A NEW translation of the Bible updates the religious text with modern technology, replacing several words with emojis.

    The digital text titled “Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millenials” uses Apple’s vast library of emoticons to retell all 66 books of the Bible in a way intended to relate to young people.

    The book’s online description says: “A great and fun way to share the gospel. Explore all 66 books chronicling the stories of Abraham, Noah and Jesus like never before!”

    In addition to the e-book, the “Bible Emoji” website also allows users to produce their own translations by typing a Bible verse into a text box and having it converted to emoji.

    The translator behind the project, who would only identify him or herself with the cool-dude-with-sunglasses emoji, told the Guardian that the inspiration for the project came from the idea of a futuristic Bible written within the constraints of social media outlets like Twitter.

    “I thought if we fast forwarded 100 years in the future, an emoji Bible would exist,” the translator said. “I wanted to make it similar to how you might text or tweet a Bible verse, by shrinking the total character count.”

    The translator said he began tweeting the verses as a “public proofread” to gauge people’s interest in the emoji Bible.

    The Bible’s translator told The Memo in an interview: “You start with emojis that are really common — for instance, the earth emoji can mean earth, world, or planet.

    “Eventually I created an actual translator program with a list of 80 different emoji icons, and 200 corresponding words. In addition, I built in some common shorthand — so that ‘and’ became &, and ‘first’ became 1st.”

    The translator revealed to the website: “I’ve received a lot of tweets, some very nice some very, not nice.

    “But it’s all worth the goal of making the Bible a little more approachable, to inject some levity, and to get people to look at it, with no particular agenda beyond that.”

    The translator told The Memo: “Emojis are emotional, and allow people to express feelings in a visual way within the structure of ‘normal,’ written language.”

    “What’s made them so successful, is that they’re language-agnostic — they allow you to convey an idea to anyone, regardless of what language they speak.”

    The project was completed in approximately six months, the translator said. Bible Emoji is available on iTunes for US$2.99, but the translator stated he was not able to develop versions for Android and Amazon e-book platforms as they do not recognize Apple’s emojis.(SD-Agencies)