NEWSWEEK: There have been some 3,000 translations of the Bible to date. Why another?
Rabbi Sidney Brichto: The Bible has been tainted by holiness. No literary person really wants to read it. It’s a best seller least read. If you were to sit on a train and take a Bible out, it would be unusual for another person to sit next to you, because they’d think you’re either a Jehovah’s Witness or an evangelical and would be a bit frightened. I want people to read [the Bible] as literature. I want them to read the narrative as primarily fiction. They’re good stories. I want to make [the Bible] a good read … I have sex scenes, for example, in the story of Esther, because I think it requires [detail], not “He saw her, he asked her to come up to his place and he knew her and she was pregnant.” Something else happened. Those who do read the Bible read it like a duty, a chore. There are so many professors of English who would be embarrassed to admit that they haven’t read Homer or Euripides, but [unashamedly admit they] haven’t read the Bible because they feel it’s a religious tract.
More found here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/937287.asp