The Voice, New Testament Devotional
The Voice - Thomas Nelson
Any literary project reflects the age in which it is written, starts the preface of “The Voice” but sometimes this isn’t true of all biblical translations. The Voice, a scripture project to rediscover the story of the bible by Thomas Nelson and friends does reflect 2010 without compromising on truth. Translations of the bible often carry the relics of years of translation, The Voice is a poetic and beautiful addition to this well esteemed collection of translations and devotionals which doesn’t detract from the mainstream publications of the Holy Bible but it certainly eased itself into this bloggers regular reading pile.
Once more plagiarising The Voice’s preface: there are four key words that describe the vision of the project:
- holistic - considers heart, soul and mind
- beautiful – achieves literary and artistic excellence
- sensitive – respects cultural shifts and the need for accuracy
- balanced – includes theologically diverse writers and scholars
As a bible translated into a modern context, there are three significant additions to this text, outside and in addition to the standard translation which you might find in any bible be it NIV, NLT, WEB etc etc.
- Screenplay format – in dialogue and monologue this bible uses a screenplay format to capture the dialogue, instead of saying “then Jesus said to John …” it is written like a screenplay, leaving room for your creative mind to build the scene in your head, it actually is a beautiful way of following a story.
- Additive text in Italics – the original text of the bible was a very different language, not only to English, but especially to 2010 English. So to bridge the gap in a few places the authors have added small amounts of text in italics, so that it reads accurately and is much more understandable.
- Side notes – as you would be familiar with from study bibles, but these side notes are great! A small example is at the start of the book of John “My name is John. My fathers name was Zebedee. We made …”. The side notes are very contextual, personal and edifying.
The project is beautiful in language and is brimming over with life changing truths. If the language of the bible has lost it’s impact on you then The Voice will re-impress on you the power and the reality of the bible and the stories contained within.
Download the free pdf The Voice: The Book of John or buy it online below.
Buy The Voice New Testament on Amazon.com now.
Joshua Withers
