The average US household has 3.9 Bibles. US consumers purchase 20 million new Bibles a year.

[BurtWorm]

Why? :wtf:

http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/19/the-greatest-business-story-ev


...Today America is characterized by Biblical obesity, not Biblical famine. A 2003 survey conducted by Zondervan, one of the nation’s largest Christian book publishers, found that the average U.S. household contains 3.9 Bibles, and U.S. consumers purchase approximately 20 million new Bibles annually. “Business analysts describe Bible publishing as a mature industry with little prospect for strong growth,” The Boston Globe reported in 1986, but year in and year out, the Bible remains the best-selling book in America.

The glut, in fact, is what creates the demand. Long before Web 2.0 billionaires decided that $0.00 was a price point consumers would find even more tempting than Eve’s apple, Bible societies had started distributing millions of copies for free or at little cost to establish brand awareness, build a user base, and make the formerly expensive, scarce, and highly regulated item a ubiquitous presence in the culture.

...

“The old tradition of one family bible is passé,” Edward S. Mills, president of the National Association of Book Publishers, told The New York Times in 1929. “A wide variety of editions and prices are now available, children’s Bibles, reference Bibles, beautifully illustrated editions.” But even the world’s best-known, widest translated, most easily obtainable book needs a little professional sales push on occasion. In 1952, Thomas Nelson & Sons published the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Amongst evangelicals, it would prove to be a controversial work, with critics calling it “The Devil’s Masterpiece” and “The New Communist Bible” and condemning its “modernistic scholarship” and textual emendations, especially in Isaiah 7:14, wherein it replaced the word “virgin” with “young woman” and thus appeared to undermine the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. In its marketing, however, the Revised Standard Version was thoroughly infused with the spirit of capitalism. Thomas Nelson & Sons had started planning its advertising campaign at least three years earlier, and with the help of ad agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, spent $500,000 on radio spots, TV commercials, and newspaper ads to introduce the new version. It was, The New York Times reported, “probably the largest ever allocated to the promotion of a book before it has even been printed.” The initial run of 1 million copies sold out in two days.

In 1984 Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network took Bible marketing to the next level, with an explicit mandate to peddle the Bible as a “consumer item.” Focus groups were enlisted; mall shoppers were surveyed. The conclusion: People wanted a Bible that was as easy to read as a bestselling paperback novel. CBN took the text of a bestselling paraphrase, The Living Bible, made it even easier to read, and rebranded it as The Book. Celebrities such as Dick Butkus, Linda Evans, and Glen Campbell were recruited for TV commercials, and The Book was sold in supermarkets, truck stops, and even hardware stores. In 1999, Robertson resurrected The Book with a $7 million marketing campaign that included two prime-time TV specials, bus shelter ads, a music CD, and a song-and-dance-filled Broadway-style launch at Grand Central Station.

Today’s publishers embrace The Book’s consumerist approach so thoroughly that the resulting products often seem like parodies. The Sportsman’s Bible features a camouflage cover and supplementary essays on “God the Hunter” and “Setting Up a Ground Blind.” The Veritas Journey Bible combines a compact edition of the New Living Translation with a TuTone LeatherLike purse styled after “such upscale brands as Coach, Dooney & Bourke, and Brighton.”

...

[ddeclue]

1. I keep it under my gun.. NOT..

no bibles here nor guns..

:P

[BurtWorm]

4. We may have two--one I had and one my wife had.

But if 3.9 is an average, there must be households with 50 Bibles or more.

:crazy:

[DavidDvorkin]

2. We have a few Bibles in the house

And we're both atheists. Possessing copies of the Bible doesn't necessarily signify anything.

[BurtWorm]

9. With Bibles on line though, you don't really need a hard copy anymore.

I haven't cracked my Bibles in years, but I visit the Skeptics Bible or Google Bible quotes when I'm arguing with theists, which is usually online.

[Brickbat]

11. Yup. We have several, many for sentimental/historic reasons. We have the Koran and the Kalevala,

too. ;)

ETA: And we're pretty much atheists. And we're always running to them to look stuff up.

