The Simplest Scripture Yet

In the beginning, the American Bible Society decided to develop Scripture for kids. Translators spent hours on end watching Sesame Street and TV cartoons, puzzling out ways to make the Bible understandable for youngsters ages 5 to 13 -- the Bart Simpson generation. But when versions were tested in local churches, adults reported back that they needed stripped-down Scripture too.

Lo, that revelation led to the ultimate in simplified Holy Writ, the Bible for Today's Family. The Bible society has just published the New Testament portion, with the Old Testament due by 1996. The new Bible is the work of three translators living in Springfield, Mo., plus dozens of consultants, and comes in both Protestant and authorized Catholic editions.

A generation ago, the Bible society produced another simplified version, the Good News Bible (113 million Bibles and Testaments in print); the 1991 Bible is even less highbrow. In Today's Family Bible, for example, angels proclaim Jesus' birth by saying, "Praise God in heaven! Peace on earth to everyone who pleases God." The Lord's Prayer runs, "Our Father in heaven, help us to honor your name. Come and set up your kingdom . . ."

The new Bible banishes words, like whom, that are dying out in everyday American speech, as well as theological favorites, like righteousness. Even grace, the term that launched Luther's Reformation, has been replaced with the bland "kindness." The graceless Bible is also as genderless as possible. For all that, the Bible society claims that the Good Book's "majesty and poetry" have survived.

Will Americans buy this Bible? A new poll in the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant group, shows that despite a marketplace clogged with modernized competitors, 62% preferred the complex, but inspiring, phraseology of the 1611 King James Version. Nonetheless, the Family Bible is sure to be popular, at least among those with scant interest in church tradition.