What is different about the World English Bible?

The style of the World English Bible, while fairly literally translated, is in informal, spoken English. The World English Bible is designed to sound good and be accurate when read aloud. It is not formal in its language, just as the original Greek of the New Testament was not formal. The WEB uses contractions rather freely.

The World English Bible doesn’t capitalise pronouns pertaining to God. The original manuscripts made no such distinction. Hebrew has no such thing as upper and lower case, and the original Greek manuscripts were written in all upper case letters. Attempting to add in such a distinction raises some difficulties in translating dual-meaning Scriptures such as the coronation psalms.

The Classic World English Bible translates God’s Proper Name in the Old Testament as “Yahweh.” All other editions of the World English Bible translate the same name as “LORD” (all capital letters), or when used with “Lord” (mixed case, translated from “Adonai”), GOD. There are solid translational arguments for both traditions.

Because World English Bible uses the Byzantine Majority Text (MT) as the primary 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 contains an addition in some translations, including the KJV. Erasmus admitted adding this text to his published Greek New Testament, even though he could at first find no Greek manuscript support for it, because he was being pressured by men to do so, and because he didn’t see any doctrinal harm in it. Lots of things not written by John in this letter are true, but we decline to add them to what the Holy Spirit inspired through John.

With all of the above and some other places where lack of clarity in the original manuscripts has led to multiple possible readings, significant variants are listed in footnotes. The reading that in our prayerful judgement is best is in the main text. Overall, the World English Bible doesn’t differ very much from several other good contemporary English translations of the Holy Bible. The message of Salvation through Jesus Christ is still the same. The point of this translation was not to be very different (except for legal status), but to update the ASV for readability while retaining or improving the accuracy of that well-respected translation and retaining the public domain status of the ASV.