About
Translation Philosophy & Methodology
A free, modern English Bible translated from the original Hebrew and Greek — with every decision documented and every tradition compared.
Why This Exists
Many modern English Bible translations — the NIV, ESV, NASB, NLT — are under active copyright. Displaying them on websites, in apps, or in educational materials requires licensing fees or explicit permission. For most independent developers, educators, and researchers, that's a wall.
The KJV is in the public domain, but its 17th-century English can be a barrier for general readers and difficult to use in modern study tools. There are few free, modern-English alternatives that anyone can use without restriction.
The Covenant Rendering exists to fill that gap: a rigorous, formal-equivalence translation from the original Hebrew, released under CC-BY-4.0 — free to use, quote, distribute, and build on, with attribution.
Source Text
The Covenant Rendering is translated from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) — the same authoritative Masoretic text used as the Hebrew source for the ESV, NASB, and most other modern translations. The WLC preserves the full vowel pointing (niqqud) and cantillation marks of the medieval Masoretic tradition, representing the most carefully transmitted form of the Hebrew text.
All Hebrew displayed on this site uses the WLC text with full Masoretic pointing. The KJV is provided alongside each verse as a reference comparison — not as a translation source, but as a familiar benchmark for readers who grew up with it.
Translation Philosophy
Formal Equivalence
TCR prioritizes word-for-word correspondence to the Hebrew wherever natural English allows. This approach preserves the structure of the original text and enables readers to trace translation decisions back to specific Hebrew words. Where the Hebrew is ambiguous, TCR renders the most defensible reading and documents alternatives in the translator notes.
Reading Level
Target reading level is 9th–10th grade, comparable to the ESV. Where a concept requires a specific term, that term is used and explained in the key terms section.
Theological Neutrality
TCR is not affiliated with any denomination or theological tradition. Where the Hebrew text is genuinely ambiguous — and in the Hebrew Bible, that is often — both readings are presented and the tension is named. TCR does not resolve interpretive disputes in favor of any confession; it documents them.
Full Documentation
Every verse includes translator notes explaining significant lexical choices, grammatical decisions, and points of scholarly debate. Key terms carry their Hebrew or Greek original, transliteration, semantic range, and a note on how the word is used in context.
How It Was Made
The Covenant Rendering was generated using AI language models (Claude, by Anthropic) operating against the Hebrew and Greek source texts under carefully designed translation prompts.
Every chapter was produced through a two-stage pipeline: a generation agent translates from the source text following formal-equivalence principles, and a separate QA agent validates the output against 18 automated checks and 8 judgment-based quality standards. The result is 1,189 chapters that pass automated validation for JSON integrity, verse numbering, required fields, KJV independence, translator note specificity, archaic language absence, term consistency, and schema compliance.
The Old Testament was translated from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) and the New Testament from the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) — the same authoritative source texts used by the ESV, NASB, and most modern translations.
The translation prompts, quality contract, validation scripts, and every chapter of structured data are available in the GitHub repository. We believe transparency strengthens the work.
Who We Are
The Covenant Rendering was created by Aaron Blonquist — a program manager and technologist. This is not a committee-produced translation and does not claim to be one.
What this project offers is full transparency. Every translation decision is documented. Every Hebrew and Greek word is visible alongside the rendering. The source texts, prompts, and validation pipeline are public. A reader with a Hebrew lexicon can verify any verse against the source.
This project exists to provide a free, modern, open alternative for anyone who wants to read, study, or build with the biblical text. If you find an error, please report it — the work improves through feedback.
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
You are free to share (copy and redistribute in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you give appropriate credit to The Covenant Rendering and indicate if changes were made.
Attribution requirement: "The Covenant Rendering, thecovenantrendering.com, CC-BY-4.0" is sufficient. You may use any reasonable format.
Note on the source text: The Westminster Leningrad Codex is in the public domain. The translation text (the English rendering, translator notes, and key term analysis) is the original content licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
Found an Error?
This project improves through scrutiny. If you find a rendering that misrepresents the Hebrew or Greek, a translator note that is inaccurate, or any other error — please report it.
Open Source
The full translation data (JSON), generation prompt, and methodology are available on GitHub. Contributions, corrections, and forks are welcome.
View on GitHub →