Preface
It is our prayer that the Open English Translation of the Bible will give you a clear understanding of the accounts and messages written by the God-inspired Biblical writers.
Note: This is still a very early look into the unfinished text of the Open English Translation of the Bible. Please double-check the text in advance before using in public. Some things (like capitalisation of ‘him’ referring to Yeshua, or of ‘father’ referring to God) in the OET-RV haven’t been decided yet so we’re still testing both ways.
The OET Literal Version (OET-LV) is a technical document that presents the Hebrew and Greek texts to the English reader in words of their own language. It’s not especially nice to read, but every original language word is represented in the text so you can focus on the exact words that were written (and the exact numbers and units that were used if you’re tracing Biblical symbolism, etc.). It’s like holding an English magnifying glass over the original documents, and sometimes these technical details are important.
In contrast, this OET Readers’ Version (OET-RV) is designed to help you see the big picture. Remember that one of Jesus/Yeshua’s strengths was using stories and word-pictures to help his listeners understand spiritual truths. Remember that as we look back to the real-life stories of Biblical characters like Abraham and Isaac, Mosheh and the exodus from Egypt, Jonah/Yonah and many others, we can see that those narratives were also prophetic and taught about the coming messiah. So when you read this Readers’ Version, we want you to be able put aside the magnifying glass and stand back and focus on the stories and the big picture, and then on what effect they should have on your chosen lifestyle. We want those stories and their deeper meanings to stick in your mind so that you’ll be excited to share the Good Message with others via gripping stories that they can relate to.
Goals and intended audience
The OET has the following goals:
- The primary goal of the Open English Translation is to make the Bible more accessible to this current generation with the best of a free-and-open, easy-to-understand Readers’ Version alongside a faithful Literal Version so that readers themselves can checkout what was said and what is interpreted by the translators.
- Part of the motivation comes from our work on the street and door-to-door where we worked hard to explain the Good Message about Yeshua to people without any church background. The Readers’ Version strives to replace jargon and terminology that’s only heard at church with words and phrases that should be understood by modern English speakers.
- A further goal is to expose more people to some of the background of where our Bibles come from and how translators make decisions, i.e., to teach a little more about original manuscripts and to challenge a little more about English translation traditions (some going back to the 1500’s) that can possibly be improved.
- Finally, we also want a translation that can be read by Christians with many years of Bible reading experience, but who might benefit by reading the accounts in slightly different words that make it fresh and interesting, and hopefully it will provoke deeper thought into what the original speakers or writers likely meant.
The OET has the following distinguishing points:
- An easy-to-understand Readers’ Version alongside a very Literal Version.
- A generous open license so that the Open English Translation can be freely used in any Bible app or website, or printed in your church Bible-study notes without any verse limits and without even needing to request permission.
- This Readers’ Version speaks like people around you. Because the history and legacy of English Bibles now goes back for hundreds of years, many things have been carried over that readers don’t even realise. For example, we all smile at Yoda saying, “Strong is the force.” That’s because naturally we would say, “The force is strong.” So think about “Great is your faithfulness.” We don’t normally talk like that in natural English. (At least Miles Coverdale improved it in his version in 1535 if you look carefully.) But our aim isn’t at all to criticise those who came before (because we very-much build on their shoulders)—we just want our readers to be able to share the Good Message of Yeshua the messiah with others, without them thinking that Christians speak like dinosaurs (or Yoda)!
- The Readers’ Version has section headings and cross-references and most of the other features that help modern Bible readers.
- The Readers’ Version uses modern units for all measurements (easy to understand and visualise), whereas the Literal Version retains the ancient units (useful for historical and symbolic studies).
- The Readers’ Version uses well-known figures of speech, or if the original figure of speech is not readily understandable, explains the point that the author appears to be trying to express. On the other hand, the Literal Version retains the original figurative language (even if it’s not a figure of speech that most modern readers are familiar with).
- Up and down in the original languages (and thus in the Literal Version) refer to uphill and downhill (which you might expect in cultures where most people walked or rode animals). However, in the Readers’ Version, up and down are used to refer to north and south respectively as per our modern norm (with computerised maps).
