A Calligrapher’s-Eye View of Scripture

A modern scribe writes God’s Word with feeling.

Calligrapher Tim Botts will do almost anything for a good devotional time. Thus, out of the artist’s personal attempt to bring Scripture to life has come a bold venture in contemporary calligraphy: verses from The Living Bible bathed in colors, strokes, and images to make the reader feel God’s truth.

To many, calligraphy conjures images of medieval scribes copying the Scriptures in monastic solitude. But Botts, whose first book, Doorposts (Tyndale), has just been released, shatters such preconceived notions. His biblical art began as an experiment when his personal devotions hit bottom. “Often when I studied the Bible I felt lazy,” he explains, “like I was just going through the motions. So I decided to keep a sketchbook of verses. Putting something on paper that expressed God’s Word made me ask, ‘What are these words saying? How can I show what they mean by the way I write them?’ ”

For Botts, showing what Scripture means demands experiencing its meaning first—physically, if possible. Devotional times have found him working under self-inflicted limitations—even pain. To feel some of the suffering of Hebrews 2:18, Botts did not rest his arm on the table, but held his brush vertically. That hurt. The resulting slightly erratic lettering was executed in complementary colors, which, when placed next to one another, appear to vibrate with an irritating effect.

Another time the right-handed artist used his left hand to simulate a child writing out Deuteronomy 6:7–9, from which comes the title Doorposts: “Teach these commandments to your children and talk about them when you are the Bible to someone who might not be familiar with it,” he says, “and that’s why diversity, more than anything else, marks my work. In Doorposts, I want people to get a sense of the big picture in the Bible, the full range of human emotions.”

Getting The Big Picture

Botts himself began to get a sense of the big picture at an early age. Accepting Christ as a child, then reaffirming his faith in high school, he sought out fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University where he studied graphic design. He joined Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, where fellow students affirmed his role as a Christian artist.

At Carnegie he got turned on to calligraphy under the guidance of Arnold Bank, then recognized as the best in the field. Bank saw Botts’s flair and took him on as an apprentice. Now, some 20 years later, Botts has dedicated Doorposts to his mentor, who died only months before its publication.

There were other important influences on Botts’s work, including the three years he spent in Japan teaching English for a Brethren mission. That experience opened up a new way of thinking about use of space and natural forms. “A lot of American artists wouldn’t have the guts to do this,” says Botts of his interpretation of Romans 1:20, in which an abstract array of colors representing nature dominates the piece. “They’d want to fill the page with lettering. But the verse is saying how nature tells us about God, so I decided to keep the lettering off to one side, Japanese style. Space is precious to the Japanese, so they celebrate it.”

Leaving Japan 14 years ago to work for Tyndale House, Botts came to rely for inspiration on Tyndale’s Living Bible. “The words are highly emotive,” he says. “Reading them has many times brought tears to my eyes. I’ve been able to feel what Scripture is saying before I tried to convey that in my art.” In turn, he hopes many will consider God’s revelation anew in Doorposts. “Just as the psalmist says we should sing a new song to the Lord, I think the artist needs to make a new statement. I’m trying to do something for our time, something that might capture the attention of people who would never pick up a Bible.”

He remembers a woman attending one of his calligraphy classes who was taken by his work. “Are all of these things really in the Bible?” she asked. Assured they were, she said, “Well, I’ll have to go home and read my Bible.” To which Botts quietly answered, “Amen.”

By Robert Kachur, assistant editor of His magazine.

Yabba-Dabba-David and Goliath

A generation generation that grew up with The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, and a host of other animated characters, will be intrigued by Joseph Barbera’s latest project. In the most ambitious assignment his Hanna-Barbera Productions studio has ever undertaken, Barbera is currently engaged in producing animated Bible stories on videocassette. The first 6 in a projected series of 26 were released last spring, and they are captivating a new generation—but this time the stories are true and the settings are historical.

Distributed by Abingdon Press, which is also publishing companion books, the 30-minute videocassettes telling the stories of David, Daniel, Samson, Moses, Noah, and Joshua are available only in Christian/religious bookstores or by response to commercials on religious television.

Barbera became interested in the project 18 years ago because he wanted people to know the stories and the truths they exhibit beyond a simple, superficial knowledge. He talked about his new animated Bible stories in a recent interview.

Why have you remained interested in a project for which you first had the idea nearly 20 years ago?

The stories are so good that everyone should know them. I thought they should be brought home to families in an exciting and interesting way, but one that doesn’t disturb the story or its truths.

The stories are seen through the eyes of three young twentieth-century archaeologists who time-travel to biblical times. Why did you use contemporary characters in the narratives?

We’ve seen how Bible stories can appear ponderous and preachy and become turnoffs, so we wanted to bring a contemporary note to them. We thought it might be interesting to see things through the eyes of contemporary teenagers who serve as observers. The only actual interaction takes place with Noah’s Ark. There was no way we could tell that story from their viewpoint unless we had them involved with the ark.

Do you think children might be confused because the teenage characters in your stories aren’t really in the Bible?

I’ve asked myself, “How many kids ever read these Bible stories?” And the answer is, out of a hundred, maybe one—maybe none. No one is reading the stories; television has bred into kids—even adults—such a short attention span. So I felt we had to find a way to tell the stories that would hold their interest. We’re able to provide visual excitement to do on a screen what no book can do today, because the kids are not reading. But I believe that by staying with the truths of the stories, which is what we’ve done, the “window dressing” won’t hurt them.

What kind of research did you do?

When you get involved in Bible stories you must be careful. We did a lot of research to give families a look at the way it was. At the time of these stories, you know, the Sphinx and the pyramids and the temples were all new. The people wore certain clothes—the heat even dictated what they wore on their heads.

So many things had to be considered: How were the wagons built? What kind of armor did they wear? How big was Goliath? Now that was something we really worried about: we didn’t want to make him too big and therefore ridiculous. We had to find out what kind of armor he had on, what kind of helmet—how his head was exposed so a stone could hit him in the forehead.

Do you see the stories as having spiritual as well as dramatic content?

No one can deny their great dramatic content; believe me, they are violent. Censors in animation and the networks wouldn’t put some of them on the screen. But our method allows us to do the stories the way they are. And I hope there are some subliminal morals and messages, like in the Moses tape. After they’ve crossed the Red Sea, Moses says the problem wasn’t Pharaoh—it was the people’s lack of faith. It is my hope that these kinds of messages will be picked up and stick.

By Peter Crescenti, director of public relations at C. W. Post Campus, Long Island, New York.

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