Using Genesis doesn't sound like such a good idea, a better approach might be some neutral text about nothing of any religous or cultural significance. How do you keep it from getting destroyed intentionally? Do you just hide it well enough in enough places and just hope the right people may find it in the future?
> Using Genesis doesn't sound like such a good idea
That was also my first reaction, but thinking about it a bit more there might be a practical reason for it: they included genesis 1-3 in 1500 languages. I bet there aren’t many texts available that have that many translations, if at all, outside of the bible.
The point is the language, not the content, I assume. Although dictionary + grammar textbooks would have been better.
I'm also not sure about thousands of languages (the goal being all of them). Throughout history, there may have been a hundred of lingua francas. A few hundred tops. We also see a constant desire of people to leave writings in the most popular language of the era. It makes sense, too: they want the largest percentage of people to be able to consume their writing.
Creating dictionary pairs + grammar textbooks + science textbooks for a (still) large but limited number of languages popular now and in the past would be more beneficial to future linguists.
