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GENESIS 1
If you want to know how we began
The clues are in Genesis, man!
There was nothing at first
Till the universe burst
On infinity, as God’s plan.

From nothing, God made the whole lot,
Put heaven and earth on the spot.
He made grass and fruit,
Sun and moon—it’s a hoot!
With birds, fish and insects. That’s what!

Is your heart sinking yet? Let me confirm your fears: this is the entirety of the Bible paraphrased in 1,001 tortuous limericks.

GENESIS 9:18-28
Lived rather a long time, did Noah.
He had only three sons, not four.
Shem, and brother Ham
And then Japeth. Yes, Ma’am!
These ones were his family. Oh coo er!

Sticking doggedly to its task, the book creaks, clunks and shudders through even the lesser known books:

1 KINGS 14:1-20
King Jerry¹ persuaded his wife
To disguise herself, for the life
Of Abijah now
Was in peril, but wow!
Despite intrigue, son died. Such strife!

¹ Jeroboam

Sometimes the need to compress lengthy exchanges into a limited-syllable five-line structure becomes a little too much for our intrepid poet:

MARK 8:28-29
“Who do men suggest that I am?”
Asked Jesus. “Elijah? P’haps John?
A prophet?” “No way!”—
Blurted Peter—“I say
That you are THE Christ!—yes Sir!” Wham!

Even in comparison with other notable attempts to colloquialise the Bible to make it look fun and approachable, this book really honks.

JOHN 19:16
They took Jesus out to the cross.
His title, “King of Jews”. No loss
Felt by Pontius Pilate.
Rage turned red to violet—
The crowd screamed, “He’s never our boss!”

JOHN 19:23-25
For his garments soldiers cast lots,
His coat alone must have cost pots!
Then they raised him aloft
On the cross, nails in soft
Flesh. Victim of dastardly plots!

JOHN 20:1-3
To locked Upper Room Mary ran
And banged on the door. “If you can
Believe it,”—took breath—
“The Lord’s risen from death!
Come look, Peter! John, you’ll see, man!”

Meanwhile, here's the cover of a 1994 edition of the King James Version packaged for Buffy fans:

(I can vouch that this edition exists because I couldn’t resist picking it up for the almost no money that the remaindered bookshop was inexplicably asking for it.)

I photocopied this story at the time but only found it again recently. The traditional WSJ woodcut portrait is from the original.

From The Wall Street Journal, 13 June 1994:

Star Trek Fans Translate Bible Into Truly Alien Tongue; Spats Arise Over Efforts

( Conveying even basic concepts has proven difficult. “Their mode of thought is quite different,” he says. “Things that are part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian faith—forgiveness, atonement—don’t fit into Klingon thinking.” )

Of all the tribulations that have faced Christianity through the ages, surely the greatest has to be the modernisation of the spelling of one of the translations of its holy book:

This particular edition of the Cambridge Bible that calls itself a King James Bible is not genuine. IT’S A COUNTERFEIT! It’s not the Bible of my forefathers!

Here are some of the changes I located: Asswaged has been changed to assuaged. Basons has been changed to basins. Chesnut has been changed to chestnut. Cloke has been changed to cloak. Enquire has been changed to inquire. Further has been changed to farther. Jubile has been changed to jubilee. Intreat has been changed to entreat. Morter has been changed to mortar. Ought has been changed to aught, and rereward has been changed to rearward.

Brother Nic, why get so upset? These are just minor changes in spelling. Well maybe they are, but have you never read “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” You see I believe God wrote the Bible through sinful men. I believe God copied the Bible through sinful men. I believe God translated the Bible through sinful men, and I believe God edited (purified) the Bible through sinful men. So therefore I believe God gave us the exact words in the exact order He wanted us to have them in. If that’s the case then He spelled the words exactly the way He wanted to spell them, and gave them to us in a pure language, and that language is the standard text of the King James Bible. This is the Bible that has stood the test of time without any editing whatsoever ... Once you modernize spelling, change capital letters to lower case letters and add hyphens, you are changing the standard text in order to please modern society ...

One thing a lot of them do is change the spelling of words that end with the letters o-u-r to the more modern American spelling of o-r ... Now the very worst of this battle of o-u-r vs o-r comes when dealing with the only begotten Son of God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The modern day counterfeiters have changed Saviour to Savior. They have given us a six-letter Savior in place of a seven-letter Saviour. In Bible numerics seven is the number of completeness, purity, and spiritual perfection. On the other hand six is the number of man which is earthly not heavenly. Everyone has heard of 666. It has a bad connotation and is not highly esteemed in Bible numerics.

The seven-letter Saviour is the only begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The six-letter Savior is the son of perdition, the anti-Christ. He wants to be like the most High (Isaiah 14:14), but not in a good way, but in an evil way. He is not a follower. He’s a counterfeiter. Therefore his final destination is the lake of fire. The new versions, along with the new age movement, and some of the King James Bible counterfeits are preparing the way for this six-letter so called Savior. That's the way he will spell his name, S-a-v-i-o-r not S-a-v-i-o-u-r. No thank you Satan.

