The New English Bible

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NOTE:
King James Version is abbreviated to KJV.
New English Bible is abbreviated to NEB.

Isaiah 53:3
"He is despised and rejected of men" KJV
becomes
"He was despised, he shrank from the sight of men." NEB

Luke 19:10 clearly contradicts the above interpretation:
"For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."
He shrank from no man.

Isaiah 53:4b
"We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted" KJV
becomes
"We counted Him smitten of God, struck down by disease and misery." NEB
An appalling mistranslation.

Isaiah 53:9
"And He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." KJV
becomes
"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, a burial place among the refuse of mankind." NEB

Matthew 27:57-60 tells the story of the rich man Joseph of Arimathaea, claiming the body of Jesus and burying it in his own new tomb.

Psalm 22:16
"They pierced my hands and my feet" KJV
becomes
"And they have hacked off my hands and my feet" NEB

Psalm 34:20 "He keepeth all His bones, not one of them is broken."

Genesis 3:15
"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel." KJV
becomes
"I will put enmity between you and the woman,
between your brood and hers.
They shall strike at your head,
And you shall strike at their heel." NEB

Here the NEB eliminates the great prophetic picture of the Lord's triumph at Calvary, and neatly does away with that which heralds the doom of the devil. The scholars appear to take no notice of the fact that in this verse a singular masculine verb is used, therefore the noun "seed" must be singular. Consequently, this clearly refers to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Romans 9:5
"... Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever" KJV
becomes
"...sprang the Messiah. May God, supreme above all, be blessed for ever." NEB

By a clever bit of punctuation another clear testimony to our Lord's Deity is eliminated. NEB is by no means alone in this deception. This strange punctuation by many scholars in spite of the fact which they should know; namely that nowhere in the Scriptures, either in the Hebrew or Greek, does the "Blessed" follow the name of God; it always precedes it when the writer is making an ascription of praise to God.

Zechariah 13:5
"I am a husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth" KJV
becomes
"I am a tiller of the soil, who has been schooled in lust since boyhood" NEB

Zechariah 13:6
"And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?" KJV
becomes
"'What,' someone will ask, 'are these scars on your chest?'" NEB

Zechariah 13:6b
"Then shall he answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends." KJV
becomes
"I got them in the house of my lovers." NEB

What do we now have before us? A man schooled in lust since boyhood, with scars on his chest, which he got in the house of his lovers. What could be more nauseating than this?

Zechariah 13:7 "Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts, smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered." KJV
In Matthew 26:31 the Lord Jesus clearly reveals that this Scripture is Messianic. That is, it prophetically speaks of Him.

In the New English Bible we search in vain for Zechariah 13:7 in the rightful position given to it by the Holy Spirit of God.

We find it tacked on at the end of Zechariah 11:17. This verse now refers to an "Idol Shepherd, that leaveth the flock." The judgment of God is upon this man. The translating scholars of the New English Bible in their wisdom (??) (or rather folly) have placed that which clearly refers to the Good Shepherd in conjunction with the "Idol Shepherd." In the minds of the readers, this could easily equate the Lord Jesus with a wicked shepherd.

The amazing fact is that many who profess to love the LORD quote this version without any apology for using it in the presence of Christians who truly are Bible lovers.

Mark 1:2
"As it is written in the prophets." KJV
becomes
"In the prophet Isaiah, it stands written." NEB

Read Isaiah from chapter one to chapter 66, and you will not find the quotation "Behold I send my messenger...".That is Malachi 3:1. Nearly all the new versions follow their "blind guides" erroneously named "the oldest and best manuscripts" into the ditch of scholarly error. Mark 1:3 is in the prophet Isaiah, so the scholars are half right, but still totally in error in verse 2.

Matthew 13:35
"That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables..." KJV
The NEB comes out brilliantly with the help of one of "the oldest and best" manuscripts "This was to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah."

The only thing wrong with this beautiful change from the King James Version is that Isaiah did not write that prophecy. It just happens to be a quotation from Psalm 78:2. What are these people trying to do to us?

Luke 2:33
"Joseph and His Mother marvelled at thsoe things..." KJV
becomes
"The child's Father and Mother were full of wonder." NEB

Now what are they insinuating? Does it matter to you?

Luke 4:4
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." KJV

"Man shall not live by bread alone." NEB

Romans 10:17 tells us that "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Almost anyone will agree with the NEB reading as far as it goes; but the great truth that man lives spiritually "by every Word of God" has been quietly removed and so the truth of God has been changed into a lie.

