The
World English Bible
Translated by
Michael Paul Johnson
Based on the ASV 1901 and original language versions
Public Domain
The World English Bible (WEB) FAQ
This Frequently Asked Questions document covers the following about the
* Why create yet another English translation of the Holy Bible?
* Why is the copyright such a big deal?
* Isn't it dangerous not to copyright the WEB?
* What is the WEB Revision?
* Who is behind the WEB Revision work?
* Is the WEB a one-man translation?
* What are your qualifications to do translation work?
* What is the WEB Translation Philosophy?
* What original language texts are you using?
* How does the WEB compare to other translations?
* What about the King James Only movement?
* What makes you think that you can compete with multi-million
* What kind of editing help do you want?
* How do you publish draft portions of the WEB?
* How do I join the WEB mailing list?
* How do I get off of the WEB mailing list?
* How do I change my address on the WEB mailing list?
* Is anyone else working on a public domain, Modern English
translation?
* When will the WEB be completed?
* Can I get a printed copy of the WEB?
* Why the name WEB?
* Why do you use "Yahweh" for God's name in the Old Testament?
* Why don't you capitalize pronouns referring to God?
* Why do you use contractions?
* Where can I get the WEB?
* How can I help support the WEB work?
* Who Maintains this FAQ?
Why create yet another English translation of the Holy Bible?
That is a good question. There are many good English translations of the Holy Bible. Unfortunately, all of them are either (1) archaic (like the KJV and ASV of 1901), or (2) covered by copyright restrictions that prevent unrestricted free posting on the internet or other media (like the NIV and NASB). The Bible in Basic English (BBE) was in the Public Domain in the USA (but not all countries) for a while, but its copyrighted status was restored by GATT. (The BBE used a rather restricted subset of English, anyway, limiting its accuracy and readability.) In other words, there is NO OTHER complete translation of the Holy Bible in normal Modern English that can be freely copied (except for some limited "fair use") without written permission from the publisher and (usually) payment of royalties. This is the vacuum that the World English Bible is filling.
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Why is the copyright such a big deal?
The copyright laws of most nations and the international treaties that support them are a mixed blessing. By granting authors and translators a legal monopoly (for a limited, but very long, time) on the right of copying and "first sale" of their works, the law makers have made writing and translating very profitable for some people whose works are in great demand. This has, no doubt, been a factor in the creation of many of the good Modern English translations of the Holy Bible that we now enjoy. The problem with this system, with respect to the Holy Bible, is that it has had the effect of limiting distribution of God's Word in modern languages. For example, I cannot legally post copies of the entire New International Version of the Holy Bible on my web site in a downloadable, searchable, and readily copyable format without the permission of the International Bible Society and Zondervan (copyright owner and publisher). Zondervan won't grant such permission unless they get a significant royalty (they quoted me $10,000 + $10/copy distributed) and unless I convince them that my Bible search software is "good enough" for them. Needless to say, the Bible search software that I am writing with the intention of distributing as donorware will not come with the NIV.
The problem of copyright protection of Modern English translations of the Holy Bible is not just significant on the Internet and various electronic information services. It also affects people who want to quote significant portions of Scripture in books, audio tapes, and other media. This drives up the price of preaching the Gospel. Basic economics tells us that this is not a good thing when our goal is to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). For example, the "free" Bibles that the Gideons place cost more if they use a modern version, like Thomas-Nelson's New King James Version, than if they use the (more difficult to read) King James Version.
Naturally, I'm not suggesting that we abolish the copyright law or that existing Modern English translations be immediately released to the Public Domain. I understand the way that the profits from the sales of the NIV, for example, help fund other language translations at the International Bible Society (as well as helping to enrich some folks at Zondervan). I also understand that the business of Bible sales has helped establish a good supply of Bibles in many parts of the world, in a variety of formats, sizes, styles, and colors. What we are doing is liberating at least one Modern English translation of the Holy Bible from all copyright restrictions — a translation that is trustworthy, accurate, and useful for evangelism and discipleship.
Another concern where copyright restrictions come into play is in translation and creating derivative works. For example, the copyright notice of the NASB expressly forbids making translations or derivative works based on the NASB without getting permission from the Lockman Foundation. I don't know if they would make this easy or hard, expensive or cheap, but I do know that there will be no need to even ask when using the WEB.
Isn't it dangerous not to copyright the WEB?
No. Copyright protection is intended to protect the income of the copyright holder's sales of a work, but we are planning to GIVE AWAY the right to make copies of this version of the Holy Bible to anyone who wants it, so we have nothing to lose that way. There is some argument for copyrighting a Bible translation just to retain some legal control against some evil, cultic revision of a translation. The God's Living Word translations of John's Gospel and John's letters are copyrighted only for this reason, for example, even though blanket permission to make unlimited copies of that translation is published with them. This legal leverage is so much weaker than God's protection of His own Word that it is of questionable value. (See Revelation 22:18-19.) One other major concern is that somebody might later claim a copyright on the WEB and remove it from the Public Domain. Because there is a timely and public declaration of the Public Domain status of the WEB by those who are working on it, that would not work, and they would not be able to defend such a bogus copyright claim.
