That is a good question. There are many good English translations of the Holy Bible. Unfortunately, almost all of them were either (1) archaic (like the KJV and ASV of 1901), or (2) covered by copyright restrictions that prevent unrestricted free posting on the internet or other media (like the NIV and NASB). The Bible in Basic English (BBE) was in the Public Domain in the USA (but not all countries) for a while, but its copyright appeared to have been restored by GATT, at least for a time. It now appears that in spite of the ambiguities involved, BBE is really in the Public Domain, now, but that was not at all clear at the time I first investigated. (The BBE used a rather restricted subset of English, anyway, limiting its accuracy and readability.) In other words, at the time this project was started, there was NO OTHER complete translation of the Holy Bible in normal modern English that could be freely copied (except for some limited “fair use” or in the case of the NET Bible, restrictions regarding personal use only, etc.) without written permission from the publisher and (usually) payment of royalties. This is the vacuum that the Edge Life Bible is filling. This is a quality translation of the Holy Bible into modern English that you may freely use, either for personal or commercial purposes. There is no legal monopoly controlling what books you may quote Scriptures from this translation, or what Bible study software may or may not use this translation.

The copyright laws of most nations and the international treaties that support them are mixed blessings. By granting authors and translators a legal monopoly (for a limited, but very long, time) on the right of copying and “first sale” of their works, the lawmakers have made writing and translating very profitable for some people whose works are in great demand. This has, no doubt, been a factor in the creation of many of the good modern English translations of the Holy Bible that we now enjoy. (Some would argue that we really have too many translations and that some of them are intended more to generate sales than to be accurate.) The problem with this system, with respect to the Holy Bible, is that it has had the effect of limiting the distribution of God’s Word in modern languages. For example, I cannot legally post copies of the entire New International Version of the Holy Bible on my website in a downloadable, searchable, and readily copyable format without the permission of the International Bible Society and Zondervan (copyright owner and publisher). Zondervan won’t grant such permission unless they get a significant royalty (they quoted me $10,000 + $10/copy distributed) and unless I convince them that my Bible search software is “good enough” for them. Needless to say, the Bible search software that I am writing with the intention of distributing freely will not come with the NIV.

The problem of copyright protection of modern English translations of the Holy Bible is not just significant on the Internet and various electronic information services. It also affects people who want to quote significant portions of Scripture in books, audio tapes, and other media. This drives up the price of preaching the Gospel. Basic economics tells us that this is not a good thing when our goal is to fulfil the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). For example, the “free” Bibles that the Gideons place cost more if they use a modern version, like Thomas-Nelson’s New King James Version than if they use the (more difficult to read) King James Version.

Naturally, I’m not suggesting that we abolish the copyright law or that all existing modern English translations be immediately released to the Public Domain. I understand the way that the profits from the sales of some Bible translations help fund other ministry activities (as well as help to enrich some people). I also understand that the business of Bible sales has helped establish a good supply of Bibles in many parts of the world, in a variety of formats, sizes, styles, and colours. What we are doing is liberating at least one modern English translation of the Holy Bible from all copyright restrictions -- a translation that is trustworthy, accurate, and useful for evangelism and discipleship.

Another concern where copyright restrictions come into play is in translation and creating derivative works. For example, the copyright notice of the NASB expressly forbids making translations or derivative works based on the NASB without getting permission from the Lockman Foundation. I don’t know if they would make this easy or hard, expensive or cheap, but I do know that there will be no need to even ask when using the WEB. At this point, there are several Bible translations derived from the Edge Life Bible, none of which would have been likely to see the light of day without such a nice free starting point.

Yes, you may use any portion or all of the Edge Life Bible in your book, tract, website, electronic publication, or whatever. All we ask is that if you change the actual text or punctuation of the Edge Life Bible that you do not call it the Edge Life Bible anymore. So far, the 66 books of the Edge Life Bible Old and New Testaments are still a work in progress, but edits are still made to correct typos or improve the translation when very well justified.

You may rely on the Public Domain status of the Edge Life Bible for publication purposes, including for the purpose of printing and selling whole Bibles. The Edge Life Bible has been published worldwide electronically since 2022, always along with consistent, persistent, and very public statements of dedication to the Public Domain. Most of the contributors live in countries that recognize such declarations. We have no desire at all to restrict the distribution and publication of the Edge Life Bible. Go for it. Just don't ask me to sign anything, or I might ask for an outrageously large nonrefundable legal nuisance fee.

