The Bible in Less Than Two Hours?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from news.yahoo.com, September 21, 2005, with the headline: “Speedy, but Spiritual: British Cleric Unveils 100-minute Bible. London. Business folk are used to reading executive summaries of important documents, and now would-be Christians are to have the same privilege in the form of a chopped-down Bible that can be read in under two hours. A Church of England Vicar was on Wednesday unveiling his self-styled, 100-minute Bible, an ultra-condensed addition of the Christian Holy Book which claims to neatly summarize every teaching from the creation to the Revelation. The Reverend Michael Hinton was launching his work at Canterbury Cathedral in Southern England, the headquarters of the Anglican Church. Publishers the 100 Minute Press say the book has been written for those who want to know more about Christianity, but do not have the time to read the original in full. ‘This is a book for adults, and has been written in a style to encourage readers to keep turning the pages, but without resorting to any literary gimmicks,’ said Lynn Bud from the publishing firm. ‘As the Bible itself, the 100 Minute Bible should be a bestseller.’”

Tom: Dave, you know, to think about that, I think about my old days, my old ways, and in college I always wanted the Cliff notes - get the abbreviated version; didn’t have to wade through the big stuff, and so on. But now I think, Wait a minute! Doesn’t the Word of God say, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”? So this is one more thing - we’ve been talking about Bibles, everything from the Renovaré Bible to the…so-called Bibles, The Message and so on - but this is just one more travesty that Christians are going to line up for.

Dave: I haven’t read it, Tom, so I don’t know what it leaves out, but of course it leaves out most of the Bible.

Tom: It has to.

Dave: Now, the Bible says, “Every Word of God is pure.” So now we are going to cast some of these pure words of God aside. We’re going to give people a condensed way to get to heaven. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.” He told the Pharisees, “You search the scriptures; in them you think you have eternal life. These are they that testify of me.” I wonder how much of Jesus and who He really is and the prophecies concerning Him and the proofs of who He is was left out of this shortened version of how you get to heaven. Tom, as you said, it is a travesty. It’s an insult to God! We’re editing what God wrote. God apparently didn’t know what was needed; He over spoke Himself, He became too verbose, used too many words, He was a little bit wordy, and now we can cut this whole thing down… I can tell you, Tom, I don’t remember much about my math degree - I do have a degree in mathematics from UCLA from way back there - but I can tell you, you cannot condense mathematics; you’re not going to get the right answer. You cannot condense physics and astronomy and think you will get to the moon in a rocket ship. In fact, you cannot even build a rocket ship unless you use the full instructions. Every part is important, everything about it. But now we’re going to cut out most of what God has said, we’re going to condense it down to what we think are the essentials, and, Tom, it is an abomination.

Tom: Yeah. You know, Dave, when I was interviewing people after The Passion of the Christ came out - I’m talking about interviewing evangelicals - and I would say, “Well, what about this scene, and what about that scene,” and most of them had to think for a minute as to whether the scenes were really in the Bible or not. That was a problem.

Dave: And most of them were not in the Bible.

Tom: Most of them…exactly. So then it made me think, What’s going on here? Do we really have a plague of biblical illiteracy among Christians? I think so. But worse than that, there’s a plague of alliteracy, meaning people know how to read, they have the Bible, but they’re not willing to do it. That’s going to lead to so many problems. I mean, we’re already seeing it today. Christianity is being dumbed down, made not just superficial, but so shallow that people can’t be Bereans, they can’t search the Scriptures - they don’t have any basis for it. I’m not saying this about everybody, but, Dave, you know and I know - we’ve been looking at trends in the church for the past 25 years or longer (you longer, certainly) and we see this developing. It’s pretty scary. 

Dave: Tom, it reminds me of a quotation from Eugene Peterson which we had in The Berean Call - what was it, a month or two ago? And Eugene Peterson said - I’m just paraphrasing him now; he paraphrases God! I guess I can paraphrase him, because I don’t have a quote exactly in front of me - but he said, “I’m not impressed with all this Bible study. We need to study the Bible less, not more.” So we’re being encouraged to study the Bible less, and of course he doesn’t give us the Bible, he gives us his own words, shoves God’s Words aside in the so-called “Message.” Tom, I don’t know whether I could say this is direct fulfillment of the Scriptures, but the Scriptures do say, “In the last days there will be a famine.” Not for bread - we’ve got plenty of bread today in America, certainly, and most of the Western world. A famine not of bread, but of the words of God. And we are really getting that today.

Tom: Dave, back to this 100-Minute Bible - if there’s any value in it at all, it’s that people get interested and say, “Hey, all right, this is the abbreviated version. Now let me see what it really says.” So, I would hope that. It’s wishful, but that would be my prayer about this, that whatever it takes to get people back to the B-I-B-L-E. That’s important.

Dave: Yeah, but, Tom, this is not going to encourage them to do that. There may be a very, very few, but the vast majority are going to be just satisfied with this. Wow, they think they’ve got the Bible now.

Tom: And they think they understand the Bible, which is worse.