Author Tries to " Humanize the Old Story"
Mr. Hendril Willem Van Loon is an American editor who has gone over to England to finish the task he has set himself of rewriting the Bible, or, as he prefers to put. it, "telling the old story in a new way."
The first question he was asked when he was interviewed at the Hotel Metropole was:
Why are not the authorized and revised versions good enough for you?
Mr. Van Loon replied at once: Of course they are, for me, but in America and, I suppose, in other countries, there is a tremendous nvmoer of people who won't read the Bible as it at present appears. They ought to know what is in it, and so I have just concluded a book which I call "The Story pf the Bible," and have done it in such a way as I hope will induce them to read There is no theological argu ment or controversy in it. 1 don't teach; I merely tell. It is an attempt to humanize the old story.
(Mr. Van Loon has reduced to 120,000 word: that which appears in the Old and New Testament to the length of something like 1} million.
He has cut out all the tables of genealogy.
Instead of attempting to do anything with the Psalms, the Prophets, or the Epistles, he has just said a few words to show how wonderful they are-in the original and tells his readers to go and get them."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.