A Review of The Manga Bible –New Testament

I immediately warmed to the Manga Bible when I read that the artwork was the responsibility of someone who had worked on Judge Dredd. The Judge, and the comic that spawned him, 2000AD were required reading for me in my teenage years!

 

This helped me as a forty something year old to relate to the book. And, it meant that I gave it the benefit of the doubt when I came to look at the biblical stories related in it. I can see why some might have reservations with The Manga Bible, and I will touch on some of them here, but first I am going to say why my overall instinct is to give it a strong recommendation.

 

I want to say something about the medium for the book - Manga. I can understand why anyone might have misgivings about using this as a medium for telling biblical stories. It’s a youth oriented, urban style, and it can alienate those who are not used to it. But as I looked at the way Scripture was presented here, and thought about Manga as a medium for those stories, I became convinced that this was in fact an excellent way to present the New Testament – and indeed the medium was for me one of the strongest positives about the whole book. 

 

Manga has an amazing capacity to convey mood and feeling, and compliments the atmosphere of biblical drama: the sinister anonymity of Herod’s troops, the passion and zeal of John the Baptist, the crazed horror of the possessed man – Manga conveys it all. I believe that the Bible is an energetic and dramatic work; and this book captures the passion of biblical encounters, both in the gospels and the epistles. In recognising the suitability of the medium, I would also pay tribute to Siku the artist on the project.

 

I also liked the reinterpreted script which for me, crucially, did not compromise biblical truth. Again, I was reassured to see that people like Paul Blackman from All Souls, Langham Place, were on hand to guide this book in its theology.

 

I was also intrigued and impressed by the style of drawing used for the parables. The fact that the parables were presented as simple sketches added to their value as stories, and also by contrast gave the Manga images an increased intensity and power.

 

My misgivings about the book centre more on problems of omission rather than commission - I’m more concerned with what’s not in there rather than what is! At one level I would have like to see more material in the book, simply for the pleasure of seeing Siku and Akinsiku’s treatment of more of the Scriptures. I would encourage them to think about going back and thinking about doing some more work - time and money permitting. I would be interested in seeing their treatment of Philemon, for example.

 

Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, although this book calls itself the Manga Bible, it contains just a fraction of the New Testament Scriptures and cannot be presented as the Bible, or even the new Testament, on it’s own. The writer and artist are aware of this problem, and deal with it in a competent way. They refer readers to the actual passages of Scripture, and indeed one version of the Manga Bible actually incorporates the New Testament. Additionally the foreword, titled, Read this First!, is clear that what is being presented is not the whole of the New Testament. Readers are encouraged to read the full-text Bible, and references are explained. Because of this issue, I might perhaps have argued against using the word ‘Bible’ in the title, but I know that the word is likely to draw readers and sell the book.

 

I think, therefore, that the team who put the book together have done what they can to guard against any charge of ‘dumbing down’ the Scriptures; and the reader is given every encouragement to search the Bible itself in response.

 

Overall, this is a successful book. I love the way in which the style of Manga is used to convey the passion and urgency of the Scriptures We can so easily lose this aspect of God’s Word. I would consider buying it and giving it to anyone who is interested in the Manga art form, and my misgivings about the breadth of content have been dispelled by the effort the authors have gone to point out that their work is not a definitive version of the bible, and to point readers in the right direction.

 

© Andrew Chamberlain 2007