In the 1950s, Dr. Kenneth Taylor worried that his children were having a hard time understanding the King James Bible and started paraphrasing the New Testament into modern English. After several publishing houses rejected his manuscript, Dr. Taylor and his wife used their life savings to publish Living Letters: The Paraphrased Epistles in 1962. The following year, Billy Graham found a copy and asked Taylor to print a special edition for his crusades, where half a million copies were given away. Portions of the Bible were published separately until 1971, when Taylor published The Living Bible, the first major paraphrase of the Bible in English. This set contains six volumes: Living Letters (1962), Living Prophecies (1965), Living Gospels (1966), Living Psalms and Proverbs (1967), Living Lessons of Life and Love (1968), and Living History of Israel (1970).