[martymar64]

80. I'm an atheist with a copy of the Living Bible

The only reason I keep it is it is a gift from my late grandma. It's just another book to me, just like my collection of HP Lovecraft paperbacks and my manual for Final Cut Pro.

[izquierdista]

3. Somebody has 8

Because my household has 0.

[FarCenter]

5. People keep leaving them in motel rooms

Protect the environment -- make sure they are recycled properly.

[guitar man]

24. naw, is just one dude

whoever this Gideon dude is, he must have a bunch because he leaves one in every room he stays in

"Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt to help with good Rockies' revival"

:rofl:

[TornadoTN]

6. My grandparents have been using the same bibles for 50 years

I'm an atheist, but I've been around Christianity all of my life in some form of another. My grandparents, who are in their 80's now, have been using the same bibles for over 50 years. The big ones with the giant print, well worn, but they won't give them up. I don't think I've ever seen them with any other bible in my 30 years.

[rcrush]

7. I have 14 of them

I use them to fight vampires.

[anonymous171]

8. I like my bibles hard cover and small.

Fuck this consumer bullshit. The bible is an ancient document for study, not some kind of Grisham novel.

[BurtWorm]

14. How many years between Bible purchases would you say?

Do you buy them new or used? "This little number was used on Sundays only by a little old lady from Pasadena."

[MineralMan]

10. Pikers. I have a least a dozen Bibles in my house, and I'm

an atheist.

[tularetom]

12. I have two of them but I've never even read either one

Couldn't even if I wanted to.

One is in German, the other in Italian.

They are old family bibles, both from my Swiss Grandmother's family.

[Xithras]

13. Possession doesn't mean much.

I can't even remember the last time I stepped into a church, and yet my home has two. I have one on the big bookshelf in my living room (where it's just one book among many), and my daughter has one on her bookshelf in her bedroom (a gift from her now-deceased great-grandmother). Come to think of it, I may have one or two more in some boxes out in the garage.

Simply having them doesn't mean much. Atheists and agnostics who have them but assign them only small value prove that. So do the fundie freeptards who call themselves "Christian" and wave them in the air, but only crack the cover when it's time to review Leviticus.

[BurtWorm]

16. But how many copies of The Rights of Man do you have?

Or the Origin of Species? Or the Adventures of Huck Finn for that matter (actually we have at least a couple of HF).

[Xithras]

27. Zero, One, And One. I also have a copy of The Demon-Haunted World on the same shelf.

And, unlike the Bible, I've actually read The Demon-Haunted World cover to cover in recent memory.

[FailureToCommunicate]

35. NOW you're onto something! Go Tom Paine! We have AT LEAST 15 Bibles in the

house including in several languages - Greek, Latin, and a LARGE PRINT one (that's a big one!)
But haven't bought any of them: my father was a minister.

[elocs]

31. I haven't been in a church for years either, but I have a couple of Bibles

and have even read all of it. I don't crack them open anymore because it really is a lot easier to look things up online. That works since I don't "read" or "study" the Bible anymore.

[Journeyman]

15. I have a half dozen or so, and I'm not religious at all. . .

Some are the books my grandparents and mother kept (with a wealth of genealogical info in my grandparents' volume), while I have two, a King James and a New International Version I used for reference for literary allusions and to clarify historical and contemporary citations. I don't use the books so much anymore, now that the Bible is available in searchable format on the web.

[stopbush]

17. We have zero Bibles in our house. Young kids at home. Don't need books full

of gratuitous violence around the house.

[elocs]

18. I've had a couple for years, and I have even read the entire Bible

which probably puts me a leg up on most Christians (I am at best now a deist). Of course since so many versions of the Bible are available online now, that is a lot easier to check.

[madrchsod]

19. i have my grandmother`s german bible....

the entry of her birth was the only official document that was excepted by social security. i also have 4 or 5 bibles.

[Mudoria]

20. Have four in the house...

read through the NT quite often.

[salguine]

21. What I want to know is, where are all those tenths of Bibles going?

[no_hypocrisy]

22. During the Third Reich, every household had at least one copy of "Mein Kampf" and proudly displayed.

Didn't mean it was picked up and read . . . .

