About This Site
Introduction
The Brick Bible is creator Elbe Spurling's epic 12-year endeavor to illustrate the entire Bible using only LEGO bricks as an artistic medium. It is motivated by a desire to increase people's knowledge and consideration of the content of the Bible in a way that's both captivating and fun while always staying true to the text of the scriptures.
To this end, the text of each story is told using direct quotes of the Bible with chapter and verse cited. The stories play out in a series of scenes whose characters and scenery have been meticulously constructed out of LEGO and expertly photographed by the artist.
The success of The Brick Bible project has spawned a hit book series with over a quarter million titles in print, carried by major retailers including Costco, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Amazon. Autographed copies of books can be ordered through this site, directly from the artist.
Elbe Spurling is an accomplished artist and musician whose work has been featured in Time, People, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Bible Review, Maxim, and Entertainment Weekly.
Frequently Asked Questions
May I use material from The Brick Bible at my church or Sunday School?
Please feel welcome to display The Brick Bible website at gatherings, or make use of the Brick Bible print books. Remember, if your audience includes children, you may wish to limit yourself to The Brick Bible for Kids stories.
If you would like to incorporate material from The Brick Bible in another project (such as displaying images to illustrate a sermon, adding images to a pamphlet or worksheets), please make sure your audience is made clearly aware that the material is borrowed from The Brick Bible and provide the website address TheBrickBible.com.
If your usage would be more extensive or if you are unsure if it would be permitted, you are welcome to describe your suggested usage in an email to contact@thebrickbible.com.
Permission cannot be granted to use material from The Brick Bible in other print books as these rights lie with the publisher of The Brick Bible books Skyhorse Publishing, who can be reached through their website's contact page.
Which translation of The Bible does The Brick Bible use?
One of the goals of The Brick Bible is to present the stories of The Bible in a clear and easy-to-understand way, therefore it uses a modern English translation rather than an older translation written in difficult-to-understand archaic English. Since modern English translations of The Bible fall under copyright protection, however, The Brick Bible uses its own unique wording. Chapter and verse are cited at the bottom of every illustration, and are clickable to bring up a side-by-side comparison of four other popular English translations.
In those instances where The Brick Bible includes a bit of dialogue that is not a direct quote of The Bible, such text appears in gray rather than the usual black. Most such instances are there to help the flow of the visual storytelling, though occasionally they are included purely for light-hearted comic effect.
Is The Brick Bible really created entirely out of LEGO bricks?
Yes, everything but the background sky is indeed created out of LEGO bricks and nothing else.
Since the LEGO company themselves have never made any Bible-themed sets, every character and every bit of scenery in The Brick Bible has been formed by creative recombinations of thousands of different parts from LEGO sets that were released anywhere from the 1960s through today.
Why does The Brick Bible include The Bible's violent and sexual material?
NOTE: If you are looking for LEGO-illustrated Bible stories aimed toward younger children, please see The Brick Bible for Kids website and book series.
Something that distinguishes The Brick Bible from other illustrated scriptures is its goal to treat all of The Bible's content as equally worthy of inclusion, since it is, after all, in The Bible.
The Brick Bible further aims to present the stories as The Bible itself presents them. There are other illustrated Bibles whose authors take a free hand in re-writing the Bible's stories as they see fit, adding or subtracting content, providing questionable re-interpretations, and foisting onto them a modern sense of morality or theology simply not present in the original.
Although well-meaning, these authors fail to let the Bible speak for itself, and don't provide the reader an experience that is much like reading the actual Bible at all.
While there is really no substitute for reading The Bible itself, The Brick Bible endeavors to come as close to that experience as possible for people who wouldn't normally read the Bible all the way through on their own. And for those who are already familiar with the Bible, it offers the chance to brush up in a fun way, or to reconsider what they have read before.
I remember an old website called The Brick Testament. Is that the same as The Brick Bible?
In a word, yes. The Brick Testament was the original name for Elbe Spurling's illustrated Bible project. It first became notable as a website, and then as a popular book series under the name The Brick Bible.
By modern standards, the original website is low resolution and its navigation cumbersome, so some years later a new website at TheBrickBible.com improved on the original site in various ways. For the 25th anniversary of the project, a further improved version of the site was launched.
The original Brick Testament is now a legacy website that will remain online indefinitely, so links to that site will still work. And if you prefer the look and feel of the old site, it will always be there for you, either there or at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
The current website contains the most complete set of content released to date.
Who can I contact for media inquiries or issues regarding this website?
Please send all media inquiries to contact@thebrickbible.com.
Reports of any broken links, typos, or other website issues are appreciated and can also be sent to contact@thebrickbible.com.
May I translate The Brick Bible books or website into another language?
The Brick Bible books have been published in English, French, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean. If you are a publisher interested in printing The Brick Bible books in another language, please contact Skyhorse Publishing to negotiate the rights.
Translations of the website are not permitted.