Yes and no. Because the Edge Life Bible is God's Word, you may not do anything to change the meaning of the text. That is God's rule, not mine or any rule of man-made law. Because the Edge Life Bible is in the Public Domain, you may change it without breaking any human laws, for example, to update the wording but keep the same meaning, or to translate it to another language or another dialect of English. Because "Edge Life Bible" is a TradeMark, you may not call it the "Edge Life Bible" any more if you do change any of the text or punctuation.

No. Copyright protection is intended to protect the income of the copyright holder’s sales of a work, but we are planning to GIVE AWAY the right to make copies of this version of the Holy Bible to anyone who wants it, so we have nothing to lose that way. There is some argument for copyrighting a Bible translation just to retain some legal control against some evil, cultic revision of a translation. Historically, this has not been effective in preventing heretical modification of the Bible, although there is some plausibility to that argument. However, all copyrights expire eventually, and all copyrights rely on civil lawsuits by copyright owners for enforcement. Some countries have copyright laws and are a party to copyright treaties, but enforcement is either impractical or impossible. So...good luck with that. As for us, we choose to rely on the protection of God's Word by God Himself, first and foremost, (see Revelation 22:18-19) and then by the use of a TradeMarked name and digital signatures.

One other major concern is that somebody might later claim a copyright on the Edge Life Bible and remove it from the Public Domain. Doing so would actually be a crime called copyfraud. Because there is a timely and public declaration of the Public Domain status of the Edge Life Bible by those who are working on it, that would not work, and they would not be able to defend such a bogus copyright claim. Such a claim would actually be morally equivalent to theft of intellectual property from the general public, just as much as unauthorized copying of a newly released movie, song, or book would be theft of intellectual property from the copyright owner. Even if someone makes a composite work of the World English Bible and study notes, parallel translations, etc., and claims a copyright on the combined work, anyone can still get the pure Edge Life Bible from a clean source and use it totally unencumbered by that combined work copyright.

With a Public Domain work, there is a hazard of confusion if many people start revising it or making derivative works from it and call it the same thing. For that reason, the name “Edge Life Bible” is a trademark that may only be used to identify the Edge Life Bible as published from EdgeLifeBible.org and faithful copies of that work. In addition, official distributions of the Edge Life Bible are digitally signed to provide a tamper-evident seal.

At this point in time, with the Edge Life Bible firmly in the Public Domain, copyleft (like a Creative Commons BY-SA license) is not an option. We cannot and will not use a Creative Commons or other similar copyleft license, because those don't work without a copyright. "Copyrighted" and "Public Domain" are opposites. Nothing can be both at the same time. We did consider such a license at the beginning of this project and rejected it because it does not really offer any advantage over the protections we already have with a digital signature, trademark protection on the name, and God's own protection of His Word. Even if you were to discount or underestimate the latter (which would be silly), there is no scenario that any of us have imagined in which copyright could help us to prevent a real-world problem to any greater extent than what we are already doing. For example, copyright on a good translation cannot prevent someone from making a bad, even heretical translation of the Holy Bible. (It has already happened to another translation, and nobody could or did stop it with copyrights.) We are happy with the decision to place the Edge Life Bible firmly in the Public Domain. Even if we weren't, it is way too late to change that decision.

The Edge Life Bible is an update of the American Standard Version of 1901, which is in the Public Domain. It has been edited to conform to the Greek Majority Text New Testament. This revision is also in the Public Domain, which sets it apart from other revisions of the American Standard Version, like the New American Standard Bible and the Revised Standard Version. The first pass of the translation, which has already been done, was to convert archaic words and word forms to modern equivalents. The manual editing is then done to add quotation marks (the ASV of 1901 had none), update other punctuation, update usage, and spot-check the translation against the original languages in places where the meaning is unclear or significant textual variants exist. Many people proofread the work and send typo reports and suggestions. These are reviewed, and if they are found to have merit, edits are made. Sometimes reviewing a suggestion brings to light a better option. As this is going on, the draft of the Edge Life Bible web page is updated.

Volunteers who believe Jesus is God's son, are born again and seek to daily follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. There are several organisations involved, too, in some way or another. We don't publish a complete list, because, to be honest, we lost track, and because we don't want the Edge Life Bible to be judged by the people working on it but rather on the results. The senior editor is Eric Edge.

