Berkeley Version

Last updated
Berkeley Version
Full nameThe Berkeley Version in Modern English
AbbreviationBV
LanguageEnglish
Complete Bible
published
1959
CopyrightCopyright by Zondervan Publishing House
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness lay upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. God said: Let there be light, and there was light.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The Berkeley Version is an English translation of the Bible. The New Testament was published by Zondervan in 1945 and an entire Bible was published in 1959. A revised version was published as the New Berkeley Version or Modern Language Bible in 1969.

According to editor-in-chief Gerrit Verkuyl: "The conviction that God wants His truth conveyed to His offspring in the language in which they think and live led me to produce the Berkeley Version (BV) of the New Testament. For I grew increasingly aware that the King James Version (AV) is only, in part, the language of our people." [1]

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Gerrit Verkuijl or Gerrit Verkuyl was a New Testament Greek scholar and Bible Translator. He emigrated from the Netherlands to the United States at 21, becoming a farmhand in California. He later went to college, earning degrees from Park College of Kansas City, Princeton University, and the University of Leipzig.

References

  1. Verkuyl, Gerrit (April 1951). "The Berkeley Version of the New Testament". The Bible Translator. 2 (2): 80. doi:10.1177/000608445100200207. S2CID   164676721 . Retrieved 4 January 2017.