If you have not read the preface to the Authorized Version of 1611, then that might be something you would want to do. They state in the preface, the reason that Bible translation was made, and they say clearly, paraphrasing, it was for the common man to have access to God’s word in man’s common language.

Well noted. If Peterson’s “Message” is not even a translation, but just a paraphrase? Then of course, so much the worse.

A 1611 update by the best scholars available, in the era of Shakespeare, of a c. 200 AD document, might be useful after all. Though we might well look into just exactly what “improvements” were made, and the complex developed theology that made them. In particular, the pointed Shakespearian semantic ambiguity of later versions, seems to have helped convey a complex message that most ordinary churches have not really appreciated, even to this very day.

An “American” – right-wing/ nationalistic bourgeois? – translation, on the other hand, would not respect “God’s continuing revelation.” And the complex and useful nature, of a long tradition of increasing theological refinement.

But especially? I don’t know much Greek; but enough to look at the oldest Greek texts we have … and to assert that, in spite of protests from classicists or others, the old tongue was much less refined, much less specific in many ways, than language is today.

But especially? There is so much slack, play, in TRANSLATIONS. For me – not an expert in Greek per se, but pretty well informed on language, semantics, and so forth – looking at the original Greek? There’s “many a slip, twixt cup and lip.” There’s more than enough slack, to come up with a Bible that pretty much says almost anything you want it to.