R father n hvn was published by Westminster John Knox Press in 2002.

The book began life as a couple of competitions on Ship of Fools, where we asked our shipmates to send us their most-enjoyed bits of the Bible, boiled down to the size of a text message. See here for more about the competitions.

It includes the best moments from the competitions, with text versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, the 10 Commandments and the parables of Jesus, to name but a few. The book also had 160-character summaries of each book of the Bible, written in text-speak.

As an example, here are the 10 Commandments, as translated by Nicola David of Ripon: jus me no uvas/no copiz/rspc mi nam/hona sunda & ur ma&pa/neva kil cht stl r lie/4get jelsi.