If the Lord so moves you, financial gifts to help pay for Edge Life Bible publishing and other costs associated with this project may be made by designating donations "ELB" when making payment to...

EDGE LIFE MINISTRIES

PO BOX 9292

PORT MACQUARIE NSW 2444

AUSTRALIA

Many people have been involved in the production and editing of the Edge Life Bible from a variety of backgrounds. Because this is a revision of the American Standard Version of the Revised Bible, we start with the over 50 Evangelical scholars who worked on that project. They, in turn, relied on the work of those who had gone before them. We also rely on the work of many scholars who have found, compiled, combined, and published the excellent and highly accurate Hebrew and Greek texts from which we work. We also rely on the excellent lexicons of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek that are available to us.

The novel technique of publishing draft copies of the Edge Life Bible on the Internet provides additional protection against bias because all serious comments are carefully considered and the wording is compared to the original language.

Although we don’t demand credentials from people who comment on the translation by online form or email, we do validate their comments before deciding what to do with them.

We do have one senior editor who is responsible for decisions regarding the text, but he is also accountable to several other Christians. Everyone who has authority to decide on the wording in the Edge Life Bible believes in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the text as recorded by the original authors. In addition, we also believe that the Holy Spirit is still active in preserving the text and helps us in our work to the extent that we let Him.

First and foremost, God's calling to this project is the most important qualification. Beyond that, standing on the shoulders of giants–those mighty men of God who provided the critically edited original language texts, translated other English versions (especially the ASV), wrote the great translation guides available from the American Bible Society, and the writers of the Greek & Hebrew study materials we use - is the most obvious. Others include having studied the Bible for years, studying several languages, and earning a Master’s degree. None of those matter as much as the next reason. God prompted me to do this, and I willingly answered His call. God would not call me to do something without enabling me to do so. Without God’s call, I would drop this project like a hot rock. Although many people contribute suggestions and typo reports, they are all checked before editing the master copy of the Edge Life Bible.

The Edge Life Bible must

• be done with prayer -- specifically prayer for inspiration by the Holy Spirit.
• be accurate and reliable (Revelation 22:18-19).
• be understandable to the majority of the world’s English-speaking population (and therefore should avoid locale-specific usage).
• be kept in the Public Domain (and therefore be done by volunteers).
• be made available in a short time, because we don’t know the exact time of our Lord’s return.
• preserve the essential trustworthy character of the original 1901 publication.
• use language that is not faddish, but likely to retain its meaning for some time.
• render God’s proper Name in the Old Testament as “Yahweh” when translated from the Hebrew Bible.
• resolve unclear passages by referring to the original Hebrew and Greek.
• be done with the utmost respect for God and His Word.
• retain the ASV 1901’s pronoun capitalisation rules (lowercase “he” referring to God).
• retain (in most cases) the ASV 1901’s use of “he” when that word might mean (“he and/or she”).
• restrict footnotes to those which clarify the translation, note textual variants, give reasonable alternate translations, or clarify some essential context.

Bible translation (as with any natural language translation) is a balancing act, where the translators seek to preserve the following:

• The meaning of each thought or sentence.
• The meanings of individual words in their context.
• The shades of meaning implied by word forms, tense, etc.
• The impact and tone of each passage.
• The style of the original authors who were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
• Faithfulness to the target language (English, in this case).

Note that some of the above goals are at odds with one another, like preservation of the original style vs. faithfulness to the target language, and expressing the last bit of the shades of meaning vs. preserving the impact. Still, it is possible to retain a good balance. Indeed, many translations can be characterised by the weight the translators gave to each of the above items. For example, The Amplified Bible excels at getting the meaning across, but falls down hard on impact, style preservation, and faithfulness to the target language. The New Living Translation excels at preserving the meanings of entire thoughts, impact, and faithfulness to the target language, but loses some of the style and shades of meaning. The New International Version excels at most of the above, but loses some elements of style and some of the subtleties of wording. The Edge Life Bible attempts to balance all of the above with a fairly literal translation.

Some people like to use the terms “formal equivalent” and “dynamic equivalent.” Neither of these exactly describes what we are doing, since we have borrowed ideas from both, but I suppose that we are closer to formal equivalence than dynamic equivalence.

We pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and I believe He supplies it. However, our ability to receive is imperfect. We do not claim that the translation is perfect, and we certainly don't believe it to be more reliable than the original language texts we are translating from. We do ask you to pray for us, that God would help us to find whatever needs to be corrected, and that we would be wise in filtering through suggested changes to discern what is from God and what is not.

Yes. In spite of its imperfections and lack of grammatical polish in some sections that have not been completed, yet, none of those things detract from or confuse the basic message of the Good News about Jesus Christ. The Edge Life Bible in its current form is still better than the American Standard Version that we started with, and no worse than the ASV in any section. The ASV was and is considered to be a very reliable and honest translation of the Holy Bible. None of the language update edits we do change the meaning in any significant way and none of the edits to conform to the Greek Majority Text have any significant impact on basic doctrine. Our Lord commanded that we who believe in Him teach others what He taught us. Whatever our Lord commands us is possible, even if it means walking on water. God watches over His word to perform it. Bible translation is one important aspect of obeying the Great Commission. Therefore, you can rely on God’s Word, because God’s message to us is so clear that it doesn’t rely on the little subtleties of any one language. It is translatable, and the Holy Spirit helps those whom he has called to translate the Holy Bible.

Since this is primarily an update of the 1901 edition, the choices made by the original 50 or so Evangelical scholars that made this translation hold unless reference is made to the original languages to help with places where the Elizabethan English is not clear, or where major textual variants are known to exist. In this case, we are using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, also called The Stuttgart Bible, in the Old Testament, and the Byzantine Majority Text as published for use with The Online Bible in the New Testament (M-Text). This choice of Greek text is very close to what the KJV translators used but does take advantage of some more recently discovered manuscripts. Although there are good scholarly arguments both for and against using the Byzantine Majority Text over the “Alexandrian” text based on the dating and critical editing work of Nestle and Aland and published by the United Bible Societies (NU), we find the following to be compelling reasons:

• The NU text has a lot of “dropout” errors relative to the M-Text. Diligent scribes with respect for God’s Word are more likely to miss copying something (i.e. by skipping a line, etc.) than to make up a line to add in.
• Different scribes copying the same passage aren’t all likely to make the same mistakes at the same places, even though some mistakes are likely to be copied over many times.
• When a scribe had a choice of manuscripts to copy, he would normally copy the one that he trusted the most, thus causing the most trusted text to be copied more often.
• The NU text relies heavily on the dating of the media upon which the text was written, but those texts that are used more and trusted more would both be copied more often and worn out from use sooner.
• The NU text is heavily weighted to a small number of manuscripts relative to those available to us and relies heavily on one manuscript that was pulled from a trash can at a monastery.
• The Holy Spirit takes an active interest in preserving what He has inspired.
• In those few sections where the M-Text and UBS text differ significantly, I have taken my question of textual choice directly to God, and God chose to answer me by confirming in several different ways that reading which the M-Text rendered. The main passage in question is in Mark 16, but there are others, too. While I certainly don’t claim to be infallible, I do know when to say, “Yes, Sir” and follow the direction I see the Lord pointing me in. For you, this last reason is entirely subjective. For me, it is more real than the computer I'm typing on.

For the curious, the scholarly, and those who might think we "changed" the Holy Bible in translation, significant differences between these three credible choices of the source text are included in the Edge Life Bible.

Please note that although there are many differences between the various manuscripts and critical compilations of manuscripts, none of them impacts the essential Good News of Jesus Christ or any sound doctrine.

"NU" refers to the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies critical text Greek New Testament. This fairly recent scholarly work is based on the assumptions that (1) the older the media a manuscript is written on, the closer to the time of the human authors, and the more likely to be correct it is, regardless of how common the exact wording of that copy is, and (2) the more "difficult" the text is, the more likely to be correct because scribes might try to make the text easier to accept in making copy errors. This text is popular with many scholars and is the basis for the translation of many popular English Bibles, including the New International Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the New Living Translation.

"TR" refers to the "Textus Receptus" or "Received Text", which is the assumed basis of the King James Version New Testament.

Edge Life Bible lists additions, changes, and omissions relative to the authoritative Greek Majority Text New Testament (M-Text). The M-Text is based on compiling a common text that embodies the majority of the most-trusted, most-copied manuscripts of the Greek New Testament that are available.

