READ: ACTS 8:26-35

William Tyndale was publicly executed in 1536 in Belgium for translating the Bible from its original languages into English. When the King James Version was published in 1611, it was made up mostly of Tyndale’s translation—the translation he was executed for writing. For over 300 years, the King James Version served English speakers well. Many people still love its beautiful poetic language.

In the 1950s, a seminary graduate named Ken Taylor and his wife Margaret were raising their ten children in suburban Chicago. As they read to them from the King James Bible (KJV) each evening, the children had difficulty understanding the old English.

Ken remembered his own struggles with understanding the KJV in his youth and wanted to make the Bible understandable to his children—and to everyone. So, he began writing a modern English paraphrase of the Scriptures, first completing the New Testament epistles. He formed them into a book called Living Letters. Unable to find a publisher, Ken and Margaret formed Tyndale House Publishers, named for William Tyndale.

Living Letters caught on when world famous evangelist Billy Graham began offering it on his telecasts. The Living New Testament was published next, followed by The Living Bible in 1971. By the end of the twentieth century, 40 million Living Bibles had been sold. Tyndale House later asked 90 Greek and Hebrew scholars to revise The Living Bible. The result was the 1996 publication of The New Living Translation.

From the beginning, Ken and Margaret Taylor used all the royalties from The Living Bible to support missions, making the Bible available around the world. The Taylors knew the love Jesus had for them, and they wanted everyone to understand the gospel—the good news of how Jesus died and rose again to save us. That is always news worth sharing! • Kathy Irey

• Can you think of a time someone explained a Bible passage in a way that made sense to you? What do you remember about that experience?

• Paraphrases like The Living Bible are very easy to understand, but they do have some limitations. While translations (like The New Living Translation) seek to translate the original text word-for-word, a paraphrase focuses more on relating the thoughts and ideas behind the original text. How can translations and paraphrases be useful in different ways?

Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. Psalm 119:18 (NLT)