Stand in the Gap

It could be that someone on your Christmas list would appreciate the new star studded audio Bible “Word of Promise”. JoBe Cerny, most famous for being the voice of the Pillsbury Doughboy, has produced the new “Word of Promise Audio Bible”.

It is the King James Bible in its entirety: a 79-CD set of more than 98 hours of dramatic audio theater, with an original score by Stefano Mainetti, feature film quality sound effects, narration by Michael York and the work of about 600 actors, including such stars as Richard Dreyfuss (Moses), Gary Sinise (David), Marisa Tomei (Mary Magdalene), Stacy Keach (Paul), Louis Gossett Jr. (John), Joan Allen (Deborah), Max von Sydow (Noah) and Luke Perry (Judas). There have been other audio versions of the Bible, but most featured just one voice, such as James Earl Jones. This is something vastly different.

Most of the roles were recorded in Cerny’s Illinois Street studios. There were seven other venues, in places such as Nashville, Los Angeles and Italy. All of the sound effects were created in Chicago, using high-tech equipment and some unusual items: The plague of the frogs in Exodus was accomplished by having raw chicken breasts thrown against a cement slab.

And so the work has ended, after 6,000 hours of studio time, more than 175,000 takes, thousands more hours of mixing and editing. Cerny says “The days were sometimes endless. It was an honor for me to be asked to dig deep enough to make this happen. I knew it was in me somewhere.”

Watch a video preview of the Word of Promise Audio Bible.

SOURCE: The Tennessean