I recently bought a new Bible – a TNIV translation that is supposed to be a bit more accurate and a bit more gender accurate. A friend noticed it – still unread – and after teasing me about whether the new translation changes “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” into “the Parent, the child, and the Holy Spirit” (it doesn’t) said, “Well, you’ve discovered the dirty secret of the publishing industry – the need to constantly update to keep the copyrights fresh.”
It turns out he is right. The reason there are so many translations has far less to do with Biblical accuracy and far more to do with modern publishing companies needing to constantly refresh translations to keep making money on newly copyrighted material (since copyrights run out after a certain number of years).
The Bible is big, big business and now it is also bigger and better in the audio world as well with dramatic new Bible readings that include voices like Samuel L. Jackson, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Jim Caveziel.
Big audio bucks indeed…

…as well as interesting debates about whether having Madonna and the Bible on the same iPod is sacrilegious. As the MSNBC article points out:

The convenience of these modern miracles is obvious, but they raise a thorny question: now that the holy texts are digital, portable and deletable, how should we treat them? It seems blasphemous to shuffle God into electronic company with Madonna and the Grateful Dead, and later destroy his name as casually as “Control-Delete.” Even downloading the Word through the same fiber-optic cables as the latest Korn album sounds like a bad idea, given that Roman Catholics dispose of holy water through special pipes to keep it from touching sewage.

Questions I’m guessing centuries of Bible scribes never anticipated – and to think, they did it for free and not as a for-profit endeavor. Silly monks.