If you watch Adam Lewis Greene's Kickstarter campaign page for more than a couple of seconds, you can see the number of pledges pop higher. With two days left, Greene's goal of raising $37,000 to print a Bible "designed and crafted for reading, separated into four elegant volumes, and free of all numbers and notes" has been met several times over.

In fact, it just surpassed $1 million.

Greene's project, named Bibliotheca, is a (mostly) American Standard Version Bible (with the "thees" and "thous" replaced). But what's catching attention is the layout. Unlike most Bibles printed since Gutenberg, Greene's version has one column, wide margins, a large typeface, and no notes or chapter marks.

The design choices are meant to enhance the reading experience, according to Mark Bertrand, author at the Bible Design Blog. Orders for Greene's project close on Sunday, July 27, almost a month after Crossway released a similar-looking English Standard Version (ESV) Reader's Bible. Like Bibliotheca, the Reader's Bible is meant to be read like a story, with one column and missing chapter and verse notations. Biblica, which publishes the New International Version, released a similar project, The Books of the Bible, in 2007 and 2011.

"Traditionally, reference Bibles look like dictionaries that you look things up in," Bertrand said. "Reader-friendly Bibles are more like novels. I think what is happening is that we're lamenting that people don't read their Bibles enough, and now we've realized the design of Bibles has an influence on that."

"Reader-friendly" Bibles have been tried before, but never caught on, he said. (The notable ...

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