God becomes a smiley face in new Bible for millennials
The latest updated version of the Bible opens in the familiar way: the earth was without form and void, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. In this case, however, the creator is represented by a smiley face with a halo, and his spirit appears to readers as a tiny picture of a ghost.
This is the Bible for the emoji generation; the scriptures as they might have been written if Moses, Isaiah and the various evangelists were conversant with Twitter.
The work of translating the Bible into emojis began piecemeal, with a popular Twitter feed that offered animated versions of famous verses, calling it ‘‘scripture for millennials’’. The author created a ‘‘Bible emoji translator’’ that enables followers to key in their own verses and see the burning bush or the parting of the Red Sea rendered into smartphone sprites.
As the idea caught on, he set to work on Bible Emoji, which translates the entirety of the good book, from Genesis to Revelation, into textspeak, smiley faces and other godly abbreviations.
He has described himself as a ‘‘techie’’ but has sought to remain anonymous, apparently fearful of attacks from those who might think he has dumbed down the word of God.
The translator told The New York Times that he had been brought up as a Christian and had read the Bible from start to finish as a child. He said his emoji Bible had not been abridged; it contained the same number of verses but fewer characters, in keeping with the demands of the Twitterverse.
God appears as a smiley yellow face, with a halo that rather resembles a sweatband. The light that shines in the darkness becomes a small light bulb; the heavens are represented by small yellow stars; and when God sees that it was good, the seeing is represented by two goggly eyes, and the goodness via a thumbs-up sign.
The gospels do record that Jesus was accosted by pharisees and scribes who said: ‘‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from you’’ – but a tiny, pixelated image of a loaf of bread and a fish was almost certainly not what they had in mind.
The translator said he believed that there were certain advantages to using emojis. He had been told that they might help students who struggle with reading.
Also, the Emoji Bible avoided the patriarchal and racial assumptions of previous translations, he told Forbes. ‘‘Emojis have no gender, no race and no agenda.’’
If some regard it as irreverent, other recent translations of the Bible have wrought even greater violence on the text. For example, there is The Brick Bible, an illustrated text in which Lego men play the parts of prophets, angels and disciples, culminating in a tiny plastic Jesus.