Sydney, Australia - “IN DA Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth.” Thus begins the latest version of the Bible, translated into text messages for mobile phones. It also tells us “da earth was barren, wit no 4m of life”.
The Bible Society in Australia unveiled yesterday its translation of all 31,173 verses of the Bible in text message, which can be accessed free of charge over the internet.
The aim was to help to spread the word of God, Michael Chant, the society’s spokesman, said. “The old days when the Bible was only available within a sombre black cover with a Cross on it are long gone.
“We want to open it up for people of all ages, backgrounds and interests, and the text message version is a logical extension of that.”
It took one person about four weeks to convert the Old and New Testaments to text. The society used the International Contemporary English Version of the Bible, and remained true to the grammar, changing only the spelling. Sending the entire Bible would take more than 30,000 text messages.