Controversy surrounds 'C.S. Lewis Bible'

Debate has ensued around the release of a Bible containing about 600 excerpts from the writings of C.S. Lewis, with a group of scholars signing a petition saying Lewis would not have approved of the gender-neutral translation with which his notes are paired, reports Baptist Press.

"The C.S. Lewis Bible," published late last year by HarperOne, the religion imprint of HarperCollins, utilizes the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which was released in the United States in 1989, 26 years after Lewis' death.

Louis Markos, an English professor at Houston Baptist University who has written four books on Lewis, launched a petition asking HarperOne to change the translation to the Revised Standard Version or the King James Version, which Lewis would have used.

"Though we commend Harper for publishing a Bible that includes thoughts and meditations from C.S. Lewis, we disagree with their choice to key Lewis's writings to the text of an intentionally gender-neutral translation of the scriptures that Lewis himself would have opposed," the petition said.

"By doing so, Harper tacitly suggests that Lewis would have approved of the NRSV and the agenda that underlies its gender-neutral translation. Yet, the majority consensus among C.S. Lewis scholars is that Lewis was firmly against gender-neutral usage and the egalitarianism on which it is based," the petition added.

Signers of the petition said they support the right of the C.S. Lewis Bible editors to choose passages from Lewis that they believe best capture his legacy, but they do not support the editors' choice of presenting the NRSV "as if it were the Bible Lewis would have endorsed had he been alive today."

The project was overseen by Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham and Lewis scholar Jerry Root of Wheaton College. Michael Maudlin, executive editor of HarperOne, told the Los Angeles Times the devotional Bible "uses Lewis' writings to illuminate what is being addressed in Scripture."

For example, after Genesis 3:1-13 when Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden, this Lewis excerpt appears: "He would rather have a world of free beings, with all its risks, than a world of people who did right like machines because they couldn't do anything else."

Maudlin said the NRSV is used by a wide swath of Christian denominations and while the petition may have discouraged some conservative evangelical bookstores from carrying the Lewis Bible, it hasn't hindered overall sales.

The release of The C.S. Lewis Bible comes amid a surge in interest in the lay theologian. The film version of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," third in his "Chronicles of Narnia" series, has earned more than $400 million since its December release, and a fourth film, "The Magician's Nephew," is in the works.

In 2012, the C.S. Lewis Foundation is expected to launch C.S. Lewis College in Northfield, Mass., on property purchased for the foundation by Hobby Lobby, a retail crafts chain. As owner of the Northfield property, Hobby Lobby will invest more than $5 million in operations and capital improvement projects in support of the creation of the college, which is projected to enroll 400 students and employ a faculty of 40 and a staff of 45.