Just as Jesus did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he did for the others: “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” But for many people today, believes David Capes, professor of New Testament at Houston Baptist University, the Scriptures are "probably the most-owned and least-read book out there. That's because, for many, it's too difficult to understand." To help open minds to greater understanding, Capes was part of a team that compiled The Voice, a new version of the King James Bible, seven years in the making, that seeks to emphasize the meaning behind the words.

Some have made light of certain of the new work’s features, such as the omissions of the name “Jesus Christ” and words such as angel or apostle. The translation, however, does not write these figures out of the story but describes them with terminology that indicates their definitions and meanings. Angel, for example, is rendered as "messenger" and apostle as "emissary." Jesus Christ is "Jesus the Anointed One" or the "liberating king."

Capes says that many people, even those who've gone to church for years, don't realize that the word Christ is a title. "They think that Jesus is his first name and Christ is his last name," Capes said. "We asked, 'What kind of questions are they coming to the text with,’ ” Capes says. “We . . . made that strategic decision, not to transliterate, but to translate everything, to give them the meaning of the text, and to give them the sense of where the story . . . is going.”

In the gospel reading for this Sunday, the disciples thought at first they were seeing a ghost—just as they did in Matthew 15 when Jesus walked on the water. The Voice gives their reaction as: “Disciple: 'It's a ghost!’ Another disciple: ‘A ghost? What will we do?’ Jesus: ‘Be still. It is I; you have nothing to fear.’ ”

The title for The Voice came from the use in the New Testament Gospel of John of the Greek word logos, which is usually translated into English as “word.” In The Voice, John 1:1 reads: "Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God.”

"The Voice considers the narrative links that help us to understand the drama and passion of story that is present in the original languages,” the book’s website said. "The tone of the writing, the format of the page, and the directness of the dialog allows the tradition of passing down the biblical narrative to come through in The Voice.”

Sources: Articles by Stephen Walsh for CNN, Bob Smietana
for RNS/USA Today, and Dan Gilgoff on the CNN Belief Blog