Can you judge a book by its cover? A multimodal analysis of the Bible front covers and home pages

The Bible is one of the most widely translated and read books in history available in as many as 1250 languages and in multiple versions within the same language. As many as fifty-nine English language versions are included in The Bible Gateway website, differing across periods of time, creeds, and language use. Although the Bible has significantly permeated society, culture and literature in Christianised Europe through the ages and even influenced language usage, its study by now seems to have been mostly restricted to a theological domain, with the discussion of its historical or mythological foundation and meaning, its literary, religious and social impact. Little has been said about the textual and graphic (r)evolution underlying the recent passage from book to a hypertextual format and how increased online accessibility and digitalization can reconfigure its textuality, and also affect the critical reading experience of the public at large. The present study sets out to investigate the textual thresholds of the Bible in two very different media: book and website. A collection of popular English Bible and home pages will be analysed according to a multimodal framework with particular regard to narrative and conceptual representations; composition and resemioticization.