I do know this: If we live in a world that must have its magazine Bibles, and apparently,
we do, then this is the kind of Bible zine I’d subscribe to. Put another way, if I had a teenage daughter who could only be convinced to read glossies, I’d prefer she pick up this over
other options. Some of the art choices in
Bible Illuminated are discordant (a swimming polar bear over Paul’s “
hope is unseen” passage), but many others are compelling (one favorite is a bling-wearing Chihuahua underneath the Romans 1 passage about worshipping images of the Creator). The publishers don’t have the grandest vision of What the Bible is About (their answer, in short, is ”ethics”), but to their credit, they demand that the book be read as an indication of what we are supposed to do with the world.
To that end, Bible Illuminated takes the Bible seriously. No one could read it without realizing that the Bible makes claims on us, that being called to the kingdom of God means living for the good of others over ourselves. The gospel of Luke, for instance, is prefaced with a reprint of powerful photos related to the
eight Millennium Development Goals. Just flipping through BI, you’d be hard pressed to understand the message on offer in so many of the other Bible zines: that the Bible, just like Cosmo, Money, and Martha Stewart Living, is filled with clever tips for living. That’s not just an improvement over the nasty notion that the Bible is the world’s greatest self help book; it’s an improvement over the notion that the Bible is something just for your private encounter with God. The Bible Illuminated, if nothing else, will provoke you and make you want to show it others, question it, talk about what it’s doing and why. It stands to be a shared Bible, a Bible that prompts exchanges, which gets it closer to what the Bible oughta be.
posted October 29, 2008 at 12:55 am
I agree that a Bible is always about communication.I recall that there was a day when Bile stories told in comic book form were hotly debated. But the reached an eager audience of pre-teens and teens who were not otherwise very interested.
A few years ago I stumbled into another way to “illustrate” the Bible — actually with the Bible. I am an artist who creates narrative imagery using Torah font letters from the original Bible text s of the Hebrew testament for each and every stroke. I am always ilustrating the theology of Genesis that says when the Creator spoke the universe into being, the letters from those words are the essences of the physical universe.
Amazing but true, after I experimented with painting this way I discovered (thanks to many Google searches and Wikipedia)that the only font in any of the world’s languages that is alpha-numeric, phonic and binary is Torah font. This means that the letters almost perfectly symbolize the strings of elementary physics. Not only that but according to M theory (sort of synonymous with string theory) there are 11 membranes (branes) in our dimension while there opposites are in other dimensions of the physical universe (this is physics). There are 22 basic Torah font letters!
So I am having the experience of being an emerging artist who is literally showing people the Bible and illustrating the Genesis theology. It is a whole new way of seeing the Bible!
Most of my works do not appear to be religious, but are of sunsets, seascapes, animals, and now also portraits. The point being that the words of the Creator are present always and now creating the basis for the physical universe.
It also happens to be Post Conceptual Art. I call this branch UnGraven Image. Come and see more at the web site.
Judy Rey