Other Interesting Bibles

Over the years, particularly the past hundred years, many translations, adaptations, and paraphrases of the Bible have come up. Some of these have remained to become staples in the lives of Christians, others were relegated to the periphery, and still others have come and gone.

Some translations are available only for the New Testament, while others changed significantly between the time that the New Testament version was first translated, and the project was completed with the translation of the Old Testament.

These include the American Translation, by Edgar J. Goodspeed, which included the New and Old Testaments; William Barclay's translation of the New Testament only; and one of my favorites, the Cotton Patch translation by Clarence Jordan, which includes only a portion of the New Testament. Other notable translations include the New Testament in Modern English, by J.B. Phillips; the Reader's Digest Bible, which angered more people than it pleased; the Gospels in Scouse, a vernacular version from the Liverpool area translated by Dick Williams and Frank Shaw in 1967; an amusing paraphrase called the Word Made Fresh, by Andrew Edington; and Young's Literal Translation, which is not really a modern translation.