Julia Duin describes a new Swedish edition of the Bible (now here on our shores in an English translation) which uses photos depicting modern day issues and personalities to serve as a leftist, skeptical, and blasphemous commentary on the text itself.The result is a marvel of deconstructionism, where the first-century meaning behind the text is reinterpreted into the 21st century. Certain highlighted passages signify "whatever the readers want them to mean," says a press release.
Thus you have photos of Al Gore, Bill Gates, Princess Diana, the Dalai Lama, Che Guevara, Angelina Jolie, Nelson Mandela and John Lennon dispersed throughout the book of Mark.
Dag Soderberg, the advertising executive behind the effort, wants to rebrand the Bible for a consumer audience but not mess with the text, which is the 43-year-old Good News Translation. Still, glimmers of a worldview emerge: A text in the book of Hebrews about the priesthood shows a woman in clerical vestments about to be ordained.
The verse in Philippians about how the Gospel should be preached "whether from right or wrong motives" shows images of the 1978 carnage at Jonestown, Guyana, when 900 members of the People's Temple cult killed themselves...
Photos appear as if they were plucked from the day's wire services. A passage in the book of Revelation about the power of "the beast" is illustrated by a man's hand filling a tank of gas. The flyleaves show young people glued to blinking screens during a Swedish computer festival. On the back of the Bible is the angel of death, wearing a hoodie...
This is a Bible where artists have decided the Bible should not be left to Christians or Jews to define; that they as outsiders have a say in its message.
As for what the message is, well, it's that traditional ways of understanding God need to be illuminated by the blinding reality of 24/7 news. Can God deal with this, the photos ask you.
One can find a depiction of a cross, but that's about all one sees of Jesus Christ. And so the reader is tempted to despair, seeing no solution to the world's pressing ills.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus pushed away demands to mend the horrors of his time, which included a brutal occupying army, mass crucifixions and the kind of life expectancies one might find in today's Bangladesh. His kingdom is not of this world, he kept on saying. But the illuminated Bible is very much of this world. It shoves your face into its silent screams.
But it's missing that radiant personality around which the entire New Testament is based...