HIGH POINT, North Carolina (NCF) – Most Jews in Israel, and Israelis in America, haven’t read the Bible because it’s still in a foreign language. “Secular Israelis today are a Bibleless people group,” said Paul Vermillion, chairman of New Covenant Fellowship’s Modern Hebrew Bible Translation Committee.

“Just like the NKJV, NASB and NIV have been very successful with English in North America, we're working to do something similar with Modern Hebrew for secular Jews in Israel, America and abroad. Most modern Israelis have never studied the Ancient Hebrew language in which the Old Testament was written. Modern Hebrew is only 100 years old; there's still a lot of new work to do in it,” Vermillion explains.

To give Israelis the Bible in their own language, Vermillion is supervising a translation committee of native-born Israelis translating both the Old Testament and the New Testament into Modern Hebrew – the language that is read and spoken by 4.5 million secular Israelis today. “We want all people to have God’s Word accessible to them in the language that they fully understand today,” Vermillion said.

“We’re recruiting God's Hebrew dream team. We’ve consulted with men on the Old Testament and the New Testament who have led the field in Bible translation work. Dr. Roy Tov is on board as one of our senior level editors and translators; he was raised on a kibbutz in Israel, served as an officer in the Israeli army, is an author, a born again believer now and is professor of Biblical Hebrew at an Evangelical Seminary. Other Israeli translators and editors want to be involved and are ready to start work. We’re off to a great start,” said Vermillion.

Vermillion calculates that his project teams have 27,500 hours of work ahead of them to render the first edited draft of the entire Bible into fluid Modern Hebrew. "As a forward looking statement, I believe that once we've completed our first round of funding, we'll be able to publish the first translation draft within 6 months," said Vermillion. How much will it cost to produce and publish the entire Bible for Israelis? “We’re believing God for $27 million to give hope to Israel through giving them God's word speaking to them today. Translating and publishing the Bible in Modern Hebrew is the most important work that can be done for secular Israelis today. We’re recruiting project sponsors to invest in this work. They will be touching the apple of God’s eye and will be receiving the yield of eternal dividends,” Vermillion said.

“Our translation procedure has three major phases of operations,” said Vermillion, “First, with careful examination, we prepare the original texts from which we will work. Second, we assign a team of translators to each book of the Bible and assign them a project manager for their unit. Third, the translation drafts go through a number of senior rounds of edits, comparing them again to the original texts, and editing them for internal consistency, style and readability.”

For the Old Testament, “This is the world’s first time in 2000 years that the Old Testament will be accessible to Israelis in the language that they think and speak in,” said Vermillion. The last undertakings to deliver a translation of the Old Testament in the language of the people of Israel were in AD 110 when the Old Testament was translated into Aramaic (the “Onkelos”); and in 260 BC when the Old Testament was translated into Alexandrian Greek (the “Septuagint” or “LXX”).

For the New Testament, there have been two notable previous efforts to provide Israelis with the Bible in their language. The first, limited to the New Testament, was conducted in the 1970s and 1990s by a group of expatriates living in Israel. Vermillion compares reading it to reading something in that “English as a second language” version of English that appears often in instructions for assembling or using products made in China, after a translation from the original Chinese (or any other language) fails to come across in “normal” English:

Scholars of Ancient Hebrew did the second notable New Testament translation, undertaking it in the 1880s before Modern Hebrew was created. Vermillion says it’s done in the Ancient Hebrew, which, like the Ancient Hebrew Old Testament for today’s secular Israelis, reads like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English without translation:

The completion of this new translation project will mark the first time that the entire Word of God will have been translated by native Israelis into the language spoken and understood by their fellow Israelis today. Vermillion summed up his team’s calling by reciting God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants: “I will bless those who bless you. Is there any greater blessing that you can give Jewish people than the blessing of salvation? I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.”

Biblical literacy is one of the major ways that the Holy Spirit is using to work in people's lives. The Bible is a timely and appropriate tool that God can use to capture people's hearts. To have Vermillion speak to your congregation, contact him today.