Berkeley Version

A twentieth-century English rendering aimed at conservative evangelical readers, the Berkeley Version — later circulated under the title Modern Language Bible — sought to present the whole of Scripture in contemporary idiom at a time when few such options existed. It covers the complete Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek, with the original-language texts serving as its base, and it stands as a fresh translation rather than a revision of an earlier English edition. Its translation philosophy is moderate and readable, avoiding both strict literalism and free paraphrase. Distinctively, the work began as a one-man New Testament project and was afterward expanded by a team of collaborators into a full Bible. It occupied an important place among evangelical readers in the period before the New International Version and the New American Standard Bible became dominant, and it is now chiefly remembered as a bridge between older literary versions and the modern-language translations that followed.