makes this project financially feasible,
00:02:02.000 | I presume.
00:02:04.160 | And the aims, as I understand them,
00:02:06.480 | just watching the video that's been made available,
00:02:10.200 | is to make a version of the Bible,
00:02:12.960 | a form, a packaging of a Bible,
00:02:15.480 | which is, quote, "elegant, simple, and pure,"
00:02:20.900 | and to enable readers to read it, quote,
00:02:23.280 | "with a fresh set of eyes," and to, quote,
00:02:27.360 | "experience it anew."
00:02:29.660 | Now, I pray that that will happen.
00:02:31.440 | I think that's an laudable goal,
00:02:33.680 | to want a fresh set of eyes
00:02:36.120 | to be created by a fresh presentation.
00:02:39.280 | The reason I don't protest the expense of the Bible
00:02:42.880 | is because, as far as I can tell,
00:02:44.760 | there's no intent on the part of the publisher
00:02:47.280 | to make this normative,
00:02:49.160 | like, "This is the way all the Bibles should be,
00:02:51.400 | "$75 in beautiful bindings."
00:02:53.880 | I don't think that's the mindset at all.
00:02:56.360 | The publishers aren't saying, as far as I know,
00:02:59.200 | "All Bibles should be printed this way
00:03:01.080 | "and be this expensive."
00:03:03.480 | And, of course, it's nothing new, right?
00:03:05.760 | I own a $200 Bible because it was given to me,
00:03:09.600 | because it's got a lambskin cover.
00:03:11.820 | I mean, there are Bibles of every price imaginable,
00:03:15.640 | ranging from 50 cents to hundreds and hundreds of dollars,
00:03:19.680 | based largely on the nature of the cover
00:03:21.640 | and the binding and mass production and all that.
00:03:23.420 | So I'm happy to have the Bible available in another format,
00:03:28.360 | with enough formatting differences to draw people into it
00:03:32.340 | in a fresh encounter with the Word of God.
00:03:35.440 | Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
00:03:38.400 | You can't bind the Word of God.
00:03:39.960 | It's running free and doing its work
00:03:41.960 | wherever you faithfully present it.
00:03:44.400 | But it might be helpful to hear just a few reasons
00:03:47.640 | why I think this Bible won't replace
00:03:52.640 | traditional Bible formats.
00:03:55.800 | I mean, for all the good things you can say
00:03:57.200 | about taking out verse divisions and chapter divisions,
00:04:00.140 | for freshness' sake, there are some really good reasons
00:04:03.360 | why this will not do away with,
00:04:06.520 | and should not do away with,
00:04:08.440 | our traditional Bibles printed with verse divisions
00:04:11.680 | and chapter divisions.
00:04:12.560 | So here are a couple of reasons.
00:04:14.120 | One, because we love to share our discoveries,
00:04:17.280 | and the greater the discoveries are,
00:04:19.160 | the more we want to share them,
00:04:20.440 | and verses make it possible for us to share something we saw
00:04:24.520 | because we can tell people it's that chapter so-and-so
00:04:27.000 | and verse so-and-so, and they can just find it and share it.
00:04:30.080 | Number two, we love to study our Bibles
00:04:34.120 | and see what the Bible say about all kinds of topics
00:04:37.520 | and how one part of the Bible sheds light
00:04:39.560 | on another part of the Bible,
00:04:40.860 | which means that we need to find our way around
00:04:43.920 | in five or 10 or 20 places in the Bible
00:04:46.720 | that speak about something,
00:04:47.840 | and it's very hard to do that if you can't jump around
00:04:51.220 | with the help of verses and chapters.
00:04:53.740 | Number three, we love to memorize precious sentences
00:04:57.360 | in the Bible, but we know the danger
00:05:00.860 | of taking them out of context.
00:05:02.960 | With verse and chapter divisions,
00:05:04.560 | we can find our way right back to the context
00:05:06.980 | where we are learning and see what it says
00:05:10.160 | in the surrounding verses.
