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A Translation of the Bible

This is a project to amplify Introduction to Bible Translation by producing a translation of the Bible into English. It may eventually include the books of the Apocrypha, as included in many editions of the King James Bible, and possibly other books regarded as sacred by one or more churches, such as the Book of Enoch.

See also Bible (Wikisource) the Wikisource collaborative Bible translation project.

Languages

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The translation will keep as closely as possible to the original languages:

  • Old Testament: The edition published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, edited by Meir Letteris.
  • Apocrypha: The Septuagint text as published by the University of Gottingen.
    • NB: Many of the books of the Apocrypha may originally have been written in Greek. Some of the books may originally have been in Hebrew or Aramaic, but only the Greek translation survives. Where some of the original is known, for example for Ecclesiasticus, this has generally been used rather than the Greek.
  • New Testament: The latest revision of the Nestle-Aland text.

Methodology

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  • The language of the translation will be modern but dignified, and should be comprehensible to any reasonably well-educated person who speaks English fluently.
  • This should not be a slavish word-for-word translation, but should be grammatically correct English. In particular, there is no need to translate a given Hebrew word by the same English word wherever it occurs. On the other hand, paraphrases that may distort the meaning must be avoided. The guiding principle is "as literal as is possible, as paraphrased as is absolutely necessary".
  • The translation should always make sense. If the meaning of the original is uncertain or controversial, this should be explained in a note.
  • In the Old Testament, the traditional tune for chanting aloud often provides an indication of punctuation, and this should be adhered to where possible.
  • In general, it may be assumed that there is a full stop at the end of each verse, and none in the middle of a verse. However, this rule need not be followed slavishly. There is no presumption that a new chapter starts a new section, since the chapters are a mediaeval invention.
  • Where there might reasonably be doubt or controversy about a translation, it would be helpful to add a footnote justifying what has been done.
  • Headers giving one-line summaries of a passage may be inserted; they will be in italics to show that they are not part of the text.
  • For ease of comprehension, well-known proper names as used in most translations should be retained rather than replaced with more accurate transliterations. Thus we will have Moses not Moshe, Solomon not Shlomo, Jeremiah not Yirmeyahu.

Old Testament

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Five Books of Moses

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Historical books (known as Former prophets)

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Prophetic books (known as Later prophets)

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Apocrypha

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See also Apocrypha

New Testament

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The Gospels and Acts

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The Pauline Letters

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The non-Pauline Letters and Revelation

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Bibliography

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See A bibliography for Bible students#Translation_theory

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