Ministry

How Is the Bible Edited? Part II

This is part two of a two-part series about how the Bible is edited from Tyndale’s Bible editorial team. You’ll find answers some of the most common questions below and in part one of this series.

How can you manipulate or move the Word of God around and not be disobeying God?

We are not adding to the Bible text, and we never purposefully omit parts of the Bible text.

We strive to remain faithful to God’s Word. Bible features are only for the purpose of highlighting and explaining important Bible truths.

These features should never be mistaken as additions to the Bible text.

And we try very hard not to manipulate God’s Word, either by misrepresenting it in a feature or by taking a verse out of context for the purpose of making it mean something that God and the Bible book’s human author never intended it to.

We try very hard to make sure that verses that are discussed in features are treated appropriately and with sensitivity to the context they come from.

We strive to be faithful and obedient to God throughout the Bible-publishing process.

As for moving the word of God around, the Bible text itself went through a long process before the books were accepted in their current canonical form and order.

In fact, some books in the Bible were originally part of one book, but due to space constrictions on scrolls they were split into multiple books. And Luke and Acts are actually more like a series written by one author, but they are split up by John in canonical order.

In some Bibles, books appear out of normal canonical order to emphasize connections between certain books that aren’t normally read together. In the Immerse series, books that were split are presented together as one, and Luke and Acts appear in succession.

In the case of One Year Bibles and Chronological Bibles, we apply a similar philosophy.

We are always careful not to drop or add to the Bible text in the process of moving it around.

And we do it only to enhance people’s ability to read and understand the Bible better. The bottom line is that we desire to use God’s Word in ways that will give him the glory.

What do you do if you find out that you (the proofreaders and editors) missed something after you’ve printed copies for selling?

First, we cringe. We take our work very seriously and want each product to be flawless.

But Bible publishing is a very long and complicated process, and there’s a lot that can go wrong along the way.

How we address a mistake depends on its severity. In extreme cases, we use a procedure known as “rip and tip”—cutting the affected page out of the printed volume and inserting a new page.

For more minor issues, we keep records of errors found in each product and fix them at the product’s next printing.


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