Weekly Memory Verse:
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness…” 2 Timothy 3:16
So, this week’s post has two titles. 1) How to Choose Your Bible and 2) How to Do an In-Depth Bible Study If You Don’t Know Greek. These are two of the most common questions I get in my inbox. Since the answer to the first leads to the answer of the second, I figured I’d combine them into one informative post.
Before we can answer the second question, we’ve got to respond to the first. Just how does one select the “right” Bible translation for themselves? If you’ve ever looked for a Bible and searched the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble or the virtual shelves of Amazon, you might have been quite overwhelmed with the sheer number of different translations that are out there today.
Before we begin, when I say Bible translation, I’m not talking about publisher branding of a particular Bible. I’m not talking about particular “study Bibles” such as those put out with names like John MacArthur Study Bible, Tony Evans Study Bible, or the Single Moms with Two Children and a Pizza Shop Study Bible. John MacArthur’s Study Bible (of which I’m a fan) actually has several additions with various translations. These study Bibles are just that: Bibles with built-in commentary to allow you to study deeper into Scripture. For the most part, these study Bibles are excellent resources for any Christian to use. But they have nothing to do with “translation” as such and won’t really help you choose the translation that is best suited for you.
By translations, I am, of course, referring to those such as the King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), New International Version (NIV), New American Standard Bible (NASB), English Standard Version (ESV), the Catholic Bible, the Amplified Bible, The Living Bible, The Message, etc. Each of these are considered “translations” by varying degree and it is within these ‘degrees’ that the difficulty in finding the Bible that will benefit you the most rests.
So the question that might be coming to mind is: Why are there so many translations? Is it just a money grab? I certainly don’t think so. The sheer amount of time, energy, and labor that goes into translating the Bible would render such efforts borderline profitable at best. No, despite my usual cynicism about heretical influences seeping into orthodox theology, I honestly think that those providing these various translations have the very best intentions about their endeavors. I think they are genuinely attempting to provide the very best translation to the masses—perhaps a vestigial concern from back in the day when the common man could neither read the Bible for themselves or afford a Bible even if they were able to read.
And as I alluded to, translating Scripture from its original text is a monumental task. Why? Because the Bible was written over a period of hundreds (maybe thousands) of years by approximately forty different human writers under the Holy Spirit’s influence. Each of these authors used language, idioms, dialects, and contextual devices that were often specific to their particular time, region, and culture. In addition, while most of the Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew, some was written in Aramaic. The New Testament was written mostly in Greek, but Aramaic popped up here and there as well. And once again, each author contributed their own particular cultural idioms (common sayings similar to phrases we use like “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”). On top of all that, one must understand that in ancient writing, there was no such thing as punctuation marks and spaces were rarely (if ever) used to separate words in a sentence. Imagine reading this in another language: imaginereadingthisinanotherlanguageandthentryingtranslateitsopeoplecouldbetterreadit. (Also, in most of the Greek manuscripts, it was written in all capital letters, so you couldn’t even be sure where a sentence started or ended.)
Needless to say, all these variations require a great deal of thought when deciding on the best way to translate them. Do the translators want to risk misunderstanding due to unfamiliarity with a particular historical period, region, or culture and translate the Bible word for word (known as “Formal Equivalency” or “literal” translation)? Does the translation team want to do what they can to protect the integrity of the original text while making it more understandable to modern western minds (known as “Functional Equivalency” or “dynamic” translation) which incorporate a ‘thought for thought’ translation. Or in other words, they translate a sentence word for word, then look for ways to edit the sentence to be more easily read and understood by modern audiences. Finally, there’s the third type known simply as Paraphrase. These Bibles are less about translation of the words as they are about translating ideas. They take the original text and often completely write the sentences while striving to preserve the overall meaning of what the original writers intended.
So, which Bible translations fall into which of these three categories? Let me give you some examples:
Word-for-Word (Literal) Translations: The KJV and the NKJV are both examples of this. So is the ESV and NASB. For my money, there is no better word-for-word translation than the NASB (1995 edition). The reason for this? When I was in seminary, one of my required projects was to translate the book of 1 John from Greek to English. When I was finished, I compared it to different Bibles (for the fun of it) and discovered that my translation and the NASB matched almost word for word. Because of that experience, I was assured of the accuracy of the translation. I use the NASB almost exclusively for serious Bible study. NOTE: Not a big fan of the 2020 edition of NASB though because they began translating certain ambivalent words as “gender inclusive.” Words like “Brethren” or “Brothers” became “brothers and sisters.” Now bear in mind, they didn’t change God’s pronouns or anything like that. They only changed to the gender inclusive phrases and words when it bore no real significance to theology. But that’s a judgment call I’m not sure any translator is worthy to make, therefore, I’ll stick with the 1995 edition. I should also point out that I’ve only recently begun using ESV. While the translation is also very accurate, I do struggle with the word order choices they make. The sentences seem clunky to me, but I suspect that’s due to just being used to the NASB.
