# The Passion Translation The Passion Translation (TPT) is a single-translator English Bible by [[brian-simmons|Brian Simmons]], published through his Stairway Ministries and Broadstreet Publishing. Critics across evangelical, academic, and discernment traditions argue it is less a translation than a doctrinally shaped amplification, and that it functions as the [[New Apostolic Reformation]]'s in-house Scripture. This page synthesizes that critique and names the manipulation patterns it relies on. --- ## What TPT claims to be Simmons presents himself as the "lead translator" working "from the Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew text," and roots his qualification in linguistic training with New Tribes Mission and a New Testament he says he co-translated for the Paya Kuna language in the late 1980s. (Source: `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/Is Brian Simmons Qualified to Make The Passion Translation.md`) His stronger claim is the contested one: that God gave him access to "secrets of the Hebrew language" and "revelation from God in it that's greater than other translations." Simmons has described receiving "downloads" — "it was like I got a chip put inside of me" — and has said "the homonymic structure of Hebrew is going to be the key to understanding Revelation." (Source: `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/The Bible Translation That Needs a Surgeon General's Warning.md`) --- ## The translation critique Mainstream evangelical and academic reviewers — assembled in [[Mike Winger]]'s multi-scholar "Passion Project" — reach a near-uniform verdict: > "What you are holding in your hands … does not qualify as scripture." (reviewer, via Winger compilation) > "That claim is so incredibly arrogant I can hardly believe it." (Mike Winger) Reviewers describe TPT as "not a translation at all … more of an amplification … from the opinion of the translator," call the method "haphazard and amateur," and single out the Song of Songs rendering as "a deeply flawed presentation" that imposes an allegorical reading. (Source: `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/The Bible Translation That Needs a Surgeon General's Warning.md`) Simmons himself concedes the novelty of his Song of Songs reading: he admits "not any of the church fathers for about 1800 years" read the book his way, until an 1880s commentary — a concession that undercuts the claim to have recovered an ancient meaning. His worked example of the "Hebrew secrets" method: the word in "let him kiss me" (*nashaq*) is a homonym whose "alternate meaning of kiss is to take a drink of wine." (Source: `Readwise/Articles/Brian & Candice Simmons - Saturday PM.md`) A former colleague's testimony goes to credentials directly: New Tribes Mission director Jerry McDaniels states "nobody in our mission would ever say that he's a Bible translator or was ever approved as a Bible translator." (Source: `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/What You Need to Know Before Using the Passion Translation.md`) Two technical rebuttals recur: - **The Peshitta leapfrog.** Simmons leans on the Syriac Peshitta as if it preserved Jesus' own words; critics note it is "a 5th-century document … 500 years after Jesus … not even the same Aramaic as Jesus spoke." - **The NWT comparison.** Reviewers judge TPT to contain "more intentional changes than the Jehovah's Witness New World Translation," a comparison meant to mark it as a sect Bible rather than a translation. (Source: `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/What You Need to Know Before Using the Passion Translation.md`) In 2022, Bible Gateway and YouVersion removed TPT from their platforms — a rare institutional counter-signal. (Source: `Permanent Notes/The Passion Translation Is the NARs Scripture Distribution Vehicle.md`) --- ## TPT as the NAR's Scripture distribution vehicle The sharpest framing in the vault is Courtney's own synthesis: TPT is the movement's "doctrinal-distribution vehicle" — the theology came first, and the text was shaped to carry it. Holly Pivec calls it "the NAR Bible." Pivec and Geivett document the in-house function plainly: > "NAR has gained so much momentum that its community now has its own Bible version, The Passion Translation, produced by the apostle Brian Simmons of Stairway Ministries." (Source: [[readwise-nar-pivec-geivett|A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement]], Location 