What do you do with a bible that is well past its sell-by date – especially a massive old one that you’ve inherited? It’s too large to store in modern homes. And the language belongs to another era altogether. Take 1 Corinthians chapter 13 – a beautiful choice for wedding services, but it makes little sense in the early seventeenth-century King James version: for instance, what do modern hearers make of ‘charity vaunteth not itself…’? And yet it doesn’t seem right just to put a bible out with the household rubbish. An academic study has just been published about the disposal of sacred texts: Kristina Myrvold, The Death of Sacred Texts Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions (May 2010, Ashgate). There is also advice on the web about how to properly dispose of a bible in wikiHow. But are there ways in which Christian bookshops could actively help people dispose of unwanted bibles? For instance, what about emulating the UK government’s car scrappage scheme? Why not devise a scheme whereby you could leave your unwanted bible at your Christian bookshop for reverent disposal/recycling and get, say, a 10% discount on a brand new bible?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 3:58 pm and is filed under STETS Blog.