00:05:13.220 | Number four, we love to teach groups of people
00:05:17.060 | what the Bible says, and in a group,
00:05:18.940 | it's very helpful to direct all the eyes to the same place,
00:05:23.060 | and we can do that way more easily
00:05:24.760 | if we can say it verse so-and-so in chapter so-and-so.
00:05:28.240 | Fifth, we're not only citizens.
00:05:30.600 | This is a comment about the beauty of it.
00:05:34.680 | I love beauty.
00:05:35.880 | However, we are not only citizens of this world
00:05:40.540 | who savor the beauty around us, right,
00:05:43.600 | including book bindings and layouts.
00:05:45.480 | I'm reading a book right now about George Herbert,
00:05:48.920 | and it's simply beautiful.
00:05:50.160 | The paper's beautiful, the cover's beautiful,
00:05:52.500 | the writing is beautiful.
00:05:53.960 | I love just holding the book,
00:05:55.440 | so I resonate with what's behind this.
00:05:58.580 | We are that kind of human being.
00:06:00.560 | We're not animals.
00:06:01.760 | We love beauty, and the Bible ought to be, at times,
00:06:06.560 | presented in that kind of way,
00:06:08.920 | but we are also pilgrims who are aliens here
00:06:13.920 | and who travel lightly on our way to heaven
00:06:16.960 | and are striving to get the Bible,
00:06:19.120 | its message and its truth into as many hands as we can,
00:06:23.400 | which means simplicity and economy become,
00:06:28.400 | in some contexts at least, just as important as elegance.
00:06:33.320 | A Bible that costs $1, and there are Bibles
00:06:36.160 | that cost $1, can be put into the hands of many people
00:06:40.360 | more easily than a Bible that costs $75,
00:06:44.440 | and so that pilgrim principle, I think,
00:06:47.320 | drives us to economy as well as beauty in different settings.
00:06:52.320 | And one last thing.
00:06:54.440 | The ASV will never replace
00:06:57.480 | the more readable contemporary versions.
00:06:59.760 | It is literal, and I love that,
00:07:03.880 | but it is wooden also, and in some places,
00:07:07.760 | so structurally foreign to our way of writing
00:07:12.220 | that there are greater barriers
00:07:15.560 | than these and thous that people are gonna run into.
00:07:20.560 | So last thing I'd say is God bless the project.
00:07:26.360 | God bless it, and may thousands of people
00:07:30.080 | not just encounter the text in a fresh way,
00:07:33.560 | but may God himself make his way through
00:07:36.960 | this new version into people's lives.
00:07:40.240 | - Amen, thank you, Pastor John,
00:07:42.640 | and for more on this project,
00:07:43.800 | go to the website bibliotheca.co.
00:07:46.800 | And it's probably worth mentioning here
00:07:48.160 | that Crossway has just recently released
00:07:49.960 | the ESV Reader's Bible, which is a one-volume Bible
00:07:53.040 | with a lot of the same aesthetic values
00:07:54.960 | of the Bibliotheca Bible,
00:07:56.680 | but for only a fraction of the cost.
00:07:58.040 | I think you can get a copy for 20 bucks right now on Amazon.
00:08:00.560 | It's worth checking out the ESV Reader's Bible.
00:08:03.840 | Also, it's no fair for Pastor John
00:08:05.200 | to ever mention a book he's reading
00:08:06.640 | without giving us the title.
00:08:08.400 | The title of that George Herbert book
00:08:09.720 | is titled Music at Midnight,
00:08:11.800 | the Life and Poetry of George Herbert,
00:08:13.740 | authored by John Drury, D-R-U-R-Y.
00:08:17.480 | Well, speaking of reading beautiful books,
00:08:19.320 | the weekend is upon us.
00:08:20.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you on Monday.
00:08:23.080 | (upbeat music)
00:08:25.660 | (upbeat music)
00:08:28.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]