Liberty University students have a hand in writing a new version of the Bible

By Christa Desrets and Robin Farmer
Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: October 15, 2008

The first Bible was handwritten.

And now there will be another, only this Bible will be written “one verse, one person” at a time.

Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of Liberty University students lined up to contribute.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the New International Version Bible, the Bible will be handwritten, verse by verse from start to finish, during a 90-city tour in 44 states. The handwritten version will be called America’s New International Version.

It will take 31,173 people to copy all the verses in their own handwriting. So far, the project has attracted more than 2,000 participants.

Tim Paneitz, one of four employees of Zondervan Bibles who rides with Bible Across America, expected 300 to 400 more to contribute their handwritten verses Tuesday during the tour’s 13th stop, in front of Liberty’s Vines Center.

Mike Barnes, a senior majoring in biology, was one of them.

“I thought it was a cool chance,” he said after carefully writing out his verse — Numbers 5:25. He wasn’t familiar with the verse previously, but now has a connection to it.

Rebecca Abell, a sophomore psychology major, finished her verse a few minutes later.

“It was a lot of pressure,” she said, noting that she wanted to make sure to have perfect handwriting for the project.

“I was more afraid of misspelling words,” said senior graphic design major Nina Palazzo. But she had a note card with her verse written out to reference while copying it down.

It takes participants about six minutes to print their respective verse twice on large 11-by-17-inch pages to ensure an error-free version. They are asked to write along faint lines, and to keep within margins.

Later, the pages will be scanned into computers, and the images will be shrunk.

Discussion is under way to offer an original copy to the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress for display.

The tour, which was in Richmond on Monday, moves on to Baltimore today.

To follow the tour, which has an online GPS tracking system, visit http://www.BibleAcrossAmerica.com.