# The Passion Translation

The Passion Translation (TPT) is a book in modern English, and is alternatively described as a translation or an interpretive paraphrase of parts of the bible—as of early 2025, the New Testament, the Psalms, and an increasing number of further books from the Hebrew Bible. Per his description in interview, TPT's author, Brian Simmons experienced a vision, and thereafter pursued a goal is "to bring God's eternal truth into a highly readable heart-level expression that causes truth and love to jump out of the text and lodge inside our hearts." The current publisher's information states Brian Simmons as translator, but the absence of a disclosed committee for the translation (as is most common for bible translations) has been noted, and various scholars have described the work as a solo, interpretive, and additive (rather than a true translation) effort.
The work has received endorsements from leaders of at least one segment of the American Christian church, but has also been subject to intensive scrutiny and criticism. In January 2022, the TPT was removed from an online compendium of available bible translations, Bible Gateway, amid controversy, but remains available on the YouVersion and Logos Bible Software platforms.
The entire TPT Bible is slated for completion in 2028. Elements were first published in 2011 by 5 Fold Media, while the current publisher, as of February 2025 is BroadStreet Publishing Group.

## History
### Simmons' vision

During a 2015 television interview, Brian Simmons asserted that in 2009 Jesus visited his room and commissioned him to write a new translation of the Bible. According to the publisher's website, Brian's vision for the project is that people would read it and grow closer to Jesus.

### Release

The Passion Translation is primarily the work of Simmons. Although he claims that a team of "respected editors and scholars" reviewed his translations and footnotes, no names have been given. For the translation, Simmons claims to have assisted as a translator in the New Tribes Mission to the Paya-Kuna. Some who worked on the Paya-Kuna translation have said that Simmons was never a translator. They stated he only assisted in reading the translation to the native people, and providing feedback to the translators of how well the translation was understood by the intended audience. The New Testament was published on October 31, 2017.

### 2022 removal from Bible Gateway

In January 2022, Bible-reading website Bible Gateway removed TPT from their list of translations. Simmons criticized the action in a since-deleted Facebook post, saying "cancel culture is alive in the church world" and asking followers to request the site restore the version. Broadstreet Publishing, however, said in a statement that it "accepts that Bible Gateway has the right to make decisions as they see fit with the platforms they manage". As of November 2023, the website has not given Broadstreet Publishing a reason for the removal.

## Critical reception

The Passion Translation (TPT) has received many critical reviews, many endorsements, and some positive reviews. As of February 2025, the publisher, BroadStreet Publishing Group, included an endorsement for the work from Bill Johnson of Bill Johnson Ministries and Bethel Church. (Specifically, Johnson has praised the work as "One of the greatest things to happen with Bible translation in my lifetime.") Lou Engle of TheCall (Lou Engle Ministries) has also endorsed the TPT.
In a thorough, 14-point critique (7 main points and 7 subpoints), Andrew Wilson, a Cambridge and King's College trained historian and theologian who serving in 2025 as a Teaching Pastor at King's Church London, (and other commentators points out that TPT was done as a "solo attempt" lacking the usual scholarly translation committee, and as such, is "not really a translation", and is inaccurate to the original language source texts. Specifically, he points to the Greek of Galatians 2:19, hina theō zēsō, which is often translated as "that I might live for God", which TPT presents as "so that I can live for God in heaven's freedom [emphasis added by Wilson]". This commentator continues,
   To be clear: there is no indication whatsoever in the Greek of that sentence, or the rest of the chapter, that either heaven or its freedom are in view in this text.
He concludes that elements like this in the TPT are "not... translation. It's an interpolation, or a gloss, or (more bluntly) an addition." Wilson continues: "I don’t want to play the Revelation 22 card [an admonishment of a perceived, more generalised warning about people adding to the biblical canon] but Christians really shouldn’t do this"; he concludes,
   Brian Simmons is a brother, and one who has put in a huge amount of work on something very close to his heart. But the result, for a variety of reasons, is not good. I wouldn’t recommend people use TPT, and if they do, I would recommend they recognise that a) it is not actually a translation, and b) they use other versions as their primary texts for study.
Andrew G. Shead, who at the time of his writing was head of Old Testament and Hebrew at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia and a member of the New International Version Committee on Bible Translation, reviewing the release of Simmons version of the biblical Psalms, concludes that the TPT is no longer the Bible, stating:
   Brian Simmons has made a new translation of the Psalms (and... the whole New Testament) which aims to ‘re-introduce the passion and fire of the Bible to the English reader.’ He achieves this by abandoning all interest in textual accuracy, playing fast and loose with the original languages, and inserting so much new material into the text that it is at least 50% longer than the original. The result is a strongly sectarian translation that no longer counts as Scripture... If the translation had been packaged as a commentary on Scripture I would not have needed to write this review; but to package it as Scripture is an offence against God. Every believer who is taught to treat it as the enscripturated words of God is in spiritual danger, not least because of the sentimentalised portrait of God that TPT Psalms sets out to paint. Simmons's caricature of God as 'the King who likes and enjoys you' [citing p. 5 of The Psalms: Poetry on Fire] eliminates all but one facet of God's feelings about us, and then gets that one wrong.