The Pioneers’ New Testament

Dear brothers and sisters:

Yesterday, one of you pushed the total of views of this blog site over the 100,000 mark.  You represent 186 countries, and over 3000 of you have downloaded the Pioneers” New Testament.  I just want you all to know what an enormous gift that has been to an aging, but still eager, fellow-follower of the Lord Jesus.

This month marks 8 years since my son Dan began putting my studies on the web.  This year will also mark 60 years since the Lord confirmed to me that I was supposed to spend my life at the task of working to provide for people a tool — or a set of tools — for more accurately understanding the text of the New Testament, which is our best record of the life and purpose of our Lord.  Although I tried diligently to prepare for this assignment with academic training in both the Greek language and the principles and practice of linguistics, the privilege to work at it in any sort of “official” fashion was denied me.  I had no “sponsor” among the hierarchies of several “church” institutions, and I was not willing (because of  very clear New Testament precedent) to go around begging strangers to pay my way.  Additionally, as you surely can imagine from reading many of the studies, my work rattled a few too many cages, kicked too many “sacred cows”, to be attractive to officials who treasure their pet “doctrines” more highly than linguistic accuracy.

However, with the immeasurably precious support of  an equally committed husband, and occasional encouragement by fellow-seekers,  the work continued.  For a bit over ten years (most of the 1980’s), we taught informal classes to enable folks to do serious study on their own.  These dear people kept asking for more organized work.  Finally, in the early 1990’s, our dear daughter-in-law, Colleen, patiently introduced me to the alien computer world of “Word Perfect”, in order to prepare for a trial print version.  Our students were enthusiastic — but with no “sponsor”, distribution was minimal.  Later, our eldest son Dan created a CD version, with similar results.  So it was that after several more revisions, Dan undertook to put it on the web, where most of you have found it.  And this outlet enables me to continue to insist that it NEVER BE SOLD, but be freely available to all.  I believe firmly that if anything is truly from the Lord, its only price-tag is obedience.

No one can stop it now!  I thank the Lord for the privilege to share this work with each of you.  I would still love to hear from more of you.  The work would be much better with interactive efforts.  None of us is “smart” enough to fully understand, alone.  That’s why the Lord planned for a Body.
May we all represent him faithfully!

My love to you all —  Ruth

This is a beginning. . .

I have been helping my Mom, Ruth Martin, with the technical aspects of electronically publishing her translation of the New Testament from the Greek. First self-published (by my brother Dave) in paperback in 1992, the Pioneers’ New Testament has undergone two revisions and one digital edition on CD since then. This latest revision was completed just last year. We’re using the blog format to put it “out there” for you. . .bread on the waters I guess. . .in the hopes that it can find interested parties to critique, chew on it, and perhaps be inspired to a new reading of the Scriptures through the challenges it presents.

In the next few days I’ll also post Mom’s translation notes, and with any luck get her on here to start commenting herself! In the meantime, please download a copy of the Pioneers’ New Testament (Adobe Acrobat format) and have a look for yourself!