The translator, Phil Ward, sent this to me via e-mail and I’m posting it with his permission:

You commented about the dangers of this being a one-person translation. However, the Bible as Poetry was reviewed word-for-word for six months by another scholar, one who had supervised the creation of 20 different translations for the Bible Society. After 40,000 hours work on the translation, I would be surprised if there are any one-person idiocyncracies in it. And if there are, let me know and I will fix them! The translation deliberately tries to be as impartial as is humanly possible. If there are two different schools of thought on one verse and they both can’t be covered in the translation itself, the second one is given in the footnotes.

Martin Luther, Wycliffe and Tyndale were all one-person translations and they were very good.

He also sent me a document called Humor in the New Testament. This is a subject I’m interested in because I usually miss any and all humor in the Bible. It’s a long document so I’ve only been able to skim it, but it’s enlightening. As far as each item being legitimate, that’s for the reader to discern and decide. Much of these items are listed in the footnotes of the translation.

See the first post on this subject here.

Certainly this must have been mentioned on other blogs but I haven’t seen anything about it yet. There is a New Testament translation called The Bible as Poetry. Information and a sample chapter of Matthew can be found at BibleasPoetry.com.

The translation was done by Phil Ward. The format is unique. There is a gutter to the left which has verse numbers so they aren’t in the way of the text. The text is formatted as poetry. Since obviously not all of the Bible is poetry, I’m not sure how I feel about this, but the formatting can highlight certain relationships between phrases. The translation is somewhat on the literal side but without archaic language which is really nice. To the right of the translation are the footnotes so that you don’t have to look at the bottom of the page.

See the site for other details on the features it has.

Since there is only one translator, including for the footnotes, care needs to be taken in reading. But I find that this translation is interesting enough to be enjoyable to read and when I find something I want to verify, it gives me ideas for things to look into further.

I was given a pre-release sample of the whole New Testament. Here is a sample passage without the formatting. I like the translation.

1 Corinthians 1:27-29 Bible as Poetry
27 But God chose the world‘s fools
to shame the wise.
God chose the world‘s weak
to shame the strong.
28 And God chose the world‘s lowly
and despised
(those without status) –
to eliminate status.
29 So no one can boast

I’d like to know what your comments are based on the sample of Matthew.

BibleasPoetry.com