This is part of a short series of interviews with people who have summarised the Bible on Twitter. I'll ask each person the same set of questions.

Nathaniel Jones was part of a three-man team summarising the Bible at @140bible.

Firstly, who are you and what's your day job?

The 140Bible Project was hatched at Abilene Christian University by 3 of us in the Technology Support department. Chris Rhodes, Kent West and myself, Nathaniel Jones, decided to commit to starting and completing the project. Two of us, Chris and I, moved away from Abilene during the 3 year project. Chris is now pursuing a medical degree in Fort Worth. I am working in Baylor University Law school's IT department.

Why did you decide to summarise the Bible on Twitter?

We were discussing the various Twitter ideas people were trying in 2010 such as condensing the Declaration of Independence into a single tweet. Chris and I decided we should do the Bible one chapter at a time. We quickly recruited Kent to join us. 

How would you describe your style? 

We each have a bit of a different "voice" that would probably be obvious if one looked closely. I tended to shy away from abbreviating names I'd rather say "Joseph" rather than "Joe." Kent was always the best at finding ways to shorten everything to make as much as possible of the chapter fit. We wrote individually and usually did very minimal editing of each other's tweets. 

Did you prepare the summaries in advance?

It varied again by person. Chris and I were more likely to write one a day while Kent preferred to do several chapters at a time. We used gremln.com to queue and send the tweets on schedule. 

Did you ever miss a day?

We did miss days either due to miscommunication or software failure. To get back on-track we would release multiple tweets in one day. I've not actually checked, but I think we finished within a day or 2 of our scheduled end date. I'll also say that having you and others doing similar projects served to motivate me. I wanted us to be the first to finish.

Which was the hardest book, and why?

I'd say Psalms and Proverbs were the most difficult. Poetry is extremely difficult to summarize for obvious reasons. We usually just tried to get a few main points and then called it good. 

Which was your favourite, and why?

I'm not sure I had a favorite. I think I enjoyed the Old Testament history books the best. There is so much in them but since they are telling a story, it's much easier to condense the main points. 

What kind of responses have people have to your project?

Most people have been encouraging. I think most people had no idea what to make of it. My main hope was that we would make God's story a little more accessible and encourage people to look deeper into God's word. 

How has summarising the Bible affected your faith?

This 3 year process certainly helped me better understand the Bible and showed God's plan more plainly 

How much have you read the Bible since you finished?

To tell the truth, I've actually not read as much as I did during the project. It's always been a struggle to make time for it. Doing the project forced me to read even if I didn't feel I had time. I felt a heavy burden to keep the project on schedule and knew that if I let up I'd have a hard time getting going again.

What's your next project?

At this point I'm still enjoying not putting out a daily tweet. Doing something like this everyday can be very difficult. I was fortunate to have a team working with me. My hat's off to the person who does it solo. [Thanks!]

How can we get hold of your complete summary?

We are still in planning stages on how to make it available. We have considered making a Bible study/class curriculum or perhaps something for Bible bowl study. I'd be interested to hear what ideas your readers might have.

Thanks for inviting us to respond. If your readers want to get an example of our product, check out facebook.com/140bible or @140bible When we have any news, we'll use Twitter and Facebook.

This is the first in a short series of interviews with people who have summarised the Bible on Twitter. I'll ask each person the same set of questions.

Jana Riess began her #Twible project in October 2009 and finished six months ago.

Firstly, what's your day job?

For most of the time I was tweeting the Bible I worked as an editor at a publishing house, but now I am freelancing full-time. Most of my clients are religion publishers or authors who are writing religion books.

Why did you decide to summarise the Bible on Twitter?

I had tried several times to read the Bible straight through from cover to cover, with no success. I generally gave up around Leviticus. So one reason was just to see if I could make it all the way through the text if I read it out loud, as it were, in community, and if I made it funny. Another reason was that I’d been impressed by the creative ways other people were using Twitter, sometimes to teach a class or to write a novel.

How would you describe your style?

I think you Brits would call it “cheeky.” My sense of humor has been influenced by Buffy, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Dr. Who and The Onion, if that gives you a sense of the tone. So The Twible is primarily entertainment, looking at the lighter side of the Bible. If people are also learning, and going back to the original source, that’s fantastic.

Here are a few examples:

• Genesis 17: Abram now Abraham. G was clearly not thinking ahead about the Twitter character count. Name longer; foreskin snipped. A tradeoff.
• Ecclesiastes 3: To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn). Except for orange plaid. There is absolutely NO season for that.
• Jeremiah 47: G says the day has come to annihilate all Philistines. This is fair punishment for never learning to appreciate opera.
• Luke 2: “Ma’am, the rooms are full at Bethlehem Inn, but there’s a rustic barn out back that is quite charming. And the hay is complimentary.”

