 It has been a little while since I published my reviews of the Eth Cepher (part 1 here and part 2 here), and since then, more than a few of you have asked me what Bible translation I actually recommend. I will cover that in a separate article (spoiler: none of them rank 10/10 for me) but closely related to that question is another one I have received many times: what do I think about the ISR? This review is my answer. Here I will lay out, as clearly and fairly as I can, what I think about "The Scriptures" as produced by the Institute for Scripture Research. What's in a Name? First, a bit of orientation. "ISR" stands for the Institute for Scripture Research, an anonymous organization based in South Africa. It was founded, at least in part, by the late Dr. Chris "CJ" Koster. Today, ISR exists primarily to publish and sell "The Scriptures" and the other work it holds rights to: Koster's Come Out of Her My People. The name Institute for Scripture Research is, frankly, a strange title for an organization that does not actively engage in, promote, or publish any research on Scripture — though, to be fair, that may not have been Koster's original vision for it. Regardless, because "The Scriptures" is far too common of a term to use in casual conversation (as nearly any translation could be called such), most people have taken to calling it the "ISR" version, and I will follow that convention throughout this review. Background Before getting into the text itself, I want to establish some background on the translation and its origins. As I did with the Eth Cepher reviews, I want to highlight concerns that should be on your radar before you spring to the ISR's defense. Note: The biographical material below is drawn from a sermon archive of Koster's own messages, recorded in South Africa in the 1980s. Dozens of these sermons are available for streaming or download at cj-koster.com. ISR was founded by Dr. Chris Koster, and while Koster was indeed a credentialed doctor, it is important to note that he was a medical doctor; he received no formal training in Biblical languages, Biblical studies, or theology. His background began in the Dutch Reformed Church in the late 1960s, and through significant exposure to Herbert Armstrong's The Plain Truth magazine, other Worldwide Church of God materials, and - perhaps most influentially - Alexander Hislop's infamously discredited The Two Babylons, Koster became convinced that the Christian church, particularly that shaped by Rome, had apostatized and abandoned the true faith. Out of this conviction and his wholesale adoption of Hislop's impulse to label everything as "pagan" in origin, Koster set out to produce a Bible version free of what he believed was the accumulated theological baggage and "pagan influence" of institutional Christianity. Now, to his credit, Koster held to a number of positions to which I myself subscribe. He believed that all followers of the God of Abraham are called to observe the seventh-day Sabbath and the biblical Feast days. He believed in keeping the dietary laws of Scripture. He taught, often and clearly, that the Law of God was not abolished but remains in force and obligatory for all believers today. He taught that Scripture was the supreme rule of faith and should have the final word on all matters of doctrine. On these points, many of you - the reader - I'm sure will agree as well. However, Koster also held a number of erroneous, and at times heretical, positions. He denied the personhood of the Holy Spirit, teaching instead that the Spirit is simply another way of referring to the Father. He taught the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in a manner that undercuts the Son's full deity. He espoused a form of universalism: that those who had never heard of Messiah but lived righteously according to Torah would be accepted by God on that basis. He identified the 144,000 of Revelation as a latter-day Torah-observant movement that had never participated in what he called the "Roman beast" system. He taught that 666 equates to Latenos or "Latin man," and used it as a cipher identifying the Roman Church as the Beast. He claimed to have received a prophetic word in 1970, declaring that the "communist nations of Russia and China" would be brought against South Africa and the Bible-professing nations of the West as divine punishment for their refusal to acknowledge the "true name of Yahushua." This leads directly to the most emphatic and recurring theme across his lectures: that using the name "Jesus" means one is not calling upon the correct God at all, and that unless one knows Messiah as "Yahushua," one will not be numbered among the 144,000 and will not enter the Kingdom. Beyond this, Koster also claimed that a truly born-again believer is incapable of committing deliberate sins such as lying or adultery. He taught that physical circumcision is "nothing" and that the "true Jews" are those who observe Torah, and