When we wrote the modern English column of the Modern Bible, we had to make four choices. Each one came down to refusing something.
We did not paraphrase verses away. Every verse the King James contains, the modern column contains. No combining two verses into one for flow. No collapsing parallelism for brevity. If the KJV has 31,102 verses, the modern column has 31,102 verses.
We did not delete textually disputed passages. Mark 16:9-20 is there. John 7:53-8:11 is there. Acts 8:37 is there. 1 John 5:7 is there. We make our case for keeping them on the Why KJV page. We did not let the modern critical text decide for us which passages our column would carry.
We did not soften theological language. When the text says "propitiation," we explain it in a footnote. We do not replace it with "sacrifice of atonement" or "sin offering" because those words shift the meaning. "Hell" stays "hell" — not "Hades," not "Sheol," not "the grave" — in the passages where Christ used the word and where the meaning is clearly the place of conscious torment.
We did not add anything. The modern column is a translation, not a commentary. Cross-references and explanatory notes live in footnotes, never in the verse text itself. The reader sees the verse the way the KJV translator saw it, in language a modern reader can follow.
None of these refusals required scholarship that did not already exist. They required only that we treat the text the way the men who first received it treated it — as something handed down, not something we get to revise.
— Thirdwatch Co.