Bibledudes

Following on from reading reflections on the outcome of the US election in Michael Homan's Blog, I enjoyed visiting a web site to which he refers there:

Bibledudes

Michael Homan is responsible for much of the content, along with several others. It's not finished yet, e.g. nothing yet on the NT, but it's a remarkable project, aiming to provide lively, introductory materials to those who know nothing about the Bible using cartoon characters who speak in colloquial contemporary American. This is the kind of site where you really can begin from scratch and build. I doubt that anyone who reads this blog is anywhere near the target audience for this site, but it is an encouragement to those of us who are committed to communicating Biblical scholarship to a wide population to see academics thinking creatively about how to reach people. Good for them.

Just one thought: is this website going to look pretty dated in a few years time when noone says "dude" anymore, and all its other colloquialisms, even in America? Think of Godspell, aiming at the height of trendiness in 1973 and now horrendously and embarrassingly dated, and not in the delightful way that people now celebrate. Here would be a real challenge: create a website like this in which the content is separated from the vehicle conveying it, and use CSS for all the latter, so that you could then find out about the Bible by clicking "1970s style", "1990s style", "classical style", "slasher movie style" and so on.

To see the kind of thing I mean, have a look at the CSS Zen Garden, to which The Coding Humanist recently referred. This is a fantastic advert for the value of using CSS. (Excuse the digression, which has ended up being an excuse to draw attention to another great site).

Update (8 November, 00.03): AKMA comments, Totally.