The Gideon Bible (1908- ) are those Bibles you see all across the US in hotel rooms, usually in the drawer of the nightstand. It is not just the US but 194 other countries. And it is not just hotels, motels and Holiday Inns, but hospitals, prisons, military bases, police stations, universities – anywhere the lost may be found. They are printed and distributed by Gideon International with help from its Financial Friends and over 260,000 Gideons.
- Number: 2 billion since 1908.
- Location: found in 195 countries (nearly all of them).
- Life expectancy: an average copy lasts six years.
- Identifying mark: their logo: a jug with two handles.
- Translation: ESV (with more than 50 verses changed) has been their main English translation since 2013.
- Editions: complete Bibles and pocket New Testaments (with Psalms and Proverbs thrown in).
- Readership: 25% of hotel guests or 2,300 people per copy (according to a Gideon study in 2012).
- Souls saved: 88 million – if it has the same 4.4% response rate as junk mail.
They do not sell them, not on Amazon, not at book shops, but you can take one from any hotel room. In fact, they want you to! I wish I knew that as a child. But later at university, they did give me one of their little green New Testaments. My parents never gave me a Bible, yet they did!
If you open a new hotel, a Gideon will show up offering free Bibles for all your rooms and make sure you never run out.
The original Gideon is a hero in the Bible. See Judges 6 and 7. He did what God said even when it seemed hopeless, thereby defeating the Midianites with only 300 men.
Translations: Gideon Bibles come in over 90 languages and various English translations. There is no “official” translation. But there is one they print the most. As best as I can tell, it goes something like this for the US:
- 1908-74: KJV (King James or Authorized Version)
- 1974-83: Revised Berkeley Version
- 1983-86: NIV*
- 1986?-2013: NKJV
- 2013- : ESV*
* = customized translation (see below)
They moved from the KJV because it was turning off Catholics. They moved from the NKJV because the publisher, Thomas Nelson, was bought up by HarperCollins by way of News Corp (the Murdoch media empire) and would not renew their contract.
Customized translations: The Gideons will move alternate readings of its choosing out of the footnotes into the main text and then wipe out all the footnotes. In the case of the ESV they changed more than 50 verses to make it more closely match the wording of the NKJV or KJV.
Compare Luke 4:4:
KJV: And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
NKJV: But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ”
ESV: And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”
Gideon: And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'”
Why the ESV (and most new Protestant translations since 1900) got rid of “but by every word of God”, of all things, is another story.
– Abagond, 2021.
Sources: The 1966 edition (KJV), Gideon International, Best Western Siesta Key, David Cloud (translation history), Joshua Holman (changes to ESV).
See also:
- External links:
- Bible
- White Evangelical Protestants – the Gideons have a clear conservative Evangelical Protestant slant, though not necessarily always White.
- Muzak
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