he world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible isn’t at the Louvre, or the Prado, or the Met: It’s on the web, and it’s made up of Legos. The Brick Testament features over 3,600 illustrations that retell more than 400 stories from The Bible, and is constantly growing. The illustrations were conceived, created, and photographed by the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith, who is not a real Reverend (he describes himself as “bigger than Jesus, slimmer than Buddha,” as well as “highly presumptuous and extremely vain”) and an avowed atheist, but insists his project is ment to explore the Scripture, not to mock them. Everything in these pictures, but the background sky, is built out of Lego brand building blocks.
”I choose to work in the medium of Lego simply because it’s eye-catching and great fun to work with. And who doesn’t get a chuckle out of seeing Lego Adam and Eve in the garden, or Lego Moses smashing the Ten Lego Commandments? For me, it’s all about making the content of the Bible more accessible without changing that content,” Smith explains. ”I think illustrating the Bible in Lego has been, for me, a chance to re-tell these stories in a way that’s more faithful to the text than the other illustrated Bibles I’ve seen.”
The original idea however was not of his own: in Taco Bell one day, Smith claims, his burrito suddenly burst into flames and the voice of God boomed out that he needed to illustrate the Bilble entirely out of Legos. “But I’m an atheist”, Smith objected. “Then you are expecially unqualified to question me!” God thundered. “Now get to work!”. So Smith, who has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and religion, amassed with his girlfriend $5.000 (U.S.) worth of Lego from yard sales and eBay, and began the production of his dioramas, each one taking around one work week.
There are a few select instances where Rev. Smith has resorted to modifying Lego pieces with a hobby knife or permanent ink marker, but by far the vast majority of everything you see in The Brick Testament are unaltered Lego parts from sets that date from the 1960s up to the present day, artfully recombined to form the characters and settings that make up these Bible stories. It may be a small miracle, but somehow, Smith says, ”You always have the right pieces for what you’re trying to build.”
The project was started in 2001 and three books of Smith’s photographs (Stories from the Book of the Genesis, The Story of Christmas and The Ten Commendments) have been released between 2003 and 2005.
