The World English Bible (WEB) is an English translation of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

freely shared

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" ...

. The translation work began in 1994 and was deemed complete in 2020. Created by volunteers with oversight by Michael Paul Johnson, the WEB is an updated revision of the

American Standard Version The American Standard Version (ASV), officially Revised Version, Standard American Edition, is a Bible translation into English that was completed in 1901 with the publication of the revision of the Old Testament. The revised New Testament had ...

from 1901. The WEB has two main versions of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

: one with

Deuterocanonical books The deuterocanonical books (from the Greek meaning "belonging to the second canon") are books and passages considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East to be ...

and the other limited to

Protocanonical books The protocanonical books are those books of the Old Testament that are also included in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and that came to be considered canonical during the formational period of orthodox Christianity. The Old Testament is entirely r ...

. The

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

is the same in both versions.

History

In 1994, Michael Paul Johnson felt commissioned by God "to create a new modern English translation of the Holy Bible that would be forever free to use, publish, and distribute." Since he did not have formal training in this regard, he started to study Greek and Hebrew and how to use scholarly works. His first translated books were the gospel and letters of

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

, which he shared drafts of on

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

and a

mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

, receiving some suggestions and incorporating them. Estimating he would be 150 years old by the time this style of work would be finished, Johnson prayed for guidance. The answer was to use the

(ASV) of 1901 because it is regarded as an accurate and reliable translation that is fully in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...

. Johnson's main goal became modernizing the language of ASV, and he made custom

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and oth ...

s to organize the process. This resulted in an initial draft of 1997 that "was not quite modern English, in that it still lacked quotation marks and still had some word ordering that sounded more like

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personific ...

English or maybe

Yoda Yoda () is a fictional character in the ''Star Wars'' universe, first appearing in the 1980 film ''The Empire Strikes Back''. He is a small, green humanoid alien who is powerful with the Force and is a leading member of the Jedi Order until it ...

than modern English." This draft was soon named World English Bible (WEB), since Johnson intended it for any English speaker, and the acronym indicates that

the Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through we ...

is the means of distribution. Over the years, a number of volunteers assisted Johnson. The entire translation effort was deemed complete in 2020, and the only subsequent changes have been fixing a few typos.

Features

The translation philosophy of the WEB is to be mostly formally equivalent, like the

it is based on, but with modernized English. The WEB also follows the ASV's decision to transliterate the

Tetragrammaton The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', and ...

, but uses "

Yahweh Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he po ...

" instead of "

Jehovah Jehovah () is a Latinization of the Hebrew , one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism ...

" throughout the

. The British and Messianic editions of the WEB, as well as the

and

use more traditional forms (e.g., the LORD). The WEB has two main versions of the Old Testament: one limited to the

, while the other also includes the Deuterocanon (a.k.a. the

Apocrypha Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered ...

). The New Testament is the same for both versions. There are a modest amount of footnotes for cross-references and brief translation notes.

Licensing

All of the text of the World English Bible is dedicated into the

. The ebible.org project maintains a trademark on the phrase "World English Bible" and forbids any

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in ...

that substantially alters the text from using the name "World English Bible" to describe it. The reasons given were that they felt copyright was an ineffective way of protecting the text's integrity and the fact that the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

licenses did not exist at the time the project began.

Critical reception

The Provident Planning web site uses the World English Bible because it is free of copyright restrictions and because the author considers it to be a good translation. The Bible Megasite review of the World English Bible says it is a good revision of the American Standard Version of 1901 (ASV) into contemporary English, which also corrects some textual issues with the ASV. The World English Bible is widely published in digital formats by a variety of publishers.

References

External links