The Bible has gone user-friendly.

last updated 8 January 2015

Netherlands

Editorial

The people have spoken, said Amsterdam’s Allgemeen Dagblad in an editorial. The public voted the new Dutch translation of the Bible as this year’s Book of the Year. The Bible was neither nominated nor, technically, eligible for the annual national prize, since it isn’t actually a Dutch book. But because a massive write-in campaign gave it 70 percent of the 92,000 votes cast, the award committee made an exception. The new translation is completely modern and colloquial, “a radical break” with the Dutch Authorized Version. Archaic language such as “Thou shalt not steal” was junked for the more straightforward “Don’t steal.” The infant Jesus was laid in a “crate,” not a “manger.” In the eyes of its many fans, the simple clarity of this “everyman’s Dutch” makes the Bible more accessible—which means that young people brought up on text-messaging might actually read it. Traditionalists, of course, prefer the old-fashioned version, with its “thou shalts” and “begots.” The Catholic Church in the Netherlands has already decreed the New Bible to be “unsuitable for use in the liturgy.”