Thought-for-Thought (Dynamic) Translations: The NIV is the most popular dynamic translation out there today, and for good reason. Zondervan, the publisher behind the NIV did an excellent job preserving the overall text of the original manuscripts while making the English translation more readable, enjoyable, and understandable. I use the NIV for my daily Bible reading or when I just want to spend some time in God’s word. To me, its comforting. Familiar. And doesn’t tax my brain so much that I’m not able to meditate on the overall meaning of the passage as opposed to the individual words. Other examples of dynamic translations would include the NiRV (New Internaional Readers Version), the New Living Translation, and the Common English Bible (CEB), which I know very little about personally. Each of these will vary from translation to translation on how much they diverge from the original texts for the sake of modern understanding. It’s best to research them on your own, but I’ve found you really can’t go wrong with the NIV.
Paraphrase: There’s only one paraphrase Bible I honestly would recommend outside of using them more as commentaries to another translation than a translation itself and that is The Amplified Bible. I’ll get to that in a minute, but for now, other examples of paraphrase include the Living Bible and The Message. These Bibles go beyond either the words or the thoughts of Scripture and try to instruct the overall intent of what a certain passage is trying to say. Like I said, nothing wrong with such approaches if used in tandem with an actual translation as a commentary, but I’d warn against using them as your sole source of God’s word. The difference with the Amplified Bible, however, is that unlike the other two versions I listed, it goes to near opposite extremes of the word-for-word translation in that it will take one word in the text and provide several different possible translations so that you, as the reader, can decide which definition of a given word would be more accurate. Once again, it’s still a dangerous thing to utilize such Bibles as your only Bible in case you “choose” the wrong word choice and grasp onto an unintentional heretical concept.
So, knowing the three major categories of Bible translations and a brief primer into the various translations themselves, which Bible should you choose? Heh heh…any of them, but I prefer to say, “All of them.” And therein is where we lead into the second topic of discussion regarding in-depth study of Scripture without any knowledge of the original dead languages with which they were written.
Using the Translations for In-Depth Bible Study
How do you trust any one translation over another when it comes to studying the Bible? Simple. Learn Hebrew and Greek and study the original texts like a scholar. If you don’t have the years or the money to invest in going to graduate school to learn these things, it might seem like you’re out of luck and that you’re just going to have to trust that the translation you chose is accurate enough not to lead you astray, right?
Good news is, you don’t have to trust blindly in any one translation! There’s a nifty trick taught in seminary that has helped me out on a number of occasions when my memory of Greek (I didn’t study nearly as much Hebrew as I did Greek) fails me. If you have multiple translations, you can grab them all, lay them all out on a desk or table, open them all to the specific text your studying…and read them all. Look at the similarities in each of the translations. Look at the differences. Ask questions of the text. Why did the translators opt for this word instead of the other? What’s missing in this translation and why might that be? By studying the differences and similarities of the different translations, you can then extrapolate the most likely accurate translation (regarding both text and meaning) for yourself and your understanding of that passage will be opened to new heights!
And there’s even better news for you! If you can’t afford to buy ALL the translations, that’s okay. Zondervan (and maybe some other publishers out there) has been kind enough to publish Bibles known as The Parallel Bible, providing most one book that contains multiple translations side by side on the printed page. It’s simply a matter of comparing columns of text in one hefty book. It has also become one of my favorite Bible study resources.
And even more good news for you! If you can’t afford all these different translations or even one Parallel Bible (between $40 and $100 on Amazon depending on the number of translations in the same book), there are other resources available at the touch of your finger on the screen. I personally use an amazing app called Logos, which provides access to almost every translation and every Bible resource imaginable (many of them free!) that goes right on your phone! I also use the website www.biblegateway.com frequently as well. Both have amazing selections of the various translations and Bible study resources. Bible Gateway is completely free too, but they don’t have nearly as many resources as Logos does…even though they’re still very impressive.
Point is, you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to better understand the Bible better. Nor do you need to spend years studying ancient languages. With a few resources at your disposal and some critical thinking, you too can study Scripture like a scholar!
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