With a Public Domain work, there is a hazard of confusion if many people start revising it or making derivative works from it and call it the same thing. For that reason, the name "World English Bible" is a trademark that may only be used to identify the World English Bible as published by Rainbow Missions, Inc., and faithful copies of that work. In addition, official distributions of the World English Bible are often digitally signed to provide a tamper-evident seal.
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What is the WEB Revision?
The WEB Revision is an update of the American Standard Version of 1901, which is in the Public Domain. The revision is also in the Public Domain, which sets it apart from other revisions of the American Standard Version, like the New American Standard Bible and the Revised Standard Version. The first pass of the translation, which has already been done, was to convert about 1,000 archaic words and word forms to modern equivalents using a custom computer program. The second through seventh phases consist of manual editing and proofreading. The initial manual pass is to add quotation marks (the ASV of 1901 had none), update other punctuation, update usage, and spot check the translation against the original languages in places where the meaning is unclear or significant textual variants exist. The subsequent passes are to review of the results of the previous pass. In each pass, volunteers read the current draft, looking for typos, unclear passages, etc., then report back to the senior editor (Michael Paul Johnson <[email protected]>), who checks the suggestions and merges the best suggestions into the master draft. As this is going on, the draft at the WEB web page is updated.
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Who is behind the WEB Revision work?
Rainbow Missions, Inc., a Colorado nonprofit corporation — and many volunteers who are born again and seeking to daily follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. If the Lord so moves you, tax-deductible financial gifts to help pay for WEB publishing and other costs associated with this project may be made to:
Rainbow Missions, Inc. PO Box 1151 Longmont CO 80502-1151 USA
Rainbow Missions gets its name from the rainbow that is a sign of the covenant between God and Noah, the rainbow around God's throne, and the rainbow that suddenly appeared in the clear blue sky right after I asked God what to name this ministry.
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Is the WEB a one-man translation?
Many people have been involved in the production and editing of the World English Bible from a variety of backgrounds. Because this is a revision of the American Standard Version of the Revised Bible, we start with the over 50 Evangelical scholars who worked on that project. They, in turn, relied on the work of those who had gone before them. We also rely on the work of many scholars who have found, compiled, combined, and published the excellent and highly accurate Hebrew and Greek texts from which we work. We also rely on the excellent lexicons of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek that are available to us.
In addition to these excellent references that represent literally hundreds of years of combined labor by many committed Christian men and women, we have access to the United Bible Society handbooks on Bible translation and a large number of other English translations to compare and consult.
Among the volunteers who have contributed to this project, we have people who attend various churches, including Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, non-denominational, and many more. This broad representation helps guard against introducing sectarian bias into the work. In addition, the novel technique of publishing draft copies of the World English Bible on the Internet provides additional protection against bias, because all serious comments are carefully considered and the wording compared to the original language.
Although we don't demand credentials from people who comment on the translation by email, we do validate their comments before deciding what to do with them.
We do have one senior editor who is responsible for decisions regarding the text, but he is also accountable to several other Christians. Everyone who has authority to decide on the wording in the World English Bible believes in the inspiration by the Holy Spirit of the text as recorded by the original authors. In addition, we also believe that the Holy Spirit is still active in preserving the text and helps us in our work to the extent that we let Him.
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What are your qualifications to do translation work?
Standing on the shoulders of giants - those mighty men of God who provided the critically edited original language texts, translated other English versions (especially the ASV), wrote the great translation guides available from the American Bible Society, and the writers of the Greek & Hebrew study materials I use - is the most obvious. Others include having studied the Bible for years, studying several languages, and earning a Master's degree. None of those matter as much as the next reason. God called me to do this, and I willingly answered His call. God would not call me to do something without enabling me to do so. Without God's call, I would drop this project like a hot rock. Although many people contribute suggestions and typo reports, they are all checked before editing the master copy of the World English Bible.
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What is the WEB Translation Philosophy?
The WEB must
* be done with prayer — specifically prayer for inspiration by the
Holy Spirit.
* be accurate and reliable (Revelation 22:18-19).
* be understandable to the majority of the world's English-speaking
population (and therefore should avoid locale-specific usage).
* be kept in the Public Domain (and therefore be done by volunteers).
* be made available in a short time, because we don't know the exact
time of our Lord's return.
* preserve the essential character of the original 1901 publication.
* use language that is not faddish, but likely to retain its meaning
for some time.
* render God's proper Name in the Old Testament as "Yahweh."
* resolve unclear passages by referring to the original Hebrew and
Greek.
