There are already many good English Bibles. So why start another one?
Two reasons. The first is permission. Almost every modern translation is copyrighted. That is not a scandal; translation is expensive, and copyright is how the cost is usually paid. But it means that anyone who wants to quote a translation at length, print it, put it in an app, record it, or build a new resource on it has to ask first, and is often told no or asked to pay. Churches in poorer countries, small app makers, teachers and translators into other languages feel this most.
The second is reasoning. Every translation makes thousands of choices. Does a Greek word mean “overcome” or “understand”? Is a phrase “only begotten” or “one and only”? Should “brothers” include the sisters in the room? A good translation team argues about these for hours. Then the reader receives the result and almost none of the argument. A few footnotes survive; the rest is invisible.
What Open Word Bible does differently
Everything is free to use. The translation, its notes and its data are released under CC0, which places them in the public domain. You may quote it, print it, adapt it, put it in software, or sell a book that contains it, without asking.
The work is shown. Every sentence carries a reasoning record: the original words, a word-for-word gloss, the translation at three reading levels, and each decision made along the way, with the alternatives that were considered and the reason for the choice. You can open any verse on this site and read them. The article Showing our work explains how.
It is translated from the original languages. Every language is translated from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, not from English.
It is honest about where it stands. Everything on this site today is an AI draft. It is not marked reviewed until named reviewers who read Hebrew or Greek have checked it, and the reader always shows each sentence’s status. See AI drafts and human review.
Where we are
The project is young. Two sample passages, John 1:1–18 and Philippians 4:1–9, are translated into English and Spanish, with their full reasoning. They are there to show the method and to be criticised. If you read Greek or Hebrew, or simply notice something that reads badly, the project on GitHub is the place to say so.