American retail giant Costco has apologised after copies of the Bible labelled as "fiction" were found on sale at one of its stores, triggering protests by Christian groups.
Caleb Kaltenbach, a pastor at the Discovery Church in Simi Valley, California, tweeted a picture of the Holy Bible, with a bar-code price sticker clearly labelled "Fiction" on 15 November.
"Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION. Hmmmm ... " he wrote, prompting a surge of retweets and comments from critics and some suggesting that the description was accurate.
The retailer sought to downplay the flap, apologising, but saying it was simply an error by a distributor, AFP reports.
"Costco's distributor mislabelled a small percentage of the Bibles, however we take responsibility and should have caught the mistake," it said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We are correcting this with them for future distribution. In addition, we are immediately relabelling all mislabelled Bibles. We greatly apologise for this error."