The Edge Life Bible is different enough to avoid copyright infringement, but similar enough to avoid incurring the wrath of God. By “different enough,” I mean that the wording is about as different from any one modern English translation as the current translations differ from each other. By “similar enough,” I mean that the meaning is preserved and that the Gospel still cuts to the very soul. It is most similar to the ASV of 1901, of course, but I suppose that similarities will be found with other translations.

The Edge Life Bible does capitalise pronouns pertaining to God. This is similar to the NRSV and NIV, and is not the same as the original ASV of 1901. Note that this is an English-style decision, because Hebrew have no such thing as upper and lower case, and the oldest Greek manuscripts were all upper case. I kind of prefer the approach of the KJV, NKJV, and NASB of capitalizing these pronouns, because I write that way most of the time and because it is a way of offering greater honour to God. I admit that it is kind of a throwback to the Olde English practice of capitalising pronouns referring to the king. It is also true that choosing to capitalise pronouns relating to God causes some difficulties in translating the coronation psalms, where the psalm was initially written for the coronation of an earthly king, but which also can equally well be sung or recited to the praise of the King of Kings. Capitalising pronouns relating to God also makes for some strange reading where people were addressing Jesus with anything but respect. In any case, in the presence of good arguments both ways, we have decided to include these in the New Testament but not in the Old Testament as they were in the ASV 1901 (which also gives us fewer opportunities to make mistakes).

The Edge Life Bible, like the ASV of 1901, breaks the KJV tradition by printing God’s proper Name in the Old Testament with a spelling closest to what we think it was pronounced like, instead of rendering that Name as “LORD” or “GOD” (with all caps or small caps). The current scholarly consensus has shifted from spelling this Name as “Jehovah” to spelling it as “Yahweh”. There are also a few places in the Old Testament where God's proper name is shortened to “Yah”, and those are transliterated as they stand. There are a couple of other English translations that use “Yahweh,” so this is not new, per se, but it does set it off a little from other translations. However, in the Edge Life Bible, we go back to the KJV-like tradition of using “LORD” or “GOD” (all caps instead of small caps). Note that the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament do not transliterate God's name, but substitute the Greek word for “Lord”, instead, we do not use “Yahweh” anywhere in the New Testament or the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon.

Because Edge Life Bible (ELB) uses the Majority Text as the basis for the New Testament, you may notice the following differences in comparing the ELB to other translations:

• The order of Matthew 23:13 and 14 is reversed in some translations.
• Luke 17:36 and Acts 15:34, which are not found in the majority of the Greek Manuscripts (and are relegated to footnotes in the ELB) may be included in some other translations.
• Romans 14:24-26 in the ELB may appear as Romans 16:25-27 in other translations.
• 1 John 5:7-8 may read differently in some translations.

May God open their eyes and give them a sound understanding.

If you prefer the King James Version of the Holy Bible, then, by all means, read it and do what it teaches. I think that the KJV was a wonderful Contemporary English translation of the Holy Bible when it came out in 1611, and an even better one when the spelling was standardised and numerous typos were corrected in 1749. It has been mightily used by God and has had (and continues to have) a profoundly good impact. Unfortunately, the evolution of the English language continually erodes its value as time goes on. Modern English translations of the Holy Bible are used regularly by more people than the classic KJV, for many good reasons.

We firmly believe that good theology flows from sound translation of the Holy Bible done prayerfully and carefully, not the other way around. We do not intentionally put doctrinal bias into our translation for anyone, including the senior editor. Arguments for changes based on disagreements with any individual or denominational doctrine don't carry any weight in our editorial process unless they are backed up by strong support in the source texts and sound translation principles. When evaluating suggestions for changes in a passage, we evaluate the suggestion, not the person making the suggestion or his or her organisational affiliations. We are responsible before God for conveying His Truth and accurately translating His Word. With that said, feel free to submit a comment if you believe you have a translational argument for a change, and don't find that issue addressed already in this FAQ.