are thereby the true restored Israel (thus without utilizing the term, falling prey to supersessionism aka replacement theology). [1] I raise none of this to simply disparage the late Dr. Koster. Rather, I raise these points because they are directly relevant to what we are about to examine: the point that his theological presuppositions and personal biases demonstrably shaped the translation that bears his vision, the very thing he claimed he was trying to avoid. The Text-Base According to the 2009 edition of "The Scriptures," the textual basis for the ISR is the 1937 edition of the Biblia Hebraica (the Masoretic Text) for the Tanakh, which is a fine and standard choice. For the Brit Chadasha (New Testament), however, the preface states: "As a modus operandi then, we have started out using the Textus Receptus, modifying our rendering as seemed appropriate in light of those other texts which we consulted, such as the Nestle-Aland text and the Shem Tov Text, noting certain differences in the footnotes, where necessary." [2] Using the Textus Receptus as a base text is an increasingly isolated choice in modern New Testament scholarship. The overwhelming consensus among textual critics today is that the Textus Receptus cannot represent the original text, given that it was compiled in the sixteenth century and no single manuscript in existence prior to it contains identical readings throughout. Among major English translations, only the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), and the Modern English Version (MEV) still rely on the Textus Receptus, and the reasons for moving away from it are well-documented (though I won't cover them here). More concerning still is the stated practice of modifying the TR "as seemed appropriate," without ever fully defining when or why such departures were considered warranted. This is a significant methodological gap. Adding to this, the claim to have used the Shem Tov Hebrew Matthew is equally, if not more, problematic. Contrary to what its proponents often suggest, the Shem Tov Matthew is not an ancient Hebrew original; it is a 14th century translation from Latin into Hebrew, produced for the specific purpose of disputing claims made by believers in Yeshua. That is a topic deserving its own treatment, but for now, the point stands: the textual foundation of the ISR is unique among English Bibles, and not in a way that should be considered a strength. With that, let us get into the key texts we want to highlight for the present endeavor. Key Passages The ISR claims, as part of its stated purpose, to be a translation free of theological bias. A careful examination of the text reveals that this claim does not hold up. As noted above, Koster denied the full and co-equal deity of Yeshua (the Son's full equality with the Father), and this theology has left clear marks on the translation itself. For the purposes of comparison I use the Tree of Life Version (TLV) below, but feel free to check any other major English translation for your own research. Titus 2:13 The Tree of Life Version (TLV) renders this passage: "We wait for the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Messiah Yeshua." The ISR reads instead: "looking for the blessed expectation and esteemed appearance of the great Elohim and our Saviour יהושע Messiah." On the surface this may seem like a minor stylistic difference, but the underlying grammar makes the distinction significant. Titus 2:13 contains what is known as the Granville Sharp Rule: in a Greek construction of the form "the X and Y," where both nouns are personal, singular, and non-proper, the article governs both nouns joined by the conjunction kai and they refer to the same individual. The Greek reads: τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. The single definite article τοῦ governs both "God" and "Savior," and the conjunction καὶ links them, grammatically identifying the "great God and Savior" as one and the same person: Yeshua Messiah. The ISR sidesteps this by inserting "our" before both "Elohim" and "Saviour," creating the impression of two distinct referents: the Father and the Son, separately. This is not what the Greek text says, and the change serves a clear theological purpose rather than a textual one. Philippians 2:9–11 In the TLV: "For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Yeshua every knee should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue profess that Yeshua the Messiah is Lord — to the glory of God the Father." In the ISR: "Elohim, therefore, has highly exalted Him and given Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of יהושע every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and every tongue should confess that יהושע Messiah is Master, to the esteem of Elohim the Father." This passage is Paul's intentional echo of Isaiah 45, where Adonai (YHWH) declares that every knee will bow to Him, and that there is no God or Savior besides Him. Paul's explicit