I’ve been listening to James White on Catholicism. And I want to do a funny.

Have you ever felt that the Protestant Bible was too straightforward? Have you ever wanted to dunk on the Catholics by putting them in a morass of uncertainty as they try to figure out what in the world you’re talking about when you read your Bible’s table of contents? Have you ever wanted to use the fabled ‘Your Bible has less books than mine’ argument? Well look no farther, because the upcoming OPNV (Obstreperous Protestant’s Non-standard Version) has you covered.

(Translation of the OPNV has already been completed; we encountered little difficulty, as our translation strategy was to take 1 verse from the ESV, one from the NASB, one from the 1611 KJV (with original spelling and typography), one from the NASB, and one in the original language in a cycle.)

With that out of the way, what can you expect from your new favorite translation’s table of contents? How will you get to baffle everybody else?

1. Genesis has been re-labeled as a ‘Prologue’ rather than a book
2. Exodus has 39 chapters because we combined chapters 28 and 29.
3. Leviticus is printed twice, as 1 Leviticus and 1.1 Leviticus. This means you get two separate translations of the same book!
4. Numbers has been printed in an alphanumeric code.
5. Deuteronomy is just the 1611 version, straight up, with the fun ‘s’ version, the one that looks like an ‘f’. Maybe you can get some IFB friends this way? As long as they don’t look at the rest of the Bible….
6. Joshua and Judges are now numbered as 1, 2, and 3 Joshua-Judges. Chapter 25 of Judges is the new 3 Joshua-Judges.
7. Ruth is now one chapter.
8. 1 & 2 Samuel are combined with 1 & 2 Kings in one mega-book of # Samuel, with chapter numbers counting up through the former 1 Samuel, then down through 2 Samuel, up through 1 Kings, and down again through 2 Kings, to end at # Samuel 4.
9. 1 & 2 Chronicles are unchanged.
10. Ezra and Nehemiah are in reversed order.
11. Esther is entirely in NIV, except that every fourth word is translated into ecclesiastical Latin.
12. Job has all of what Job says in bright purple. (The e-book software turned this into invisitext, which we have been unable to fix without compromising our vision.)
13. Psalms is now 149 separate books, most of them a single chapter long, with some exceptions being 42 Psalms (which has 2 chapters, formerly chapters 42-43 of Psalms) and 118 Psalms, which has 8 22-verse chapters.
14. Proverbs is now two books, splitting after chapter 29.
15. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are now 1 Ecclesiastes and 2 Song of Solomon.
16. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel, while still separate books, are printed in a cycle, one chapter of each before returning to the beginning of the cycle. Extra empty chapters are added to the end of all except Isaiah to keep the cycle running.
17. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai are unchanged (except for Micah 6:8 being bedazzled) because our translators forgot about them, like most churches.
18. Zechariah is also left unchanged, but this was a deliberate decision. This book was judged to be confusing enough already.
19. Malachi is now printed between Genesis and Exodus. ‘Out of order’ has been stamped on every page of it as a watermark.
20. Each of the four gospels has been split into two books, labeled 1 & 2, immediately after the Crucifixion.
21. John has become 1 & 2 John; 1-3 John are now 3-5 John. 5 John is reprinted three times without alteration to fill the page.
22. Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon are now 1-10 Paul.
23. 1 & 2 Timothy are unchanged from the original text because we didn’t pay the editor enough, having spent all our money on failing to fix Job. We used the Textus Receptus for one but I forget which.
24. Titus was meant to be 13 Paul, but due to a typographic error it is denominated 13 Pual.
25. Hebrews is re-named ‘Nobody-Knows-For-Sure-But-We-Have-So-Many-Opinions.’ It is now one chapter.
26. 1 & 2 Peter include a picture of a large rock. This is ¾ of the file size in the e-book version.
27. Jude’s verses are now marked as chapters, with each word being marked as a verse, to make reading and citation easier.
28. Revelation is published in a separate book to accommodate those who prefer to take it that way. The font alternates between 1pt and 1500pt.

As you can see, this comes out to 216 books, a solid 150 book improvement, well ahead of the Catholic deuterocanon. That makes it better, as we all know.

Toodles!