The Holy Bible is a library in itself. Its 66 volumes contain 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses, 773,692 words. Published last week was A Digest of-the Bible* in 284 pages, whose author, Peter V. Ross, California lawyer and Christian Science lecturer, said: “If you can read 50 interesting pages in the course of an evening, you can, during the evenings of one busy week, read the Bible—here shaped to swiftly moving narrative.”
The Ross Bible omits only one book (Song of Solomon), slashes many, notably in the Old Testament, where 27 chapters of Leviticus are cut down to little more than a page of fairly large type. Digester Ross deletes “indelicate episodes” like the incest of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19, 29-38), modifies others, such as Nicodemus’ reference, in conversation with Christ, to the womb.
* Prentice-Hall ($2.75).
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