House Church Talk - CEV and WEB

[Ross J Purdy]

CEV is the Contemporary English Version and WEB is the World English Bible.
The CEV is highly interpretive and based on ecclectic critical texts but
reads easy and once in a while has a gem of a rendering that is convenient
to one's theology. What are multiple translations for but to offer a variety
of renderings to suit you?

Num 8:7a CEV "and sprinkle them with the water that washes away their sins."
I could not pass it up, it was just too good. My family has enjoyed reading
the OT out of the CEV since it has a low grade reading level which makes it
easy to understand. The CEV and the many other big publisher products that
are based on ecclectic critical texts and have a translation philosophy
based on "functional equivalence" (also known as "dynamic equivalence") is
always HIGHLY SUSPECT. The WEB is a non-copyrighted work found easily on the
"web" and is based on the Byzantine majority Greek Text in the NT. It began
as a revision of the ASV by laymen and then corrected to the Byzantine Greek
Text. It remains fairly literal but is modernised and has had its grammar
corrected. It has not been printed, but anyone is free to do so in its
entirety! It is pretty good and is based on the absolute best Greek text of
the NT available which is even better! I have run across a couple of
renderings that I think are errors though.

They both along with a number of other versions can be downloaded with the
e-Sword Bible program which is FREE and EASY to use. It makes it easy to
paste verse electronically and has a number of good old public domain
reference and study works. Check it out at

www.e-sword.net

It has a lot of Bibles and reference and study works for free that one has
to pay big bucks to get in software packages that are purchased.