I once read an interview where Eugene Peterson was surprised when churches started using The Message as part of Sunday liturgy. Tyndale House today publishes Randy Alcorn, Francine Rivers, James Dobson and the Left Behind series. Taylor was fortunate to have predated the internet today bloggers would be lining up to dissect every jot and tittle, but at the time, it was a simply matter of you either liked it your didn’t. By today’s standards, Taylor’s work wasn’t all that controversial, but his decision to render the Psalms as prose rather than poetry is one of the features that was later undone in the creation of the NLT. While sometimes a publishing company will work to fill a void by creating a Bible, this is a Bible that created a publishing company. A year later, Billy Graham endorsed the project and gave away many times that number on his crusade telecasts. Today it’s hard to think of The Living Bible as radical, but several publishers rejected it, so Ken Taylor created Tyndale House Publishers and released Living Letters with a whopping print run of 2,000 copies in 1962.
Similarly, all three were roundly criticized by traditionalists and conservatives as taking too many liberties or not being “Bible enough.” Some people simply have an automatic aversion to new translations, or are influenced by church leaders who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in all things.Īll three were released in stages The Living Bible began as a series of smaller books, Living Letters, Living Gospels and Living Psalms and Proverbs being three examples The Message Old Testament came out as a series of four hardcover books The Voice issued a variety of editions consisting of individual Bible books and two music CDs.Ĭompleted versions of all three came out in 1971, 20 respectively, and all three spread in popularity through word-of-mouth recommendations. The Voice is the most recent of the three and was developed over the last ten years by the Ecclesia Bible Society, and while it is also a translation, the translators worked with stylists (poets, playwrights and musicians) to create something that blended traditional approaches and some radical departures in form.Īll three Bibles were quickly embraced by people looking for an alternative, fresh take on the text, and therefore each has impacted a different generation. It is Hebrew-to-English and Greek-to-English, so it is a translation (regardless what anyone tells you) but a translation that uses American colloquialisms and a conversational reading style. The Message refers to the Bible written by Eugene Peterson beginning in the 1990s to help people not knowing the original languages a better feel for the dynamics and nuances of Biblical passages. Anything else currently offered for sale is an NLT. The Living Bible is currently available for purchase in only two editions, a padded hardcover and an imitation leather anniversary edition.
This is not the same as the New Living Translation (NLT) though there is obviously shared history. It is an English-to-English simplification of the ASV. The Living Bible refers to the Bible originally begun in the 1960s by Ken Taylor to give his ten kids a better understanding of scripture at their suppertime family devotions. This is an article about three specific Bible versions, but has more to do with the form of each the purpose is not to delve into specific translation issues associated with the use of words, phrases, sentences or the doctrinal implications of different translation practices.