Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. - Luke 12:27. New Revised Standard Translation, 1989.
Look how the wild flowers grow! They don't work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn't as well clothed as one of these flowers. - Same passage. Contemporary English Version, 1995.
More than 90 percent of American homes have at least one Bible, and many homes have four or more. That ratio compares well with television sets, VCRs, microwaves and computers. But judging from widespread ignorance of the Bible, it seems that the wired gets more regular use than the word.
Preachers once ascribed this neglect of the Bible to sin. Today they are as likely to blame syntax - that is, the simple fact that many people find the Bible hard to read. In a poll conducted for the American Bible Society, more than two-thirds of those owning a Bible said they wish its language were easier to understand.
Bible publishers cite findings that nearly half the public cannot read at an eighth-grade level. Questionnaires distributed in adult Bible classes show that many churchgoers cannot give the scriptural meaning of biblical terms like covenant, redemption, justify or even grace.
Many potential readers are also put off by the sheer "churchiness" of terms like sanctification, oblation or righteousness, let along by the "thee" and "thou" and "unto" and old verb endings ("hast" and "saith") and the inverted word order of the King James Version.
Modern translations have removed the most obvious of these obstacles. But the ultimate solution has been what are called "simplified" translations. The grandparents of this breed appeared in the 1970s: The Living Bible (Tyndale House), which was considered a "paraphrase," and the American Bible Society's Today's English Version.
Simplified translations are currently multiplying. The New Century Version (Wordbibles) appeared in 1991. Last March saw the appearance of God's Word (World Publishing). In June the American Bible Society released the Contemporary English Version, distributed commercially by Thomas Nelson.
In July the New Testament appeared in a New International Reader's Version (Zondervan), a simplification of the best-selling New International Version. The publishers of the Living Bible plan to release a complete New Living Translation next summer.
In every case the strategy is similar: use simple vocabulary; keep sentences short; eliminate subordinate clauses; substitute concrete explanatory phrases for abstract nouns or theological terms; avoid too many ideas in a sentence.
In Psalm 8, the psalmist no longer asks, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" (King James Version) or even what are "human beings" or "mere mortals" in various modern translations. Instead, the query becomes "But why are people important to you?" (New Century Version) or "Why do you care about us humans?" (Contemporary English Version).