This petition was created to advocate for the removal of relevance and the readdition of the “essence of the verse” rule. Relevance as well as essence of the verse were added in an attempt to help new players be able to get into and have fun with bible bowl. However, while both help this cause, relevance significantly hurts both the experience of players that have put a large amount of time into learning the text, as well as that of the audience. It hurts the experience of players due to the penalty for quoting an entire verse. When an entire verse is quoted, often a player is counted wrong despite having quoted the verse perfectly because a small part of the verse quoted wasn’t contained in the relevant information. Not only is this fact frustrating for the players but also for any spectators. When a spectator watches bible bowl and hears someone answer a question, they usually don’t hear a cohesive verse quoted; rather, they witness a player saying nonsensical, out of context phrases as they try to give the answer while also dodging the mines of “irrelevant” information. Due to these occurences we advocate for the removal of this rule and a restoration of the “essence of the verse” rule from previous years. This rule accomplishes the goal of making the game easier for newcomers while also not hurting the experienced and hardworking existing players or their audience. For the sake of National Bible Bowl and it’s members, we ask that this request be considered. Thank you.

Just to clarify, essence is indeed in bible bowl, however, it’s effects are like largely overshadowed by the presence of relevance.