[BurtWorm]

29. But why have FOUR copies of the Bible (on average)?

Does everyone need their own Bible? Why? If you're not a religious person or family, isn't one enough to share among you?

These questions are directed at you in particular of course.

And, to be sure, I know the reason: this is a book that has been deemed holy and special in the culture. Religious people, Christians especially, think it makes a good gift, and as most families in the US have at least some religious people in them somewhere, they tend to accumulate gift Bibles. And some families have college aged kids in them who buy the Jerusalem Bible, maybe, for religion classes. The Bible has been a big deal in the culture for a 2500 years. It's bound to be in most homes. But the real reason we have so many is the publishers glut the market with them.

[no_hypocrisy]

32. I dunno. In case God's counting?

[Book Lover]

54. Different editions, different translations...

I have six copies of Beowulf, all different versions. I can understand why some people house many different bibles in their libraries.

[BurtWorm]

62. Not just some people.

Virtually all Americans, we're talking about. Most of whom are not likely to be scholars.

[Hekate]

84. That's kind of how it happened with us.

[jmowreader]

94. How it happens

You'll start with the Bible your grandma gave you when you graduated from High School.

Then you'll be walking through a bookstore and see a really nice Bible with gilt edge pages and the words of Jesus in red.

Later you'll get married and buy a big Bible you can read together with your new bride.

Now you've had a child and you want to introduce her to the Word of the Lord, so you get the special picture book edition of the Bible--this one, of course, does NOT contain the story of Lot's daughters date-raping their father.

Your eyesight's getting a little bad, so you buy a large-print Bible.

Now your daughter is sixteen and you buy her a Bible as a Sweet Sixteen gift. She reads Genesis 19 and becomes an atheist. When she leaves for college, one of the things she does not take is her Bible.

Grandma turns 92. She has no one to take care of her, so she moves in with you...bringing her fifteen Bibles with her.

[MUAD_DIB]

23. My bible is the US Constitution.

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. Hell, I'm an atheist and I own 3 bibles.

Which is why the premise of "The Book of Eli" is so silly. Not a bad actioneer, but really, the premise is thinner than that of "2012" or "The Core".

[katmondoo]

26. I gave 3 to the Salvation Army

I have none at the moment. Never could read it.

[hunter]

28. Papercrete -- You can build yourself a house that's very holy.

"The paper to be used can come from a variety of sources. Newspaper, junk mail, magazines, books, etc. obtained from the local dump or from waste bins are all useful. Depending on the type of mixer used to pulp the mix, the paper may be soaked in water beforehand."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papercrete

Uh oh, they might not let me into church Sunday. :P

But I really do wonder where all these Bibles go... Does Satan stoke the fires of hell with Bibles?

[G_j]

30. save the trees!! nt

[Hekate]

33. "A bestselling paraphrase" Great, the Reader's Digest Condensed version with all the hard bits gone.

My former son-in-law used to claim he'd gone to a "Christian high school" and he'd harangue me and Mr. H on Biblical topics. I don't think he'd ever actually READ the Bible, as such -- as far as we were concerned he was virtually illiterate on the subject of its contents, or any historical context whatsoever. I thank the Goddess my daughter finally woke up, but that's another story.

The King James version is beautiful and was the best scholarship of its time, but its 400-year old English is rather inaccessible today, and scholarship has moved on. The New English Bible and the New American Bible bring both the language and the scholarship into to the modern era.

Somehow over the years before we got married we did acquire a couple of different versions apiece, but none of them have pictures. If all you want is a Reader's Digest Condensed Books version with pretty pictures sprinkled liberally about, you're going to miss the multiple layered messages.

Hekate

[hunter]

81. My favorite is the racy 1976 edition New English Bible...

It's like the "unrated" DVD version of an "R" rated movie. The translation does crazy old spittle spewing street preacher Ezekiel proud. You can almost picture the temple prostitutes riding the letter Q.

[Hekate]

82. LOL. I have the 1970 edition, and Ezekiel just goes fulminating on. I wonder if they changed...

... anything in the next edition? I like the NEB for its clarity.

