World English Bible (WEB) - PDF download

I've recently become aware of the World English Bible (WEB) project - an ambitious project that has been active for some time.  They are creating a modern English translation that is in the public domain - not copyrighted - (using the ASV for reference, which is already in the public domain).  It is still work in progress, but large parts of it are essentially complete.

I find the complete freedom of the public domain of Scripture attractive - print it yourself, share it, quote as much as you like, etc.  The project also comes in multiple editions to suit your preference, including:

• The main WEB edition, which uses the English transliteration of the Name of God in Hebrew where it appears (instead of using the Hebrew/Jewish tradition of using "LORD" instead in these instances).  This edition includes Deuterocanonical books - the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Aprocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
• The British English edition, which adjusts words of the main edition affected by British spelling differences, and does not use the English transliteration of the Hebrew Name of God, but uses "LORD" instead (there is a note about expecting this edition to be used for missionary work, in which case the transliterated Name of God may cause some confusion).  This edition also includes Deuterocanonical books.
• The Messianic edition, which does not use the Hebrew Name of God, but uses "LORD" instead.  It also uses transliterations of Hebrew names in the New Testament, such as Yeshua instead of Jesus, Yochanan instead of John, etc.  A quick glance through it seems to indicate they also use "Judeans" in many places where other translations use "Jews" or "Jewish leaders" - this is interesting to me, and makes some passages read quite differently.  But this is a subject for another post.  No Deuterocanonical books in this edition, as they don't appear in the standard Jewish canon.
• The British Messianic edition, which is the same as the Messianic edition, but modifies British spelling as needed.

Being a work in progress, they have made source files available in a few standard formats.  These formats are the "raw" markup files with the Scripture, which is useful for collaboration and editing, but they are not in a readable state themselves. (There is a browseable web-based version linked on the site above if you just want to check it out.)

Out of curiousity, I figured out how to import these files into a standard (also free) Bible editor called  Bibledit (installation page with links to different platforms here).  After adjusting the layout options, I have gotten it to export a PDF of the WEB main edition that is quite printable (or readable in a PDF reader, although there are no hotlinks in the document itself).

As per the project notes, "All Old Testament and New Testament books are essentially done EXCEPT for JEREMIAH, LAMENTATIONS, EZEKIEL, and DANIEL. Editing work continues on those books and the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon/Psuedepigrapha books, mostly in the form of slight updates to language and punctuation, but the meaning should be correct as those books read now. The companion Apocrypha/Deuterocanon of the World English Bible is mostly (except for Psalm 151) in a rough draft form, as an automated language update of portions of the Apocrypha from the Revised Version and portions from the "LXX2012: Septuagint in English 2012"."

PDF Document Layout Notes

The PDF is laid out with the following main parameters (for others, consult the exported Bibledit stylesheet linked below):

• Letter size paper
• Times New Roman font (side note: Bibledit will only render italics when fonts are selected that have a "true" italic version.  On my system this appears to be only Serif fonts - the Sans Serif fonts I tried to use list an "oblique" variant that apparently isn't "true" enough.  As well, Times New Roman was one of the few Serif fonts that also supported rendering of the Hebrew characters used in some of the footnotes.)
• Main text: 12 pt
• Footnotes and cross-references: 8 pt.
• Header: 9 pt.
• Words of Christ in red
• Order of Old Testament and Deuterocanonical books is borrowed from the Orthodox Study Bible (with some differences as a few books are different/extra/split)

Downloads

These may try to open in your browser if you click on them directly.  You may need to right-click on each, and select "Save link as" or equivalent in your web browser.

World English Bible (main edition) PDF

Bibledit stylesheet used for generating the above