"The One Week Bible" Not Catching On

Carol Stream, Il - Tyndale House Publishers reported on Thursday that since the release of The One Week Bible three months ago sales have been "significantly less than expected." Sales reports for the first quarter show that a mere 13 copies have sold since The One Week Bible hit the shelves in May.

Many are already familiar with the popular One Year Bible, available in a variety of translations and conveniently divided into 365 daily readings taking approximately 30-35 minutes each, allowing the reader to steadily read through the whole Bible in a period of one year. But The One Week Bible is designed to be much more "intense," dividing the Bible into seven readings of roughly 10 hours and 20 minutes thus allowing a person to read the whole Bible in one week.

The idea for The One Week Bible was developed over the last year at Tyndale House. Various audio Bibles that have been released have shown that the Bible can be read through from beginning to end in about 72 hours. With this in mind Tyndale set out to release a Bible for people who wanted a more "intense reading" of Scripture. Tyndale first designed and test marketed The Three Day Bible, in which the Bible was conveniently divided into three "daily" readings of about 24 hours each, but the product was received rather poorly. Tyndale then began working on The One Week Bible hoping to attract a larger audience.

But now the extremely poor sales have become a major concern for Tyndale House. Having printed over 40,000 copies and having only sold 13, marketing directors are beginning to question whether or not the release of The One Week Bible was the wisest course of action.

"We knew going in that this was going to be for a particular market, but we weren't expecting sales to be this low," said Tyndale Vice President of marketing Roger Schultz. "We're going to try and restructure some of our approaches to marketing and see what develops. Perhaps we need to target more specific audiences with, say, The One Week Women's Bible or The One Week Teen Extreme Bible."

Zondervan Investigates Translating the Bible to "Engrish"

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

The desire to make the Bible accessible to all kinds of people has brought some "unusual" versions in the past. Notably, there was Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Version that paraphrased certain parts of the Bible in a folksy, grass-roots style. More recently there was the movement to "translate" the Bible into ebonics. Now, in an attempt to further see the Scriptures made readable to all kinds of people, Zondervan Publishing is proposing that the Bible be 'translated' into "Engrish."

"Engrish," as it is known, is essentially English that has been translated from another language, often by a non-native English speaker, and usually very poorly. This is most commonly seen on signs and the packaging of products from China and Japan.

"Engrish is becoming very popular." Said Kurt James, editor in charge of researching the possibility of the translation. "For the longest time Engrish has been nothing but the target of humor and ridicule. Now, we here at Zondervan want to show the world that Engrish is legitimate."

Zondervan estimates that the process would take approximately 7-10 years of intense work to accomplish. It would involve first translating the Bible into Mandarin Chinese from the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Then, a group of 12-16 year-old Chinese students would be brought in to attempt to translate the entire Bible back into English, thus resulting in an Engrish version.

"We've already been involved developing a prototype of what the Bible would be like, and we're very excited about the results." Said James. "We've worked for the past 6 months translating 1 Corinthians into Mandarin Chinese and then having the students translate it back again. It turned out better than what we had hoped for!"

If approved Zondervan plans to invest some $3.5 million dollars to see the project through to its completion.

"We want this translation to be spread far and wide." Said James. "I'd like to see an Extreme Teen Engrish Bible or possibly a Women's Engrish Study Bible. We just want to see Engrish speakers everywhere be able to enjoy the Scriptures in a way that they can understand."

Zondervan Introduces New "Serious Scholar's" Bible

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Underlined passages, highlighted words, coffee spills, prayers written in the front, and torn pages - these are all the marks of a well-worn, well-read and well-used Bible. Many who carry such Bibles are admired and respected as the most pious and most devout of all Christians.

"There's the older gentlemen at our church and he's got notes written all inside his Bible." Said Alan Herth, a member of Second Avenue Baptist Church in Grand Rapids. "His Bible is literally falling apart from use. I'm just ashamed to open my Bible around him. I read mine and all that, but I just don't have that much stuff written in it."

Many Christians like Herth have found themselves wrestling with a sense of spiritual inferiority when faced with the worn and torn pages of another believer's Bible.

To help ease this strain Zondervan Publishing now has plans to release a new Serious Scholar's Bible this fall.

"We are excited about this new product." Said Richard LaMont, the Bible's editor. "If you can buy jeans that look like they're old and worn, and if you can buy brand new furniture that looks like it's an antique already, why shouldn't you be able to buy a Bible that looks like it's already been read through 100 times?"

The Serious Scholar's Bible will feature a deluxe pre-worn antique leather binding with browned and frayed paper edges. On the inside front and back covers there will be multiple Bible verses printed to look as if they have been written by hand along with numerous quotes from the church Fathers, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Stanley, Norman Vincent Peale and the book The Prayer of Jabez. Each page of the Bible will include at least one marked passage of Scripture with some books containing large highlighted and noted sections.

"We even have notes and markings on the hard and obscure like Leviticus, 2 Chronicles and Nahum to really give the appearance of deep and profound study." Said LaMont. "Of course, Romans is highly marked along with the gospels, and Revelation includes many hand written charts, graphs and time lines that will really impress anyone who happens to glance at your open Bible."

The Serious Scholar's Bible will be available in black or brown leather with the choice of either a hard or soft cover at a price of $59.99.