God: Big Wheel and Ceiling Cat
A new Bible translation is enthralling both web junkies and kitty lovers. According to PopSci.com, there’s a new effort to translate the Bible into lolspeak, a cutesy mix of “baby talk and IM speak” usually accompanied by pictures of furry animals. God becomes “Ceiling Cat.” Genesis 1:1 somehow turns into, “In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.”
One wonders about the people orchestrating this project — Christians with a dual passion for the Word of God and lolspeak? It isn’t the first time someone has given the Bible a new twist, however. People expend efforts on quirky Bible versions to reach new audiences all the time.
Most recently, SMSBible conveniently allows you to text 150-character Bible passages to groups of people. In Australia, Christian author Kel Richards wrote the Aussie Bible. The Angel Gabriel’s speech to Mary in Luke 1 goes like this:
You are a pretty special sheila. … Don’t chuck a wobbly. God thinks you’re okay. You’re about to become pregnant, and you’ll have a son, and you’re to call him Jesus. He will be a very big wheel … and he will be in charge of the whole show forever.’
It’s no joke. Richards told Christian Science Monitor that chaplains use it for prison ministry, and others have told him the book inspired them to read the full-length Bible: “It’s accessible. It’s not a big black book the size of a telephone directory.”
Bible rapper Matt Bar used rap to hold the attention of his middle school Hebrew class and then attempted to spur a Bible rap movement. He sees his rap as poetry: “Through iambic pentameter, Shakespeare reached depths and through rap, I also believed that you can reach the real spirit of things.”
In Britain, a teacher put the Bible into cockney rhyming slang and even got an endorsement from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said, “This version puts the energy and passion back into the stories.”
The 100-minute Bible is perhaps the most energized version. This one is tailor-made for the “harried and hurried generation” and allows you to get the gist of the Gospel in two minutes.














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back to top9 Comments to “God: Big Wheel and Ceiling Cat”
Possibly this is the version that Jeremiah Wright was preaching from when he said he was ’still in Bible country”? That would explain a lot.
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* “A new Bible translation is enthralling…”
* “Chaplains use it for prison ministry.”
* “It’s accessible. It’s not a big black book the size of a telephone directory.”
* “This version puts the energy and passion back into the stories.”
* “This one is tailor-made for the ‘harried and hurried generation’ and allows you to get the gist of the Gospel in two minutes.”
How nice. Salesmanship aside, the word “translation” does NOT apply.
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“There’s a new effort to translate the Bible into lolspeak, a cutesy mix of ‘baby talk and IM speak.’”
Small problem, the Bible does not speak lolspeak or use ‘baby talk.’ Such talk has to be manufactured rather than translated.
With all the technological and scientific progress humanity has made, this reveals that we have trouble holding a candle to the linguistic, cultural, aesthetic, axiological and spiritual intelligence of many (not all) of our forebears.
Don’t look down on those who lived long ago.
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“a cutesy mix of “baby talk and IM speak” ”
I bleev da propar term iz ‘kitty pidgin’. Haz nuffingks to do wif babees. Kittehs doan like babees. Dey thinks dey is gud fur nom noms. Iz much pleh. An LOLBible iz not seereeus tranzlashun. Iz joke. I can has laffs?
In English, for the LOLchallenged:
I believe the proper term is ‘kitty pidgin’. It has nothing to do with babies. Cats don’t like babies. They (babies) think they are good for nibbling on. That is unwanted. And LOLBible is not a serious translation. It’s a joke, so laugh.
Ceiling Cat (iz rated PG-13!):
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/ceilingcat9xd.jpg
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i am ashamed to admit that i completely understood the first paragraph on post 4.
T_T
i can haz chezburgr?
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I understood it, too, TomBob, but I am appalled by the whole idea, as I am at the thought that one can get the “gist” of the Gospel in two minutes.
Joel Mark is right that this is no translation. I suppose it has its place, but honestly, it would never have crossed my mind to dumb down the Bible in this fashion.
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Jesus wept.
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I find even the idea appalling. If it is a joke, I find it in poor taste. I agree that sometimes you have to use innovative methods to get people’s attention, but let’s not call whatever this is a Scripture translation. It’s not. I for one would not want any part of something that demeans God or fails to give the Word of God the respect it should be given. I imagine even a fiction writer would object to his words being “translated” in such a way, how much more careful should we be when dealing with God’s Word.
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The lolspeak Bible is not only not a translation, not only is it done as a joke, but it is also completely (to use a very out-of-fashion term) irreverent. There is no reverence in it at all for sacred things. Not only are words and phrases changed, but completely silly situations and expressions are added for fun, that diminish the truth that the Bible conveys, and that put a worldly twist on God’s character and on the stories it contains.
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