When I have taught mythology of the Ancient Near East, I do a little comparative reading from the respective myths of Gilgamesh and Inanna, then from the story of Noah, a bit of the Song of Songs, and Ezekiel on the topic of the women "wailing for Tammuz" and baking moon-cakes. Jaws drop. It's really fun.

Gilgamesh encompasses the first Noah story, only the gods (a) did the deed because humans were too raucous, not because of their sins, and (b) the gods themselves were absolutely appalled at the results. Song of Songs is just too sexy for words, and it's in a text holy to both Christians and Jews. Inanna and her consort Dumuzi are known as Ishtar and Tammuz in the Bible. Inanna's sex-life with Dumuzi was sacred beyond words, except the ancients found the words and the words were erotic.

Same region of earth. Two systems of mythology. Rather different results.

Hekate

[gkhouston]

34. The cost of firewood is a bitch. n/t

[kentuck]

36. I like to read the Bible.

especially Proverbs.

[Hekate]

83. There is a lot of food for thought in there.

[lynne]

37. I have four or five Bibles -

- the standard "King James" version that an aunt gave me as a child one Easter. I also have a child's Bible, a Youth Bible, an American Standard version, and an older Bible that I acquired due to the genealogical info in it. Oh, there's a Bible from my husband's mother, too, and one of those tiny Bibles that were so popular in the 1960's.

That's seven. Looks like we're above the average household Bible level!

[anarch]

38. if they included any door-to-door bible salesmen in their sample

I bet that totally screwed up their numbers.

I myself have at least three bibles (different translations), a copy of the gnostic gospels from Nag Hammadi, two Qur'ans, two copies of the Bhagavad Gita, a tattered copy of the Dhammapada, and a nice hardback copy of Magick, Liber Aba, Book 4. And all kinds of other stuff too, I bet. I like books.

[proteus_lives]

39. I own a bible.

I'm not religious but religious tomes are good to have around.

[madokie]

40. Not a one here

[montanto]

41. I have a copy of Crumb's Genesis.

And if he went on to illustrate the whole thing (don't do it Crumb) I'd actually buy the whole thing.

[LeftyMom]

88. I just bought that the other day.

It's fantastic in a :wtf: kind of way.

[lazarus]

42. atheist and pagan family here

Daughter one (a gift from her fundy mother who can't accept that she's atheist), a big reference one in the front room, and I have a Mason's Bible in storage.

I mostly use the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, though. I'm reading it through again. Fun read, lots of sex and violence, and it's fun catching all the contradictions.

[trackfan]

43. I have 5 -10 bibles; but I have 4,000 books. n/t

[Sisaruus]

61. 1 bible but only 3,752 books.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/sisaruus

[Hekate]

86. I think my books multiply in the dark. nt

[Fumesucker]

44. No Bible but I do have a leather bound copy of Machiavelli's "The Prince"

:evilgrin:

[Norrin Radd]

45. A friend of mine is a linguistics professor at a university and

an expert on many ancient languages. He once demonstrated to me how laughable most of the translations are.

[Igel]

56. I can do that with Dostoevsky and Chekhov.

On the other hand, I've also translated professionally so I know better. I could do the same thing with my own translations, if I wanted to.

You always leave stuff out that's there and put stuff in that's not there. There are theories about what to leave out and why, what to put in and why, with people arguing that if you do X, you're wrong, but somebody else argues that if you don't do X you're even more wrong. It gets tedious.

It's always fun on SEELangs to read a debate on how to translate something. Once somebody asked about how to translate "avtomat" from Russian. "Small assault rifle" was *the* accurate term in English but stylistically infelicitous. All the words that "felt" like the Russian did were inaccurate. Translating meaning is hard enough. Translating style with meaning becomes very nasty.

Or there's Nida's famous example of Bible translation. You have the task of translating some as basic as "wine", as in where Jesus said that the bread was his body and the wine his blood. Fine. What happens if you're translation is in a language in the Amazon and they've never seen or tasted grape juice. The translation came out using some locally produced alcoholic beverage, which, it turned out, was sort of a watery milky color. Bad enough. But it also meant that other things in the NT made little sense--all the business with grape vines or with wine presses, for instance. So do you define something that the reader will never see, or make do with what they know but which doesn't quite "fit"?

