Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Attack Bibles

From Wilfried.

Which is the scarier looking Bible?

I vote for the Pulpit Bible with the beveled edges. The kids will certainly remember that one when it comes crashing across their faces.
Curious how "weaponized" they all look. I wonder how much overlap there is between Bible collectors and gun collectors?


ESV Pulpit Bible



ESV Journaling Bible



Satanic Bible

UPDATE:
To see fire breathing extremist Calvinist liturgical regulations go to this link which Wilfried has so graciously provided us.
According to Wilfried, they ask if Catholics are really Christian here.  The answer is no.

7 comments:

Counterlight said...

These are Bibles for thumping. They are not for liturgical worship. That includes the Satanist bible.

All the Satanists I've encountered are all former fundamentalists. They are the only ones with the necessary Manichean world view to conceive of "worshipping" Satan.

Wilfried said...

I think of them as the Death Star Bible, the Klingon Bible, and, of course, the Satanic Bible.

Thumping is a manual act. How is it not liturgical?

On a the board for fire-breathing Reformed Calvinists mentioned in the last post, I came across the notion of the Regulative Principle of Worship (it's in the Westminster Confession, who knew?). Their punctiliousness over the rules rivals that of the the highest Anglo-Catholic. I have no doubt there's a rule on the requisite number of thumps for a valid sermon.

http://www.puritanboard.com/f67/index2.html

Looks liturgical to me.

I will soon have a Big Black Attack Bible of my very own! KJV of course. It arrives tomorrow; I'm beside myself. See here:

http://tinyurl.com/nyxksp

Counterlight said...

"Thumping is a manual act. How is it not liturgical?"

I'm with you, but I don't think they would see it that way. Liturgy is for Catholics and other such pagans, in their view.

Wilfried said...

Just cause they don't call it liturgy doesn't mean it ain't. However, here they actually use the word:

http://tinyurl.com/nzxlpa

And here they ask if Catholics are Christian:

http://tinyurl.com/lrvqny

They mostly answer, no.

Fran said...

Well I guess I am no longer a Christian.

Wow. Just like that.

What is really funny is that I was at one of the Catholic blogs that I read (translation - not harsh, well written and fair) and mentioned that George Weigel, with his endless bloviating, made me feel as if I were in some Calvinist church where I would be denied.

Well! We see where that comment got me!

Wilfried said...

I got my Big Black Attack Bible! It's a lovely thing, though I don't think I can be seen with it in polite Episcopalian company. It big, black, and floppy! It's KJV! It has no Apocrypha! The horror. Not that Episcopalians are ever seen carrying Bibles.

Oddly, the hard-as-nails Calvinists like their Bibles soft and limp.

It's odd how one's choice of Bible is a marker of one's confessional allegiance. The ESV is the hot new thing among the hard core Reformed types (hence the incredibly severe look of the ESV Lectern Bible). It claims to be "essentially literal," and their form of Biblicism requires a rigorous formal equivalent translation (and they love to read Greek and Hebrew; perish the thought of touching Latin with a 10 food pole). Some still favor the tried and true KJV, or even more rigorously literal NASB. Happy-clappy Evangelical types apparently still favor the NIV (and other newfangled loosey-goosey dynamic equivalent translations or paraphrases). We liberal mainline types are partial to the NRSV of course. And Catholics ( should I even mention the questionably-Christian Catholics?) read the New American or New Jerusalem (if they read any Bible at all :P).

Isn't armchair virtual anthropology fun?

Counterlight said...

Almost all of my Bibles are presents or heirlooms. And they tend to be red in color, some floppy, some not. One is King James (my Grandmother's Bible), all the others are Revised Standard Version (they all were published before the New Revised Standard Version).

My mother has my Great Grandfather's old Bible, all in German. I presume it's Luther's Bible. But, Great Grandfather was a Methodist all his life.

The only Bible I ever bought was a cheap paperback New English Version. It has the Apocrypha.