PREFACE

The goal of The One New Man Bible is to bring a greater understanding of and appreciation for the power given to believers – the power in which we are all supposed to walk. The One New Man Bible also makes the Jewish Roots of Christianity come to life. This translation of the Hebrew Scriptures has been edited from a public domain English translation. The English has been brought up to date and many words previously translated according to tradition have been changed to the literal. Hebrew is a very expressive language, so this translation brings out much of the power that has commonly been omitted. The New Testament is The Power New Testament, a fresh translation of the Fourth Edition United Bible Society Greek text. An effort has been made to keep the text as free as possible from denominational biases and doctrinal interpretations.

Ephesians 2:14. For He is our peace, the One Who has made both things into one and Who has loosed the dividing wall of the fence, cause of the enmity to His flesh, 15. by His nullifying the tradition of the commandments by decrees, so that He could create the two, Jewish and non-Jewish, into One New Man, establishing peace 16. so He could reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, as God killed their enmity by means of Y’shua. 17. And when He came He proclaimed the Good News of peace to you, to those far away, and peace to those near: 18. because through Him we both have the introduction to the Father by means of one Spirit. 19. Therefore then, you are no longer aliens and strangers, but you are fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God, 20. building upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Messiah Y’shua being His cornerstone, 21. in Whom the whole building being constructed is being fit together into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, 22. and in Whom you are built together into a habitation of God by the Spirit.

This passage, written to former heathens (See Gentile in Glossary), tells us that all are to worship the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, The King of the Universe, the God Who became flesh and walked among us. Now is the time to bring this era to fruition, so The One New Man Bible is coming to facilitate the changes in our mindsets. It will help ease the Church into its Jewish Roots, and finally recognize that Y’shua (Jesus) was born Jewish, that He grew up Jewish, and that He is the same today as He was then. (Hebrews 13:8) We are all to join together in understanding that the Scriptures Y’shua, and every New Testament author, embraced are for us today, irreverently called Old Testament by the Church. One great blessing was finding that Matthew flows, as if a continuous stream, out of the book of Chronicles. Only God could have done this! Those Scriptures are the Living Word and our prayer is that this book will bring these Living Words to life for you.

The One New Man Bible has been written to help present day believers move toward God’s perfect plan to create One New Man, bringing Jewish and non-Jewish together. The One New Man Bible uses LORD* to translate the Tetragrammaton, the four letter name of God. The name is a Hebrew word meaning, “I was, I AM, I always will be.” He never changes. In the New Testament there is a problem because the authors of the Septuagint used the same Greek word, Kurios, that the authors of the New Testament used to translate the name of God, which is always translated in English as Lord. In the New Testament the word Kurios is used in reference to both Y’shua and the LORD* when quoting or alluding to the LORD* in Hebrew Scripture. There is no distinction in the Greek text between the word Lord in reference to Y’shua or to the LORD*. In this New Testament a Bible quote with Lord, for LORD*, is expanded in a footnote for clarity.

The Hebrew Scriptures are in the traditional Jewish book order, and although different from the Christian book order, it is easy to learn the sequence. This Bible is very easy to read through, beginning with Genesis. Those of us who are used to various English translations will be surprised at the power and vitality of this translation. Look over the Table of Contents to acquaint yourself with the sequence if you have not previously used this book order. A few verse numbers are different, primarily in Psalms where the Hebrew text counts the introductory verse as verse one. In Malachi the verse numbers of the third chapter continue counting instead of making a fourth chapter, but all the verses are included even though there is no fourth chapter. Numbers 16:35-50 of other Christian Bibles are Numbers 17:1-9 here, but nothing is missing from the text.

One early surprise is in Genesis 12:1 when God does not say “Go” to Abram, but “Get yourself out of here!” Later He tells Moses to order Pharaoh to “Send My people away!” instead of pleading “Let My people go.” These passages are the literal translation.

Throughout the text of The One New Man Bible there are more than 4,000 footnotes. The Glossary at one hundred seventy pages describes various first century Jewish customs and explains Hebrew Scriptures, such as Leviticus 14, which on the surface is about cleansing a leper, but has a much deeper meaning. Read about it in Gossip/Slander in Glossary.

Many Jewish sources were studied to bring the Scriptures to life, including many modern as well as ancient Jewish commentaries. Those studies bring real depth to the subjects in the Glossary, but even more importantly they give insight into the thinking of the New Testament authors, the Apostles, and especially Y’shua. It is important for those of us reading in the twenty-first century to understand what a word or expression meant to those who wrote the passages in Bible times.

Do not ignore the Hebrew negative imperative! When you see Do not in bold, know that the expression has no direct English translation. It is in bold to let you know that the phrase means even more than saying, “Do not even think about doing whatever is being warned.” One very important statement to keep in mind is the frequent warning, Do not be in awe! It is very important for us to remember to focus on our heavenly Father and not to be like Job (Job 3:24) and let fear come in.

