Our Vision
Why This Project Exists
Traditional Bible translations carry centuries of accumulated meaning—layers of interpretation that, while valuable, can obscure what the original audience would have understood. Words evolve. Contexts shift. What was clear to a first-century reader often becomes muddied by tradition.
This project aims to cut through those layers and ask a simple question: What did this actually mean to the people who first heard it?
Translation Examples
Matthew 6: "Performers" vs. "Hypocrites"
In Matthew 6, traditional translations use the word "hypocrites" to describe those who pray and give alms publicly for recognition. Today, "hypocrite" implies someone who says one thing but does another—a moral inconsistency.
But the original Greek word hypokritēs (ὑποκριτής) meant "stage actor" or "performer". Jesus wasn't primarily condemning moral inconsistency—he was critiquing theatrical religious performance. These were people putting on a show, playing a role for an audience. That nuance changes everything.
Our translation uses "performers" to recover that original theatrical imagery.
John 1: "Word" vs. "Logos"
The opening of John's Gospel is one of the most famous passages in the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
The problem? "Word" is a profoundly insufficient translation of logos (λόγος). To Greek-speaking readers, logos meant far more than just "word"—it carried connotations of reason, divine order, the organizing principle of the cosmos, the rational structure underlying reality.
Philosophers like Heraclitus and the Stoics used logos to describe the fundamental rationality that governs the universe. When John's audience heard logos, they understood it as a profound theological claim: the ordering principle of all existence had become flesh.
Translating it simply as "word" flattens that rich, layered meaning into something far more pedestrian.
Our translation acknowledges this complexity and provides notes explaining the fuller meaning of logos.
Why Use AI for Translation?
Language is AI's native domain. Modern language models can hold the entirety of multiple languages in context simultaneously—ancient Greek, classical philosophy, historical usage patterns, semantic relationships across millennia. They can identify subtle meanings that get lost in word-for-word translation.
Where human translators must make judgment calls based on their training and theological traditions, AI can analyze the full semantic range of a word, compare it to how it was used in contemporary literature, and offer translations that prioritize original meaning over inherited tradition.
This doesn't make AI perfect—but it makes it exceptionally well-suited for the task of linguistic analysis.
Acknowledging AI's Limitations
We recognize that AI has inherent limitations. Language models are trained on human data, which means they can carry the same biases, assumptions, and blind spots that humans do. There's also a risk that AI might default to producing translations similar to existing versions—simply because those versions dominate its training data.
This project is not about replacing human scholarship. It's about augmenting it. AI gives us a powerful tool for re-examining long-held assumptions and recovering meanings that tradition may have obscured. But it's a tool, not an oracle.
We approach this work with humility, transparency, and a commitment to explaining our translation choices. Each chapter includes detailed notes on significant decisions, so you can see our reasoning and decide for yourself.
An Ongoing Project
This is an open-source effort. The code, the translations, and the methodology are all available for anyone to review, critique, and improve. We believe that transparency and collaboration produce better results than closed systems.
If you find this work valuable—or if you have questions, critiques, or suggestions—we'd love to hear from you. Check out the GitHub repository to learn more or contribute.