The Story Bible

by V. Ritchie Pruehs (editor), Samuel Henry Hooke (Translator)

Have you ever set out to read your Bible only to get stuck in Leviticus, the prophecies of Ezekiel, the seemingly endless lists of First and Second Chronicles, or the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew or Luke? It’s common to start out determined to read through the Bible only to get bored, confused, or discouraged as you struggle through genealogies, prophecy, or sanctuary rituals.Prophecy, genealogy, and sanctuary rituals all have their proper place within the bounds of Bible study. But for the new believer, these things can be difficult and confusing. To resolve this difficulty, I created The Story Bible. The idea was to remove from the text those things that are complicated and/or confusing for the new believer, or for anyone who is new to Bible reading. For example, the books of First and Second Chronicles contain some great stories. But they include so many numbers and lists that the narratives get lost in the shuffle. So in The Story Bible I simply removed the lists, while leaving the stories to be read and enjoyed. Another example is the book of Numbers, which also contains some fascinating stories. But the stories are interspersed with descriptions of sanctuary rituals and census data that can become boring or confusing to the new believer. So again, I simply removed the sanctuary ritual descriptions and the census data while leaving the stories in place to be enjoyed without frustration. What I have produced is a Bible that can be read by a new believer from cover to cover without getting stuck.After serving as a Christian pastor for many years, I not only recognize the problem of new believers getting stuck in genealogies, sanctuary rituals, etc., but I also recognize that what new believers need most is familiarity with Bible stories. The Bible narratives form the backbone for everything else in scripture. Prophecy, sanctuary rituals, pastoral letters, genealogies, and even census data find their place once the new believer becomes familiar with the stories.Keep in mind that I have not edited the narratives themselves. Every word of The Story Bible is from the text itself. I have only removed that which is not narrative, so that the narratives are no longer obscured and can more easily be enjoyed. Another way to put it is to say that The Story Bible is a compilation of all the stories of Scripture. Every portion of the Bible that is narrative was included. I did not edit, condense, or rewrite the narratives. I only compiled them.The translation I used for this project is the Bible in Basic English. It was translated by Professor Samuel Henry Hooke (1874-1968), an English scholar and Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Studies in the University of London. The BBE was printed in 1965 by Cambridge Press in England. Published without any copyright notice and distributed in America, this work fell immediately and irretrievably into the public domain in the United States. The BBE is easy to read, since it utilizes a 1000 word vocabulary. My hope is that new believers will be drawn in by the Bible stories and discover how relevant and practical the Bible is for us today.

Genres: Christian, Religion

822 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 17, 2012

Reviews

[Craig Childs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This e-book is a collection of all the narrative portions of the bible. The editor has removed the non-narrative texts including the Mosaic laws; genealogies and consensus data; books of prophecies, psalms, and proverbs; and letters.

It is important to note the editor did not attempt to abridge, retranslate, rearrange, or omit any of the narrative stories.

This provides an entirely different approach to reading the Bible. It felt like I was reading a long mosaic novel. It was easier to feel the flow of the whole story of God’s redemption of mankind, and it was generally a very engaging experience.

The most illuminating aspect was reading through the stories in the four gospels without interruption. Taking notes on how the same stories were presented differently in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) led me to research some centuries-old theological debates over how they should be reconciled.

I also never realized before how different the Gospel of John is from the others. It omits all the exorcism stories, and it contains many original stories that do not appear elsewhere; it is also more concerned with establishing proof of Jesus’ divinity.

The only drawback to the project is the translation used (BBE-Bible in Basic English). It is in the public domain in the United States, but it is not the most readable. It does not use quotation marks, and it does not always use paragraph breaks to indicate when a new person is speaking. On a few occasions, I had to consult an NIV or ESB translation to make sense of a passage.

There were also a couple of annoying formatting errors, such as a few chapters being repeated twice. The biggest error was the last 15 verses of Acts were omitted (which I assume was a mistake, since they are clearly narrative), which means this entire grand story ends in Malta instead of Paul’s house arrest in Rome.

[Brandie Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes you want too read the bible more, explains everything so easy were you can understand it.

[Belinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd due to its many typographical errors (entire passages repeated throughout the electronic text prompting me to wonder, "didn't I just read this?"), The Story Bible is one man's attempt to extract from the Bible and tell only the story portions of the text. I thought it would make a unique devotional Bible for a year, and it has been different. Part of the difficulty for me is that the translation chosen by the author is the Basic Bible in English (BBE) version created by Professor S. H. Hooke of Great Britain back in the 1940s. In the translation, Professor Hooke opted to use only 850 basic (presumably British) English words making some passages wholly unrecognizable to me. There were a number of passages wherein the insertion of one word would suffice to replace the three to five words opted for by the restricted vocabulary making the reading cumbersome and repetitive sounding at times. While it was OK as a devotional, barring the editing needed for the Kindle version, I would have firm reservations in recommending it for use in serious Bible study.

[Simone Hyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Greatest book ever

this bible is great it teaches children alot of stuff and I am very happy I purchased this bible and it is free so I am very happy because of that.

[billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the bible, but good bible stories.

Good adult reading for an overview of the story of the coming of the Messiah. Gives an overall understanding of God's word.

[Jeffrey Groh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Story Bible

All the stories from the Bible. Much learned and appreciated. Faith, Love, Hope...Beautiful. Everyone should read to rekindle their faith.