It had to happen. Five years after John Goldingay published his translation of The First Testament, Scot McKnight applied the same translation philosophy to the pages of the New Testament Second Testament.

Like Goldingay, McKnight sought to use the same English word to translate every unique Greek word. This leads to some fascinating results. For example, McKnight translates kalos, a word that is used about 100x in the New Testament as “beautiful,” which is the basic meaning of the word. However, it’s usually translated as “good,” which is a figurative understanding of beautiful. Thus:

So shine your light before humans so that they may see your beautiful works and splendor your Father in the heavens. (Matt 5:16)

In case you didn’t guess, McKnight chose to represent the verb doxazo with “splendor” rather than the more traditional “glorify.”

The result is a translation of the Bible that makes the familiar unfamiliar again and challenges the reader to think about the language of scripture in a new way. As I mentioned regarding Goldingay’s First Testament translation, this makes a very poor version for public reading but an excellent boost for someone who has grown overly familiar with their preferred English translation.

McKnight, Scot. The Second Testament: A New Translation. IVP Academic, 2023.