The Bible in Living English

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The Bible in Living English is a translation by Steven T. Byington. He translated the Bible on his own for about 45 years from 1898 to 1943. After he died in 1957, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society acquired the publication rights, but the translation was not published until 1972, at which time they printed 100,000 copies. A major characteristic of this translation was the use of God's name, which Byington translated Jehovah in the Old Testament. Byington states: “The spelling and the pronunciation are not highly important. What is highly important is to keep it clear that this is a personal name. There are several texts that cannot be properly understood if we translate this name by a common noun like Lord, or, much worse, by a substantivized adjective”.

This translation is notable in that it is published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses), but differs from their better known New World Translation by not inserting the indefinite article "a" in John 1:1, "At first there was the Word, and the Word was where God was, and the Word was God", not "was a God".

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