Christianity Today just published a report after an investigation into the ever-popular charismatic Bible “translation”—if you even want to call it that—called The Passion Translation (TPT). TPT was a project founded in 2008 by Brian Simmons, a man who claimed to have special access to God and received special insight from Christ Himself.
And despite my ire with Christianity Today in general, the investigation revealed at least 2400 instances of “likely plagiarism,” along with questionable credentials and a severe distortion of many passages.
The investigation, which was led by pastors David Fish and JonMark Baker, along with YouTube vlogger Mike Winger, argues that a “lack of credentialed authority” and an “abundance of Christian credulity” are the primary reasons TPT was so successful.
Assemblies of God chaplain Andrew Chapman also noted that:
“We’ve lost literacy in the original [biblical] languages amongst pastors,” Chapman told CT. “I don’t think this would have gone on so long if the pastors knew Greek and Hebrew—or had any scholarship—in the charismatic end of the spectrum.”
Plagiarism is a serious charge, and the amount of plagiarism uncovered certainly discredits TPT’s author, Brian Simmons. The central focus of the CT investigation was the plagiarism—and it should be reported. It is a newsworthy scandal for sure.
But…
As the title of this article states, Hell shouldn’t need a flashing billboard with neon lights telling us that “Satan lives here!” for us to know it’s a bad place.
In other words, a Bible “translation”—and I put that in quotes because it isn’t a real translation—written by an unqualified charismatic who claimed supernatural access to divine revelation, personal insight into the biblical languages directly from Christ Himself, and who claimed to have secret encounters with angels who guided him in his distortion of the text, should have never passed the most basic of sniff tests.