Wayne Grudem Comments on the Clear Word [Bible]

A well-known theologian has weighed in on the issue of The Clear Word, a paraphrase of the Bible printed by a Seventh-day Adventist publishing house (Review & Herald) and distributed in Adventist Book Centers. Wayne Grudem is a Protestant theologian who is the respected author of Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine and many other works. He also served on the committee overseeing the translation of the English Standard Version of the Bible. (BTW, none of this means I agree with his theology - a lot of it I don’t!) Grudem has recently written a brief evaluation of The Clear Word. He writes:

"I do not think anyone should trust The Clear Word as a reliable translation of the Bible, or even as a useful paraphrase. It repeatedly distorts the teaching of the Bible. It removes significant content that is in the original Hebrew or Greek, and adds new ideas that are not found in the original texts. Verse after verse has been changed simply to support unusual Seventh-day Adventist doctrines, but these changes are not supported by reliable translations such as the KJV, NKJV, ESV, NASB, RSV, or NIV, or even by dynamic equivalence translations such as the New Living Translation or free paraphrases such as The Message. I was deeply troubled as I read various verses because it was clear that these verses were no longer the words of God only, but the words of God mixed in with many words of man, and ordinary readers of The Clear Word will not be able to tell the difference." (Wayne Grudem, Ph.D., Research Professor of Bible and Theology Phoenix Seminary, Phoenix, AZ

You can read the original document here. Related Links

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