Jim Caviezel, star of The Passion of The Christ, is to reprise his role of Jesus in an audio Bible project for Thomas Nelson Publishers, according to a report in The New Yorker.

Caviezel is to be joined by Seinfeld star Jason Alexander who will portray an unspecified Old Testament character in the project said to be planned to rival Zondervan's successful Inspired By … The Bible Experience, featuring prominent African-American actors.

The Thomas Nelson audio effort was revealed in a major article on Bible publishing in the latest issue of The New Yorker. The article, “The Good Book Business,” also said that Nelson planned a new Bible paraphrase, The Voice, for “the progressive emergent church” movement.

Writer Daniel Radosh traveled to Nashville and also Denver to visit the International Christian Retail Show in July in order to report on what he called the “intensively competitive business” of Bible publishing. Annual Bible sales totaled an estimated half-billion dollars, he said, and publishers “manage to sell 25 million copies a year of a book that almost everybody already has.”

In his 4,000-word report, Radosh showcased Nelson's popular “BibleZine” editions, which have sold more than 1 million copies, and referenced the debate over word-for-word or thought-for-thought translation. Bible publishing in the 21st century, he observed, “involves an intersection of faith and consumerism that is typical of contemporary American evangelicalism.”