353) [[Bethel Church]] operationalizes the channel through a two-tier text practice — a mainstream translation for preaching, TPT for devotional use — alongside a bookstore selling branded TPT editions. **[[Bill Johnson]] confirms the two tiers in his own voice** (2026-07-16 update): he teaches and writes only from the New American Standard and New King James "because they're more word-for-word translations," reads TPT "for passion, for inspiration," and says "I don't use it as a as um as a proof text for something." The wiki previously held this on inference from a Permanent Note synthesis; it is now primary-source. (Source: [[2026-07-16-bill-johnson-defends-passion-translation|Bill Johnson Defends The Passion Translation (Rediscover Bethel)]]) Spread runs on network and endorsement rather than translation merit; [[Mike Winger]] ties the pieces together: TPT, Bethel worship, and [[Bill Johnson]] are "all connected to a certain degree." (Source: `Permanent Notes/The Passion Translation Is the NARs Scripture Distribution Vehicle.md`; `Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/Mike Winger The Passion Translation, Bethel, Bill Johnson, and More.md`) > [!contradiction] **In-house Bible vs. received text.** Mainline, Reformed, and Catholic traditions read from translations produced by committees accountable to the wider church and to public scholarship. TPT is a single-translator text accountable to one ministry network and to a private-revelation claim. The structural difference mirrors the [[Apostolic Authority]] problem: authority that authenticates itself. --- ## Why the divine-revelation claim matters A claim of private revelation about the source languages removes the only check a translation can be held to. If Simmons' renderings come from God-given "secrets," then every divergence from standard scholarship is reframed as new information rather than as error — the claim is unfalsifiable by design. (Source: `Permanent Notes/Divine-Revelation Translation Claims Immunize a Work From Scholarly Critique.md`) This is the same epistemic move that protects NAR prophecy ("the Lord told me") from correction — see [[Fallible Prophecy]]. Critics counter by dragging the work back onto testable ground: the credential rebuttal (McDaniels), the Peshitta anachronism, and the NWT comparison. (Source: `Permanent Notes/Divine-Revelation Translation Claims Immunize a Work From Scholarly Critique.md`) --- ## Manipulation and fallacy patterns Cross-referenced to the [[NAR Fallacy Taxonomy]]: - **Designed unfalsifiability.** The divine-secrets claim makes every observation consistent with the theory; nothing can count against it. - **Title and credential inflation.** "Dr. Brian Simmons," "lead translator" against McDaniels' "nobody in our mission would call him a Bible translator." - **Endorsement laundering / appeal to authority.** Reach by "reckless and unwise endorsing … by high-profile hyper-charismatic pastors," not by scholarly reception. - **Linguistic sleight-of-hand.** The *nashaq* homonym move and the Peshitta leapfrog. - **[[DARVO]] — documented, no longer anticipated (2026-07-16).** This entry previously *predicted* the defensive pattern: deny that scholarship matters, attack the academy as spiritually blind, reverse-victim by casting critics as persecutors. [[Bill Johnson]] performs all three on camera in [[2026-07-16-bill-johnson-defends-passion-translation|Bill Johnson Defends The Passion Translation (Rediscover Bethel)]] — **deny/attack**: "this critical spirit it ain't pretty, it ain't helpful… when we join it we're not helping anybody"; **attack the academy**: "they may be scholars, but they don't have the relationship to really add the nuance"; **reverse victim**: critics "are usually very well educated… but they can read the harder translations easier," while "this brand new believer" cannot — so the critic becomes the elitist and TPT becomes the beginner's protection. He closes by casting scholarly mastery as the Pharisees' error. The prediction now has its primary source. > [!question] **Hold the counterpoints honestly.