My goal in this translation has been to bring some fresh turns of phrase to the New Testament's varied texts, adapting linguistic forms as a given genre or writer's style might suggest. My aim is not to supplant prior translations so much as to shed light on obscure passages; capture the humanity of Jesus' personality as presented in the Gospels; intelligibly convey doctrine and experience as related in Acts and the Epistles; and reflect the atemporal nature of the Book of Revelation. The translation seeks to be at once enjoyable, novelistic and at times poetic, avoiding the overly-literal, freely adopting the colloquial, and taking grammatical license where the writer employed imagery not subject to standard linguistic limitations. This Second Edition largely tracks the prior edition, but also includes a distinctively new version of the Letter to the Colossians as an example of a canonical-hermeneutical approach to translation, one that better reflects the historicity of under-standing in seeking to capture the interrelating effects of time and tradition on textual expression. It thus takes fuller account of intrascriptural language and imagery; hymnic aspects of the text; nomina sacra found in early manuscripts; the text's effective history in faith formulae; and the trajectory of its lengthy translation-tradition. The translation as a whole approaches Scripture as the viva vox evangelii, with ongoing linguistic presence through credal, liturgical, sermonic and other forms of expression.