Disclaimer: People who know me will attest that I do not have religion. I do, however, have a bunch of religious books.

P K McCary’s “Black Bible Chronicles” series was published in the States in 1994. Volume one, From Genesis to the Promised Land, was an “urban” retelling of the Old Testament. Volume two, the New Testament, has the zestier title of Rappin’ With Jesus - The Good News According to the Four Brothers:

[Jesus said:] “You brothers kill me, you really do. Don’t go ‘round talkin’ bout what a brother is or isn’t doing when you might not be so hot yourself. How you gonna tell another brother how he should be doing something when you ain’t doing nothing yourself?”

… Then Pilate asked, “What am I gonna do with Jesus?”

And the crowd yelled, “Waste the dude. Waste him!”

… In His hand they put a reed and pretended to bow down before him.

“Hey, King Jesus. What’s up, man?”

And it was on. They spit on Him and pushed and shoved Him. They beat Him upside the head and cursed Him, too. After they had big fun, they took Jesus out to kill Him.

… The angel was so bright it was breathtaking. His threads were whiter than snow. It spooked the stuffings out of the guards so that they fainted like dead men.

The angel spoke calmly to the two sisters. “Hey, don’t go getting yourself outta whack, ‘cuz I know you came to see Jesus, but he ain’t here. No, ma’am.”

The Glasgow Gospel, by Jamie Stuart, was published in 1992:

Meantime Peter was sittin oot in the courtyard. An this burd comes up tae him an says, “Wir you no a pal o that Jesus, the man fae Galilee?”

“Don’t know whit ye’re bletherin aboot,” said Peter.

Then he went oot inty the porch an anither lassie spots him, an she cries tae the folk staunin aroon, “See this yin here? He wis alang wi that Nazarene!”

Wance mair Peter denied it an swore at them, “Ah’ve telt ye—ah dinna ken the man!”

But mair o the folk thought for a bit an said tae Peter, “Jist haud oan a minute, by the way. Ye are so wan o them wi that Jesus—for the wey ye speak gies ye away!”

Peter sterted tae curse at them, “Ah’m telling ye the truth—ah dinna ken that man!”

Jist then a cock began tae craw an Peter wis minded whit Jesus had telt him, “Afore the cock craws ye’ll deny me three times.”

Big an aw as he wis—Peter crept outside—an began tae greet.

Rob Lacey’s The Street Bible—swiftly republished as The Word on the Street, possibly after complaints—was the latest attempt in 2003 to divest the Bible of any of the poetry that had helped fix its salient points in the minds of the faithful and instead make it “understandable” and “relevant” to “modern” people. This meant employing an inexplicably over-eager, bouncy writing style:

First off, nothing. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God starts it all up and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function – just darkness… total. And floating above it all, God’s Holy Spirit, ready for action.

Day one: then God’s voice booms out, “Lights!” and, from nowhere, light floods the skies and “night” is swept off the scene. God gives it the big thumbs up, calls it “day”.

Day two: God says: “I want a dome – call it ‘sky’ – right there between the waters above and below.” And it happens.

Day three: God says, “Too much water! We need something to walk on, a huge lump of it – call it ‘land’! Let the ‘sea’ lick its edges.” God smiles, says, “Now we’ve got us some definition. But it’s too plain! It needs colour! Vegetation! Loads of it. A million shades. Now!” And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers and fungi. “Now give it a growth permit.” Seeds appear in every one. “Yesss!” says God.

Day four: “We need a schedule: let’s have a ‘sun’ for the day, a ‘moon’ for the night; I want ‘seasons’, ‘years’; and give us ‘stars’, masses of stars – think of a number; add a trillion; then times it by the number of trees and we’re getting there: we’re talking huge!”

Also, paraphrasing the boring bits and renaming characters in a contemporary fashion:

The Flyby Fest [Passover] is not far off. Jesus Davidson tells the team…

“This is how it’s going to be,” he sighs. “We’ll arrive in Jerusalem; I’ll be handed over to the HQ Board of Directors. They’ll pronounce the death sentence and hand me over to the Romans. I’ll be dissed, sat on, smacked about and executed.”

The public and personal letters of St Paul are known respectively as “Paul’s Work ‘Sent Items’ Box” and “Paul’s Private ‘Sent Items’ Box”.

To paraphrase Jesus himself: “Eat me.”

EDIT: Oh, and how could I forget:

The Bible has been translated into text message-speak in Australia to allow its lessons to be disseminated more easily.

The entire 31,173 verses can be downloaded for free and sent by mobile phone, said a spokesman for The Bible Society in Australia.

“In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth,” it begins. [BBC]

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