The Bible is the world’s best-selling book. But few have actually read the whole thing. So “Bible slang”is going to print.
For the first time, the world’s most translated and widely circulated book will be published in “street language”.
This paper “Tower of Babel” is to be published in the Netherlands, and the language chosen for the publication is a mixture of Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, English and Caribbean Papiamento.
Paul Claudel, a French poet who converted to Catholicism, said that “Catholics have such great respect for the Bible that they stay as far away from it as possible.”
The aim of this new version is to help people understand how the human and divine dimensions of the Scriptures are linked.
The publication, which will be “in slang”, will include the Pentateuch, historical books, wisdom books, texts by the prophets, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, letters and the Apocalypse.
This Bible in slang aims to bring new generations closer to the Holy Scriptures, creating a version that young people can understand. The project is based on the linguistic model of an English translation, entitled “The Word on the Street”, by Robert Lacy.
The Bible is one of the oldest books known to exist. It is also, without a doubt, the book that has left the deepest mark on humanity. Art, literature, music, life and Nations’ customs have been inspired by the Bible; people were moulded and nourished by the Bible.
And of course, the Bible is above all, a sacred text, the primary religious text for countless people over so many centuries.
Its message has inspired people in their own lives and acted as a foundation upon which entire communities have been built. It has been translated into a record 2400 languages to date.
But in Italy – as in many other Catholic countries – the Bible remains a mystery.
A survey carried out by Italian market research organisation Eurisko, commissioned by the Catholic Bible Federation, illustrates people’s poor knowledge of the Christian religion’s key text (last summer Benedict XVI encouraged people to read the Bible over the holidays).
The survey was carried out on 13 thousand people, consulted in nine countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Russia.
For example, only 14% of Italians interviewed, responded correctly to the more basic questions on the Bible: Are the Gospels part of the Bible?
Did Jesus write any of the Bible’s Books? Which character was in the Old Testament, Moses or Paul? Who wrote a Gospel – Luke, John, Paul or Peter?
Scores were not much better in other Countries either: Only 17% of those interviewed in the U.S. and the UK got all the answers correct. This figure dropped to 15% in Germany, 11% in France and 8% in Spain.
The Poles came out with the highest score, 20%, while the most ignorant of the lot were the Russians, who scored a meagre 7%.
Italy was among those who came last, even when it came to general questions on Bible reading: while 75% of Americans affirm they have read a biblical passage in the last 12 months, only 27% of Italians can say the same.
Other Catholic Countries such as France (21%) and Spain (20%) are worse off. Italians enjoy listening to homilies and preachings, watch religious television broadcasts and pray using their own words rather than spending their own free time reading sacred texts.
And yet, Italians, 88% of which proclaim themselves to be Catholic, did not even stand out for their participation in religious rites: only 32% goes to church regularly, compared to 55% of Poles and 45% of Americans.
Among the Russian Orthodox faithful, only 6% go to Mass every Sunday.
However, the percentage of Italian believers who feel they are protected by God (79%) is very high indeed. A high percentage of Poles (79%) and Russians (78%) also felt the same, but in France this figure dropped to just 47%.
It was also interesting to see the statistics relating to the interpretation of the Bible, that is, whether people adopted a fundamentalist (literal reading) or critical viewpoint: for 27% of Americans interviewed, 23% of Italians, 34% of Poles and 21% of Russians, Biblical texts are read in a literal sense, as “word of God.”
If the data from this survey portrays a reality that is marked by a great deal of confusion and ignorance, Italians look like they could certainly improve on their knowledge of the Bible: 28% of Italians interviewed, believe the Bible should be studied in schools and 34% is quite in favour of this idea.
Only 11% of those interviewed were against this, while 10% said they were “fairly against” the idea.
Dutch translators of the new slang version of the Bible, asked themselves what the secret of the Bible is; where it gets its ability to have such a deep effect on the history of the world and its people, from.
One simple response is that is that the Bible is a core document in the Jewish and Christian faiths. But the world of Islam also esteems the text. It is a literary work, a literature in itself that recounts the two century long history of Israel, Jesus and the early Christians.
This history carries an extraordinary message with it: God’s revelation to humanity through the Bible and the plan of salvation He is creating through history. By listening to the Bible’s message, one discovers that it is more than just a literary and historical text: it is the word of God.
The Bible is the word that God has echoed through time, through the words of the prophets, of Jesus and of the Apostles.
God communicated his word to the Israeli people through the sacred writers, and then in a definitive way to the Church, and through it to all people across the Earth.