Hello and welcome to my first behind the scenes podcast for my narrative Bible adaptation. So, in the main podcast I read one chapter of my adaptation per week, but I also wanted to create a short companion podcast each week that addresses the creative choices I made. For anyone who is either simply interested in my creative process or has questions about what I chose to leave out, rearrange, or focus on, this will hopefully be of value to you. This week, I am doing two behind the scenes podcasts. For this first one I want to explain the origins and overarching purpose of this writing project and in the second, I will discuss specific choices I made in chapter one.
Before my son Isaac was even old enough to walk, he was an eager listener, and later an avid reader, devouring whatever stories I put before him. We quickly moved on from Dr. Seuss to longer works like Oz series, Harry Potter series, and the Hobbit, which holds a special place in my heart because it is the entry point for many into Tolkien’s rich Middle Earth mythos.
Of course, alongside all of these, we read various many anthologies of Bible stories. Much like with the Hobbit, I I find these Bible story anthologies invaluable literarily because they excite and introduce young readers and listeners to the many of the most important and certainly the most well-known moments of the Christian faith. Spiritually, of course, they are of infinitely more importance as all of them rightly tend to place their greatest focus on the miraculous birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our lord and savior.
But the more of these anthologies we read the more, the more I found myself needing to explain to Isaac, whose is a bright kid, a number of details omitted from each story which I felt were essential to understanding its nuance. Beyond that, I felt that the overarching and interconnected narrative thread of the Bible was muddled when reading an anthology of stories.
Feeling that Isaac was not yet old enough to digest all of the Bible in its original form I felt God calling me to create a thematically and narratively focused adaptation of the Bible to be finished before he entered middle school and that I would read aloud to him. The clarity of the previous sentence does not convey the years of rewriting it took to feel like I understood what it was I was meant to be doing. Now that it is nearing completion and Isaac is finishing elementary school, If the only fruit of my work on this project is that it gives him a leg-up in understanding the whole story of the Bible and in so doing brings him closer to Jesus, then it will have been my great honor to have labored on it.
There a few things that work IS and IS NOT, that I would like to articulate. This work is a narratively focused adaptation, NOT a translation. My writing should be read with the same spirit as one would read a children’s Bible anthology. It omits certain things (which are footnoted). It rearranges certain things for narrative flow. It has its own distinct style, tone, and perspective.
This work is a supplemental companion to the Holy Bible, NOT a substitute. In the written versions of each chapter, I include footnotes to the Bible chapter because I want readers to go open the actual Bible and compare. Though I have felt called by God to this project and the work I am adapting from is Holy and inspired, I make no pretext that my work is worthy of such distinction and its only purpose is as an aid to the Bible which hopefully stirs curiosity and excitement in the reader or listener.
This work is intended to be read or heard by any audience, NOT only adults or only children. The text scores between a 6th and 8th grade reading level depending on what metric you use. It intentionally minimizes explicit sex and gore without avoiding the topics altogether. If it were a movie, I would hope it would get a PG rating. It is not written with any specific agenda in mind other than presenting the truth of God’s word, but I acknowledge that my own perspective on theology has likely affected the writing.
Though I am pro-science, this work does NOT seek to scientifically explain all of the intricacies of Biblical cosmology, anthropology, or mysticism.
I am sure that if we sat down over a cup of tea or coffee, I would have many more things to say about my heart and process in writing this, but regarding the work as a whole.I think I will leave it at that for now. If any other questions or suggestions about the work as whole crop up, feel free to share them with me and perhaps I will discuss them on a future podcast. Thanks for listening.
Before my son Isaac was even old enough to walk, he was an eager listener, and later an avid reader, devouring whatever stories I put before him. We quickly moved on from Dr. Seuss to longer works like Oz series, Harry Potter series, and the Hobbit, which holds a special place in my heart because it is the entry point for many into Tolkien’s rich Middle Earth mythos.
Of course, alongside all of these, we read various many anthologies of Bible stories. Much like with the Hobbit, I I find these Bible story anthologies invaluable literarily because they excite and introduce young readers and listeners to the many of the most important and certainly the most well-known moments of the Christian faith. Spiritually, of course, they are of infinitely more importance as all of them rightly tend to place their greatest focus on the miraculous birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our lord and savior.
But the more of these anthologies we read the more, the more I found myself needing to explain to Isaac, whose is a bright kid, a number of details omitted from each story which I felt were essential to understanding its nuance. Beyond that, I felt that the overarching and interconnected narrative thread of the Bible was muddled when reading an anthology of stories.
Feeling that Isaac was not yet old enough to digest all of the Bible in its original form I felt God calling me to create a thematically and narratively focused adaptation of the Bible to be finished before he entered middle school and that I would read aloud to him. The clarity of the previous sentence does not convey the years of rewriting it took to feel like I understood what it was I was meant to be doing. Now that it is nearing completion and Isaac is finishing elementary school, If the only fruit of my work on this project is that it gives him a leg-up in understanding the whole story of the Bible and in so doing brings him closer to Jesus, then it will have been my great honor to have labored on it.
There a few things that work IS and IS NOT, that I would like to articulate. This work is a narratively focused adaptation, NOT a translation. My writing should be read with the same spirit as one would read a children’s Bible anthology. It omits certain things (which are footnoted). It rearranges certain things for narrative flow. It has its own distinct style, tone, and perspective.
This work is a supplemental companion to the Holy Bible, NOT a substitute. In the written versions of each chapter, I include footnotes to the Bible chapter because I want readers to go open the actual Bible and compare. Though I have felt called by God to this project and the work I am adapting from is Holy and inspired, I make no pretext that my work is worthy of such distinction and its only purpose is as an aid to the Bible which hopefully stirs curiosity and excitement in the reader or listener.
This work is intended to be read or heard by any audience, NOT only adults or only children. The text scores between a 6th and 8th grade reading level depending on what metric you use. It intentionally minimizes explicit sex and gore without avoiding the topics altogether. If it were a movie, I would hope it would get a PG rating. It is not written with any specific agenda in mind other than presenting the truth of God’s word, but I acknowledge that my own perspective on theology has likely affected the writing.
Though I am pro-science, this work does NOT seek to scientifically explain all of the intricacies of Biblical cosmology, anthropology, or mysticism.
I am sure that if we sat down over a cup of tea or coffee, I would have many more things to say about my heart and process in writing this, but regarding the work as a whole.I think I will leave it at that for now. If any other questions or suggestions about the work as whole crop up, feel free to share them with me and perhaps I will discuss them on a future podcast. Thanks for listening.
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