AFrEn The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature comes
another enormous volume, printed in double-column, with a rather odd title (one had believed that the Bible had always been " for today "). Unkindly, one might call this the Advertising Man's Bible—the editor's manner has the naivety and the hearti- ness and the intellectual vagueness of a man accustomed to think in slogans. His aim, he says, is " to offer the ordinary man an approach that he can call his own—one that is in line with his everyday knowledge and experience of life." There are more than zoo illustrations, "mainly of contemporary life, by Mr. Rowland Hilder and others (who are justifiably left nameless). Sometimes these illustrate a text (a bombed thurch for " The Word of the Lord endureth for ever ") in the manner of Mr. Wragg's The Psalms in Modern Life, but without Mr. Wragg's subtlety and daring : more often they illustrate with a vulgarity only equalled by the captions some woolly text of the editor's own, the crudity of which is painfully shown up by its context. A bad drawing of an air-liner heads the Acts of the Apostles with the caption: " A New Service for the Spread of the Gospel." The Book of Ruth is sub-titled " An Idyll that will not let the world forget the dxeam of a happy home and homeland." The editor has even inserted cross-heads into the text in the style of our popular dailies. Samuel is split up into such heads as " Shameful Counsel," " The Plan Foiled." A picture of a girl in ski-ing kit to illustrate Corinthians, of a B.B.C. announcer to illustrate Job, of a broadcasting station as a general introduction to the Book of Revelations—this will give some idea of what the editor calls " the news-message " he has found in the Bible. It is regrettable to see a book of this kind published by the Oxford University Press : the Oxford Group would have been a more appropriate parent.
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