A CONDENSED BIBLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1923, Page 5

A CONDENSED BIBLE.

EXAMPLES OF STYLE. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received June 12, 10.15 p.m. London, June 12. Hendrik William van Loon, a DutchAmerican professor, lecturer and author, who is translating the Bible into popular form, boiling down a million and a half words of the revised version to the size of an average novel, has arrived in England to finish his work at Cambridge. He is writing the book for America, but thinks he can do better work here than in the United States, where his style might be corrupted by the newspapers and motion pictures. An example of van Loon’s style is hia description of Christ’s agony on the cross: “By a last supreme effort he regained consciousness, and he uttered a prayer in which he asked that his enemies might be forgiven for what they had done to him. Then he whispered: ‘lt is all over/ and he died.” Describing the trial of Jesus, van Loon avers it has been overlooked that if Pilate had acquitted Jesus it would have meant his dismissal without pension. The writer also represents the soldier who gave Jesus vinegar on the cross as a kindly Roman soldier who gave him a “narcotic, to deaden the pain in his lacerated hands and feet.”