New English Bible

The New English Bible was the first major British ecumenical undertaking to offer a wholly fresh translation of scripture, intended to replace rather than merely revise the King James tradition that had shaped English-language worship and reading for centuries. Sponsored by the principal British churches and Bible societies, it covers the complete Bible, working from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and resting on critical editions of the original-language texts. Its approach is dynamic and literary, rendering sense and idiom into contemporary English rather than reproducing the structures of the source languages, and it is accordingly classified as a fresh translation rather than a revision. Among its distinctive features are its literary independence and its willingness to emend difficult texts where the transmitted wording was judged obscure. Widely read and widely discussed on its appearance, it marked a turning point in modern British Bible translation and prepared the way for later revision.