Press Releases from the ISV Foundation

New Translation of the Bible Hailed as the King James Bible for Our Time
(Released 28 February 2007)

Essay: A King James Version for our Time
(Released 9 February 2007)

ISV Foundation Releases International Standard Version® New Testament
(Released 10 April 1998)

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Reader Responses

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The essay “A KJV For Our Time” [rang] so many bells for me! For the last 5 years I have been using the NLT for all my devotional reading. The reason that I decided to do this was that the Lord has been bringing me into a much deeper level of intimacy with Him, resulting in me talking with Him a lot more within my ordinary day.

Using the NLT? Amazing. :-)

The NLT uses the same language in taking to me that I use in talking back to Him. This makes reading the bible much more of a fluid two-way conversation. As The Lord is transforming us into his likeness day-by-day, so that Jesus is the first-born of MANY sons, being able to use the bible conversationally with the Lord means that the scriptures are more and more on our lips in our ordinary everyday language.

...which is why we're working to produce the ISV...

As the Lord takes us into the next and most exciting phase of the New Apostolic Reformation, it seems to me that those in the forefront of this movement increasingly have the ability to speak the simple truth of God's precious word into ordinary human situations and are seeing them change. It is therefore more vital than ever therefore that we have a translation that is a) very normal and everyday in terms of its language b) absolutely accurate. Unfortunately, I have found several places where the NLT is simply not strong enough, or not accurate enough. This is a great disappointment to me, because its language is so fresh. I therefore look forward to the release of the ISV with great anticipation!

Except for your reference to New Apostolic Reformation, which we don't understand, we certainly concur with your view that the ability for a good translation to communicate accurately what the original authors of Scripture were intending to say when their authors first wrote and/or spoke in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek is the foundation of all true revivals and reformations. Now if only we could get the "Emerging Church" people to understand that point and start teaching the Bible...

One final comment. Very few bibles these days, in fact almost none, have space for the addition of your own personal notes. I notice that more and more bibles have very tight margins, headers, footers. Study bibles have the addition of many footnotes, but no space for the addition of one’s own notes. This is a very grievous lack, in my opinion. The scriptures say clearly that in the blessing of the New Covenant "They shall all be taught by God". This surely means that the Holy Spirit wants to make our journey with Him a very personal one. Therefore we are being fashioned INDIVUALLY into different but interlocking expressions of his being. It follows therefore that our journeys in the word will necessarily be personal, with many different insights into the text, and very many different cross-references. Personally, I write these down in my bible constantly, including many questions that arise as I read the text. I date these questions and comments, so that after only a few years I am able to trace back and remember the things the Lord has revealed to me. I am also able to see a history of my questions answered as I put a second date against the question when it is answered. This helps me enormously to grow in confidence in my relationship with Him. I urge you therefore to give serious consideration to the amount of free space that you leave around the printed text, when publishing the ISV. You may also wish to consider a study version similar to that produced by Cambridge for the NIV. This particular version has exceptionally wide margins/headers/footers and is printed on thicker paper to allow the addition of many personal notes and cross-references. When I made these comments to the publishers of the NLT and the NASB, I'm sorry to say that they were of little help. I would much appreciate it if you would kindly give a little more consideration to this letter than they were able to. I wish you every success and blessing as you finish this wonderful project. God bless you all.

One of the reasons we produce free downloadable electronic editions of the ISV such as may be found here is so you can print them out on double-sided 8.5"x11" paper and have 2.5" extra left for side margins and 2" extra for top and bottom margins on each page. Now as to PRINTING an edition that you can buy in a box, this is NOT our decision, since we're not publishers.