** Some critic rhetoric risks its own fallacies — ad hominem (fixating on Simmons' credentials rather than the renderings), appeal to majority (scholarly consensus treated as automatically decisive), and false dichotomy (TPT versus "good translations"). The strongest case against TPT rests on the textual evidence and the unfalsifiability problem, not on the translator's person. --- ## The plagiarism case (2026 update) The [[Minor Prophets Podcast]] follow-up moves the charge from "amplification" to documented, traceable plagiarism — copying "nearly verbatim" from existing English paraphrases and idiosyncratic Aramaic-primacy sources while claiming original-language translation. (Source: [[2026-06-20-minor-prophets-is-the-passion-translation-finished|Minor Prophets — Is the Passion Translation Finished?]]) - **"Redeemer who ends the curse" (John 14).** TPT calls the Holy Spirit a "savior" and footnotes an Aramaic word study claiming *parakleta* means "to end the curse." The note was invented by Paul Younan, carried via Andrew Roth's *Aramaic-English New Testament* (copied from p. 306, including Roth's own citations), even though *paraklete* is a Greek **loan word** in Aramaic/Syriac — and Younan walked it back in a 2011 forum before TPT published. Dutch Sheets, Damon Thompson, and Jesse Duplantis then built doctrine on the fabricated note — the preaching-side propagation is documented verbatim in [[2026-06-23-how-the-passion-translation-changed-preaching|How the Passion Translation Has Changed Preaching]], including Thompson's believer-deification extension ("the other savior is actually you"). - **Instrumental copying.** Luke 7 tracks the 1971 Living Bible; Luke 11 matches The Message's "spider" (for scorpion) plus an invented gender switch; Hebrews 9:10 copies a misspelled transliteration ("diorthosis") from François du Toit's Mirror Bible; Hebrews 12 softens "scourges/chastises" via a fabricated Aramaic note plagiarized from David Bauscher; Romans 8:9 follows du Toit's universalist reading. The plagiarism is *instrumental* — it imports heterodox/universalist theology into the text. - **Scrubbing the foundation.** Simmons reportedly admitted to Dr. Mark Strauss that he doesn't know Aramaic, and is now removing the Aramaic-primacy claims — including from the legally sensitive copyright section, while keeping softer language on the FAQ. > [!contradiction] **The Hebrews 12 convergence.** TPT's fabricated note turns "the Lord scourges every son he receives" into "it proves you are his delightful child" — importing the Bethel "God is always in a good mood / unpunishable" theology (Danny Silk / [[Jonathan Welton]], mapped in [[2026-05-19-bethels-book-platformed-a-wolf-video|Bethel's Book Platformed a Wolf and Silenced His Victims (YouTube exposé video)]]) into the one passage that most directly contradicts it. The translation and the accountability-collapse cluster carry the same theology through two channels. ### The Psalm 81:10 "decree" insertion and the fake review team (2026-06 update) A third Minor Prophets source — [[2026-06-29-minor-prophets-pastors-quoting-word-of-god|Minor Prophets — 'And Pastors Are Quoting It as The Word of God' (TPT)]] — adds the cleanest **doctrinal-insertion specimen** yet and documents the accountability façade directly: - **Psalm 81:10.** ESV "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it" (God's wilderness provision) becomes TPT's "Open your mouth with a mighty decree. I will fulfill it... The words that you speak, so shall it be." As the hosts put it, "the word decree is never once used in the Bible to refer to this. Brian has inserted it and now it exists." This manufactures the Word-of-Faith "decree and declare" proof-text, now chanted in Rod Parsley's church and quoted on Daystar **as Scripture with no TPT attribution** — the doctrinal-insertion counterpart to the John 14 "ends the curse" case. - **The "theological review team" is a façade.** The Roys Report reached reviewer Rick Wadholm (PhD), who said his role was "simply to consult," with no editorial control; endorsement quotes from Keener, Strauss, and Bird imply approval, though all three repudiate the work (Keener: the Aramaic basis is a "fatal flaw"). Sharpens the **endorsement-laundering** pattern above. - **Candace Simmons, undisclosed editor.