The Latest and Best Bible Translation--Yours!

Debut author Potts offers a guide to understanding the Bible in its original Hebrew.

When we read the Bible in English, or any other language in which it has been translated, what are we actually reading? With the subjective nature of the task at hand, are we right to trust the work of others? Arguing that current translations do a great injustice to the original message, Potts guides readers through the painstaking task of examining portions of Scripture word for word in original Hebrew. He begins with an examination of the Ten Commandments as they supposedly appeared on the stone tablets held by Moses—which Potts has recreated after receiving divine inspiration: God “gave me a calling in December 2007 to produce the Ten Commandments tablets just as Moses had received them.” The idea of retranslating is treated with utmost seriousness: “Now no one can pull the proverbial Biblical wool over your eyes, or shove your eyes underneath the wool about what’s going on in the Bible—no priest, no rabbi, no pastor, no woman, no man, nobody anywhere—from here on is going to be able to bamboozle you about what’s going on in the Bible.” What follows includes book recommendations (such as an interlinear Bible), passages the author has retranslated (and how he came to his conclusions), and generally cheerful words of encouragement. “That’s how you should go about your work of re-translating whatever it is in the Scripture that captures your attention and interest,” he says. Encouraging readers to come up with their own word choices, the book maintains an infectious tone of optimism. Still, for all the author’s skepticism of translation, there is little doubt espoused about the validity of the Bible as the true word of God or of his idea that we are currently living in a period predicted by the book of Revelation. “This has all come out at this time in human history because we are living in the fabled end times,” he says, which might strike some readers as immaterial. Nevertheless, even readers who don’t come away with the energy to tackle their own investigations will see the Bible in a new light.

Slow and steady yet highly readable; an intriguing look at deciphering Scripture.