Articles
Articles examining how the UPDV's textual decisions affect the understanding of specific doctrines.
Books of the Bible
The UPDV Matthew is a reconstruction of the Gospel that addresses material which appears to have been added from other Gospels or which lacks attestation in the earliest sources...
The Book of Matthew in the UPDV is a reconstructed text. The Greek Matthew that survives in all known manuscripts is not a simple translation from a Hebrew or Aramaic original —...
The Gospel of Luke in the UPDV addresses several places where the text appears to have been modified after the original was composed. These range from the exclusion of the birth...
The Gospel of John in the UPDV preserves what appears to be the original text of the Fourth Gospel, while addressing several places where the text has been disturbed, expanded, ...
The UPDV presents the Gospel of John as ending at 19:35. Everything after that verse — the fulfillment citations, the burial, the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, the S...
The book of the Acts of the Apostles is not included in the UPDV. While Acts appears to be generally based on historical people and events for its outline, many of the details w...
Scholarship has always called this text "The Epistle to Diognetus," after the named recipient. The UPDV calls it "Greeks" — after the audience.
The Epistle to the Greeks is ten chapters long. An anonymous second-century author addresses a high-ranking pagan named Diognetus, answering his questions about the Christians: ...
The book of First Maccabees is included in the UPDV since it fills in important events in the history of Israel between the time of Malachi and the New Testament.
1 Maccabees tells the story of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire (167–134 BCE), from the persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes through the restoration of the t...
It is generally accepted that the author of Sirach was a teacher and scribe in the second century BC. He was well-versed in the Scriptures and wrote to help those who wanted to ...
Translation Decisions
The purpose of the UPDV Bible is to provide a modern version that retains the accuracy of older English translations, to update archaic words so that it is easier to read using ...
The UPDV Bible excludes or reconstructs several passages in the New Testament based on textual and historical evidence. Any teaching of the Bible which depends solely on these p...
The UPDV Bible generally follows the recommendations of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (HOTTP), Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament (CTAT), and the United Bible Soci...
The UPDV arranges its books differently from the traditional Bible order. The New Testament comes first, and within the New Testament, John opens the canon rather than Matthew. ...
The UPDV does not take a position on the virgin birth as a matter of faith. It takes a position on the text. Five distinct judgments — translational, text-critical, editorial, a...
The standard Greek text reads differently. Where thirty-eight consecutive entries in Matthew's genealogy use the active verb "begot" — Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, on...
In the garden of Gethsemane, the night before his death, Jesus knelt down and prayed. What happened next is one of the most contested questions in New Testament textual criticis...
At Jesus's baptism, a voice from heaven declares his identity. Every major English Bible translates it: "You are my beloved Son." The UPDV renders it differently: "You are my ch...
Language and Meaning
If you grew up in church — especially a Pentecostal or charismatic one — you know how the story of tongues goes. It starts with a dramatic scene in Jerusalem:
In traditional English translations of 1 Maccabees 1:14, the apostasy of the Jewish leadership under Antiochus IV Epiphanes begins with what sounds like a municipal building pro...
The UPDV translates gendered terms according to the distinctions present in the original languages. Hebrew uses several different words where English has only "man," and the UPD...
In earlier forms of English, Bibles such as the King James Version used words like ye, thee, thou, and you to distinguish singular and plural address. Modern English has lost th...
If you open the UPDV Updated Bible Version to Proverbs 23:2, you will encounter a dietary warning translated with startling consistency: "put a knife to your throat, if you are ...
Open a standard English Bible to the Minor Prophets, and you will find declarations that pit the God of Israel against the gods of the surrounding nations. In traditional Englis...
If you open the UPDV Updated Bible Version to John 5:34, you will encounter an unexpected word. Where virtually every English Bible translates Jesus as saying "that you may be s...
Aramaic is likely the original language of part of the New Testament. In Syriac, a type of Aramaic, there is a word for "life" which can mean "life" such as eternal life. In som...
The companion article, The Speech in John 1:1, establishes what John's Speech is — the Aramaic Memra, God's active speaking presence deeply embedded in first-century synagogue l...
The UPDV Updated Bible Version translates 'the Word' in John 1:1 as 'the Speech'.[1] The reason for this is to restore the original meaning of what has generally been translated...