The Great Bible Review

History of this project

The long road towards this Bible review project started in 2007, when I was contacted by a group of private Bible researchers, who review the accuracy of Bible translations in a few languages that they focus on. They had seen some Bible text translations that I had done two years earlier, in 2005, and they wanted to have a chat with me. We exchanged some thoughts about the principles of accurate Bible translating.

This is all that I heard of these people in the next 15 years, until they contacted me again in 2022. This time they asked me to join their group, and participate in their project of reviewing the accuracy of Bible translations. 15 years had taken a toll among their members, and they needed more people in their ranks. They remembered me as someone who has suitable language skills and a personal interest in the accuracy of Bible translations.

I participated in their project for a year and a half, and I learned their way of thinking, how they review Bible translations, what categories of deviations they use, and how they score the deviations based on estimated significance. It was interesting research, but eventually I started to feel that I want to prioritize my time for my own other projects. I left this group in the summer of 2023, but their way of thinking did not leave me. Soon I got the idea that I want to do something similar in another language. I want to review the accuracy of all Bible translations that have ever been published in english.

I imagined that the Bible has been translated into english a bit more than 100 times, because some website gave such an estimation. Eventually I found more than 800 translations, so the project became larger than I had expected. The definition of a Bible “translation” is debatable, though. Probably half of these 800 translations are simply restyled versions of a famous older translation, which is in the public domain and freely reusable, so that the “translator” has not looked at the manuscripts in original languages at all, and might not even master the original languages.

I would like to give credit to the members of this private Bible research group, who are my mentors and inspirers in the art of reviewing the accuracy of Bible translations. However, these persons wish to remain anonymous at this point, until their own Bible review project will be fully completed.