A new, exciting, radical, freely-licensed Bible translation for the 2030's.
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What is the OET? Who is it for? Why was it created? A new, exciting, radical, freely-licensed Bible translation.
News
As of mid-January 2026, we have a first draft of most of the sixty-six Bible ‘books’ excluding Leviticus, Numbers, Proverbs, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Now over 84% of the Bible is drafted.
Volunteer
Wanting to gift your God-given skills to the Bible world? Excited that your work could be freely reused by Bible translators across all the continents and for decades to come? Yes, we need you!
Trying to nudge English Bible translation into the 21st century.
Imagine if, instead of all those complicated rules about how many verses you can use and how much of each book your work is allowed to contain, what if the copyright page on your Bible said something like:
This is a careful, modern-English translation of God’s messages to mankind that have been preserved through the centuries despite much opposition and bloodshed, and it’s free for you to use!
What is the OET?
The OET contains a Readers’ Version and a very Literal Version side-by-side. Every word in the OET Literal Version is linked to the Hebrew or Greek word that it’s translated from.
Not a commercial product unlike most English Bibles— it is freely available to use, copy, print, adapt, or retranslate—no need to ask for permission.
An opportunity for experts to donate their linguistic, archaeological, cultural, or theological expertise as a gift to the world by submitting it as an add-on pack to the translation (see our Partners page)
Not bound by church jargon, unnecessary tradition, and following the crowd, in an attempt to communicate well to non-churched readers, yet to provoke and stimulate seasoned Bible readers.
A commitment to accuracy and high-quality, and to wrestle with the text to try to determine the likely intent of the various biblical writers.
Prepared to fix long-time mistakes, including some that have been propagated for hundreds of years since the New Testament was translated from the Latin translation into middle-English, i.e., we’re aiming to correct old mistakes (at the risk of making some new ones)
Following modern trends in our societies of showing more respect to other language groups by trying to do the same with the names of the Biblical characters and with God’s name.
Trying to avoid using untranslated Greek words as much as possible in the English translation (words like ‘angel’, ‘apostle’, ‘baptise’, and ‘Christ’), although we do use ‘Messiah’ (from Hebrew) heavily
Preparing for the next major movement of lost young people searching for truth and meaning and purpose, but who mightn’t want to be forced to learn old-fashioned English to do so.
Designed from the beginning to connect with other resources including links to the original manuscripts.
Able to keep improving over time with community input.
Verse of the day
Reader's version
And the message became a human and lived here among us and we saw his greatness—the greatness of an only child of the father—full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:14, OET-RV, early draft version)
Literal version
And the message became flesh and sheltered among us, and we_saw the glory of_him, a_glory as of_an_only_begotten with a_father, full of_grace and truth. (Jn 1:14, OET-LV, joined_words come from single Greek words)