Luke 4:8
The NEB omits the Saviour's word of command to the devil, "Get thee behind me Satan." Why???

Luke 4:18
The NEB omits the second great purpose of our Lord's anointing, i.e. "to heal the broken hearted." Interestingly, they have not bothered to remove it from Isaiah 61:1 in their Old Testament translation.

Scores of other mutilations could be recorded here. The writer feels that sufficient has been brought forward to cause a true Christian to fear and tremble to use or commend this version as one to be trusted by orthodox, evangelical, fundamental Christians.

The preface of the New English Bible opens with a grand trumpet blast, plus "all kinds of music." The reason given for adding yet another version to the epidemic of translations which has afflicted the church of our Lord Jesus is as follows.

"In May 1946 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland received an overture, recommending that a translation of the Bible be made, in the language of the present day, in as much as the language of the Authorized Version (KJV) already archaic when it was made, had now become even more definitely archaic and less generally understood."

No doubt with the best of intentions, seeking to relieve the torture of the modern intellectual who is overwhelmed by the stately "thee" and "thou" of the KJV; and intending to deliver him from the confusion that results in his mind on account of the archaic language of the King James Version, we find the results of their kindly labours.

1Timothy 1:9b
"murderers of fathers, and murderers of mothers." KJV
becomes
"parricides and matricides." NEB

No doubt this rendering will help our dear young people who might have difficulty in understanding the KJV at this point.

1Timothy 4:3
"Commanding to abstain from meats." KJV
becomes
"Inculcating abstinence from certain foods." NEB

James 3:8
"It (the tongue) is an unruly evil." KJV
becomes
"It is an intractible evil." NEB

Isaiah 28:7
"But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink, are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment." KJV

(And this is a beauty - CJC)
"These too are addicted to wine, clamouring in their cups, priest and prophet are addicted to strong drink, and bemused with wine, (Pardon me while I cough - CJC) clamouring in their cups, confirmed topers, (time out for everyone to chuckle) hiccuping in drunken stupor." NEB

And there it is in all its magnificance, a little matter like omitting, "they err in vision, they stumble in judgment" is of little moment to some, but our God takes a very dim view of adding to, or subtracting from His precious Word, (Deuteronomy 4:2)

Isaiah 28:25b
"Wheat...Barley, and the Rie in their place." KJV

The underlined is so hard to understand that it is clarified in the NEB
"and Spelt along the edge."

What next?

Isaiah 14:23
"I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water." KJV

This is so very difficult and archaic, we are inexpressibly blessed and helped by the clarification as follows.

"I will make her a haunt of the bustard, a waste of fen." NEB

How about that? "A waste of fen" for "Pools of Water." Incredible scholarship! Amazing simplicity! Who wants it? Examples could be multiplied to the extent of many, many pages, but a word to the wise is sufficient.

Representatives on the panel from the following organizations, "accept corporate responsibility for the interpretation set forth in the translation adopted." Preface NEB page 6.

Here are the sponsoring bodies as listed in the front of the version.

The Apocrypha is shamelessly included as being part of the Bible, except for a faint foot note; "The publication of the books of the Apocrypha ... does not imply that the bodies represented on the joint committee hold a common opinion upon the canonical status of these books." How is not that real nice??

"Then the boy asked the Angel: Azarias, my friend, what medicine is there in the fish's heart, liver and gall? He said, You can use the heart and liver as a fumigation for any man or woman attacked by a demon or evil spirit: the attack will cease, and it will give no further trouble..."

"Shades of Merlin the magician!" Has this become the pure unadulterated Word of God to millions? Are true believers accepting this?

PREFACE, page 7 "As vice chairman and director, Dr. CH Dodd has from start to finish given outstanding leadership and guidance to the project, bringing to the work scholarship, sensitivity, and an ever watchful eye." There follows as example of that scholarship.

Quote from Dr. Dodd's book, "The Authority of the Bible."

"We need not doubt that Jesus shared the views of His contemporaries regarding the authorship of books in the Old Testament, or the phenomena of demon possession. Views which we could not accept without violence to our sense of truth. We readily recognize that so far, he was a man of his time." p. 237.

The Tragedy of it all. It would appear that the sponsoring bodies listed above have the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of millions of church members. Where are those who will "earnestly contend for the faith, which was once delivered unto the saints"?

Well spoke the prophet Isaiah of these days in which we live.

"The leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed." (Isaiah 9:16)