TODAY'S
BIBLE VERSIONS
Most
Bible translations today fall somewhere inbetween a paraphrase
and literal translation, favoring one or the other.
For
the purposes of this short article, I will only cover the
most common translations and will group them into one of
the two categories and provide some brief comments.
PARAPHRASES
The
Message -- This is a very loose paraphrase and very
readable. However it is not to be used for serious Bible
study, nor was it intended for that purpose
by the writer/translator. I find it completely misses the
point on many very important passages. Great care must be
exercised in it's use.
New
Living Translation -- based on the well loved Living
Bible Translation, this paraphrase is far superior to The
Message. Like any paraphrase, this too has many points
where the true meaning of Scripture is lost.
LITERAL
TRANSLATIONS
The
New American Standard Bible (NASB) is one of the
most literal, and highly accurate English translations that
we have. However, it tends to be very wooden and difficult
to read in many parts of Scripture. But it's accuracy makes
this a valuable tool to have.
The
King James Version (KJV or AV) is the most well known
translation. While it is very poetic in form, the KJV has
two weaknesses. First, the language is old English, and
not very comfortable reading for the younger generations.
Second, the texts that were used to translate this version
were not as complete as we have today. The discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in the last century provides a wealth
of material that was not available to the KJV translators.
The
New King James Version (NKJV) inherently has the same
problems that the KJV has, but this version has been updated
to reflect some of the most important benefits of the Dead
Sea Scrolls. It is also more readable and a very good translation
overall.
The
New International Version (NIV) is the best known literal
translation that freely uses dynamic equivelance.
This version can be used for serious Bible study, and in
fact, it is more accurate in translating the Old Testament
and many parts of the New Testament than is the NKJV and
even the highly regarded NASB.
However,
avoid the new NIV called Today's New International Version
(TNIV), which is gender free and obliterates much of Scripture
for the sake of political correctness. Stick with the old
NIV.
The
most exciting translation to come by in recent years in
the English Standard Version (ESV), which is less
than 10 years old. The ESV is based on the Revised Standard
Version (RSV) as a foundational starting point, and with
the vastly greater amount of ancient Bible manuscripts,
it was retranslated into the ESV.
The
ESV is argued to be the most readable, literal translation
that we have to date. Like any translation, none of them
are perfect. But many churches have completely changed all
their materials to the ESV translation because of the value
of accuracy with readability.
CONCLUSION
Personally,
the ESV is the translation I favor in my general study and
reading. I find it provides the best of both worlds, being
very acurate to the original texts while being very readable.
No
matter what translation you use, you should have a basic
understanding of what you're reading. It is always helpful
to have one or two other Bible translations handy so that
you can use them to check each other for consistency.
by
Todd Shaffer
