This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and Bible publishers are ostentatiously commemorating the landmark by producing an abundance of gorgeous doorstops. Leather bound Bibles. Two-volume sets. Replicas of the 1611 version complete with “original” illustrations.
The hoopla is entirely justified, since the King James Bible revolutionized Bible reading, bringing Scripture into a common vernacular for the first time for the English-speaking world.
It is not too much to say that the King James Bible – mass produced as it was, thanks to a new technology called the printing press – democratized religion by taking it out of the hands of the clerical few and giving it to the many.
Today, another revolution in Bible reading is underway – one that has nothing to do with gilt-edged paper. If the King James Bible brought the Bible to the English-speaking masses, today’s technology goes a giant step further, making Scripture – in any language and any translation – accessible to anyone on earth with a smartphone.
Categories: CHRISTIANITY, Religion, Technology
Technology may not only bring down the Church but also the Bible as it stands now. In our information age the contradictions and other vulerabilites of the Bible, as to how it was compiled, will become commonly known, until it will become impossible for the masses to take it as literal word of God.
Perhaps our Muslim Times and Alislam-eGazette will be part of the effort to sieve what is genuine and true in the Bible and what is later, human interpolation.