At the writers’ conference I attended in September, I was given a copy of a new version of the Bible entitled The Voice.
It’s a completely different type of “translation,” and I imagine there will be those who love it and those who hate it.
For books that tell stories and contain a lot of action, the text is almost like a screenplay. Luke 4 looks like this:
4 When Jesus returned from the Jordan River, He was full of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit led Him away from the cities and towns and out into the desert.
2 For 40 days, the Spirit led Him from place to place in the desert, and while there, the devil tempted Jesus. Jesus was fasting, eating nothing during this time, and at the end, He was terribly hungry. 3 At that point, the devil came to Him.
Devil: Since You’re the Son of God, You don’t need to be hungry. Just tell this stone to transform itself into bread.
Jesus: 4 It is written in the Hebrew Scriptures, “People need more than bread to live.”
5 Then the devil gave Jesus a vision. It was as if He traveled around the world in an instant and saw all the kingdoms of the world at once.
Devil: 6 All these kingdoms, all their glory, I’ll give to You. They’re mine to give because this whole world has been handed over to me. 7 If You just worship me, then everything You see will all be Yours. All Yours!
Jesus: 8 [Get out of My face, Satan!] The Hebrew Scriptures say, “Worship and serve the Eternal One your God—only Him—and nobody else.”
For other parts of the book, like the epistles, instead of trying to make the book more uniform, they tried to preserve each author’s “voice” and perspective (there were about 40 human authors). They remained true to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts, while not discarding the original idioms and artistic elements.
I’ve found I really enjoy this version. You can read about the process the team used at biblegateway.com, as well as see The Voice’s translations of any verse there. See for yourself and let me know what you think.