** A primary-source clip of the uncredentialed co-editor describing how she became "his number one editor" by "changing a lot of things" — strengthening the credential-inflation critique. --- ## The defense and the eyewitness (2026-07 update) Two sources ingested the same day give the wiki its first **matched pair** on TPT: Bethel's best-known figure defending it, and a Bethel graduate describing what it did to her. ### Johnson's defense, at full strength [[2026-07-16-bill-johnson-defends-passion-translation|Bill Johnson Defends The Passion Translation (Rediscover Bethel)]] is the wiki's first [[Bill Johnson]] primary source. His position is more careful than the critic corpus usually grants, and the honest version is above under the distribution-vehicle section: teach from NASB/NKJV, read TPT devotionally as commentary, never as proof text, and concede that "every Bible has an agenda." > [!question] **His best argument deserves a real answer.** Johnson's strongest point is the single-translator precedent — "we've always had these single person translations." Phillips, Kenneth Taylor's Living Bible, and Peterson's Message are all real, widely used, single-author English texts the church absorbed. He is also right that translation anxiety is old. Any critique that condemns single-translator texts *as such* proves too much: it takes The Message down with TPT. The wiki's case does not rest there. It rests on the **divine-revelation claim** (which Peterson never made), the **fabricated language notes**, and the **documented plagiarism** — none of which has a Phillips or Peterson analogue. ### Where the defense does not reach > [!contradiction] **The stated limit is not the movement's practice.** Johnson says he does not use TPT as a proof text. The wiki has documented Rod Parsley's congregation chanting TPT's inserted Psalm 81:10 "decree" and Daystar quoting TPT **as Scripture with no attribution** ([[2026-06-29-minor-prophets-pastors-quoting-word-of-god|Minor Prophets — 'And Pastors Are Quoting It as The Word of God' (TPT)]]), and Dutch Sheets, Damon Thompson, and Jesse Duplantis building doctrine on the fabricated John 14 note ([[2026-06-23-how-the-passion-translation-changed-preaching|How the Passion Translation Has Changed Preaching]]). An endorsement's stated scope and its practical effect are different objects. Johnson's qualification stayed in a Bethel interview; his reported public line — "the best thing to happen to Bible translations," never retracted — is what traveled. > [!contradiction] **Did Johnson preach from it?** Johnson (2021): "I only teach uh or write out of New American Standard or the New King James." A BSSM graduate, 2012–2015, asked whether TPT was taught from: "Um yes, it was it was preached from at that time… **Bill for sure would preach from them**" as each book released. ([[2026-07-16-bethel-alumni-calls-out-passion-translation|Why This Bethel Alumni Is Calling Out the Passion Translation]]) The accounts are ~6–9 years apart, the alumni is recalling a classroom impression rather than citing a sermon, and "teach or write" may exclude platform preaching. **Not a caught lie — an unresolved discrepancy the wiki should hold open.** > [!contradiction] **The selective epistemology.** Johnson honors scholarship precisely where it produced the texts he teaches from — "we're beholding to super smart Christians who have done this for us… I honor the scholarship that has gone into the New King James, the New American Standard" — and dismisses it where it critiques the text he reads devotionally. Same faculty, opposite verdicts, sorted by whether the output is congenial. This is **designed unfalsifiability** one level up: not "my claim can't be tested," but "the people qualified to test it are disqualified by their qualification." ### The literacy-privilege argument, answered from inside Johnson's most sympathetic move is pastoral: critics "can read the harder translations easier," while the "brand new believer" cannot. He tells of handing his young son a third-grade-level rendering of Galatians 2:20 and hearing "Dad, I understand that." > [!contradiction] **Same fact, inverted valence.** Both sides agree the critics are the educated ones. Johnson treats that education as what *disqualifies* the critique. The BSSM graduate treats its **absence** as what left her defenseless: "there's some things that just don't make sense but you have to be educated to know that. All of us who were not… seminary trained… had no idea until people like [[Minor Prophets Podcast]] started digging into it." Johnson's argument requires that the beginner be safe in TPT's hands. The testimony is a beginner reporting that she was not — and crediting educated critics with rescuing exactly the readers Johnson says he is protecting. (Source: [[2026-07-16-bethel-alumni-calls-out-passion-translation|Why This Bethel Alumni Is Calling Out the Passion