God forbid that the delicate genius should promote have to promote Christianity. I don’t know but he has some funny letters before his first name. Anyone know what Rev. stands for?

Wow! I can hardly wait to find out if Noah used twin outboards, an I/O or jet propulsion on his hydro-ark! You suppose they used the snakes as ropes and skied behind the ark?

Finally, we’re all going to find out just exactly what Ezekiel was smoking.

Rev: Radical Episcopal Vicar.

Oh yeah, that’s the “What do we do with the problem of the irrelevancy of the ancient text, acting on a modern audience,” so-called problem.  Modernizing the text seems so much easier, than pressuring the hearer into the text. 

In fairness, Believers are guilty of the same mistake too, at times.

This will be a flash-in-the-pan product. When someone turns to the Bible, takes it up, opens it and begins to read, they want something that the world isn’t offering.

” I’ve tried to retell the stories using CONTEMPORARY story telling techniques. “

Are these “techniques” along the lines of those embellishments of scripture used by the likes of Jefferts-Schori, Bennison, Spong, and a whole host of other radical revisionists? No thanks Reverend Harrison.....I’ll stick to the original version.

this Scripture Union? which is the international organization. Or this Scripture Union, which may have more familiarity in the USA?

Always new projects…

I have been using USA Scripture Union’s Encounter with God for 28 years.  It is definitely an evangelical organization.

I did follow the link to “read it all.” The story of Adam excerpted in the article was a thoughtful short-story sort of thing, a sort of “you were there” piece.  I would not say that it is supported by the Genesis text—but what I read did not contradict Genesis.  It would be interesting to read the rest of the story, and to read about the other Bibles stories that have received this treatment.

I suspect that what Mr Harrison wrote is being sensationalized by the press.  I am not saying that what he has done is necessarily something that needed to be done, or done in the way he did it—but I think that he is trying to make the stories more like the sort of stories we read in a collection of short stories.  Most Bible stories are quite compressed; they tell us the essentials but not much in the way of the details that make a story come alive as a story.

It may not be the best thing for promoting Bible reading by making the stories more approachable—but I would want to read the actual thing before saying it is not worthwhile.  SU has been a champion of biblical Christianity for over a century.  I have seen the devotional material used in England for elementary aged kids and teens—it is quite definitely English, but it is also quite definitely biblical.

ABC had the movie “The Ten Commandments” on last week. How is that retelling of a Bible story any different than this? Surely the movie too contains dialog that isn’t present in the original Hebrew.

The Scripture Union mentioned in the article is scriptureunion.org.uk. It does not appear to be more than loosely associated with the above 2 links southernvirginia1 provided. Be that as it may, I’m not sure what the publisher may have to do with reflecting upon the book. Even Zondervan publishes some junk.

I realize I’m the odd-man out here, but to respond to Tamsf, two points:

1. I’m not and never had been a fan of Hollywood versions of Scripture. Including the Ten Commandments. Yeah, OK, so shoot me. At least I’m consistent. I also find they do more harm than good. You wouldn’t believe the number of people I talk to who get their “knowledge of God” from Hollywood. And Dante. There are Oh! So many experts on Hell who claim Scriptural knowledge. Problem is, they’re quoting Dante, not God.

2. I have seen the Ten Commandments and generally thought it was rubbish, an adventure in early special effects, but nowhere in there did I see Hollywood making Moses out to be a megalomanic, or a dictator, or a drunk, or an obsessive-compulsive who just can’t get comfortable unless he’s writing laws and shoving them down other people’s throats. Moses, at least in the movie, was focused on God and doing God’s will.

But here we have an Adam who is NOT focused on God. He names things. That’s what he does. Even if he’s named it before. Even if he gave it a different name before. That’s his purpose in life. Until Eve came along, and now he can’t think of anything else. He’s obsessed with her, pining away for her. Oh, yes. She’s a doll. Beautiful, charming, interesting. Apparantly far more interesting than is God, and that seems to be the crux of the story.

So what’s so wrong with the book? 2 things. First, it’s a little more of the camel coming into the tent. It isn’t factual (it reads as Historical Fiction to me) and this book, like Dante, is what a lot of people are going to take as truth. Second, the author has a YouTube video in which he claims these stories are important because, well, they’re part of our culture. Like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Like Cinderella. The man’s take is quite simply one of the importance of literature and nothing else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1aqDahMAA

Is his work anathema? No. Is it dangerous? Only slighty, provided there are knowledgeable Christians available to the readers of this book. Is it God-focused? Absolutely not. I think I would only recommend it to very mature, knowledgeable Christians who might enjoy the fictional story-telling, but who also can recognize where the story is wrongly emphasizing a point or inventing history from whole cloth.

In the middle ages, we had the ‘mystery’, ‘morality’ and ‘miracle’ plays to re-tell the stories of the Bible for the people who could not read them for themselves; Cathedrals have been called “Scriptures in stone and glass”; in the 60’s we had “Godspell”, “Jesus Christ, Superstar” and “The Cotton Patch Gospels”; etc.

I can’t see how this is much different.  As to taking liberties with the text, one has only to read the surviving scripts for the plays mentioned above to find greater liberties (Noah’s wife was quite the shrew in one!). But you don’t have to take MY word for it:

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/playtexts.htm

Peace
Jim Elliott <><

oh, yes, how could I have not mentioned Mark Twain’s version of “the diaries of Adam and Eve”?