100 Minute British Bible

It may be the word of God, but that hasn",t spared it from regular man-made tinkering. From 15th-century printers to 20th-century modernists, every age has sought to adapt the Bible.

So now, for the era of restless consumers and fickle attention spans, a British publication distills the original into a form you could read at one sitting. Instead of 780,000 words and 1,200 chapters, there are just 20,000 words in fewer than 60 pages. Not surprisingly, the ",100-Minute Bible", is generating robust debate in Britain, where even Shakespeare is no longer immune to a culture of abbreviation.

Proponents say it is a gateway to the classic, a crash course in Christianity that will provide a useful tool to reach out to the curious, the lapsed, and the ignorant. But opponents fulminate against such pithiness, muttering about the callous disregard for Biblical virtues such as perseverance, dedication, and deferred gratification. There is, after all, no beatitude that reads: ",Blessed are the editors, for they shall make stuff shorter to read.",

                                 

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