- The Readers’ Version is less formal than most modern English Bible translations, for example, we would use contracted words like we’ll and didn’t, especially when it’s in direct speech. (Always remember that the Bible was written in the languages of the common people.)
- The Readers’ Version uses section headings which are very helpful to skim through when trying to locate a certain passage. However, you’ll quickly notice that they are formatted in such a way as not to break the flow of the narrative or letter. This is to visually help the reader to appreciate the full context of the part they’re reading, and avoid breaking the connections with what came before and what follows.
- We’ve also tried to focus our section headings on principles that are being taught, rather than just focusing on the events happening at the time.
- We also provide a list of these section headings that you can quickly skim through (including extra, alternative headings to help with searches for familiar words like ‘leper’ and ‘scribe’ which we don’t use in the OET-RV).
- Being a 21st century translation done in an era when there is much more effort in general to respect speakers of other languages (including the languages of ethnic minorities in our own countries) and to pronounce their names and placenames correctly, the OET attempts to do the same for Biblical names and placenames. (All this is a little complex when we have both Hebrew and Greek versions of names and placenames—more below.) Certainly by showing a little more respect for Hebrew names, we hope to make this Bible translation a little more ‘Jew-friendly’. If you have difficulty following the names in the Literal Version, you can always look across to the Readers’ Version. (Most English readers looking at names in the Bible all the way from Jericho to John would have no idea that there’s no J letter or sound in either Hebrew or Greek, plus there’s absolutely no such name as James in the New Testament manuscripts—it’s a historical accident carried through from the Latin from an inconsistency by John Wycliffe—see https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-versions-and-translations/james-or-Jacob-in-the-bible/ for example.)
- In addition to wanting to get names and placenames more accurate, we’ve also attempted to modernise and simplify the spelling (transliterations) of these names to make it easier for readers to pronounce them as they come across them, e.g., using f instead of ph, so Epafras instead of Epaphras. (Oddly, even traditional English Bible translations surprisingly do use Felix and Festus.)
- With regular words, we’ve tried to do the opposite, i.e., to use less Greek rather than more wherever possible. So a word like baptise (which is an adapted transliteration of the Greek verb), actually gets translated, so this example becomes immerse.
- Italics are only used for emphasis, not to indicate added words as historically done in older translations due to limitations of the original printing processes. The OET fixes the problem where most modern typesetting uses italics for emphasis whereas older Bibles use italics for the words which should actually be deemphasised, i.e., the words which actually aren’t in the original manuscripts! (We use a lighter colour for added words.)
- Bolding is used for nomina sacra. This is a feature of the early Koine Greek manuscripts that isn’t marked in most Bible translations (or even in most Greek New Testaments). Nomina Sacra (which is Latin for ‘Sacred Names’) appears to be a scribal marking that usually indicate words that the scribes considered to refer to God.
- The English Christ is an adapted transliteration of the Koine Greek word Kristos used for the original Hebrew messiah. (It’s not Jesus’/Yeshua’s surname!) It seems to make sense to only use one word consistently rather than using two words for the same thing (just because they came from two different languages), so the OET has elected to only use messiah. However, these words actually have a meaning, just as President is not just a title, but someone who presides over governmental meetings. So going a step further, we have chosen to use the contemporary meaning of the word in the Literal Version. The original meaning is one who is anointed (by pouring a hornful of oil over them), but we use the extended meaning which is one who is selected/chosen (by God).
- Most readers living in modern democracies have never been familiar with the concept of an ancient king or lord who has the power of life and death over them. Thus the title Lord Jesus/Yeshua is easily said, yet relatively few actually live with Yeshua as the lord of their thoughts and actions and daily activities. (Just think how many would embarrassingly rush to turn off the video they’re streaming if Yeshua appeared in the room.) As a reaction to the word Lord seemingly becoming so cliché for many Christians, we use the translation master as a way to get readers to at least think a little more about what the concept might mean. (The word boss felt a little too informal.)
