"Diss" Is the Word of the Lord

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

Remember the temptation of Eve in Eden? Here's how it goes in one new version of Genesis. Eve: "Yeah, snake, I can eat of these trees, just not the tree of knowledge or the Almighty said I'd be knocked off." Snake: "Nah, sister, he's feeding you a line of bull. You won't die. The Almighty just knows that if you eat from the tree you'll be hipped to what's going down." Say what?

That snatch of conversation from Black Bible Chronicles is just one of many new attempts to make the Bible get with the program. One-third of American adults today have trouble decoding the King James Version, and 70% of teenagers in a typical week do not even bother to try, according to Barna Research Group, a religious polling firm. So religious publishers, eager to expand a $400 million Bible industry, are out peddling niche-oriented Bibles in a Babel of new interpretations and formats -- or, to paraphrase Shakespeare, quoting Scripture for their own purposes. "In a Baskin-Robbins % society, people don't want chocolate or vanilla. They want a special flavor that really suits their needs," says Bill Anderson, president of the Christian Booksellers Association.

The International Bible Society, for example, has published Path to Victory ($2.25), a New Testament that includes profiles of such sports stars as Michael Chang, Orel Hershiser and Evelyn Ashford discussing their favorite scriptural sayings. Blank pages in the back are for autographs. Readers used to USA Today will get into the spirit of Thomas Nelson Publishers The Word in Life Study Bible ($19.99), which is highlighted with sidebars, graphs and charts on topics such as "Does God Work on Sundays?" For those for whom seeing is believing, there is The Bible Alive (HarperCollins; $25), which is illustrated by 250 photo re-enactments of biblical scenes shot in the Middle East and manipulated by computer photography technology for a you-are-there feel.

But Black Bible Chronicles (African American Family Press; $14.95) remains the most striking and the most controversial of the lot. The God here is one mean dude, sounding at times more like a gang leader than the Lord. Warning Noah of the Flood, he says, "I'm fed up with what's happenin' 'round here. These folks ain't what's happenin' anymore, so I'm gonna do what I gotta do, and end things once and for all. Man, I'm gonna blow the brothers clear outta the water."

The Leviticus chapter includes a section on sex straightforwardly called "All About Getting Down." It solemnly notes, "It was a bad thing to do the wild thing without the blessing from the Almighty. You had to be hitched." And, in Genesis, Joseph rejects Potiphar's wife because he "couldn't betray a homeboy that way. Also, he couldn't jock the Almighty either, 'cuz it wouldn't be right sleeping with somebody else's ol' lady."

"There is way too much street language," says Gleason Ledyard, a Christian book publisher. He says some people will be offended. Journalist P.K. McCary, who translated the first five books of the Old Testament into slang, insists that she is not "dissin' the Almighty." She has written biblical poetry and essays and developed the book by telling stories to children in Atlanta and Houston. The 39-year-old single mother believes she's filling a void. "While this is slang, it is not irreverent," she says. "It's a dramatic, colorful way of speaking. I think teenagers are going to like reading it because it gives them that Afrocentric flavor they can relate to." |

McCary intends to carry on her work by slangifying the four Gospels in Rapping About Jesus, due out before Christmas. "All I want to do is introduce kids to Jesus," she says. "It doesn't matter how you get it."

For some, there is another avenue to the way, the truth and the life. The African Heritage Study Bible (Winston-Derek Publishers; $39.95) keeps to the King James Version and adds scholarly chapters on such topics as ancient Black Christians and "African Edenic Women and the Scriptures." It also features 25 original slave songs and 57 pages of photos and artwork in which all the biblical characters are black -- and never lose their dignity.

With reporting by Adam Biegel/Atlanta