There are few discussions that illicit more views of amazement, preplexment, and laughter than talking to some pastors and adults about Twitter. For all of the buzz that it seems to be, there’s still a sizable amount of people who just don’t understand it – or rather why one needs it compared to (for example) Facebook or MySpace.

In conversations about Twitter, there’s usually the comparison to Facebook asked: “what’s the difference?” In the most simplest terms, Twitter is just the status wall aspect of Facebook. It’s not (necessarly) groups, conversations, or discovery – even though changes to Twitter and applications can bring those kinds of features towards it.

Twitter is a one-way conversation broadcast channel. It is unweildy for conversations, though it happens. It works well to following opinion and thought leaders, but you will have to cull through other types of content. In a sense, Twitter is a self-publishing platform, in all of 140 (or so) characters. It many many times fall under the pressure of several users – and at the same time, its speed in information delivery has ripped a paradigm shift towards traditional news reporting and consuming shorter snippets of information.

That all being said, this aspect of looking at Twitter as a self-publishing platform is an interesting one. And specifically for how it could end up changing how we think about reading, sharing, and applying the text of the Bible.

Two articles recently posted at the BBC looked at the subject of Twitter and the Bible. The first looked at Chris Juby and his attempt to condense the Bible into just under 1200 tweets (Twitter: @biblesummary). The second article expanded that look on Twitter and the Bible towards the various other persons who are tweeting the Bible, and taking different approaches to interpret and disseminate the classic text.

What are your thoughts on these endeavors towards re-translation and evangelism? Could we get to a point where the entire Bible is in Twitter (a Digital Twitter Version perhaps) and this decentralizes (again) the lines between publisher and reader? What about textual analysis – could someone understand the Scripture (for doctrine, correction, or instruction) in this format?

Let’s hear your thoughts.