08/21/2026
Brian Simmons’ popular Passion Translation of the Bible has endured allegations of inaccuracy and plagiarism for years.
In early June, pastors David Fish and JonMark Baker, along with Mike Winger, a content creator and frequent The Passion Translation (TPT) critic, recorded a four-hour YouTube video outlining detailed allegations of plagiarism in TPT.
In follow-up emails, Fish told CT he has since tallied over 2,400 instances of likely plagiarism, in which the text or footnotes copy unique phrases without attribution from other translations or commentaries. In rare instances when Simmons does cite sources, those attributions appear to be copied word for word—alongside additional text—from other, uncredited sources.
“Some verses contain nearly 100 percent of the words from The Living Bible, but because Brian loves to expand things, they also add other words,” Fish told CT.
Fish is the most recent and perhaps most vocal opponent of The Passion Translation, but he is far from the first to raise concerns. This time, though, the backlash seems more pronounced.
After sounding the alarm on Simmons for nearly a decade, critics hope the latest round of attention will spark some sort of lasting change.
“People justify using it, because it gives them new insights,” said chaplain Andrew Chapman. “Well, these aren’t insights. These are errors.”
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