High-Design Bible Draws Attention

By ANDREW LOSOWSKY
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 15, 2008

A heavily armed freedom fighter in the Niger Delta stares angrily at the
camera, his face hidden behind a black mask. Is this a news story from the
latest war zone? No, it's the opening page to the book of Joshua -- the
Israeli warrior -- in the new Bible Illuminated.

The Swedish-language Bible marries the standard text to glossy

magazine-style design. Full-color pages are illustrated with a striking combination of news and
dramatized photographs: a homeless child wrapped in a sweater on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia,
illustrates the book of Job; a man who drowned trying to enter Europe, for Deuteronomy; and models
posing in stylized scenes convey joy or despair. Bible passages are pulled out as captions.

The publishers wanted to draw new readers by getting rid of what

they called "the old heavy book."

"There are 40 million [glossy] magazines sold each year in

Europe," says Dag Söderburg, creative director at the edition's
Swedish publishers, Förlaget Illuminated. "But the Bible, a
literary treasure, stays on the bookshelf."

The work is aimed not at a religious audience but rather at

readers concerned with ethical and philosophical questions
Bible Illuminated's magazine-format Old and New
Testaments, in Swedish. surrounding issues such as global warming and religious
fundamentalism.

"The Bible is much bigger than the power of the church -- it's connected to our history, and it's vital
literature for us as human beings," says Mr. Söderburg, former chief executive of advertising company
Euro RSCG Scandinavia. "Our laws, our morals, they all come from the Bible, whether you like it or
not."

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 The Old Testament was published last spring and the New Testament, last
Christmas. An English-language version is planned for the U.S. in spring 2009.

Förlaget Illuminated says so far it has sold 30,000 copies of the Old and New
Testaments. In Sweden annual Bible sales are usually 60,000 copies. The
company says they are selling to an audience that doesn't usually buy Bibles: One
sales point for the magazines is Sweden's convenience-store chain, Pressbyran.

The magazines are getting wide attention in the country, with several articles in
Sweden's biggest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and reports on the leading
The book of Jeremiah
television station TV4. The archbishop of Sweden, Anders Wejryd, gave the Old
Testament to Prime Minister Göran Persson as a gift when he left office last spring. Jan Carlzon, the
former chairman of SAS Scandinavian Airlines, started Förlaget Illuminated in 2000 specifically to
publish the magazine-format Bible.

The Bible Illuminated is an example of a range of classic texts that are attracting new audiences through
modern methods of storytelling. The diary of Samuel Pepys has been turned into a blog, with daily entries
corresponding to the 17th-century original, at www.pepysdiary.com. The creator, British actor Phil
Gyford, says the site gets around 35,000 unique visitors each month. "I thought I'd like to read the diaries,
but the 10 volumes were a daunting prospect," he says. Transmitting it as a blog "seemed obvious," he
says.

British company Classical Comics

publishes classic texts as comic books --
Shakespeare's "Henry V" was published
in November; more Shakespeare and
Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre," Mary
Shelley's "Frankenstein," and Charles
Dickens's "Great Expectations" will
follow this year. The company publishes
both original text and abridged editions.
So far "Henry V" has sold 10,000 copies,
and the company's teaching materials
available free on the Internet have had
nearly 70,000 downloads from around
the world.
The book of Joshua Another British company,
SelfMadeHero, began producing Manga Shakespeare last spring, using abridged text and Japanese-style
illustrations. So far, it has released five plays, including "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which came out
this month. The company added other classic texts in comic-book style in the fall, beginning with a
collection of stories by Edgar Allan Poe called "Nevermore." Ttitles by Bulgakov, Kafka, Wilde and
Dostoyevsky are planned for this year.

Meanwhile, audio-book Web sites like LibriVox and Audiobooks for Free offer audio versions of classic
works in MP3 format, read by volunteers or actors, free to download for iPods and other players. For
example, LibriVox, launched in 2005, has texts by Nietzsche, Plato and Descartes, alongside hundreds of
other well-known texts.

The Bible itself has been published in Manga form, although only with excerpts of the text, and it came

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 out in a glossy magazine format in 2003 from U.S. publisher Thomas Nelson. This version was aimed at
teenage girls, with the full text and discussion topics (one subject: "Are You Dating a Godly Guy?").

The Bible Illuminated is aimed at a more sophisticated audience interested in understanding the origins of
Western morality. "We wanted to create a more ethical acceptance of others," says Mr. Carlzon, who says
he doesn't belong to any organized religion.

He says he wanted to foster understanding about the common heritage between Christians, Muslims and
Jews and to get people to think about the bigger moral questions through the ancient texts of the Bible.
Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in Sweden cooperated to write the edition's introduction.

"Although Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world, we are seeing a growing interest
in existential questions across the Western world, of which [Bible Illuminated] is a part," says Antje
Jackelén, the bishop of Lund, in southern Sweden. "As people travel, as they are presented with a growing
multiculturalism at home, they are thinking harder about what it means to be from a culture that is formed
by Christianity."

She says the Bible Illuminated editions, by highlighting passages and using photography, start a dialogue.

Although the images used are deliberately provocative -- such as a child walking past a line of bodies
from the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp -- there's little evidence so far of people taking offense
in Sweden, where the vast majority of religious people are Lutheran.

The only criticism seems to be the magazines' selling price, as much as 349 Swedish kronor, or about
€37, each. "I'm not a fan of religion, and I think it's too expensive," says Johanna Ögren, a 32-year-old
who runs her own PR company and writes for Sweden's most popular literature blog, Bokhora. "That
said, the pictures are beautiful, and the layout is just fantastic. The whole idea really appeals to me a lot."

Bishop Jackelén points out that the Bible has been presented in different ways throughout history. "When
Martin Luther translated the Bible into German in the 16th century, he gave it to the people to read and
interpret themselves," she says. Since Luther's time, the Bible has been translated into more than 2,000
languages, including Klingon, an invented language from "Star Trek."

Less conventional editions include numerous MP3s available for free download; the 100-Minute Bible, a
condensed version; and Bible Animé, a new project from the Catholic Church in the Philippines that
sends Bible verses to cellphones along with Japanese animé-style characters.

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