The Living Bible (2 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
I have here translated, brethren and sisters most dear and tenderly beloved in Christ, the New Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation and solace, exhorting instantly and beseeching those that are more knowledgeable in the tongues than I, and that have higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of Scripture, and meaning of the Spirit, than I, to consider and ponder my labor, and that with the spirit of meekness. And if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense of the tongue, or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right English word, that they put to their hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do. For we have not received the gifts of God for ourselves only, or for to hide them; but for to bestow them unto the honoring of God and Christ and edifying of the congregation, which is the body of Christ.
In this wonderful day of many new translations and revisions, we can greet another new one with either dread or joy! Dread that “people will become confused” or joy that some will understand more perfectly what the Bible is talking about. We choose the way of joy! For each new presentation of God’s Word will find its circle, large or small, of those to whom it will minister strength and blessing.
This book, though arriving late on the current translation scene, has been under way for many years. It has undergone several major manuscript revisions and has been under the careful scrutiny of a team of Greek and Hebrew experts to check content, and of English critics for style. Their many suggestions have been largely followed, though none of those consulted feels entirely satisfied with the present result. This is therefore a tentative edition. Further suggestions as to both renderings and style will be gladly considered as future printings are called for.
A word should be said here about paraphrases. What are they? To paraphrase is to restate something in different words than the author used, normally with the goal of clarifying the meaning of what was originally communicated. This book is a paraphrase of the Old and New Testaments. Its purpose is to say as exactly as possible what the writers of the Scriptures meant, and to say it simply, expanding where necessary to promote a clear understanding for the modern reader.
The Bible writers often used idioms and patterns of thought that are hard for us to follow today. Frequently the thought sequence is fast-moving, leaving gaps for the reader to understand and fill in, or the thought jumps ahead or backs up to something said before (as one would do in conversation) without clearly stating the antecedent reference. Sometimes the result for us, with our present-day stress on careful sentence construction and sequential logic, is that we are left far behind.
Then, too, the writers often have compressed enormous thoughts into single technical words that are full of meaning, but need expansion and amplification if we are to be sure of understanding what the author meant to include in such words as “justification,” “righteousness,” “redemption,” “baptism for the dead,” “elect,” and “saints.” Such amplification is permitted in a paraphrase but exceeds the responsibilities of a strict translation.
There are dangers in paraphrases, as well as value. For whenever the author’s exact words are not translated from the original languages, there is a possibility that the translator, however honest, may be giving the English reader something that the original writer did not mean to say. This is because a paraphrase is guided not only by the translator’s skill in simplifying, but also by the clarity of his understanding of what the author meant and by his theology. For when the Greek or Hebrew is not clear, then the theology of the translator is his guide, along with his sense of logic, unless perchance the translation is allowed to stand without any clear meaning at all. The theological lodestar in this book has been a rigid evangelical position.
If this paraphrase helps to simplify the deep and often complex thoughts of the Word of God, and if it makes the Bible easier to understand and follow, deepening the Christian lives of its readers and making it easier for them to follow their Lord, then the book has achieved its goal.
KENNETH N. TAYLOR
Adapted from the preface to the
first edition of
Living Letters
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When God began creating
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the heavens and the earth,
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the earth was
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a shapeless, chaotic mass,
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with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors.
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Then God said, “Let there be light.” And light appeared.
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And God was pleased with it and divided the light from the darkness. He called the light “daytime,” and the darkness “nighttime.” Together they formed the first day.
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And God said, “Let the vapors separate
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to form the sky above and the oceans below.”
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So God made the sky, dividing the vapor above from the water below. This all happened on the second day.
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Then God said, “Let the water beneath the sky be gathered into oceans so that the dry land will emerge.” And so it was. Then God named the dry land “earth,” and the water “seas.” And God was pleased.
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And he said, “Let the earth burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant, and fruit trees with seeds inside the fruit, so that these seeds will produce the kinds of plants and fruits they came from.” And so it was, and God was pleased.
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This all occurred on the third day.
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Then God said, “Let bright lights appear in the sky to give light to the earth and to identify the day and the night; they shall bring about the seasons on the earth, and mark the days and years.” And so it was.
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For God had made two huge lights, the sun and moon, to shine down upon the earth—the larger one, the sun, to preside over the day and the smaller one, the moon, to preside through the night; he had also made the stars.
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And God set them in the sky to light the earth,
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and to preside over the day and night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God was pleased.
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This all happened on the fourth day.
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Then God said, “Let the waters teem with fish and other life, and let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.”
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So God created great sea animals, and every sort of fish and every kind of bird. And God looked at them with pleasure, and blessed them all. “Multiply and stock the oceans,” he told them, and to the birds he said, “Let your numbers increase. Fill the earth!”
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That ended the fifth day.
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And God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of animal—cattle and reptiles and wildlife of every kind.” And so it was.
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God made all sorts of wild animals and cattle and reptiles. And God was pleased with what he had done.
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Then God said, “Let us make a man
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—someone like ourselves,
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to be the master of all life upon the earth and in the skies and in the seas.”
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So God made man like his Maker.
Like God did God make man;
Man and maid did he make them.
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And God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; you are masters of the fish and birds and all the animals.
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And look! I have given you the seed-bearing plants throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food.
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And I’ve given all the grass and plants to the animals and birds for their food.”
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Then God looked over all that he had made, and it was excellent in every way. This ended the sixth day.
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