The Explorers’ Edition
From A collection of short essays. Project references reflect the source essay; see our current status.
The Open English Translation has a Readers’ Version in modern English, side-by-side with a Literal Version (which reads as very stunted English because each Hebrew or Greek word is translated individually). This enables the reader to focus on understanding the text in the left column, but any time the question ‘Does it really say that?’ pops into your head, you can just flick your eyes to the right and work your way through the word-for-word version.
If you’re reading the OET online, you can also click on English words to discover the Hebrew or Greek word that they’re translated from. With the help of companion websites, with a few clicks you can even see an image of the original manuscript that it was translated from. (Currently only working for the New Testament.)
The Explorers’ Edition of the OET is for the brave—either for someone who’s never read the Bible before and wants to jump right in, or someone who’s read the Bible many, many times but is wanting to learn more. No, it doesn’t reveal any hidden secrets or expose any magical keys to success, it simply doesn’t do everything the traditional way if another way might be as good or better.
This includes things like the combinations and order of the books. Since we don’t have to worry about the weight of a scroll, maybe we can combine 1 & 2 Samuel back into one document (like the Jewish Bible does). We move John before Matthew so part two of Luke (known as Acts) directly follows part one.
We change some names. Maybe not as much as we’d really like to, but at least get the first sound correct, so ‘Yudah’ instead of ‘Judah’. Just enough to lead you in the right direction, but not so far that you don’t know who it’s even talking about. Except for ‘James’ of course, which is a mistake and should never have been in our English Bibles. (The Greek is nearer to ‘Yakob’.)
But if that’s too much for you, there’ll be a Conventional Edition where lots of those things will get changed back to make it more familiar. You won’t be challenged as much or stretched as far, but you should feel more comfortable.
Give it a try. Read about the design at https://OET.Bible.
Or if you’re a real explorer, check out https://Freely-Given.org/OBD/ where the drafts are displayed. It’s still being checked, so please tell us if you find an obvious mistake.
After about 10,000 hours of drafting, we entered the consistency and accuracy checking stage in September 2026.