Fun-damentalism...
The BBC today reports that a new version of the Bible has been unveiled at Canterbury Cathedral: The 100 Minute Bible. I’ve been giving this some thought and, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this will become yet another reason for the growing rift between Nigeria and Canterbury. After all, for anyone who considers every single word and sentence of the Bible to be absolute truth, the prospect of rendering the entire Bible into a 100-minute read must seem as anathema as, say, ordaining a gay bishop. I mean, at the very least, I rather suspect that, when the Rev. Dr. Michael Hinton sat down to decide what would be in his version, the book of Leviticus didn’t exactly make it to the top ten edits.
Yes, I know that such edited versions are nothing new. Thomas Jefferson, most notably, issued his own version of the Gospels in which he managed to turn Jesus into a rather boring schoolmarm. Even Classics Illustrated did its own version of the Ten Commandments and The Story of Jesus. But still, my guess is that, for the Primate of Nigeria, a Bible without Leviticus is like a day without sunshine (on a related note take a look at this...).
So, in the spirit of rapprochement so needed in the Anglican Communion today, I would suggest an alternative version of the 100-minute Bible. Given that any right thinking fundamentalist would of necessity consider every word and letter of the Bible to of equal importance, then the only way to create a fundamentalist 100-minute Bible would be to reproduce every 20th or so letter. That way, no passage would be ignored any more than any other passage. For example, the first chapter of Genesis would read thus:
“Icdemnee dttg: eh i Gema rfdrtcm.f mn epy e;o Gottefrwln ginddraAhhds hosnmeaowt eseseegareed d teinwie ndonser, nr rih btwth itedtaiuteaotaen eif tb r,aar,fvtto eetnugloeooe,fy:Gh g”
Granted, it doesn’t really make any sense. But then again, neither do the fundamentalists, so what have they got to complain about? And given that it doesn’t really make any sense, one can probably breeze through the Bible in less than 100 minutes. Just think of it, the 99-Minute Bible! Leave it to us Americans to one up the Brits!