* be done with utmost respect for God and His Word.
* be done by Christians from a variety of denominations and
backgrounds.
* retain (at least for now) the ASV 1901's pronoun capitalization
rules (lower case "he" referring to God).
* retain (in most cases) the ASV 1901's use of "he" when that word
might mean ("he and/or she").
* restrict footnotes to those which clarify the translation or
provide significant alternate readings
Bible translation (as with any natural language translation) is a
balancing act, where the translators seek to preserve the following:
* The meaning of each thought or sentence.
* The meanings of individual words in their context.
* The shades of meaning implied by word forms, tense, etc.
* The impact and tone of each passage.
* The style of the original authors who were inspired by the Holy
Spirit.
* Faithfulness to the target language (English, in this case).
Note that some of the above goals are at odds with one another, like preservation of the original style vs. faithfulness to the target language, and expressing the last bit of the shades of meaning vs. preserving the impact. Still, it is possible to retain a good balance. Different balance points are chosen by different translation committees. Indeed, many translations can be characterized by the weight the translators gave to each of the above items. For example, The Amplified Bible excels at getting the meaning across, but falls down hard on impact, style preservation, and faithfulness to the target language. The New Living Translation excels at preserving the meanings of entire thoughts, impact, and faithfulness to the target language, but loses some of the style and shades of meaning. The New International Version excels at most of the above, but loses some elements of style and some of the subtleties of wording. The World English Bible attempts to balance all of the above with a fairly literal translation.
Some people like to use the terms "formal equivalent" and "dynamic equivalent." Neither of these exactly describe what we are doing, since we have borrowed ideas from both, but I suppose that we are closer to formal equivalence than dynamic equivalence.
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What original language texts are you using?
Since this is primarily an update of the 1901 edition, the choices made
by the original 50 or so Evangelical scholars that made this
translation hold unless reference is made to the original languages to
help with places where the Elizabethan English is not clear, or where
major textual variants are known to exist. In this case, we are using
the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, also called The Stuttgart Bible, in
the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Majority Text as published for use
with The Online Bible in the New Testament (M-Text). This choice of
Greek text is very close to what the KJV translators used, but does
take advantage of some more recently discovered manuscripts. Although
there are good scholarly arguments both for and against using the
Byzantine Majority Text over the "Alexandrian" text based on the dating
and critical editing work of Nestle and Aland and published by the
United Bible Societies (UBS), we find the following to be compelling
reasons:
* The UBS text has a lot of "dropout" errors relative to the M-Text.
Diligent scribes with a respect for God's Word are more likely to
miss copying something (i.e. by skipping a line, etc.) than to make
* Different scribes copying the same passage aren't all likely to
make the same mistakes at the same places, even though some
mistakes are likely to be copied over many times.
* When a scribe had a choice of manuscripts to copy, he would
normally copy the one that he trusted the most, thus causing the
most trusted text to be copied more often.
* The UBS text relies heavily on the dating of the media upon which
the text was written, but those texts that are used more and
trusted more would both be copied more often and worn out from use
sooner.
* The UBS text is heavily weighted to a small number of manuscripts
relative to those available to us, and relies heavily on one
manuscript that was pulled from a trash can at a monastery.
* The Holy Spirit takes an active interest in preserving what He has
inspired.
* In those few sections where the M-Text and UBS text differ
significantly, I have taken my question of textual choice directly
to God, and God chose to answer me by confirming in several
different ways that reading which the M-Text rendered. The main
passage in question is in Mark 16, but there are others, too. While
I certainly don't claim to be infallible, I do know when to say,
"Yes, Sir" and follow the direction I see the Lord pointing me in.
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How does the WEB compare to other translations?
The WEB is different enough to avoid copyright infringement, but similar enough to avoid incurring the wrath of God. By "different enough," I mean that the wording is about as different from any one Modern English translation as the current translations differ from each other. By "similar enough," I mean that the meaning is preserved and that the Gospel still cuts to the very soul. It is most similar to the ASV of 1901, of course, but I suppose that similarities will be found with other translations.
The WEB doesn't capitalize pronouns pertaining to God. This is similar to the NRSV and NIV, and the same as the original ASV of 1901. Note that this is an English style decision, because Hebrew has no such thing as upper and lower case, and the oldest Greek manuscripts were all upper case. I kind of prefer the approach of the KJV, NKJV, and NASB of capitalizing these pronouns, because I write that way most of the time and because it is a way of offering greater honor to God. I admit that it is kind of a throw-back to the Olde English practice of capitalizing pronouns referring to the king. This is archaic, because we don't capitalize pronouns that refer to our president. It is also true that chosing to capitalize pronouns relating to God causes some difficulties in translating the coronation psalms, where the psalm was initially written for the coronation of an earthly king, but which also can equally well be sung or recited to the praise of the King of Kings. Capitalizing pronouns relating to God also makes for some strange reading where people were addressing Jesus with anything but respect. In any case, in the presence of good arguments both ways, we have decided to leave these as they were in the ASV 1901 (which also gives us fewer opportunities to make mistakes).
