Why Publish a New Translation of John's Gospel?

MORRISVILLE, NC -- Following the success of his translation of Mark's Gospel in his book "More Bible Wisdom for Modern Times: Selections from the Early New Testament", Bible scholar John Howard Reid now offers a new book entitled "Essential Bible Wisdom: GOOD NEWS by John, the Beloved Disciple, and John, the Elder."

This fresh translation of John's Gospel offers the following unique features:

(1) The original Foreword and Afterword have been restored;

(2) John, the Elder's contributions are plainly identified in the text itself, not confined to footnotes as in some other versions, or simply not drawn to the attention of readers at all;

(3) The notoriously disjointed and misplaced text has been re-arranged into some semblance of order. It may not be the original order, but it is the best that can be obtained using the available Greek texts. For the first time, readers are now able to read the Gospel right through without the necessity of following the narrative via extremely complicated footnotes as in some previous versions, or simply being left up in the air;

(4) Over the centuries, copyists re-worked the Greek text of all John's quotations from Scripture so that they conformed to the familiar Hebrew versions. In some places, there is little difference between Greek and Hebrew versions of the Old Testament, but in other instances there is quite a lot.  In any event, John, like all other New Testament writers, never ever quoted from the Hebrew. Instead, Scripture quotes were always made from the Greek Septuagint. For the first time ever, all these Scriptural references have been correctly restored.

(5) The primary Greek text used for this translation is that published by the American Bible Society. This text offers some startling new insights into certain passages.

"GOOD NEWS by John, the Beloved Disciple, and John, the Elder" will be published on July 20, 2008. Advance review copies are now available.

###