In the quest for more diverse emojis the most popular and widely translated works in history, ‘The Holy Bible” has been given a new update with millennials in mind.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and then some time later ? created emoji ? they said.
Introduced as a “great and fun way to share the good news”, it supposedly interprets all 66 books of the King James Version with Unicode-approved emoji and commonly-used internet slang and a multitude of contractions.
Totalling just under 3,300 pages, the book — subtitled “Scripture 4 Millennials” — was made available on the iTunes store for US $2.99.
The translator told said that he or she preferred to remain anonymous, identifying only as the cool-dude-with-sunglasses emoji: ? which kind of says it all.
“I thought if we fast forwarded 100 years in the future, an emoji bible would exist,” said Mr ?. “So I thought it’d be fun to try to make it …
“I wanted to make it similar to how you might text or tweet a bible verse, by shrinking the total character count.”
It took about six months and used a program of the translator’s own creation that linked 80 emoji with 200 corresponding words,
“I started tweeting the verses out and it was sort of like a public proofread.” How profound.
The Emoji Bible had been met with a largely positive reception, said Mr ?: “Some really nice things, some not-so-nice things.” But it hardly a surprise as reflected in the response on Twitter.
“‘in the beginning angels created the stars & the earth’ i’m pretty sure it doesn’t go like that,” tweeted one user, prompting a correction from the @BibleEmoji account. Other have raised blasphemy allegations abound.
With the Pew Research Center finding “much lower levels of religious affiliation, including less connection with Christian churches, than older generations” in a May 2015 study of religious affiliation in the US population, its release comes with declining rates of religious affiliation across the current Millennial generation.
Mr Cool said “I think we should worry more about spreading ?? [peace sign emoji] & ?? [heart emoji] & less about what church affiliation we’re doing it under.”
Mystery man why don’t you reveal yourself?
