Bible Emoji translates the holy text into a language millennials can understand. Photograph: Bible Emoji/Twitter/Twitter
It’s a holy book, it’s $2.99 and it might just save religion among young people.
“Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials” was released Sunday in the iBooks store. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an adaptation of the King James Version of the Bible using internet slang and emoji, the adorable emoticons frequently used in text messages and tweets. Translated over the past six months by a person who identifies himself or herself only as the sunglasses-guy emoji, the objective of the emoji Bible is to make the text more appealing to people of various backgrounds and age groups.
I already hate this thing. I am not a fan of emojis.
The 3,282-page emoji Bible includes interpretations of all 66 books in the Bible and advertises itself as a “fun way to share the gospel.” But it’s already causing controversy, pointing to a larger challenge facing modern Christians: How do you engage millennials without being cheesy?
[…]
The millennial generation, which includes people between the ages of 18 and 34, is famous for bucking trends, and religion is no exception. … “It’s not as if young people today are being raised in a way completely different from Christianity,” Pew researcher Greg Smith told CNN last year. “But as adults they are simply dropping that part of their identity.”
Theories vary as to why this is happening — millennials distrust institutions, or they’re getting married later, or they think the church is too antiquated — but the trend is a near-universal concern for Christians. So they’re frantically searching for a remedy.
Case in point: Though the emoji Bible appears to be the first of its kind to be published, it’s not the first to crop up on the internet. In 2014, artist Kamran Kastle launched a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign to make an emoticon Bible, according to the Inquisitr. It raised only $105.
I’m impressed.
I didn’t think it was possible to dumb Christianity any further down.
I am equally impressed with the stupid.
A “Hungarian phasebook” translation would be more appropriate.
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. → The hovercraft ate your eel balloons.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. → The Daleks are a cuddly pillow drinking from the fountain of eternal rats.
Oooookaaaaayyyy….
Blf:
Makes as much sense.
If it was atheists trolling to make christians look stupid I’d say it was good trolling. But the christians do fine on their own.
The Fundamentalist war on education has consequences. But rather than teach literacy, these fundamentalists instead resort to emoji. How long until it becomes the symbol-writing of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? How long until the nurtured illiteracy allows the fundamentalists to criminalize books and burn them to their hearts’ delight?
Gregory @ 7:
It’s not at all clear who is responsible for this bible. Of course, that won’t stop Christians from hoping it works in grabbing the current crop of younger folks.
I don’t know that it can be put down to bad education, either. Emoticons have been popular for a long time now, as have typing shortcuts seen in texting. I don’t care for it, but I think the credit for that lies at the door of tech.
Years ago I read some bits of the LOLcat Bible, which at least had fun lines like ‘and then he made a cookie tree, but he eated it’.
I still say The Brick Testament is best.
blf #3
already won this
Hungarian … hovercraft … eel … balloons…
‘nuf said
oops
Brick Testament doth indeedeth rocketh
ththth
So, not exactly at the forefront of interest for most people.