The translation, and the recording.

Why a new translation

The English most readers meet is Archibald Robertson's, published in 1892. It is faithful and it is public domain, but it was made for the eye: single paragraphs run for thousands of words and sentences average nearly two hundred characters. Read aloud, that structure puts the pauses in the wrong places.

This translation was made from the Greek of Robertson's own 1893 critical edition and built for the ear instead — one complete thought to a paragraph, and one paragraph to a recorded passage. On the Incarnation runs to 280 such passages across 8 parts, 2 hours and 44 minutes in all.

How you know the text matches the audio

Each passage is recorded as its own file, and a SHA-256 checksum of the exact text sent to the narrator is stored alongside it. Before a part is finished, every checksum is re-verified against the text you see here. The page is generated from those same records, so a quotation on this site cannot drift away from the recording — it is not transcribed, it is resolved.

The narration

The reading is synthetic speech, not a human narrator, and that is disclosed on every page. Each part was listened to in full and approved before it was published; where the voice misread a word, the passage was recorded again rather than accepted.

Where this differs from the familiar English

§40 — "Moses" where Robertson prints "Jacob". The words quoted are from Genesis 49, spoken by Jacob, and the Greek attributes them to Moses. Montfaucon set that reading aside on the authority of two manuscripts, and Robertson followed him. This translation keeps Moses: it is the reading of the other manuscripts and of every printed edition, and it is the harder reading, since a copyist corrects Moses to Jacob and never the reverse.

§§56–57 — two departures from the literal. "A saving counsel" at §56, and "the hearts of men" at §57, which differs from the phrasing of 1 Corinthians 2:9 that most readers will have in their ear.