In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then, after some time,  ? created emoji ?. And thus the Emoji Bible was born ?

Emoji have, over the years, increased in popularity as a form of enhancing, and in some cases replacing, textual communication. In a way, they are a bit like the paintings that cavemen used to record life events – communication through the use of “pictures”. Although I would like to think that society is evolving rather than devolving, it was only a matter of time before this image based language became more than a mere trend.

The Bible, one of the most widely translated works in history, has officially been given a 21st century makeover with the Emoji Bible; created specifically with millennials in mind.

Vamers - FYI - Ermahgerd - Say Hello to the Emoji Bible ?? - Genesis 1 v 1

According to The Guardian, an anonymous translator who prefers to be identified only by ?, reworked and interpreted all 66 books of the King James Version of the bible with Unicode-approved emoji and, the part I like least, commonly used internet slang and contractions (like the word ‘two’ becoming ‘2’). Using emoji is a fun idea, but those contractions only serve to bring out my inner Grammar Nazi.

? felt that it would be fun to translate the bible into emoji in order to make sharing the gospel more appealing for Millennials; and particularly mentions that the translation is intended to shrink the character limit of Bible verses, whilst retaining their intended meaning, so that they would be easy to text and share.

The Emoji Bible’s tagline is, rather appropriately, “Scripture 4 Millennials” and took roughly six months to be translated by using a ‘home-brewed’ program that matched 80 distinct emoji with 200 different words.

The over 3000 pages of “Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials” is now available for iBooks on the iTunes App Store for $2.99/R49.99.

[Sources: Engadget, The Guardian]

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Owner, founder and editor-in-chief at Vamers, Hans has a vested interest in geek culture and the interactive entertainment industry. With a Masters degree in Communications and Ludology, he is well read and versed in matters relating to video games and communication media, among many other topics of interest.