Encounter the Heart of Man

Yet another Bible translation has been produced. Its advertising spiel makes some bold claims:

Encounter the Heart of God!

The Passion Translation Bible is a new, heart-level translation that expresses God’s fiery heart of love to this generation using Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic manuscripts—merging the emotion and life-changing truth of God’s Word. God longs to have his Word expressed in every language in a way that unlocks the passion of his heart. This translation will trigger inside every reader an overwhelming response to the truth of the Bible, unfolding the deep mysteries of the Scriptures in the love language of God, the language of the heart. If you’re hungry for God and want to know him on a deeper level, The Passion Translation will help you encounter God’s heart and discover what he has for your life.

Sadly, it only includes the New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs and Song of Songs. Presumably, the less important bits like Genesis and Isaiah were thought not necessary for knowing God ‘on a deeper level’. Note the assumptions that other bibles are not ‘heart-level’, whatever this means. See how they claim to have mingled the ‘truth of God’s word’ with ‘emotion’. God’s, or theirs?

The text above uses the word heart five times. God’s ‘heart’ is expressed from Genesis to Revelation; I suspect this translation tells us more of the publishers’ hearts, which (like all of us), are deceitful above all things, than God’s. I’m not a fully paid-up member of the AV-only brigade, but the proliferation of translations, each with crass advertising slogan and sales patter, makes for weary reading.