Kenneth Taylor

Kenneth Nathaniel Taylor (May 8, 1917 - June 10, 2005) was an American publisher and author, better known as the creator of the Bible paraphase The Living Bible and the founder of Tyndale House, a major Christian publishing company.

Taylor was born in Portland, Oregon. His parents were George and Charlotte Taylor. His father was a Presbyterian minister. He graduated from high school in 1934 and enrolled in Wheaton College, Illinois. It was at Wheaton that he met his future wife, Margaret West. They were wed in 1940, and had 10 children.

In 1940 Taylor also began to work on a Th. D. at Dallas Theological Seminary. During the course of his studies he was offered the position of editor for HIS Magazine, headquartered in Chicago. Taylor moved back to Wheaton, began working at the magazine, and finished his degree at Northwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

For a time Taylor worked with Clyde Denis, founder of Good News Publishers, on translating tracts and distributing them overseas. Later, he worked on the editorial staff of Moody Bible Institute (a fundamentalist institution) for sixteen years. During that time he assisted a student named George Verwer in distributing Christian literature in Mexico. Verwer would later found Operation Mobilization, which, among other things, distributed Bibles and other books for Taylor. Because of his interest in worldwide distribution of literature, Taylor formed a foundation called Evangelical Literature Overseas for the development and distribution of Christian literature to third world countries.

Taylor developed a series of Bible stories with pictures for his own children to read. They were eventually published in a book called The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. He followed this volume with Stories fot the Children's Hour and Devoitions for the Children's Hour.

After these books were published Taylor began working on an ambitious project--the paraphrasing of the Bible in easy-to-read modern language. He published the New Testament under the title Living Letters' at his own expense in 1962. He actually formed his own publishing firm, Tyndale House, to do so. His Bible paraphrase was successful enough to allow him to leave Moody Press and work exclusively at Tyndale. Taylor finished the entire Bible in contemporary language and published it as The Living Bible in 1972. Over 40 million copies of this paraphrase have been sold.

Taylor died on June 10, 2005 from heart failure.