I very much appreciate the writings of N.T. Wright. I’m currently reading his book, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters, which is a partner text with his most recent publication, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. I hope to post a shorter, combined review in the coming weeks. I’ve also enjoyed Wright’s works on various other topics such as Scripture and Pauline theology.

So, with having an Amazon gift card, I decided to purchase his translation of the New Testament entitled, The Kingdom New Testament. It goes by the title, The New Testament For Everyone in Britain, which is where my Amazon account is currently connected.

Wright, I believe, has a very good and biblical grasp on the rule (kingdom) of God, as expressed ultimately in the words and work of Jesus in his first century, Jewish context. I also believe his perspective on Paul’s theology is much more robust than a typical evangelical approach, not just from a ‘new Pauline perspective’ focus, but from a larger kingdom concept as well. And, so, the word ‘kingdom’ might be a good adjective to describe this New Testament work.

I suppose the text will be comparable in some ways to Eugene Peterson’s, The Message. One might not really tab this as a ‘translation’, but more of a paraphrase and/or commentary on the text. Translations are usually taken up by teams of people, not one individual. But I still reckon there will be some great value in reading this version of the New Testament text. And, at times, many scholars provide their own translation of the Scripture text in their articles and books to try and unearth a little more of what’s going on beyond black ink on white paper.

In all, I look forward to reading the New Testament with a big of help from N.T. Wright. Maybe he’ll follow up with an Old Testament in the future.