If Rip Van Winkle, the fictional heavy sleeper of Washington Irving’s short story, had awakened from his long nap in the 21st Century and entered a Christian bookstore – or his local Barnes & Noble for that matter – what he’d see in the Bible section might disorient him for a minute or two.
The range of choices available in Bibles today is astonishing. At bookstores, there are Scriptures for just about every taste and style, in translations ranging from the King James to the New Century Version and beyond. ChristianBook.com, a popular retail Web site, offers more than 3,900 products listed under the "Bible" category. If you bought 10 of those products a day, it would take more than a year to shop through that range.