- The Literal Version tries to add as little as possible that’s not actually there in the original manuscripts. Of course, we add spaces between words so we can read it faster, and we add capitals at the start of sentences as per standard, modern English, but we don’t capitalise words like Kingdom of Heaven or even He when it refers to Jesus/Yeshua, because the concept of capital and small letters didn’t even exist when original manuscripts like the portion visible at https://GreekCNTR.org/manuscripts/images/1G20001/1G20001-262r.jpg were written. (Our policy has more to do with accuracy and education than it does with ‘lack of respect’ or any such thing. Often this goes against religious tradition of the last few centuries, but just because something is traditional, does not necessarily mean that it is correct or even helpful.)
- Most dialects of modern English don’t distinguish between you (singular) referring to just one person, and you (plural) referring to a group of people. However, the original languages clearly distinguish these, so in order to indicate this to our readers the Literal Version uses you_all for the plural form (although we are aware that some modern dialects now prefer y’all or yous).
- Because the Literal Version so closely follows the original languages, it’s important to remember that words often don’t match one-to-one between languages. This is one reason why the OET-LV reads strangely: because we try to avoid using different English words if we can; knowing that the OET-LV will not be natural English. Again, this is because we want the OET-LV to be a window into what’s actually written in the original languages. For fluent English (like in the Readers’ Version) the same Greek word might require several different translations when used in different contexts. For example, the Greek word translated raise in the OET-LV would likely require the following changes:
- to raise from sitting, we’d want: stand up
- to raise from bed, we’d want: get up
- to raise from the grave, we’d want: come back to life
- to raise an object, we’d want: lift up
- to raise a person, we’d often want: exalt or praise
- Alert readers might be aware that there’s a play on words here in the gospels. When Yeshua talked about himself being raised up, it was deliberately ambiguous because his hearers didn’t understand until right near the end that he was going to be executed. So we, looking back in history, know that he was talking about coming back to life, but at the time, they were just very confused and didn’t understand what he meant. But amazingly, as well as referring to his resurrection, raising also refers to his crucifixion as the victims on the stakes were also raised up from the ground. (See John/Yohan 3:14.) Sadly, it’s not usually possible to make a translation easy to read and understand in our current times, without losing some of the underlying meaning or ambiguities or word-plays that were presented to the original hearers. That’s exactly why it’s good to have two different translations right there side-by-side in front of you!
- These particular pages use British spelling, but American spelling will also be available in the future.
- Our preference in most editions is to place The Gospel according to John/Yohan before Matthew. This has a couple of advantages:
- The Old Testament starts with “In the beginning, Elohim created…” and the New Testament starts with “In the beginning was the Messenger…”.
- Acts ends up right after the first book by its author Luke.
- It just reminds readers that the order of the ‘books’ in the Bible is not set by sacred degree—only by tradition.
- Some do complain that the traditional order of the first four gospel accounts represent the lion, the calf, the man, and the eagle of Rev 4:6-7 which allegedly match with the banners (not described in the Bible) of the four divisions of the tribes of Israel mentioned in Numbers 2.
- Beware of some traps interpreting the Literal Version. Because it’s not designed to be used alone (but rather alongside the Readers’ Version), it’s much more literal than most other ‘literal versions’. You’ll quickly notice lighter colours that mark the deemphasis of words that had to be added to make the English sentences even make sense. But there’s at least two other things that aren’t necessarily changed in the English Literal Version:
- Other languages use the negative differently, especially when it’s doubled or tripled in the sentence. If you don’t understand this, you could easily think that the original means the opposite of what the words actually appear to say. For example the double negative: “You are_ not _caring_about no one.” (adapted from Matthew 22:16). In natural, fluent English, we would have to reverse the second negative to get the expected meaning, ending up with anyone as you’ll find in the Readers’ Version. But in Greek, the second negative adds emphasis rather than reversing the first negative. So our Literal Version shows you the words that are actually there (in the Greek in this case).
- Other languages may omit (or elide) words which are clearly implied to the original reader, but which the modern English reader finds strange, e.g., a son may be divided against his father, and a daughter her mother. The elided words are ‘may be divided against’ which should follow ‘daughter’.
Always check the Readers’ Version carefully for how it is translated into modern, idiomatic English before jumping to any conclusions of your own about what the original language or the Literal Version says or doesn’t say.