IF SOMEONE WERE TO GIVE YOU the job of getting as many Christians as possible foaming at the dog collar with outrage (and I can't think of anyone likely to offer such employment, but if you can, please drop me a line), I don't see how you could do better than Good as New, with the possible exception of filming Jesus as a transvestite.

Good as New: A radical retelling of scripture is the New Testament as you've never seen it, translated by John Henson and the ONE Community for Christian Exploration. For a start, it's a thoroughly loose – baggy, even – ultramodern translation. For example:

Some of you have children. Would you give your little girl or boy a stone if they asked for a sweet? Or poison if they asked for fruit juice?

The controversy starts with what that bagginess allows the translators to do. You may have noticed Jesus' political correctness in that quotation, and Henson goes further down that road than the many recent inclusive-language reissues. "Your father" becomes "your parent". The Holy Spirit is a she. Jesus is a he, but Henson somehow manages never to use a pronoun for God. The kingdom of God becomes "God's new world". Hell becomes nothing much at all.

There's not a demon in sight. Possession becomes "mental illness", "fits", or "autism", on the basis that we and the Gospel writers describe the same conditions differently. The Devil becomes "evil".

There are still plenty of miracles, but some of them are rationalised. Here's the transfiguration, for instance...

Against the clear sky he looked different, with his sunburned face and white clothes reflecting the bright light.

PUSHING THE BOAT OUT INTO hotter water, this looseness allows the translators to turn the traditional meaning of much Bible teaching on its head. Predictably, the gay community gets off lightly. Instead of men committing "shameful acts with each other" and being punished, Paul now says "their stressful lives make them ill". Instead of wives submitting to husbands, "those in committed relationships should work hand in hand with their partners".

Less predictably, some of Jesus' more negative sayings turn into proverbs that he quotes merely to contradict them. You have heard it said...

Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

But Henson's Jesus says...

You think the right way is through a narrow gap in the wall, rather than along one of the new Roman roads that make travel easy for everybody. You should be careful about accepting everything you're told.

Most contentiously of all, Henson fires the New Testament canon. The idea that 27 books and no others are the perfect word of God is, he argues, irrational, unhistorical and "a turn-off to those seeking enlightenment".

So out go the letters supposedly from Paul to Timothy and Titus, long dismissed by some as fakes. Out goes Revelation, being post-apostolic, "contrary to the mind of Jesus" which only made it in by the skin of its gnashing teeth in the first place. In their place is the Gospel of Thomas, an odd but possibly reliable collection of Jesus' sayings.

And that's the Bible. No Satan, no sexism, no Armageddon, plenty of Jesus. It's the word of life, but not as we know it.

BLASPHEMOUS FOLLY, OR A much needed spring clean for the dustiest story ever told? Is it still the good book? Is it even a good book?

Taking the last question first, you bet it is. From my description, it may well sound like what it could easily have been – a tiresomely trendy makeover, twisting Jesus and friends around the party line of western liberalism. It's not.

With an extraordinary vigour and immediacy, Good as New constantly challenges, surprises and delights you. You may not agree with all its renditions – I defy you to – but you will find yourself rethinking what you thought you knew. Over and again you feel like you're reading about Jesus for the first time.

The big question is whether it does violence to the Bible and its message. "A radical retelling" or a complete rewrite?

Firstly, all translations twist the Bible one way or another. The fact that Henson's spin is more obvious probably makes it less dangerous than in those translations we read as gospel.

Moreover, every Bible reader has an interpretive voice in their head saying, "Ah, but that doesn't mean quite what it may sound like". Henson simply allows those voices to speak on the page. How helpful you find it will depend on whether your voices are the same as his.

You wouldn't want this to be your only Bible (actually, you might, but it's probably not a good idea); but it offers an invaluable new angle, compelling and refreshing.

WHICH LEAVES US WITH THE CANON – a big question to wrap up in your last 200 words. Isn't it obviously blasphemous presumption to take books in and out of the Bible?

Historically, no. If you have 66 books in your Bible, that's because the Protestant reformers threw seven books out of the Old Testament already. What's more, it took the first churches 20 generations to agree which books to include in the New Testament.

The Gospels and Paul's letters were accepted from century one, but 400 years later vast numbers of churches rejected Revelation. Rome long used the Apocalypse of Peter instead of Hebrews or James. They finally agreed, but what reason have we to assume they got it right?

So if a precise 66 (or 73) book Bible is the heart of your faith as God's ultimate communication with humanity, you have a problem. If, however, Jesus is the heart of your faith as God's ultimate communication with humanity, you have a solution. The point of the New Testament is to preserve Jesus' life and teaching, and what his followers said about him. It is those writings which are closest to Jesus which are most biblical. There is no reason to assume that no book outside the 66 can reveal Jesus as well as those within.

Here's a question to test Christian attitudes to the Bible. Assume the Gospel of Thomas genuinely preserves the words of Jesus as well as the biblical Gospels. Should they shuffle over to make room for it in the holy scriptures?

If one cannot accept the possiblity, the Bible as it stands is more important to one's religion than Jesus – a good example of idolatry. Say what you like about Good as New (as I'm sure you will anyway), it has its priorities right.

Want to read Good as New for yourself? Click to order your copy from the UK or US.

Steve Tomkins is a columnist for Ship of Fools, a regular writer for the BBC website and the author of a biography of John Wesley.

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