citation of this passage in Philippians is designed to identify Yeshua as YHWH. Crucially, throughout the New Testament the ISR consistently renders the Greek Κύριος (Kurios) as the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) whenever it refers to the Father. Yet here, where the context most clearly identifies Yeshua as the one to whom every knee bows, the very role Isaiah assigns to YHWH, the ISR instead uses "Master," its preferred rendering for Kurios when applied to Yeshua. This inconsistency is not accidental. The ISR's own rendering logic demands the Tetragrammaton here, given that the Isaiah passage it quotes clearly features יהוה. The only reason to deviate is to avoid drawing the conclusion the passage is designed to draw. Romans 10:13 To illustrate the double standard further, compare the above with Romans 10:13, which the ISR renders: "For everyone who calls on the Name of יהוה shall be saved." Here the ISR has no hesitation using the Tetragrammaton; the verse quotes Joel 2:32, and the Hebrew original contains God's name. Yet if you read the surrounding context of Romans 10, it is unmistakably Messiah of whom Paul speaks; it is His name that Paul envisions people calling upon for salvation. Paul, as he does throughout his letters, reappropriates language about YHWH and applies it directly to Yeshua. When the connection is implicit, the ISR freely uses the Tetragrammaton. When it is unmistakably applied to Yeshua, as in Philippians 2, they arbitrarily switch to "Master." This is not a translation principle, it is a theological filter. The same pattern appears in 1 Corinthians 12:3, where again "Master" replaces Kurios in reference to Yeshua. Luke 23:43 In the TLV: "Yeshua said to him, 'Amen, I tell you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.'" In the ISR: "And יהושע said to him, 'Truly, I say to you today, you shall be with Me in paradise.'" The words are nearly identical, but the comma placement changes the meaning entirely. In the TLV (like most English translations), the comma after "you" means Yeshua is telling the man when he will be with Him: "today." In the ISR, the comma after "today" removes the temporal certainty, and the word "today" becomes a mere timestamp on the act of speaking, not a promise about the man's destination. I want to be transparent here: I agree there are substantive exegetical and theological reasons to be cautious about the traditional reading that suggests the thief entered Paradise that same afternoon, given that Yeshua Himself was still to be buried and had not yet ascended to the Father (cf. John 20:17). There is legitimate theological discussion to be had here. The problem, however, is that the grammar of the passage does not support the ISR's comma placement. The Greek word translated "today" is σήμερον (semeron), and syntactically it modifies ἔσῃ (ese), "you will be." A useful parallel is Luke 4:21, where Yeshua says, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." It would be improper and wrong, from the narrator's (Luke's) vantage point, to read that as "He began saying to them today, 'This Scripture…'" The adverb modifies the fulfillment, not the act of speech. ISR's comma placement in Luke 23:43 reflects a theological point, not a grammatical necessity. Textual Issues in the Tanakh Theological bias is not limited to the New Testament. Two examples from the Tanakh are worth examining. Exodus 6:3 The TLV reads: "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, as El Shaddai. Yet by My Name, ADONAI, did I not make Myself known to them." This passage has long puzzled readers, since throughout Genesis the patriarchs clearly use God's name (e.g., Gen. 18:14: "Is anything too difficult for ADONAI?"). Theologians and exegetes have offered several reasonable resolutions; among them, that the divine name in Genesis reflects Moses' inspired authorship looking back (an anachronistic insertion), or that the distinction is experiential rather than lexical, pointing to the deeper covenant intimacy that Israel was about to enter through the Exodus. The ISR, however, takes a different route and renders the clause as a rhetorical question: "And by My Name, יהוה, was I not known to them?" This is an appealing solution, and I will admit, when I first encountered this question myself I found it initially compelling. The problem is that it lacks textual support. In Hebrew, a direct interrogative clause is marked by the particle הֲ prefixed to the first word. In Exodus 6:3, the clause begins with וּשְׁמִי where we would expect הֲשְׁמִי if a question were intended. While it is true that context can occasionally carry an interrogative without the formal particle, especially since the vowel pointing postdates the original composition, the ancient witnesses are unanimous. The Septuagint (LXX) reads: "…but My name, Kurios, I did not make known to them" which is a declarative statement. Jerome's Vulgate, translated from a Hebrew