John Bertram Phillips
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John Bertram Phillips (16 September 1906, Barnes, Surrey - 21 July 1982, Swanage) was a Bible translator, writer and clergyman, often referred to as just J. B. Phillips.
He was educated at Emanuel School and earned a degree in Classics from Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. He was ordained an Anglican clergyman in the Church of England in 1930.
During World War II, while serving as a minister at Church of the Good Shepherd in London, he was disappointed to find that the young people in his church did not understand the Bible. Therefore, he began to paraphrase in modern English the New Testament by starting with the Epistle to the Colossians in the periods he spent in the bomb shelters during the London Blitz. The youth group was drawn to his translation because they could finally understand what the Bible was saying. Led on by their feedback, he continued to translate the rest of the New Testament after the war into colloquial English. Portions of the translation were published starting with Letters to Young Churches in 1947, which received the backing of C.S. Lewis. In 1952 he added the gospels. In 1955 he added Acts and titled it The Young Church in Action. In 1957 he added The Book of Revelation Finally, all were compiled together and published in 1958 as The New Testament in Modern English for which he is now best known. This was subsequently revised and republished in 1961 and then again in 1972. Time magazine wrote of Phillips, "...he can make St. Paul sound as contemporary as the preacher down the street. Seeking to "transmit freshness and life across the centuries". In his Preface to the Schools Edition of his 1959 version of the New Testament, he states that he "wrote for the young people who belonged to my youth club, most of them not much above school-leaving age, and I undertook the work simply because I found that the Authorised Version was not intelligible to them."
His work translating the Bible made him one of Britain's most famous Bible communicators. Phillips also translated parts of the Old Testament. In 1963 he released translations of Isaiah 1-39, Hosea, Amos, and Micah. This was titled Four Prophets: Amos, Hosea, First Isaiah, Micah: A Modern Translation from the Hebrew. But, he did not translate any more of the Old Testament. He talked of the revelation he made as he translated the New Testament, describing it as "extraordinarily alive" unlike any experience he had had with non-scriptural ancient texts. He referred to the scriptures speaking to his condition in an "uncanny way" similarly to the way the author of Psalm 119 talks. Phillips was a universalist, he denied the existence of Satan and also denied the ascension of Christ.
Among the many books he authored, he wrote an autobiography, The Price of Success, which was published in 1984. Other books he wrote include: The Newborn Christian, Ring of Truth, and Your God is Too Small.
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