Did you prepare the summaries in advance?

Yes, to varying degrees. In the beginning I was so well organized that I was working at least two months ahead of my schedule for tweeting. Toward the end there it was more like two weeks ahead.

Did you ever miss a day?

I missed a couple of days here and there by accident when I had prepared a tweet but failed to upload it properly using the automatic social media platform I’d chosen (first YouSendIt, now HootSuite).

And at one point in late 2012 I had to take a hiatus for several months, when my mom became very ill and then passed away. My heart was broken. So it took me longer than I had planned.

Did you ever feel like giving up?

Oh yes. Several times. Especially toward the beginning—Leviticus again!—when there weren’t many people following the project alongside me, I often wondered what craziness had resulted in my deciding to do this. But gradually more people began to hear about the project, which helped, and tell their friends. And as I settled into a pattern of research that I found very stimulating, tweeting the Bible just became a regular part of my own life, intellectually and spiritually. I learned a ton of things about the Bible that I didn’t know.

Which was the hardest book, and why?

Well, the most violent sections of the Bible, such as Joshua, Judges, Numbers, Nahum, and the Psalms of imprecation, were tough to tweet with a lighthearted sensibility. But sometimes we can use humor to reveal the things that are dark and disturbing, to bring them into the open, so I tried to do that.

Weirdly, though, the hardest book to tweet was my all-time favorite book of the Bible: the Psalms. I love the Psalms, so I was looking forward to writing about them. But what I enjoy most about them—the gorgeous poetry—was awfully hard to convey in just 140 characters, and it also turns out that there’s a lot of repetition in the Psalter.

Which was your favourite book, and why?

Oddly, my favorite book to tweet was Job, which is often regarded as one of the saddest parts of the Bible. But unlike almost any other book in the Bible, it has a narrative arc focused on a single person’s experience, which makes it much easier to help the reader track the story.

As well, the themes of Job are so timeless and resonant for anyone who has ever been in pain, anyone who has ever wondered where God might be hiding in the midst of our struggles. I was working through Job while a family member was in the hospital, and I found its relentless questions comforting, because they were my questions too.

How has summarising the Bible affected your faith?

I have so much more admiration for the people of the Bible than I did before—not because they were heroes, but precisely because they were not. So many sins, so much tragedy—yet God managed to use these people to do His work in the world. I wonder sometimes if the reason we often wrongly place the biblical figures on a pedestal is that we suspect that if we emphasized their human frailty, we’d realize that we have no excuse not to partner with God in challenging ways ourselves. And most of us really don’t want to take that risk of upending our lives for God. It’s much easier to imagine that the biblical characters were saints, wholly Other.

How much have you read the Bible since you finished?

A lot, actually, because I had to revise everything and add sidebars to get the project to work as a cohesive book. But now that the Twible book has just released, I’m afraid I’m sliding back into the more haphazard ways I had of reading the Bible before 2009. I need to be more disciplined.

What's your next project?

I’m working on a devotional now, a companion volume to Flunking Sainthood called Flunking Sainthood Every Day. It’s filled with great quotes from some of my favorite spirituality writers, like Madeleine L’Engle, Kathleen Norris, Thomas Merton, Richard Foster, and others.

How can we get hold of your complete summary?

The book released on November 8 and can be purchased at Amazon in the US and the UK. Here is a link.

There aren't many other people who know what it's like to summarise the Bible on Twitter, but Jana Riess is one.

Jana completed her #Twible project a few months before I finished Bible Summary, and she has recently released a compilation book. I was excited to receive a copy earlier in the week.

By definite contrast to my own attempt at neutrality, the Twible strikes a sassy, humourous path through Scripture. The take on each chapter is "What would the Onion say?"

Perhaps you're wondering where the humour is in, say, Isaiah 53? As it turns out, Jana finds a pretty good angle. And across the chapters it's striking how often humour feels like a very appropriate response. The Twible version of Song of Songs is wonderful. And I've always felt that much of Ezekiel is a matter of laugh or cry.

The Twible is certainly funny, but it's also characterised by genuine devotion. (Read the Twible response to Matthew 27 if you're not convinced.) Jana mentions in her introduction that she started the project because she felt unfamiliar with a number of sections of Scripture, and there's a sense of unvarnished discovery as the book unfolds.

I've always enjoyed the counterpoint between the Twible and Bible Summary. I particularly recommend the Twible in that light. It's an honest, refreshing and often hilarious take on Scripture. The book offers the full set of Twible summaries plus a host of cartoons and side notes. It's a great package.

Here's The Twible on Amazon.

And as a bonus - next week I'll begin posting a series of interviews with a few us who have completed a summary of the Bible on Twitter. I think I'll kick off with Jana, then Kent and Nathaniel from @140Bible, and finally my own answers. Stay tuned...