Come to think of it, what counts as a “sale”? That used to be a much simpler question, because it used to be, for someone to get a book, someone had to pay for it: Even a public-domain book like the King James Bible, someone had to pay to print and bind it.
But nowadays, an e-book can be “made” for such a trivial cost that nobody bothers to track it. Do free downloads count for “bestseller” statistics? Because I suspect that a lot of people, on getting a device that can be used to read e-books, immediately go find a list of classic public domain books and grab the lot of them just because they can, and the King James Bible is likely to be on that list. Heck, there are probably some e-readers that come with a library of such books pre-installed: Is someone who buys such a reader buying a bible?
Every fall the Gideons went to college campuses to hand out free small new testaments. I don’t know for sure if they still do that now but I would guess they do.
The Bible isn’t even the bestseller in the Amazon category of Christian Bibles. #1 is “Prayer Journal for Women: 52 Week Scripture, Devotional & Guided Prayer Journal” and #2 is “The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name”.
Absolutely. At my mothers ? 80th ? birthday, when she mentioned a bible passage, and mentally searched for the reference, all three ministers present immediately reached for their pockets and pulled out their phones…
By the way, bibles were traditionally used for cigarette paper, and for any other purpose: remember the black spot in Treasure Island? This was and (probably still is) a well-known fact of free bible and tract distribution, and I smiled at the relevant reference to this fact.
Yes; and yes, it’s sometimes used to push books with wealthy organizations behind them into being bestsellers. That’s why you find a disproportionate amount of certain “bestsellers” in used book stores, large amounts are bought in bulk and resold for cheap unread. The Scientologists did that with L. Ron Hubbard’s books for example.
Yes, but that may have something to do with the fact that each edition/format is accounted for separately in that list. 5 of the top 10 best sellers in this category are various editions/formats of the bible. I suspect if you aggregate all the bible sales together, "“Prayer Journal for Women” would cease to occupy the top slot.
My guess, FWIW, is that the bible remains the all-time best-selling book, both in the US and worldwide, but it is not often, or ever, the best selling book in any particular week, month or year.
Some years back, I found a book at the library that listed each year’s best-selling books for as long as this particular list has been published, and any efforts to find this book again can best be described as something reportable to The Society To Prevent Cruelty To Google Users. Anyway, in the mid 1970s, the Reader’s Digest Condensed Bible, which it goes without saying was extremely controversial, was the year’s top seller for a couple years in a row, even superseding Jacqueline Susann’s pulp novels.
The library I volunteer at rarely gets copies of the RDCB, and when we do, they appear to have never been opened.
I’m not religious, but I’m interested in the history of religion. I enjoy reading religious texts and commentary. Sometimes I want to look at the original or a particular translation. Some were given to me. After finishing Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions earlier today, I want to re-read the Bhagavad Gita because she provided useful context.
My basic reaction: WHICH collection of biblical texts? No such thing as “the Bible” exists; we see many variants in many languages and dialects but no single set, even which “books” let alone their contents, are held to be canonical by all who profess belief. Just in what passes for English we have assorted Catholic, Adventist, Anglican, Revised, Modern and Slang English, and cartoon versions, many of which little resemble others.
Do all translations of the Iliad and Odyssey count as the same? Are all biblical renditions in approximately the same language counted as one? IMHO all printings of each version belongs in its own cubicle. KJV’s probably out-circulate NWTs. For sales, who knows?
For simplicity’s sake, we’ll define the Bible in this thread as the 66-book tome from Genesis through Revelation - no more, no less (no Apocrypha, etc).
So only Protestant Bibles count? Because Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Bibles contain more books than that. The number will be considerably reduced if you exclude these. Hebrew Bibles don’t count? The New Testament is often published separately; these don’t count as Bibles either?
But that’s just a particular translation into English of the same Hebrew and Greek texts that appear in standard Protestant Bibles. Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, etc bibles are a different collection of texts (as in, they contain texts omitted from most Protestant bible, or they omit texts contained in most Protestant bibles).
This seems ridiculous, there is a general consensus and agreement as to what a bible is.
If I see a KJ Bible, I would call it a Bible, though I generally don’t like that one. If the Bible has the extra books, I generally like finding out what’s in those, and ponder why not all have them.
But more to the point, having extra books does not discredit it, it is common to have a abridged or unabridged version of books, or books with additions, or have a book made for a specific purpose from another.
I think the usual definition of a Bible (in the U.S., anyway) would be one that contains at least the 66 books that are standard in Protestant bibles. If the book contained just the Old Testament or the Old Testament, the usual thing to say would be that it’s just that part of the Bible, not all of it. Different translations would not affect what the usual definition of the Bible is. Most people would look at how it expresses their well-known passages and perhaps say that it’s not the translation that they are familiar with, but so what? Nearly all well-read Christians (in the U.S., anyway) know perfectly well that there are many translations and that there are additional books in some versions. If it’s a translation into some language that they know nothing about, but it seems to contain all 66 books, of course they are going to say that it’s still a Bible.
Please name a version that is thought canonical by all who claim to follow The Book. Spoiler: there ain’t one. Not even if we limit the possibilities in some form of English. Throw in other languages whose cultures lack necessary concepts and it’s impossible.
“Bible” is now a generic term for any set of texts or images any specific person chooses to regard somewhat. “The Bible” is whatever is stuck in my back pocket, sitting in a hotel drawer or on Grandma’s bookshelf, or playing on my phone or game console. And don’t forget abridged versions, whether Tom Jefferson’s or Reader’s Digest. Tell me those are the same book as a New World Translation or Hebrew or Douay-Confraternity edition.
A Protestant theological school set a class project to rewrite Genesis from the POV of the “serpent” - which could have been any reptile, thus a talking lizard. I’ve seen R.Crumb’s cartoon Genesis, and a feminist Genesis, and Genesis broken down into its multicultural myth-sets, and a few others. They ain’t the same. Might as well proclaim The Dictionary.
Yes, a Bible is like pornography - not easy to nail down a definition, but when you see it you know what it is. My great-grandfather’s bible includes maps of the holy land, a concordance, a list of characters, etc. it was basically a religious google. But - still a bible.
)