A few months ago I agreed to review a copy of a book called the voice. It's a book that attempts to offer a version of the Bible that brings out the story within the text, It presents the Bible in story form and therefore is essentially a retelling of the biblical stories.
So rather than me sitting down and reading it I thought that i'd use it in Sanctus1, read a story from it and see how people responded to it. The story that i used was the feeding of the 5000, and after i read it a few people commented - 'What version of the Bible was that?' There were some interesting words that they'd used, but I was quite surprise how important it was to people that they wanted a version of the Bible that they were familiar with. I told them about 'the voice' and we started a dialogue as to how you use the Bible and the importance of the Biblical text. I think that it'll grow into a series in January.
I really enjoyed reading the story from the voice, for public reading it works - It tells the story in a way that is accessible and introduces some of the cultural nuances within the text. This for me is significant as it offers an engagement with the text which moves beyond an academic deductive method which tries to discover the meaning by working out what each word means in the original language. It moves to the thought that the meaning is held within a correctly contextualized story. If we understand the story then we will understand the message and character of Christ. Some people will not want this, but for me in a culture where I believe story to be hugely significant, then i like it!
If you find reading the bible difficult then 'the voice', is a good place to engage. If you want to academically critique translations etc. then the voice is not the book to go for. Personally i think that we have spent too long trying to deductively understand each word in the Bible and in that have not understood the importance of the stories within which they are placed.
