Neither Zondervaan nor Nelson (the two largest bible publishers in the U.S.) are directly connected to any church.
You need copyright to publish recent translations that are under copyright protection, but if you want to type out the words in the KJV and publish them, no one can stop you.
Or you can do your own translation if you’re really ambitious.
Just where do these evangelists and preachers get their material? Is there a database they draw on or do they make up their own translations? I watched Charles Price talk for a half hour on one verse in Romans…he can certainly read between the lines.
You are confusing translation and explanation (or, more particularly, exigesis).
People have been coomenting on scripture for over 2,000 years (in the case of the Tanakh/Olt Testament) and since the early second century for the New Testament. Much of that commentary is still extant, either in translation, itself, or in summary form. With all those people adding their ideas to the body of commentary, it is not difficult to find lots of ways to “understasnd” scripture. It then becomes simple enough to apply some of the lessons that have alread been expressed to situations in the lives of current society (or the people one knows in one’s own congrgation) and generate new commentary.
Exigesis, formally, is the study of Scripture with the intent to discover the situation where and when it was written and apply an understanding of previous writings so as to discern not merely what the author explicitly meant, but to explain all the nuances that would have been apparent to the author’s audience.
Door-to-door salesmen earned a living selling Bibles, or did at one time. One tactic, so I’ve heard, was to go to the home of someone recently deceased and claim that the dear departed had ordered the Bible before his death. The Maysles Brothers made a well-received documentary about the travelling Bible Salesman in the late '60s.
Or watch Paper Moon.
Ok, thanks for the info guys. Any outspoken atheists in the bible-publishing business that you know of?
If there are, I would imagine their careers wouldn’t be very long… 