#Lds scriptures quad update

But for the rest of us, it’s pretty amazing how much the information age has brought parity to the world of holy writ. Remember before the smartphone when one could saunter over to Deseret Book and buy the digital scriptures for use on a Palm Pilot? Remember how insanely cool that was and how jealous you were of your technologically advanced friends? You don’t? Then you are clearly too young and probably only look at Instagram. And here you thought the robots had taken all our jobs. Something fascinating from the article was the reveal that the process to put thumb tabs in scriptures was only recently semi-automated it’s been done manually for all these years. Kelly Gibson, a scripture product manager for the Church, explains that the moves are also in an effort to boost “equity across languages,” elaborating that most languages only have three or four options available for printed scriptures, and this will sort of remove English primacy when it comes to printed scripture development. “Many people, from managers and linguists, to skilled producers, designers, typesetters, and press professionals help to inform all the improvements that are being made.” “Where can we improve, and what would save either time or resources?” said Brent Meisinger, a product manager in the Church’s scripture division, furthering the narrative that “simplification” means being smart with resources. Resources are finite, and it takes plenty of work to translate scriptures, let alone print and ship them. The Church went as far as to dissuade members from looking to the printed versions of the Handbooks, as they will be rendered obsolete by ongoing digital updates. For example, last year the Church announced it would no longer print Handbooks 1 and 2, which are used by Church leaders to govern how they operate within their callings.

#Lds scriptures quad update

It is significantly easier to update a digital property and maintain good ol’ correlation than it is to update printed materials, both in terms of messaging and in terms of capital investment. As the world goes digital, the Gospel Library and synchronization have become the focal point for scripture development. So why restrict what’s available? You can thank smartphones. The former isn’t much of a loss, but the latter kinda stinks. For example, compact-sized scriptures are going by the wayside, except for military pocket-sized scriptures, snap closure covers will also be a thing of the past, and brown and burgundy colors shall fall by the wayside. In an attempt to “simplify” the process of printing scriptures, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced a reduction in the available styles or varieties of the sacred works.Īn article by THE Church News explains that starting in December, the presses will cool off, and fourteen styles will be discontinued in English, which will result in the reduction of six of those styles in Spanish and one in Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean.Ĭhanging “styles” means removing colors from the lineup, reducing the number of available sizes, and removing some features. And, of course, we now have available the most recent 2013 edition of the Church’s standard works.Every single feature you see of these scriptures will be unavailable in 2020. The Quad was made available for those wanting to replace the whole set. Many people already had the 1979 version of the Bible. I’m old enough to remember that when they came out, they came out together. Although the timeline above only identifies the date of the Triple, it is also the same year that this edition of the quad was also published.

The first quad published by the Church itself was in 1981. This included the footnotes and other study aids that we are now familiar with. The first LDS edition of the Bible was in 1979. But because the Bible used was a generic King James Version and not an “LDS version”, it was not really the same as the quad we’ve come to know. So, that makes the 1959 version a pretty credible candidate. And it was probably not until after 1921 (the “Apostles Revision” edition). (for the complete timeline see here: History of LDS ScripturesĪny other version could not have been earlier than 1878 when the first PoGP was published. There was in fact an older quad printed once upon a time. What a wonderfully delightful bit of trivium you’ve stumbled upon.