[2] Created by Michael Paul Johnson with help from volunteers,[1][6] the WEB is an updated revision of the American Standard Version from 1901.

[7] In 1994, Michael Paul Johnson felt commissioned by God "to create a new modern English translation of the Holy Bible that would be forever free to use, publish, and distribute.

Estimating he would be 150 years old by the time this style of work would be finished, Johnson decided to base further work on the American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901, which is regarded as an accurate translation and is wholly in the public domain.

[8] The translation philosophy of the WEB is to be mostly formally equivalent, like the American Standard Version it is based on, but with modernized English.

The WEB originally followed the ASV's decision to transliterate the Tetragrammaton, but used "Yahweh" instead of "Jehovah" throughout the Old Testament.

[9] The reasons given were that they felt copyright was an ineffective way of protecting the text's integrity and the fact that the Creative Commons licenses did not exist at the time the project began.

[10] The Provident Planning website uses the World English Bible because it is free of copyright restrictions and because the author considers it to be a good translation.