Translation]]) The Pharisee reflex Johnson uses is not idiosyncratic, and the wiki now has its pedigree from a friendly source: [[2026-07-16-remnant-radio-continuationists-cessationists|The Remnant Radio — Why Continuationists and Cessationists Keep Talking Past Each Other]] traces "educated critics are Pharisees" to the 1904 Azusa Street class divide, and offers it as an inherited defect charismatics should outgrow. Two continuationists name the pattern; a third performs it. ### New specimen — the glory reversal A textual example for the specimen set, from the alumni testimony: where the text read that everyone was giving Jesus glory, Simmons rendered it "he gave glory to everyone" — part of what she describes as a repeated pattern "amplifying the glory of man and like the glory of self and like self-will." The congregational deflection that met it: "Oh, you're so legalistic." The **direction** matters. It is not random looseness; the alterations run toward the glory of the human reader — the same theological vector as the Hebrews 12 case above, where a fabricated note converts divine chastisement into "it proves you are his delightful child." ### Candace Simmons — independently corroborated The undisclosed-editor problem documented above via [[2026-06-29-minor-prophets-pastors-quoting-word-of-god|Minor Prophets — 'And Pastors Are Quoting It as The Word of God' (TPT)]] is reached independently in the alumni episode, whose hosts draw the cleanest statement of the objection: *"better"* is an editorial standard, not a translational one. A translator asks what the text says; an editor asks what reads well. The hosts explicitly disclaim any complementarian angle — the objection is to an undisclosed editorial hand on a text sold as a translation, not to a woman having one. ### The suppression pattern, corroborated The alumni testimony reaches [[2026-07-07-bethel-layoffs-ndas-tpt-censorship|Bethel Layoffs, Non-Disparagement Agreements, and TPT Censorship — Wake Up and Win Podcast]]'s finding by a different route: in the **official BSSM alumni group**, "Hey, can we discuss Passion Translation?" — post rejected; a link to the Minor Prophets video, made by fellow alumni — post rejected. The group was once shut down entirely over "conversations… about accountability and correction," and an unofficial group exists because of it. TPT was pulled from Bethel's online bookstore and restored two days later. *Events are first-person; the motive narrative behind the bookstore reversal is explicitly her speculation.* The asymmetry she names is the sharp end: King-James-only debates are permissible; this one is not. ## Worship-team relevance (St. John's UCC) For [[worship-song-vetting-rubric-st-johns-ucc|Worship Song Vetting Rubric — St. John's UCC]]: a song that quotes or paraphrases TPT is drawing on a theologically committed NAR source text, not a neutral translation. TPT citation in lyrics is a vetting flag worth naming, in the same family as Bethel/Hillsong sourcing. See [[Worship Songs Evaluated]]. --- ## Source gaps - No TPT primary edition has been ingested directly; the wiki works from Simmons' own video statements and the critic corpus. - **Partially closed (2026-07-16).** This page previously worked *only* from the critic corpus. It now holds a **defense-side primary source** ([[2026-07-16-bill-johnson-defends-passion-translation|Bill Johnson Defends The Passion Translation (Rediscover Bethel)]]) and a **first-person reception testimony from inside Bethel** ([[2026-07-16-bethel-alumni-calls-out-passion-translation|Why This Bethel Alumni Is Calling Out the Passion Translation]]). - **Still missing: a Bethel institutional response.** Every institutional claim — the alumni-group rejections, the bookstore removal and restoration, the "eerie silence" — is one-sided. No Bethel statement has been located, and the alumni source argues one has never been issued. Worth a directed search; its absence is itself a finding, but "we could not find it" and "it does not exist" are different claims. - **Still missing: the Johnson endorsement at source.** "The best thing to happen to Bible translations" is reported secondhand and is load-bearing in two places on this page. Find the original. - Holly Pivec (NARWatch / "the NAR Bible") warrants a dedicated [[Holly Pivec]] entity. - The full Winger "Passion Project" reviewer roster (Longman, Gupta, Bock, Blomberg, Gurry) is named but not individually ingested.