text older than our current Masoretic tradition, likewise renders it as a declarative: "…and My name Adonai I did not show them." The relevant Dead Sea Scrolls fragments of Exodus 6:3 also do not contain the הֲ prefix we would expect for an interrogative reading. There is no textual basis whatsoever for the ISR's reading. The motivation is purely theological. Proverbs 14:34 The TLV: "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people." The ISR: "Righteousness exalts a nation; And loving-commitment, To the peoples is sin." The difference between "disgrace" and "loving-commitment" is, needless to say, substantial. So how did the ISR arrive there? The Hebrew word translated "disgrace" in the TLV is חֶסֶד (chesed), which in the overwhelming majority of its 240+ occurrences in the Tanakh denotes loving-kindness, faithfulness, or covenant loyalty. This is the familiar chesed of Psalm 136 for instance. However, the same spelling appears in a distinct lexical entry meaning "disgrace" or "shame," attested in only two places: Proverbs 14:34 and Leviticus 20:17. Consulting HALOT — the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, the gold standard in Hebrew lexicography — one finds two separate entries for chesed: one positive, one negative. The negative sense is semantically required in both contexts. In Proverbs 14:34, the word must provide a contrast to the exaltation that righteousness brings: "shame" and "disgrace" accomplish this; "loving-commitment" does not. This same negative sense is supported by cognate evidence across related Semitic languages, including Jewish Aramaic, Syriac, and Mandaean. And again, the ancient translations confirm it: the LXX uses ἐλαττονέω ("to diminish"), and Jerome's Vulgate uses miseros ("misery"). There is no historical, lexical, or contextual basis for "loving-commitment" here. The same pattern repeats in Leviticus 20:17, where the ISR once again introduces an unwarranted rhetorical question, rendering a plain declarative about improper relations as, "is it loving-commitment?" Again without any interrogative particle in the Hebrew text and against the grain of every ancient witness. This is not a translation, it is an emendation driven by theological preference and personal apologetics, which is precisely what the ISR is claimed to oppose in other translations. Word Weirdness Some aspects of the ISR translation are simply strange, and most of the strangeness flows directly from what I would charitably call Koster's paganoia, an almost reflexive assumption that common English words are compromised by pagan origin. Words like "holy," "lord," "glory," and even "altar" were deemed suspect and replaced. Because of this, "holy" becomes "set-apart," and "consecrate" becomes "set apart" as well — which creates constructions like this, from Exodus 40:8–10: "…shall take the anointing oil, and anoint the Dwelling Place and all that is in it, and shall set it and all its utensils apart, and it shall be set-apart. And you shall anoint the slaughter-place of the ascending offering and all its utensils, and set the slaughter-place apart, and the slaughter-place shall be most set-apart." "Altar" is replaced by "slaughter-place," which generates genuinely awkward results, such as in Exodus 30:27: "the slaughter-place of incense." Incense is not an animal, it cannot be slaughtered. Yet the fear of using a supposedly pagan word produced this odd phrase. Similarly, "king" and "kingdom" give way to "sovereign" and "reign," which collapses a meaningful distinction: in Luke 1:33, "He shall reign over the house of Ya'aqob forever, and there shall be no end to His reign" uses both noun and verb forms of the same English word, obscuring the fact that the Greek uses two different words, one a verb (βασιλεύω, to reign) and one a noun (βασιλεία, kingdom). And then there is the curious rendering of "disciples" as "taught ones," for no clear reason. The treatment of proper nouns is also inconsistent. Silas is called Silas throughout — even where some passages read "Silvanus" — yet Paul is uniformly rendered "Sha'ul." The original 1993 edition actually omitted a part of Acts 13:9 entirely, the verse that explicitly states, "Sha'ul, who was also called Paul." Koster apparently regarded the name "Paul" as a pagan Roman invention and removed the notice from the text altogether. The 2009 revision restored those words, but all subsequent references to the apostle remain "Sha'ul." Andrew, whose name is thoroughly Greek, becomes "Andri." Peter, where the Greek reads either Petros or Kephas, is rendered "Kepha" throughout. None of these choices are inherently sinful, but they are frequently unnecessary and, at times, counterproductive. A translator's task is to bring the meaning of the source language into the destination language with fidelity and clarity — not to reimpose a new vocabulary or obscure the very meaning the text is trying to convey. The Unstated Probability Here