The Brick Testament is a project created by Brendan Powell Smith in which Bible stories are illustrated using still photographs of dioramas constructed entirely out of Lego bricks.
The project began as a website in October 2001 that featured six stories from the book of Genesis, and is completely unaffiliated with the LEGO Company. There is also a Brick Testament book series.
Throughout stories are retold using passages from the Bible, with chapter and verse cited, the wording being a free adaptation that Smith says is based on a number of public domain Bible translations. When images are being used to contrast with the underlying scripture, Smith dramatizes the images with his own additional text. Such text is displayed in gray instead of the usual black.
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| The Brick Last Supper |
The dioramas seen in The Brick Testament are created from Smith's personal Lego collection. The pieces come from hundreds of Lego sets dating from the 1960s to the present.
In the few instances where alterations are made to Lego elements, they are generally simple changes made with a hobby knife or permanent ink marker. An example alteration is God's hair: Smith made God's white hair by carving a white helmet piece (found on Peeron). The only completely non-Lego part of Smith's scenes is the background sky.
All of Smith's images are digital. Smith photographed early scenes with a Nikon Coolpix 950. He currently uses a Nikon Coolpix 4500. After photographing the scenes, he adds speech balloons and sometimes makes alterations using image editing software.
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