The Material Dimension of the Bible from Print to Digital Text

Abstract

The chapter addresses the material dimension of the Bible in the discourse and practice of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. According to surveys commissioned by the American Bible Society, announcements from big Bible publishers, and my own observations among contemporary evangelical and Pentecostal Christians in America, digital Bibles and Bible apps are on the rise. The transition from print culture to digital culture has not gone uncontested, and the discussions among Christians about the appropriateness of digital Bible media for religious practices points toward a contestation of the materiality of the medium through which God’s Word, and thereby God, is made present to religious practitioners. Thus the first part of the chapter introduces the frame of material culture studies and the approach to materiality in the study of religion. The second part discusses an analytic model suggested by the material religion scholar David Morgan along which a material analysis of religious objects should be developed. It will subsequently be applied to explore the relation between the Bible and its concrete materiality with a comparative focus on print and digital versions of the Bible.