I am not certain that I understand lolspeak or its origin, though I think it must have started at some point with texting teens. (I do understand that LOL is “laughing out loud.”) I am quite certain that I do not understand the online phenomenon of lolcats, but they seem to be everywhere. Now, however, there is a lolcats Bible, titled LOLcat Bible: In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez an da Erfs n stuffs. You can find most of the lolcats Bible on the web also at the LOLcat Bible Translation Project. Here is a snippet of “translation” from the online lolcat Bible John 3:16-17:

“So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and he sez ‘Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeves him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!’Cuz teh Ceiling Kitteh not snd hiz son 2 take all yur cookies, but so u cud maek moar cookies 4EVAR!”

I simply do not know what to make of this project, though I do think that naming God the “Ceiling Cat” is inspired…not inspired, inspired, but laugh out loud funny inspired. I think that Jesus is called the “Ceiling Kitteh.”

Any thoughts? Can anyone shed more light on this project? I take it that the goal is humor, but can even more good than humor come from it? Or is this a sign of the degradation of our culture and the Bible? These questions come, I remind you, from the one who wants one only one translation of the Bible in English. But certainly lolspeak is not English, is it?

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.