Easy-to-Read Version | |
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Full name | Holy Bible: Easy-to-Read Version |
Abbreviation | ERV |
Language | English |
Complete Bible published | 1987 [1] |
Copyright | Copyright by World Bible Translation Center |
God made the sky and earth. At first, the earth was completely empty; nothing was on the earth. Darkness covered the ocean, and God’s Spirit moved over the water. Then God said, "Let there be light!" And light began to shine. Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son. God gave his Son so that every person that believes in him would not be lost, but have life forever. |
The Holy Bible: Easy-to-Read Version (ERV) is an English translation of the Bible compiled by the World Bible Translation Center. It was originally published as the English Version for the Deaf (EVD) by BakerBooks.
Some Deaf readers struggle with reading English because of their limited exposure to language. [2] The World Bible Translation Center (WBTC) decided to do a translation that would make reading the Bible easier for them. The EVD uses simpler vocabulary and shorter sentences to make it more simple to understand. The English Version for the Deaf (EVD), and its second cover, the Easy to Read Version (ERV) were translated by Ervin Bishop (Greek Language Translator), David Stringham (Hebrew Language Translator) and Benton L Dibrell (Deaf Language Specialist, Interpreter, and Translator). The translators used a thought-for-thought or functional equivalence method of translation. It was found to be useful for others who struggle with reading and is often used in prisons and literacy programs.
The ERV uses the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1984) as its Old Testament text with some readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also follows the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, when its readings are considered more accurate. For the New Testament revisions, the ERV uses the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (fourth revised edition, 1993) and Nestle-Aland Novum Testament Graece (twenty-seventh edition, 1993).
The EVD New Testament was completed and published by Baker Books in 1978. The Old Testament was completed in 1986. The entire compilation of both Old and New Testaments was published as both the 'English Version for the Deaf' and the 'Easy to Read Version' (primarily for individuals for whom English is a second language) in 1987. In 2004, a major revision of the ERV was finished. It used broader vocabulary and greater use of gender-inclusive language. The EVD was left unchanged, so it and the ERV now have different texts. Apps for reading both Bibles are available from the WBTC's website, the full text is available online via various Bible aggregator portals. [3] [4]
The ERV caused a slight bit of controversy among a small number of lay members of the Churches of Christ (the WBTC is an outreach of the Churches of Christ). Goebel Music wrote a lengthy book critiquing this translation titled "Easy-to-Read Version: Easy to Read or Easy to Mislead?", criticizing the ERV's method of translation, textual basis, and wording of certain passages. [5] Music’s book, in turn, received criticism, as he holds no credentials with which to criticize the translators of the ERV, and seemed to have a lack of awareness regarding the stated purpose of the translators. The critique was not well-received by scholars.
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible into contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released in 1978 with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies on recently-published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2023 all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. This translation itself is a revision of the American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901, and was intended to be a readable and literally accurate modern English translation which aimed to "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries" and "to put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition."
The Revised Version (RV) or English Revised Version (ERV) of the Bible is a late-19th-century British revision of the King James Version. It was the first officially authorised and recognised revision of the King James Version in Great Britain. The work was entrusted to over 50 scholars from various denominations in Great Britain. American scholars were invited to co-operate, by correspondence. Its New Testament was published in 1881, its Old Testament in 1885, and its Apocrypha in 1894. The best known of the translation committee members were Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort; their fiercest critics of that period were John William Burgon, George Washington Moon, and George Saintsbury.
The Douay–Rheims Bible, also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The first volume, covering Genesis to Job, was published in 1609; the second, covering the Book of Psalms to 2 Maccabees plus the three apocryphal books of the Vulgate appendix following the Old Testament, was published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of the volumes and offered insights on issues of translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of the Vulgate.
The New Living Translation (NLT) is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published in 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation, the NLT was created "by 90 leading Bible scholars." The NLT relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
The New American Standard Bible is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published by the Lockman Foundation, the complete NASB was released in 1971. A new revisions were published in 1995 and 2020. The NASB relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. It is known for preferring a literal translation style that generally preserves the structure of the original language when possible, rather than an idiomatic style that attempts to match natural English usage.
There have been various debates concerning the proper family of biblical manuscripts and translation techniques that should be used to translate the Bible into other languages. Biblical translation has been employed since the first translations were made from the Hebrew Bible into Greek and Aramaic. Until the Late Middle Ages, the Western Church used the Latin Vulgate almost entirely while the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, mostly used the Greek Byzantine text. Beginning in the 14th century, there have been increasing numbers of vernacular translations into various languages. With the development of modern printing techniques, these increased enormously.
Although Christianity became the state religion of Ethiopia in the 4th century, and the Bible was first translated into Ge'ez at about that time, only in the last two centuries have there appeared translations of the Bible into Amharic.
The Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition (SSBE) is a Sacred Name Bible which uses the names Yahweh and Yahshua in both the Old and New Testaments. It was produced by Jacob O. Meyer, based on the American Standard Version of 1901 and it contains over 977 pages. The Assemblies of Yahweh printed 5,500 copies of the first edition in 1981. It is also used by some members of the Sacred Name Movement.
Sacred Name Bibles are Bible translations that consistently use Hebraic forms of the God of Israel's personal name, instead of its English language translation, in both the Old and New Testaments. Some Bible versions, such as the Jerusalem Bible, employ the name Yahweh, a transliteration of the Hebrew tetragrammaton (YHWH), in the English text of the Old Testament, where traditional English versions have LORD.
The Common English Bible (CEB) is an English translation of the Bible whose language is intended to be at a comfortable reading level for the majority of English readers. The translation, sponsored by an alliance of American mainline Protestant denomination publishers, was begun in late 2008 and was finished in 2011. It uses gender-inclusive language and some editions sold include the books of the Apocrypha which are used by the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, and in some Anglican congregations.
Bible translations in the Middle Ages went through several phases, all using the Vulgate. In the Early Middle Ages, they tended to be associated with royal or episcopal patronage, or with glosses on Latin texts; in the High Middle Ages with monasteries and universities; in the Late Middle Ages, with popular movements which caused, when the movement were associated with violence, official crackdowns of various kinds on vernacular scripture in Spain, England and France.
While the Old Testament portion of the Bible was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek. The Greek language, however, has several different dialects or denominations. This required several different translations done by several different individuals and groups of people. These translations can be categorized into translations done before and after 1500 AD.
The modern Vietnamese alphabet chữ Quốc ngữ was created by Portuguese and Italian Jesuit missionaries and institutionalized by Alexandre de Rhodes with the first printing of Catholic texts in Vietnamese in 1651, but not the Bible. Some New Testament extracts were translated and printed in catechisms in Thailand in 1872.
The modern Hindi and Urdu standards are highly mutually intelligible in colloquial form, but use different scripts when written, and have lesser mutually intelligibility in literary forms. The history of Bible translations into Hindi and Urdu is closely linked, with the early translators of the Hindustani language simply producing the same version with different scripts: Devanagari and Nastaliq, as well as Roman.
The Christian Standard Bible (CSB) is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published by Holman Bible Publishers in 2017 as the successor to the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), the CSB "incorporates advances in biblical scholarship and input from Bible scholars, pastors, and readers to sharpen both accuracy and readability." The CSB relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
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