Bibliotheca

The Bibliotheca project is the work of Adam Lewis Greene. He envisioned an edition of the Bible "designed & crafted for reading, separated into four elegant volumes, and free of all numbers, notes, etc." This edition will be in four volumes for the canonical portion and an optional fifth volume for the apocryphal writings. It is a Kickstarter project. Kickstarter is a site that allows people to seek funding for creative projects. If enough people pledge support, the project can take off. Greene estimated $37,000 to start the Bibliotheca project. With 14,884 backers the project has $1,440,345 in support. That's an average of a little under a hundred dollars per supporter.

Of course, this Bible will be of interest to Bible readers. That is Greene's goal. It is also of interest to Bible version enthusiasts. That's because Greene is using his own edited text of the American Standard Version:

I will be replacing all of the redundant archaisms with their modern equivalents (you for thou, does for doth, sits for sitteth, etc.). However, I am being very careful to preserve the great literary character of this translation by preserving vocabulary such as firmament, assuaged, abated, slayed, begot, hearkened, betwixt, etc. (you get the idea).

He is also changing the ASV's "Jehovah" to "YHWH." He also uses Young's Literal Translation to suggest "syntax (word order)." He estimates only using 1% of Young's with most changes to the syntax, not the vocabulary.

Greene has developed his own, as yet unnamed, typeface for this edition. Here are the details of the physical books:

• Time-tested typographic methods geared toward an exceptionally fluid reading experience: optimal type size, line length (words per line), leading (space between lines), and margins
• Original typeface, designed and "set apart" exclusively for Bibliotheca—traditional, clean and legible
• Original, classically proportioned, sans serif typeface for titles
• Separated into novel-size volumes (the shortest at around 450 pages, and the longest at around 650 pages)
• Page proportion and text block based on the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant as specified in Exodus (the actual size of the page is 5.25 x 8.75 inches)
• Quality, flat-opening sewn binding (including the paperback edition!)
• Offset printed; perfectly clean, hard lines (not dot-based like digital printing)
• Opaque, tactile, off-white, acid-free book paper (not "Bible paper")
• Ribbon bookmark
• European-style rounded spine
• Foil stamp on spine

Although the Kickstarter campaign is over, the Bibliotheca website has a page for pre-orders. Greene's estimate on the Kickstarter page is for Bible to be ready in December (at the earliest).