The Door-Step Evangel

Our Bible
Dr. Ronald L. Tottingham

Though surveys claim that 91% of all American households have a Bible, only 38% claim to read it in a typical week. Bookstores are overflowing with so many version choices and providing Bibles is such a good business that now supermarkets such as Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. carry Bibles. Bibles are now being marketed with tough competition on packaging, personalizing, and related things.

Each of the multitudes of versions now come in choices to enable anyone "to build a Bible wardrobe for every age and stage of life." Tyndale, whose sales increased 41% in 1997, has more than 40 products just based on one of these versions. These "products" use today's technology and become "life application," "spiritual renewal," "the journey," "collegiate devotional Bible," and many scholarship reference Bibles. Each format comes with supplementary materials woven through the margins, footnotes, and interspersed among the verses.

One long-time Lutheran pastor said he wonders if this "plethora" of packaged Bibles is not an urge to remake God in our own image, fitting faith into our own niches of need and nature. (I'd agree with him. I still hold that the old Authorized Version (KJV) is God's Word in English and is to be read daily)