The WEB, like the ASV of 1901, breaks the KJV tradition by printing God's proper Name in the Old Testament with a spelling closest to what we think it was pronounced like, instead of rendering that Name as "LORD" or "GOD" (with all caps or small caps). The current scholarly consensus has shifted from spelling this Name as "Jehovah" to spelling it as "Yahweh." There are a couple of other English translations that use "Yahweh," so this is not new, per se, but it does set it off a little from other translations.
Because World English Bible (WEB) uses the Majority Text as the basis
for the New Testament, you may notice the following differences in
comparing the WEB to other translations:
* The order of Matthew 23:13 and 14 is reversed in some translations.
* Luke 17:36 and Acts 15:34, which are not found in the majority of
the Greek Manuscripts (and are relegated to footnotes in the WEB)
may be included in some other translations. Romans 14:24-26 in the
WEB may appear as Romans 16:25-27 in other translations.
* 1 John 5:7-8 may read differently in some translations.
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What about the King James Only movement?
May God open their eyes and give them a sound understanding.
If you prefer the King James Version of the Holy Bible, then, by all means, read it and do what it teaches. I think that the KJV was a wonderful Contemporary English translation of the Holy Bible when it came out. It has been mightily used by God and has had (and continues to have) a profoundly good impact. Unfortunately, the evolution of the English language continually erodes its value as time goes on. It is now outsold by the excellent New International Version, for many good reasons.
I guess that there are a few people that seem to believe that the KJV is more accurate than the original Hebrew and Greek of the Holy Bible, and that all the other versions are tainted with heresy and conspiracy. I've read some of their literature. I found it to be some of the most non-Christian and illogical literature that I have endured, thus further proving the claim that the KJV is the only valid Bible to be wrong, at least in my mind. I guess I've now put myself on record as being a heretic in their eyes, but I must follow God, rather than men.
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What makes you think that you can compete with multi-million dollar publishers?
Indeed, throwing another Modern English translation into the "market" to "compete" with solid translations like the NIV and publishing giants like Zondervan sounds as silly. It sounds like that, perhaps, until you consider that the primary target for the WEB is royalty-free distribution of the Holy Bible in unlimited copies made by many people using many computers, tape recorders, photocopiers, and presses all over the world. This is a "market" that the "giants" have excluded themselves from. Indeed, if they change that policy (don't hold your breath waiting for them to), we win, anyway. If we win this area, that is enough to justify this effort. If we do an excellent job, the WEB might possibly start competing in more conventional areas (like printed Bibles in bookstores), but not because of any significant effort or marketing on our part. After all, the bookstores have lots of Bibles in Modern English, already.
Once you look at the whole picture of what is going on, the multi-million dollar publishers and Bible translators really don't have much of an effect on us, nor do we have much of an effect on them. The result of the combined efforts of both is simply more complete availability of the Holy Bible in Modern English.
Of course, it does take considerable effort to pull off a decent Bible translation — even a language update like the WEB. Fortunately, there are lots of people willing to volunteer some time to help with this cause, and the Internet helps bring those people together.
The real bottom line, though, is that this is God's project, and He is fully capable of providing everything that we need to accomplish His goals.
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What kind of editing help do you want?
Specifically, we need people who will read drafts of WEB chapters
carefully, checking the following things, and email suggestions for
improvements in the following areas:
* Typos & spelling errors.
* Punctuation errors.
* Grammar & usage errors.
* Unclear wording or wording that may be misunderstood.
* Wording that varies in meaning from other good Bible translations
(realizing that some will vary due to "textual variants" in the
underlying original languages).
* Wording that may inadvertently be "too close" to any copyrighted
Modern English translation for too many verses in a row (thus
risking charges of copyright infringement).
* Questions that come up with respect to specific portions of the
translation.
* Inconsistencies in style, usage, or translation.
Note that all suggestions made in line with the above mentioned translation philosophy will be seriously considered. There is no guarantee, of course, that any suggestion will result in a change, especially in those areas that involve judgment calls, because we are likely to get conflicting suggestions for the same passage. If in doubt, suggest or ask, anyway. We want to eradicate as many of the above distractions as possible, so that the meaning and message of the Holy Bible come through clearly.
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How do you publish draft portions of the WEB?
Draft portions of the WEB are published in the WEB mailing list and at http://ebible.org/bible/web, and in the unmoderated Usenet news groups alt.bible and alt.christnet.bible. Once the WEB translation is done, we plan to continue it as a daily Bible reading list.
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How do I join the WEB mailing list?
There are actually three mailing lists that can properly be called the WEB mailing list: