Hey kids, haven't read the Good Book yet? Now you can skip right to the video.
Action-packed and rich in moral fiber, the Bible has become a home entertainment blockbuster.
"Noah's Ark," "Samson and Delilah," "Queen Esther," "Paul the Mighty Convert" and other tales drawn from the Old Testament and New Testament are selling by the millions.
Hanna-Barbera Productions -- the folks who brought you the Flintstones, Yogi Bear and Scooby-Doo -- as well as such production companies as the Family Entertainment Network, have discovered video is the ideal medium for pre- and post-literate generations in need of religious education and spiritual guidance.
For example, anyone uncertain of what happens to Jesus after the Last Supper can brush up with "The Easter Story." Produced by Hanna-Barbera, now a subsidiary of Turner Home Entertainment, this video climaxes with a dramatic cartoon version of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. It is a seasonal best seller, re-released at a specially reduced $9.99 just in time for Easter.
The non-profit, New York-based American Bible Society (ABS), which publishes the Scriptures in 66 languages, soon plans to release its own live-action Bible video, a contemporary urban translation of a story from Mark, in which Jesus -- portrayed as a laborer -- performs an exorcism on a young man in a baseball cap. The video will come with its own interactive software.
For those of the Jewish faith, there are videos produced by Jewish Education Video, based on the Talmud, the body of work that constitutes Jewish civil and religious law.
Videos make up about 3.1 percent of gross sales in the $3 billion Christian retail market, says Linda Vixie, associate editor of Bookstore Journal, a trade publication that tracks Christian publications, as well as video and audio cassette productions.
Most of those videos are animated stories from the Scriptures designed for children. "It's a growing market. It's a very young market," Ms. Vixie says. "In just the last two or three years, we've seen companies putting major dollars behind their productions. Before that it was of pretty low quality."
As of January, Hanna-Barbera's slickly produced "Great Adventure: Stories From the Bible" series, which features the voices of actors such as Tim Curry and Joe Spano, had sold 2 million cassettes, according to Bookstore Journal. Of that number, 500,000 were sold in Christian bookstores and other retail outlets, Ms. Vixie says.
The New Testament series of videos produced by Family Entertainment Network -- and marketed mainly through TV advertorials -- was expected to earn $25 million in 1991, according to Ms. Vixie.
Other production companies, including Tyndale Christian Video and Multnomah Productions, have also weighed in with Bible video lines. Less professionally produced Bible video stories abound as well, Ms. Vixie says.
If Jennifer Pierce, 9, had to choose between reading or watching the Bible, "I would probably watch the video," she says. "The video helps me see more and kind of gives you an idea of what it looked like back then and still tells the story," says Jennifer, a student at Liberty Christian School, as she browses in Peter & John Trustworthy Bookstore in Randallstown.
Jennifer's mother, Jane,is all for Scripture in any form. "It is like throwing enough spaghetti against the wall. Something's bound stick," she says.
Linda Treuting, a clerk at Peter & John's, has seen video inventory expand greatly over the past five years. But she doesn't think videos will discourage patrons from reading the Scripture. The Bible has "always been there for so many thousands of years." It won't disappear, "just because another medium has come around," she says.
For the Bible to continue to draw an audience, the ABS must depart from its ancient medium, says David Burke, director of the 175-year-old society's translations department. "We have committed to bringing Scripture to all people. There is an increasing segment of the population in this culture that is reading a lot less; some are not reading at all and wouldn't be inclined to pick up a book Bible." By producing a video, "We're suggesting that we will go into the medium of their choice," Mr. Burke says.
"Religious book stores used to be completely books. They've now shrunken the number of books and expanded the number of audio and video resources and gifts. It's kind of a sign of our times," says Jim Larson, a teacher of religious education and counseling in the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary's Seminary, and president of the Center for Renewal, a Columbia consulting firm.
But videos as an educational tool are problematical, Mr. Larson says, "My concern is that there are families that buy these and use them at home. The videos can enhance the family experience of Biblical enrichment, or they can become just another form of passive entertainment [A family may] want to be entertained and that detracts from what the Scriptures are all about: life and faith and change."
As a "supplemental thing," videos "can be used very effectively, as long as they're followed by active discussion and creative expressions," Mr. Larson says.
For Joseph Barbera, entertainment and moral enrichment go hand and hand. "My feeling was that if we were going to do exciting stories and action-filled stories, and stories that had moral fiber underneath them all, Bible stories were the best that have ever been written," said the co-creator of the Flintstones in a telephone interview from Hollywood.
Producers of Bible videos and their critics quibble as well over the accuracy of Scriptural interpretations. According to the ABS, devices -- such as Hanna-Barbera's use of two archaeologists and a friendly nomad who tumble through a cleft in the Earth and find themselves in the Holy Land -- distance the viewer from the Bible's original text.
ABS' depiction of the Gerasene Demoniac, on the other hand, is a direct translation from Greek and Hebrew texts, in which the Scripture message "has priority over the medium of presentation," staff members say.
The Family Entertainment Network also sparked a controversy with its negative, stereotyped portrayals of Jews in its animated Bible video series. After meeting with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles last year, FEN president Stephen W. Griffin agreed to remove offensive characters and dialogue from the series and accompanying commercials.
Like the Bible itself, the Bible video industry and the values it imparts are open to interpretation. For Mr. Barbera, the inspiration for this lucrative video line came from a higher power. "It had to be a force bigger than me that said, 'Go back again,' " he says. "That's exactly what must have happened. It was the Lord's voice or the voice of Jesus or somebody."
But for Mr. Larson, the proliferation of Bible videos and of what he calls "holy hardware" offered in the Christian market represents the troubling transition from faith to the marketing of religion. "I have sometimes wondered what Christ would do if he were walking through the Christian booksellers market," Mr. Larson says. "Would it be like walking through the temple and driving out the money changers?"