A Question of Canon
Given that I’d like to create a translation of a Bible in the public domain, which Bible to do? All of them would be ideal, of course. On the other hand, who knows how much time I will have for the project?
It seems smartest to begin by doing the Hebrew Bible. Should I finish that, then the New Testament. Should I finish that, the Catholic Deuterocanon. Should I finish that, other books treated as canonical by the Eastern Orthodox. Then … who knows? Perhaps a crack at some Ethiopian books or some other books associated with the Old or New Testaments.
The plan is to start with the smallest canon and work my way out from there.
A Question of Text
As I see it, it does not make sense to start completely from scratch. It would be a more efficient use of time to choose the English text that comes closest to my desired goal and then revise it.
As stated on the About page, there are three things I am aiming for: (1) a public domain translation, (2) in reasonably current English, (3) in line with the findings of mainstream biblical scholarship. There is already a translation, the World English Bible, which fulfills the first criterion perfectly and is a reasonable start at the second. It does stray a bit from the conclusions of modern scholarship in some ways.
Now, the world English Bible was created essentially by a senior editor, Michael Paul Johnson, with the assistance of some volunteers, beginning with the text of the ASV and updating its language, and at some points attempting to improve on its understanding of the meaning of passages. In many cases, the resulting text is what I’m looking for. However, in some cases, misunderstandings of Greek or Hebrew, insufficient attention to English style, or the use of idiosyncratic understandings of textual criticism have lead to some readings that I think could use improvement.
It seems to me that the best way to proceed is verse by verse, comparing the ASV, seeing how the WEB has changed it, and reviewing those changes. Extensive notes will document the translation decisions.
Some of the legwork, especially for Genesis, I’ve already done. I’ll be carefully going over that work and reposting it here, piece by piece.