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

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

freely shared

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. The translation work began in 1994 and was deemed complete in 2020. Created by Michael Paul Johnson with help from volunteers, 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 several versions available on its website, including both American and British styles of English. Another important distinction is two types of

Old Testament The Old Testament (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 and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

: one limited to protocanon, while the other includes deuterocanon/

apocrypha Apocrypha () are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to ...

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." As he did not have any formal training in this regard, he studied Greek and Hebrew, as well as how to use scholarly works. His first translated books were the gospel and letters of John. The drafts were shared on

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and a

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, where he received several suggestions from others and incorporated them. Estimating he would be 150 years old by the time this style of work would be finished, Johnson decided to base further work on the

(ASV) of 1901, which is regarded as an accurate translation and is wholly in the

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. Johnson's main goal became modernizing the language of ASV. He created custom

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s to organize this process, resulting in the initial draft of 1997 which "was not quite modern English, in that it still lacked quotation marks and still had some word ordering that sounded more like Elizabethan English or maybe Yoda than modern English." This draft was soon named World English Bible (WEB), as Johnson intended it to be for any English speaker, while the acronym indicates that the Web is its means of distribution. Over the years, numerous volunteers have assisted Johnson. The entire translation effort was deemed complete in 2020, but relatively minor changes are still made.

Features

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

it is based on, but with modernized English. There are a modest amount of

footnote In publishing, a note is a brief text in which the author comments on the subject and themes of the book and names supporting citations. In the editorial production of books and documents, typographically, a note is usually several lines of tex ...

s for cross-references and brief translation notes. The WEB originally followed the ASV's decision to transliterate the

Tetragrammaton The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliteration, transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from ...

, but used "

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

" instead of "

Jehovah Jehovah () is a Romanization, Latinization of the Hebrew language, Hebrew , one Tiberian vocalization, vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God in Judaism, God of Israel in the Hebrew BibleOld Testament. The Tetr ...

" throughout the

. However, this was relegated to the ''Classic'' version of the WEB; all other versions now use the word "LORD".

WEB and ASV comparison

Licensing

All of the text of the World English Bible is dedicated to 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 a first, previously created original work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from ...

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 website 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

Official website
* * {{English Bible translation navbox 2000 books 2000 in Christianity Bible translations into English Public domain books simple:World English Bible