I must be upfront: what follows is something I cannot prove with absolute certainty (I am not sure such a paper trail even exists), but which I believe can supported with substantial evidence. My long-standing suspicion — based on the cadence, clausal structure, and overall feel of the ISR translation — is that "The Scriptures" is not an original translation at all, but is essentially a New King James Version that has been subjected to an elaborate find-and-replace process, swapping NKJV vocabulary for ISR's preferred in-house terminology. To test this, I asked Perplexity AI to conduct a deep-research comparison of the ISR against the NKJV, specifically instructing it to set aside all the in-house vocabulary substitutions: the "set-apart" for "holy," the "slaughter-place" for "altar," the divine name substitutions, and the Hebraized proper nouns. The goal was to compare the underlying clausal architecture of the two texts, not their surface vocabulary. Here is what the analysis found: "After stripping all ISR theological substitutions (divine names, Hebraized vocabulary, pagan-avoidance rewrites), the remaining English skeleton of ISR 1998 matches the NKJV at 96.0% clause-level agreement across a 30-chapter corpus spanning both Testaments. Non-theological chapters match at 98.4%. This rate exceeds or equals most openly declared Bible revisions. The probability of independent origination is effectively zero." The analysis was conducted across two waves. Wave 1 -- Theological Passages (5 chapters): Chapters selected for their density of doctrinal content and frequent use as proof texts. Result: identical clause-for-clause agreement with the NKJV at 37.7%; near-identical agreement (primarily stylistic shifts, such as ISR's preference for "see" over "behold") at 55.1%; structurally different clauses at 7.2%. Wave 2 -- Non-Theological Passages (25 chapters): Chapters selected from less frequently preached or cited portions of Scripture. Result: identical clauses at 33%; near-identical at 63%; structurally different at only 1.6%. For context: the ESV is approximately 92% similar to the RSV; the TNIV is approximately 96% similar to the NIV; the NRSV is approximately 99% similar to the RSV. By these metrics, the ISR is 96% similar to the NKJV — a similarity level that comfortably places it within the category of a revision or derivative work, not an independent translation. This also explains the Textus Receptus issue noted earlier. If the ISR was effectively built on the NKJV and then modified, the Textus Receptus becomes the de facto underlying Greek text by inheritance, since the NKJV itself uses the TR. It was not an independent textual choice, but was the natural result of the method. Furthermore, ISR has never published its list of board members or the composition of its translation committee. Instead, they assert that the ISR text is an original translation by Koster with "the aid and support of other scholars and textual experts from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds in different parts of the world." [3] Given the analysis above, the most coherent explanation is that there was no original translation team in any meaningful sense: only editors and redactors working from an existing English version. Note: full PDF report of the Perplexity results are at the bottom of this page. Conclusion I understand the appeal of the ISR. I used it exclusively for about a year and a half back in my "Torah terrorist" days, and I personally agree with a number of its interpretive instincts. But we need to be honest about what those instincts actually are: they are interpretive and theological choices, not the product of restoring some suppressed or lost meaning to the text. There is no meaningful transparency behind the ISR organization. There is no evidence of an actual translation team in the traditional sense, and the comparative textual analysis suggests strongly that if such a team existed, they were functioning as editors of the NKJV rather than translators working from the original languages. Most seriously, the theological biases embedded in the text are not merely stylistic preferences or harmless quirks: some of them are doctrinally dangerous. The attempts to resolve apparent tensions in the text (such as Exodus 6:3) are one matter. The deliberate, systematic obscuring of the full deity of Yeshua is another matter entirely. That is not an interpretive tradition with a long pedigree, it is a bias that, at its root, is heretical, and it shows up in some of the most theologically critical passages of the New Testament. The ISR is not simply a collection of unusual names and pronunciations: it is a biased, dogmatic attempt to push a conspiratorial agenda wrapped in a cloak of perceived piety. For these reasons, my recommendation is clear: mark it, and avoid it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJonathan Andrew Brown Archives
July 2026
Categories |
||||
RSS Feed