Slight Modification
to the World English Bible

* * *

The American (but not the British) edition of the World English Bible uses the word Yahweh for one of the Old Testament names for God. It is a guess as to how Jews might have pronounced the word, even though most never did so, as the word was never written with vowels and orthodox Jews refused to say it because they considered the name too holy to utter. Even when quoting the Old Testament, the New Testament in its original language never used the word but substituted the word Lord (e.g Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13 quoting Joel 2:32).

The King James Version (probably influenced by the New Testament) also uses the word Lord, and the British edition of the World English Bible follows this tradition. Both put the entire word in (small) upper case i.e. (LORD). In the original Hebrew and Greek neither testament does anything to distinguish the word.

Were I to use the British edition, I would be introducing a spelling inconsistency to the webpages, plus the use of upper case would be another inconsistency with my own writing style.

I have no strong objection to the use of the word Yahweh. My only slight concern is that since few English speakers use this foreign word, to some people it has a slightly cold, alien feel to it. Since I believe our Lord wants us to feel warmly toward him, I prefer the connotations associated with the word Lord.

The other minor modification is not displaying any footnotes or individual verse numbers. I feel this removal slightly aids ease of reading, and I do everything I can think of to encourage the actual reading of Scripture.

I honor all those who freely gave of their time to create the World English Bible.

Related Page

Bible Version Dilemmas