Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

Although I have not had personal experience with the particular translation of the New Testament that the question is asking about, my understanding is that it was developed by a woman named Annie Cressman, who died in 1993. She was a Canadian Bible teacher in Liberia in West Africa.

While teaching students in an English-language Bible school, she found that she was spending more time explaining the meaning of the English than she was teaching the Bible itself. Therefore, she decided to write this simple version in easy English so that her students could more readily understand the text.

As an example, Mark 2:5 (from the account of how the friends of a paralyzed man could not bring the man into the house where Jesus was preaching because it was too crowded, and so went on top of the house, removed tiles from the roof, and lowered the mat of the paralyzed man down into Jesus' presence through the hole in the roof) is rendered in the King James Version as, "When Jesus saw their faith, He said unto the sick of the palsy, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee."

The Wordwide English New Testament expresses the same verse as, "Jesus saw that they believed he would be healed. So he said to the sick man, 'Son, the wrong things you have done are forgiven.'"

I have also seen commentaries indicating that this translation of the New Testament is quite similar to the one presented in The Bible in Basic English.

May 05 2022 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Jack Gutknecht ABC/DTS graduate, guitar music ministry Baptist church

I like the WE translation of the New Testament because it is easy to remember and cite. Instead of writing out the whole Worldwide English (New Testament), I just say "WE." In other words, when citing John 3:16, I say, "God loved the world so very, very much that he gave his only Son. Because he did that, everyone who believes in him will not lose his life, but will live for ever." (WE)

In 1959 the Full Gospel Publishing House in Toronto, Canada, printed a trial edition of the Gospel of Mark. A further edition was published in 1962 by the American Bible Society. The whole New Testament was first published by SOON Publications in India in 1969 in hardback form. This was assisted by Operation Mobilisation (OM) and was reprinted in 1971.

The vision to reprint a new edition of the whole New Testament has now been carried out by SOON in conjunction with EPH and OM. Where a change to more modern words has been made, this has been kept in line with the Authorised Version. The Bible in Worldwide English present on the Bible Gateway matches the 1996 printing by SOON Educational Publications.

May 06 2022 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report