The Spoken English New Testament: A New Translation from the Greek

Why should there be a "spoken English" New Testament? The simple answer is that using a spoken English style often makes the Good News more accessible to a greater variety of people than a literary style. The English language is always evolving and changing, and every new generation of readers deserves a version of the scriptures that is accessible, understandable, and natural-sounding to them. If you've only heard or read the Bible in one of the relatively traditional translations, it might come as a surprise that the people who wrote the New Testament did not talk or write in old-fashioned language. Like most of us, they wrote in the everyday language of their own time and place. The NT writers often say unexpected, deeply challenging things, and one important way to let their words strike home is to let them speak in a normal, everyday manner. So, to be faithful to the authors of the New Testament, I am deeply convinced that the best translation should sound at least as normal when read aloud in English as their writing did when it was read aloud in their language. -- J. Webb Mealy, PhD, Bible scholar and translator