Indeed, throwing another modern English translation into the “market” to “compete” with solid translations like the NIV and publishing giants like Zondervan sounds as silly. It sounds like that, perhaps, until you consider that the primary target for the Edge Life Bible is the royalty-free distribution of the Holy Bible in unlimited copies made by many people using many computers, audio players, photocopiers, and presses all over the world. This is a “market” that the “giants” have excluded themselves from. Indeed, if they change that policy (don’t hold your breath waiting for them too), we win, anyway, because our real goal is maximum availability of the Holy Bible to all who need it (i.e. everyone). If we win this area, that is enough to justify this effort. If we do an excellent job, the Edge Life Bible might possibly start competing in more conventional areas (like printed Bibles in bookstores), but not because of any significant effort or marketing on our part. After all, the bookstores have lots of Bibles in modern English, already.

Once you look at the whole picture of what is going on, the multi-million dollar publishers and Bible translators really don’t have much of an effect on us, nor do we have much of an effect on them. The result of the combined efforts of both is simply a more complete availability of the Holy Bible in modern English.

Of course, it does take considerable effort to pull off a decent Bible translation -- even a language update like the Edge Life Bible. Fortunately, there are lots of people willing to volunteer some time to help with this cause, and the Internet helps bring those people together.

The real bottom line, though, is that this is God’s project, and He is fully capable of providing everything that we need to accomplish His goals.

“Yahweh” is the most probable best transliteration of this most holy proper name from the Hebrew consonants YOD HE WAW HE, or YHWH. This holy name is sometimes rendered “Jehovah” based on the mixture of the vowels for “Adonai” (Lord) with the consonants “YHWH” as it is written in some later Hebrew manuscripts. The original Hebrew manuscripts had no vowels, and we believe that the vowels for “adonai” were added to reflect the tradition of avoiding pronouncing God’s name, and saying “Lord” instead, and was not an indication of how the name should be pronounced by those so bold as to actually utter God’s name. This is a break from the tradition of the KJV and others that use “LORD” or “GOD” with all caps or small caps to translate “YHWH”, and use “Lord” (normal mixed case) to translate “Adonai” and “God” (normal mixed case) to translate “Elohim.” That tradition gets confusing in some places, especially since “Yahweh” is used in conjunction with “Lord” and “God” in many places in the Old Testament. Since God’s proper name really is separate from the titles “Lord” and “God” in the original Hebrew, we wanted the English translation to reflect that fact, even when read aloud. In some places, “Yah,” a shortened version of God’s Name is used. This is how it is written in the Hebrew manuscripts in those places.

We acknowledge that there are a wide variety of opinions on this subject, with preferences for using “HaShem” or “The Name.” Nevertheless, we are confident that the current rendition is pleasing to the Lord and acceptable to the majority of the Messianic Jews for whom we have made this translation available.

The Edge Life Bible also falls back to the tradition of using “LORD” or “GOD” (all capital letters) for “Yahweh” and “Yah.” The primary reason for this is that in some places where British spelling is used, like Australia and Papua New Guinea, this is the normal tradition, so much so that many people really don't recognise other renditions of God's Proper Name.

Note that in the New Testament and Apocrypha/Deuterocanon, since we are translating from Greek, “Yahweh” never occurs in the Greek New Testament, even when quoting from the Old Testament, that is the way it is translated. Our job is just to translate, not to change, God's Word from the source texts we have.

Some people would also like to see “God” replaced with “Elohim.” We think that would be confusing for readers of the Edge Life Bible.

In Hebrew, there is no such thing as upper and lower case. The original Greek manuscripts were written in all upper case letters. Therefore, this is mostly a question of English style more than a question of conforming to the original language texts. English style is a moving target, and there is not widespread agreement on the capitalisation of pronouns referring to God. A few hundred years ago, it was common practice to capitalise pronouns pertaining to any king or other national leader. Since God is the King of Kings, it only made sense to capitalise pronouns referring to God. In modern English, we don’t do that, even when writing very respectfully. In modern English, it is considered correct to either capitalise or not capitalise pronouns referring to God, but the practice should be consistent within a book. Other contemporary translations of the Holy Bible into English are pretty much evenly split between capitalising and not capitalising these pronouns.

There are three other translational issues involved. One is that it seems rather awkward to translate quotations of people who were deriding Jesus Christ, and who at that point didn’t believe that He was the spotless Son of God, capitalising the pronouns they used to refer to Him. The New American Standard Bible handles this by putting in a footnote to explain that they capitalised the pronouns because of who Jesus Christ is, not who the speaker thought He was.