In the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, there are divisions to spread these sections over the course of a year. These are for weekly readings in the synagogue and are noted in this text by extra lines and a slightly larger bold font to make it easier for those who study those weekly readings. The page numbers listing the Torah readings are footnoted to show which Scriptures every synagogue in the world will be reading that Sabbath. The readings begin with the first Sabbath after the celebration of Sukkot. You will need a Jewish calendar to find the reading for any date, and these can be ordered from any number of websites, or may be available from a local synagogue.

The New Testament of The One New Man Bible is the Power New Testament, a translation by this author/editor, of the United Bible Society’s Fourth Edition Greek text, published in 1993. The editors of that text used a scientific method called Textual Criticism to determine which of the more than five thousand ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament were closest to what the authors wrote in the first century. This method is similar to that used by the editors of the ancient Greek classics to determine the most accurate copies of those writings.

Until the first printed Greek text of the New Testament was published in 1515, all copies were made by hand, so there was no standard text. A mistake, addition, or omission would therefore be passed on as other copies were made of a particular manuscript. Several families of manuscripts, each based geographically, developed from that system. Among those families of texts one was called Alexandrian, from Egypt; another Caesarean, from Caesarea of Israel; another Western, the smallest; and another was called Byzantine, which was the family of texts taken to England and Western Europe by the Roman Church. See Greek New Testament Text in Glossary.

Over the centuries many additions, now identified by textual scholars, were made to the Greek texts. These additions may have been dropped from some translations, or simply identified as added text, but still translated. This translation inserts those passages in italics when they have been positively identified by the editors as additions. Footnotes are added to also identify them as additions.

In some instances it is necessary to add a word or two for a passage to read properly in English. When that is done, the added words are in italics, so you will know they were added. Also in italics are the passages that were added in later centuries. Hebrew commonly leaves out the verb of ‘being,’ so when these are added to the Hebrew text they are simply translated as Hebrew idioms, not italicized. However, in the NT these verbs of ‘being’ are italicized because the Greek language uses these verbs, so italics are used in the NT to show that the Jewish authors did not use them, but the translator added them.

Some words have been translated differently because the traditional translation conveys something not intended by the author. One of those words is the Greek word Ekklesia, which means a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place. Implicit in Ekklesia is a summoning, so this is not just a collection of people, but people called out to a public meeting for a particular purpose. Ekklesia is commonly translated church, but because of our association of church with both a building and an organization, in this translation, Ekklesia is translated congregation.

The Greek word Nomos has nearly always been translated Law, even when used for the Hebrew word Torah. Torah does not mean Law. It means Teaching. When you see Torah in this translation, do not think Law, but of the Loving God teaching His children, offering an outline to guide them for a better way of life. See Torah in Glossary.

In the New Testament books the word for High Priest is capitalized when it refers to the one who occupies that office, or a former High Priest. The word also is used to refer to members of that family, whether or not they are in office at the time. It is often used in the plural, and then is not capitalized. Some translations use “chief priests” for these situations, but this translation uses “high priests” in these cases.

Both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures were first translated into English centuries after being translated from the Latin Vulgate text. Those early translations spelled some Latin words in English and did not translate them, such as ark, magi, and mansion. See Latin Words in Glossary.

This translation has as its goal to be a very readable text that flows from one book to another while preserving much of the Jewish flavor, especially the Jewishness of Y’shua, and much of the power in the Hebrew and Greek expressions. We believe that by the laying on of hands we have all the gifts of the Spirit of the Living God, the King of the Universe, and that God is the same today as when He created the universe, and He will remain the same for eternity. The motivation is to seek Truth.

The editors of the Greek text cite many Hebrew Scriptures throughout the text, so the majority of Scripture references given in the New Testament text are from the Greek text used for this translation.

There were no chapter numbers, verse numbers, or punctuation in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Even the present Hebrew and Greek texts do not have quotation marks, but proper placement of the marks is taken from the context of a passage. Quotation marks are used only in the books of the Torah and the New Testament because in the Hebrew Scriptures conversation flows so that in many passages the speaker’s identity is not clear. See Greek Text in Glossary.

There are passages in both the Hebrew and Greek that can be translated in more than one way – and each way is still correct. One example is with Noah where the box (ark) is to be covered inside and out with pitch, or atonement, Gen. 6:14. Another is in John 3:8 where the wind blows, or the Spirit breathes or blows. Spirit makes sense to us today, but those to whom Y’shua was speaking would not have related to that, so they understood the word as wind. See Book Order in Glossary.

My hope is that you will enjoy reading this result of many years of dedicated study and worship of our heavenly Father.