It's good to have an argument for every such decision. But when you make 3-4 per sentence and need to get a work done within your lifespan, you can't.

In the end it's all a giant compromise and you just muddle through.

[Norrin Radd]

72. I mean laughable in the sense of willful omissions and outright

falsifications.

[madmom]

46. We have at least three in our house and we are atheists. They were all gifts. Tells me how

pushy "christian" relatives can be.

[RedCappedBandit]

47. The fam. bought me one when they convinced me to do the confirmation bit

Waste of time that was.

[8 track mind]

48. All the ones i had got thrown away

Yes i know, i should have recycled them but i wanted them gone. Too much bullshit surrounding them, too many years of being shamed, intimidated, and taunted into believing something i knew wasn't so. I was very glad to see them go.

[City Lights]

49. We don't have any in our house. nt

[krabigirl]

50. We don't even have one! lol

[Raine]

51. I have many more than 3

I got one when I was confirmed years and years ago plus several that I inherited. Having bibles can mean anything or mean nothing at all. I have lots of books of all kinds, some I agree with and some I don't. :shrug:

[dysfunctional press]

52. we have .92 bible(s).

i've never cared much for leviticus.

[Bluebear]

53. I'm wondering what the statistic is on dictionaries.

I'm certain it's much lower. :(

[Igel]

57. I'd account for a fair number of 0-Bible families.

I'd also account for a fair number of zero-dictionary families.

Not so many monolingual English ones. I usually hope the bookcase I'm sitting with my back while posting to DU to doesn't collapse on me. It's full of dictionaries. With a half-height bookcase full of dictionaries next to it, much of the overflow in the same bookcase as my guitar and violin sheet music, and others scattered about downstairs.

And yet I find myself using multitran.ru and dictionary.com more often than not.

[Sisaruus]

59. I'm an atheist w/ one bible (for crossword puzzles only) + at least 10 dictionaries.

More dictionaries if I include foreign language dictionaries. I've always insisted that every room should have a dictionary. And there's many an occasion when it is fun to look up a word in 2 (or more) dictionaries to see how the entries are different.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

63. I LOVE my Random House Unabridged!!!

Fabulous dictionary. I wonder if they have new editions since the 1980s, when I got mine.

[csziggy]

71. While we have five Bibles, we have seven dictionaries

Including the Webster's Unabridged Third Edition. We also have numerous thesaurus and other books on language usage.

How about books on alternative religions? I've got more books on the Goddess than I do Bibles and several shelves worth of books on mythology and non-Christian religions. I am pretty much an agnostic these days - partly because studying religion proved to me none were valid.

[fascisthunter]

55. I know no one with 3 bibles

"average"... I don't think so.

[BurtWorm]

77. It's actually closer to 4.

3.9.

[KamaAina]

58. Ewwww. Dick Butkus shilling for Robertson?

Celebrities such as Dick Butkus, Linda Evans, and Glen Campbell were recruited for TV commercials, and The Book was sold in supermarkets, truck stops, and even hardware stores.

Looks like the All-KamaAina Hall of Fame may have to induct a new middle linebacker. :(

[lumberjack_jeff]

60. John Goodman has been working overtime.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

64. Oh, well, fiction is popular.

[Sultana]

65. I'm my house we have at least 15 or more......

:D

I have 2 in my room, one in English and the other in Swahili. But I've never purchased a Bible, I always got it free.

[Violet_Crumble]

66. This atheist has a copy of the bible and the quran...

In a bit of a hatnod to buddhism I've also got a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead...

[XemaSab]

68. As I said below, I have 2 bibles

I also have the Quran and the Book of Mormon.

I've never gotten past the first couple chapters in the latter two. :P

[XemaSab]

67. I only have 2

One is wooden and was a gift from my grandma, the other was from my great-grandma on the other side. :shrug:

[csziggy]

69. We've got five that I know about

Hubby and I each have a King James version from when we were kids. I have a Good News Bible given out in our youth group when I was in high school. And a totally unused Revised Standard version that I have no idea where it came from. Those are on the shelf with the copy of The Book of Mormon some missionaries gave my Mom and the the Koran that hubby bought from a guy who used to buy rolling papers at our shop. Other book on that shelf are The Gospel According to Peanuts and our collection of books about marijuana from the 70s and 80s.

