Living Bible

The Living Bible (LB) is an English version of the Bible by American publisher and author Kenneth Taylor released in 1971. Unlike most English Bibles, the volume is a paraphrase. Mr. Taylor was quoted as having said that he paraphrased the American Standard Version as a project for several years, largely while commuting to his job in Chicago by subway.

The Living Bible was well received in many moderate Evangelical circles, in part because of its publication by Tyndale House, a publisher with impeccable Evangelical credentials. Youth-oriented Protestant groups such as Younglife accepted it readily. In 1962 Billy Graham received a copy of the Living Letters – the title of the first-published portion of the Living Bible containing New Testament epistles – while in a hospital in Hawaii. He was impressed with it enough to order 50,000 copies of the Living Letters for use in his "crusades". Later, he ordered an additional 450,000 to 600,000 copies of Living Letters for his crusades.

The Living Bible was a best-seller in the early 1970s, largely due to the accessibility of its modern language, which made passages understandable to those with little or no previous background in Bible study. A year after the 1971 release, the Living Bible was the most popular Bible sold in America. In 1973 Taylor received royalties of roughly 8 million US dollars. By 1974, those royalties had swelled to more than 29 million dollars. By 1997, 40 million copies of The Living Bible had been sold.

With this level of acclaim and acceptance came criticism, especially from conservative circles. The criticism took several forms, but generally fit one or more of the following:

• The Bible is too sacred to be paraphrased. This shows a lack of respect for the text and is too likely to reflect the doctrinal biases of the paraphraser. This view is often expressed by proponents of literal translations.
• The paraphrase is too infelicitous of phrase in some instances.
• Taylor was devoid of linguistic, theological, or other qualifications sufficient to have his work taken seriously.
• Among Calvinists, they are uncomfortable that Taylor's Arminian (which is at the opposite end from calvinism) biases are reflected in this paraphase. In fact, the "Living Bible" became popular among Arminians because of the biases.

Dr. Bill Ruhl, a minister from the Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote a tract containing most of these criticisms and several others. Other very conservative leaders followed suit in some instances. Supporters of Taylor accused these critics of smallmindedness and replied that many of their attacks were more of a personal nature than serious criticisms of the work.

In his own defense, Taylor claims that he never intended for his paraphrase to be used as the reader's sole source of Biblical knowledge, or as an aid to serious, scholarly study, but rather to put the basic truths of the Bible in language which could readily be understood by the typical reader without a theological or linguistic background, and that he had never represented himself as a professional Bible scholar or his work as a translation. Largely in response to the criticisms, however, plans were made to supplant the paraphrase with a translation that would incorporate the simplicity of language of The Living Bible. The Living Bible has since been replaced by the New Living Translation, released by Tyndale House in 1996.

The Living Bible is probably the only version of a Bible in modern times that contains a swear word, in 1 Samuel Chapter 20, verse 30. In the first editions of the Living Bible, Kenneth Taylor had Saul saying, "You son of a bitch." This angered many parents, especially since the word was also in the children's verion of the Living Bible. The verse, where Saul yells at Jonathan, has been toned down in the New Living Translation.

This article is licensed under the Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “The Living Bible.”