Bible

More than 31,000 Americans will have a hand in publishing a new edition of the Bible. Zondervan Corp. is starting a 90-city, 15,000-mile cross-country tour to mark the 30th anniversary of its new translation of the book. The tour will stop at special events, churches, landmarks and other places to allow people to write out Bible verses. The collection of handwritten verses will be published and sold after the tour ends in San Diego on Feb. 12. Most will come from regular people, but the publisher also hopes to get verses from President Bush, the Rev. Billy Graham and other luminaries.

One passage plucked from the New Testament's Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to "put on the full armor of God." An excerpt from the Old Testament's Isaiah directs them to "open the gates that the righteous nation may enter." As American troops fought in Iraq in 2003, these biblical verses and others reportedly prefaced intelligence reports approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

A little-known inaugural tradition calls for presidents to choose a biblical passage upon which to swear. The passages are not read aloud; often the Bible is opened to the page of the chosen verse. According to official records, 28 presidents have sworn on certain passages. Their choices often reflected national sentiment or foreshadowed events in their terms. Some examples (from the King James translation.

The Psalms, says theologian Eugene H. Peterson, are God's gift to those who want to learn how to pray. "If we wish to develop our entire heart, mind, soul and strength, the Psalms are necessary," the author of the bestselling "Message Bible" writes in "Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer." "We cannot bypass the Psalms."

In the beginning Pope Benedict XVI read these words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth." And the pope and millions of viewers watching him on Italian television Sunday night saw that it was good. The pontiff launched a marathon reading of the Bible, from Genesis to Apocalypse, broadcast live on state television. It will last seven days and six nights.

Martin Luther King Jr. graces one page, Angelina Jolie the next. A photo of a man on fire opens the book of Revelation. And laid across a two-page image of gasoline spilling from a pump is the quote that begins, "The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast." It's not the Good Book some may remember. Although the Bible has been re-created and repackaged innumerable times, publishers of the newest editions are using some unique formats to capture the attention of readers.

If God made man in his own image, then does God look anything like Arnold Schwarzenegger? That's a question you might mull over when you come across a picture of a much younger topless governator flexing in the pages of a glossy edition of the New Testament called "Bible Illuminated: The Book."

There was a map of the Holy Land on the front flap of my mother's Bible. It was colored in pale pinks and blues and it showed Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Galilee and the Jordan River. The names told the story of the life of Christ, but to me the map made it real. Older now, I have graduated from dreaming over maps to visiting places embedded in my consciousness, above all Israel. It is just a sliver of a country about the size of New Jersey but deep in terms of time.

THE National Geographic Society hailed it as one of the most significant archeological discoveries of our time, a 1,700-year-old text that portrayed Judas Iscariot as a hero, not a villain, for betraying Jesus. The portrayal of Judas as a favored apostle who handed Jesus over to the Romans at his master's request made National Geographic's publication of "The Gospel of Judas" -- and the companion TV documentary -- a worldwide media event.

For nearly 2,000 years, each succeeding generation of Christians has tried to puzzle out whether the Book of Revelation's spooky riddles and symbols has meant its own time was the end of time. Over the last six decades alone, the beast with seven heads and 10 horns rising out of the sea at the start of Chapter 13 has been variously pegged as Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Saddam Hussein, or the nations they represented.