![]() The acting doesn’t distract from the message itself, it only augments it. The actors keep it subtle as well–none of them ham it up or play their roles overly dramatically, but keep it somewhere between a dramatic reading and regular narration. ![]() The Bible is presented in “Dramatic Audio Theater”, which more or less hearkens back to the days of old radio drama, complete with the background music track and subtle sound effects. And other “parts” are narrated by other stars whose names you’ll recognize Marisa Tomei, Michael York, Richard Dreyfuss, Stacy Keach, Lou Gossett, Jr, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Terence Stamp, and many, many more. Jim Caviezel, best known for this portrayal of Christ in The Passion of the Christ, takes on narration of Jesus’ words. It’s unlike the Scourby and McLean audit Bibles in that there’s not just a single narrator, but a whole cast of them. The Word of Promise, released by Thomas Nelson, comes in both a New Testament Audio Bible and a Complete Audio Bible version. More recently, Max McLean released The Listener’s Bible, which continued the deep, resonant voice of Scourby, just with a slightly more pronounced accent and a continuous music track in the background. Alexander Scourby originally recorded the King James Bible on LP records in the 1950s, and those were the gold standard for years. Over the years, there have been a couple great “Bibles on Tape”. And if you’ve been stuck trying to read the Bible through, you can try the next best thing, which is to listen to someone read it to you. It’s an audiobook of the New Testament called The Word of Promise. So ironically, while it’s never been more ubiquitous than it is today, there’s no longer a need for the guy downstairs to compel kings and governments to ban it, as humans are banning it themselves. ![]() But we often forget that it’s the Living Word. Some view the Bible as just a quaint historical document some just view it as something their grandparents read. The irony, of course, is that in the Western world, most of us have Bible sitting on shelves collecting dust. And I’m not talking just about the 1500 years before Gutenberg there are still many countries around the world today that heavily regulate or even ban the ownership of the Bible. Ironically, through most of human history in the last 2000 years men struggled and even died for the privilege of reading just one page of the Bible, much less the whole thing. And in our increasing society of short attention spans, where it’s hard for people to read past one page of a blog post, much less the entire Bible, it’s happening more and more. I’ve tried everything, buying “Read Your Bible Through in A Year” Bibles, using Bible Reading plans in every Bible app imaginable, blocking out an hour of my day. And then a few months pass and you realize you haven’t even made it through the Pentateuch. But within a few weeks, usually around Leviticus, you start slipping. On January 1 you read Genesis 1-3 right on track. If you’re anything like me, you’ve made resolutions over the past years (or decades) to read the entire Bible all the way through.
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