The Original Bible Project
As some of you know I have been working for over a decade on a new and quite different translation of the Hebrew Bible, and eventually the Greek New Testament and the so-called Apocrypha. The official name of the translation is The Transparent English Bible and it is being produced as part of The Original Bible Project, a non-profit educational organization founded in 1992. I serve as the main textual editor, so it is my responsibility to produce preliminary drafts of the translation and Prof. Robert Haak of Augustana College has served as my main consulting editor for the Hebrew Bible. Once we have produced a given draft, and are reasonably satisfied with it, we have contracted with various other academic readers for input and evaluation. It is a long and tedious process and both of us have had to work on this in the midst of our otherwise full academic and scholarly agenda, but slowly we have made progress. A popular and non-technical overview of the translation method and the basic concept behind the Project is posted at the OBP site.
We have also made the decision, beginning this month, to release Beta Versions on the Web. It might be tempting for scholars to think that non-specialists would have little of value to contribute to discussions of translations of the Bible but many of us know such is not the case. It is absolutely amazing how many thousands of serious Bible students have given years of their time and devotion to poring over every line of the Bible, doing word studies, comparing translations, and learning how to use sophisticated Bible software. Dr. Haak and I have learned to welcome this kind of evaluation feedback as a crucial part of this Project, and of course, we welcome input from our professional colleagues as well.
The first Translation Sample is now available as a PDF file for downloading, consisting of the Torah Sedrah Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). Others will follow over the coming weeks and months. Most readers of this Blog have come here because of an interest in the historical Jesus, and a critical part of understanding Jesus and early Christianity is to make use of good and historically accurate translations of both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, so I am thinking that the Original Bible Project might be of interest to many.
Comments on the translation can be sent to: originalbible@earthlink.net