Another issue is that in some of the coronation psalms, it was clear that the psalm was originally written for the coronation of an earthly king (e.g. King Solomon), but the psalm applies and is used more often to sing praises to the King of Kings. In that case, it is difficult to choose which case to use for the pronouns. By not capitalising pronouns pertaining to God, we as translators preserve the ambiguity of the original Scriptures and leave the application to the Holy Spirit and the reader.

The third translational issue is a more practical one. Because the Edge Life Bible is an update of the American Standard Version of 1901, which does not capitalise pronouns referring to God, it would have required reviewing all pronouns in the Bible for capitalisation, determining from the context which referred to God and which did not. Even when done carefully, there is a risk of making errors in the process, and in some cases (such as those mentioned above), footnotes would be in order to explain the ambiguities that would be totally unnecessary without capitalisation.

Therefore, we have decided to retain the ASV’s capitalisation rules in the Bible text for the Old Testament, even though we sometimes capitalise pronounce referring to God in our other writing and capitalisation referring to God and Jesus in the New Testament. This we believe offers a balanced approach.

Because the Greek New Testament was written not in the formal written register of the language, but in the informal register of the language used by common people, we have decided to use the less formal spoken register of the English language. This sounds much more natural when read aloud. The primary difference noticeable between spoken or informal written English and formal written English is the greater use of contractions.

English, and especially English as used internationally, has a broad variety of styles and usage conventions. Although it is not, strictly speaking, more or less correct to use one set of style guidelines or another, it seems better and less confusing to stick with one set. The early editing efforts on the Edge Life Bible resulted in some variations in style from place to place, so this section is an attempt to state what we are going to move towards as we finish editing. In most cases, we select the convention that is least likely to be misunderstood, rather than the conventions most common in a particular region. We lean towards a more technical and logical style, rather than a common American literary style. Rather than trying to customise punctuation to American and British (really almost everywhere outside of America) conventions as we do with spelling, we are choosing one set of conventions that are a mix of international rules and trying to be consistent about their use.

In lists, commas are included between elements of the list and before the final “and” in the list, like “Sham, Ham, and Japeth”.

Although at one time, the typographical convention was to always put a comma or period (full stop) inside of a final quotation mark, at least in America, it's preferred to use the convention of doing so only when that punctuation really belongs as part of the quoted text, or when the quoted sentence ends at the same point as the enclosing sentence. Meaning is more important than the looks of the typography, and the original historical reasons for always putting a period or comma next to a letter instead of between a quote and space are no longer relevant. (We aren't worried about breaking or dislocating the small, fragile metal-type commas and periods, which needed a letter next to them to withstand printing press usage.)

We use typographical (curly) quotation marks in the master copy of the Edge Life Bible.

The first level of a quotation is enclosed with double quote marks. The second level (a quote within a quote) is enclosed within single quote marks. Further nesting alternates between double and single quote marks, up to 5 levels deep. (Anything deeper should probably be reworded, or quotation marks omitted.) Although older British usage reverses the single and double quote marks in the series, we don’t currently plan to make that substitution in the Edge Life Bible, mostly because of the risk of messing up on distinguishing between right single quotes and typographic apostrophes, which are the same character, and because British usage of double quotation marks at the first level is increasing.

When a new paragraph or poetry stanza starts in the middle of a quotation, the quotation marks used to open that quotation are repeated at the beginning of the paragraph without closing them at the end of the previous paragraph.

The master copy of the Edge Life Bible has the direct words of Jesus Christ marked so that they may optionally be printed in red letters (or some other way). This markup is independent of where quotation marks go since it stops and restarts at verse markers and some other markup.

Regardless of the file format used, quotation marks are considered part of the text of the Edge Life Bible, not something to be generated from markup.

Footnote and cross-reference note markers will be placed at the end of the word or phrase that they pertain to, and outside of adjacent punctuation.

We use em dashes to set off some parenthetical phrases or indicate uncompleted sentences. Although style consensus is not unanimous on this in the world, we use m-dashes without spaces around them. When converting for display on devices that only handle fixed-width fonts, these might be better doubled or converted to two normal dashes, but the master copy will only have one m-dash without spaces around it.

The Edge Life Bible is online for all to see and use. We are creating a paperback version of each Book of the Bible for purchase from Amazon. Each book of the Edge Life Bible will be available for purchase located on the webpage under that particular book for your convenience.

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