The last Bible I own was inherited - it was a wedding gift to my great-great-great-grandmother before she left England. It is the only Bible I would not want to get rid of since it has been in the family for nearly two hundred years.

My parents have a large collection of various translations of the Bible. They spent several years comparing translations to try to get a feel for the original language. And they have "custody" of a number of family Bibles from different branches since they are into genealogy.

Not one of our Bibles is less than forty years old so we are not exactly "consumers" of Bibles.

[TxRider]

70. I have two

One I was given as a child, over 40 years ago.

One I was given later, by whom it's hard to remember now.

I keep the first for mainly sentimental reasons, it's the only one I have read, the second I'm not actually sure where it is anymore.

I may be the only person in my immediate family that owns one, and I am not religious at all.

I expect a lot of bibles are like mine, bought as gifts by religious people and given to others.

[Orsino]

73. I keep hoping that Revelation is going to end better. n/t

[hobbit709]

74. Having a copy and actually reading and living by it are not the same.

I don't have any physical Bibles but I have severalversion on my computer, along with the writings of all the major religions, several obscure ones, and other religious works.

I use them to infuriate zealots by pointing out their errors or the whole verse they are attempting to quote to them when they bug me.

[RedCloud]

75. I have "Deceptions and Myths of the Bible". Does that count?

[panzerfaust]

78. Do you mean the book with that title by Lloyd Graham, or the original one by God?

More importantly, who killed Goliath?

[SmileyRose]

76. I have 6 and here's how I got them all.

Just so you see how fast they can add up...........



1. When I was born, my grandpa gave me a "family" bible with both sides of my family tree painstakingly and lovingly written in beautiful handwriting. He also glued in some pictures and hand wrote stories about both Mom and Dad's family.

2. I was raised in the fundie world and at 8 yrs old we started Bible Study in earnest. I was given my first King James study bible and it's pages are predictably full of written marks, highlighted passages assorted dog earred pages, and other blemishes. And while I never bought into the fundie beliefs and values, I still use this bible on a regular basis. I do consider myself a christian (with a small c).

3. When my Dad passed away, my husband's union reps came by to see me and offer support. They brought $212 people had donated to help offset my lost time from work to go out of state and bury my dad, along with a nice bible in a cedar case. I have never even opened the case, let alone the bible. But I have certainly never thought of getting rid of it!

4. We have my Mother-In-Law's catholic bible and her rosary. Obviously a keeper.

5. We have my husband's catholic bible from his childhood religion classes. He was raised in private Catholic schools and religion classes were a regular. From the looks of this book, in nearly pristine condition, he must have passed the course by listening in class and cliff notes.

6. We have a bible from his Union lovingly given by well meaning people when his Mom passed away.

[Dappleganger]

79. Why does this bother you?

It's just a book.

[MrSlayer]

85. I have a copy of LaVey's Satanic Bible.

But no Christian bibles.

[Iggo]

87. I got one of those in a box somewhere.

Back in the day it used to be on my bookshelf with the other books: bible, koran, this weird bahai (sp?) book, and any other religious tomes I'd gather in my limited travels. But it turned too many of my guests stupid, so I had to put it (and the rest of them) away. I found it real interesting when I was a teenager, though.

[8 track mind]

92. That was an interesting read.......n/t

[joeybee12]

89. I have one, but reallyonly for reference purposes...

not like it's true or anything...but true in the sense it reveals a lot about who wrote it.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

90. I have 1 that my mom gave me. I won't be getting rid of it simply because I know how much it meant

to her when she gave it to me.



Besides, it's always useful to show people some of the hilarious contradictions and atrocities it contains.

[tammywammy]

91. I have two in my house

I own a King James that my parents gave to me when I was probably 13. An ex-boyfriend left his here after he moved out. I don't know what to do with it. I'm anti-throwing books away in general.

I've been contemplating buying a NRSV one.

[kestrel91316]

93. I own ONE. I bought myself a pretty little leather-bound KJV 25 years ago

because I wanted to know what was in there that got the fundies so het up.