ADELAIDE - It's the Bible, but not like anything the devout have ever read before.
The world's most famous book, which has been translated into more languages than any other publication, is now available in the world's most modern form of communication, SMS or text.
So instead of reading in
Genesis how: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... " it will now be a case of: "In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth".
The idea, believed to be a world first, has come from the Bible Society in Australia, which translated all 31,173 verses of the Bible into text.
They can then be accessed over the internet for free and people can send individual verses to family or friends as SMS or text messages via mobile phone.
"The old days when the Bible was only available within a sombre black cover with a cross on it are long gone," said Bible Society spokesman Michael Chant.
"We want to open it up for people of all ages, backgrounds and interests, and the SMS version is a logical extension of that."
Inspiration for the exercise came from the son of a Bible Society employee in Sydney.
It took just one person about four weeks to convert the entire New and Old Testaments to text.
The society used the Contemporary English Version and remained faithful to the grammar, changing just the spelling of the words.
Mr Chant said there was little doubt the new text version would appeal to young people, who were the biggest users of mobile phones.
But he said it could also be used to encourage, motivate and reassure people in all sorts of situations.
"People might want to send a verse to a friend in need, instructors might want to add verses to SMS bulletins to youth club members, or other people might just want to send a daily Bible recording to themselves to meditate on while they're on the bus or having lunch," he said.
"The idea is that the Bible can be used and be relevant and up-to-date, just like getting a verse of the day or reading a horoscope."
And for the record, sending the entire Bible by SMS would take more than 30,000 messages.
It would cost almost $8000 ($8680) at 25c for each message in Australia (or $6000 at 20c in New Zealand).
- AAP
