Do you have a favorite Bible?

[Cootie Brown]

Nothing phases a fundamentalist, or any devout believer for that matter. They can explain away anything that challenges their faith. Their explanations may seem ridiculous to everyone that isn't a believer, but that doesn't matter because non-believers are evil servants of the Devil & that makes them liars & deceivers. Believers & non-believers live in two very different worlds.

[KLP]

Recently reading a passage in ESV and it used the phrase "hold fast to" and I thought it was odd they had not updated that phrase to something more modern. Same exact wording in ASV for that passage...I just would have thought it would have been updated to something more commonly used.

[Ivy]

What is the latest sexy version in cofc circles? Are they still using the NKJV?

My congregation was using NKJV, but now they've switched to ESV some years back. Some folks still use other versions, of course. The sermon slides are mostly ESV now unless using other versions to compare. The NLT will often be used for that, mocked as not being accurate, but then used because it's the most clear way of making the point being made.

Most NI CoC preachers in the past used the American Standard, then the New American Standard, but many now use ESV, which is supposed to be the most reliable. I especially like the ESV because in Deuteronomy 32 ("the Song of Moses") it's clear that the Jews were henotheistic. They believed that there were multiple gods but that "the LORD" was their god. Other versions use the Masoretic text here (ESV uses the Septuagint Greek as its source because the Qumran text (aka Dead Sea Scrolls) backs it up. The Masoretic (Hebrew text from the 3rd-5th centuries AD) seems to have deliberately changed it (from "sons of God" to "sons of Israel"). I wouldn't say they were trying to hide anything, just that they may have thought "Sons of God" was an idiom. Regardless, the passage talks about how the "Most High" divided up the nations according to the number of his sons, and how the LORD received the descendants of Jacob as his inheritance. So "the LORD" (Adonai) is one of the sons of the Most High (Elyon).

To most liberal Christians, this isn't a big deal. They understand that people's beliefs changed throughout the time the Bible was being written. But to a fundamentalist, it should either make them become a liberal Christian or an atheist. I say "should." Mostly what it does is have them looking for ways to explain it away, usually by saying "this is a difficult passage" like all of those other "sons of God" passages. If you say it's difficult, you can ignore it as being not especially important.

Interesting!! I seem to vaguely remember something about the American Standard and NAS being used.

[GNITAC]

Maybe a different version or translation than coc approved? I really liked the Complete Jewish Bible by David H. Stern. But it was a one man translation!!! Wasn't Hugo McCord's also? Most thought if you didn't use a KJV Thompson Chain Reference like Peter and Paul, it was hell-bound for you!

Funny to think about, a lot of congregations feel that its KJV only, but when my youth group was doing Bible Quiz, we used NIV. were they trying to damn us? Literally?

[ena]

Bart Ehrmann talks about a metal box containing the ashes of a New Revised Standard version that Bruce Metzger had. It was burned by a fundamentalist preacher with a blow torch because it must be of the Devil or Red. Books are hard to burn so the preacher had trouble. "Must be of the devil because its hard to burn." Bruce told him that he was glad they burned the translation but not the translator. (William Tyndale was burned at the stake for his English translation. John Wycliffe was exhumed and burned for his.)

[ena]

Funny to think about, a lot of congregations feel that its KJV only, but when my youth group was doing Bible Quiz, we used NIV. were they trying to damn us? Literally?

There are King James Inerrantists that believe that the King James is inerrant. The King James was a good translation but it is not taken from the oldest manuscripts. They do vary in Greek. It was complete in 1611 CE. With 400 years better has been found. I don't believe any translation is inerrant. The frame of reference the translator uses affects the translation.

[Shane R]

My favorite is the RSVCE (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition). This RSV printing makes a few changes to the text in order to conform to the historic lectionary of the Catholic church where the RSV had deleted material. I believe some minor adjustments to the Psalms were also made.

Being in an independent Anglican church, the preferred version is the KJV. However, we are not KJV-onlyists. Additionally, we read the Bible with Apocrypha. Besides KJV, my bishop will authorize, on request, NKJV, ESV, and NASB. I have permission to use the NKJV in my preaching.

The ESV is a conservative update of the RSV. It has maintained gendered language, unlike the NRSV. It is somewhat more formal in the Psalms and reads at a slightly higher grade level. If you find an edition printed with the Apocrypha, it is a re-print of the RSV Apocrypha - ESV's committee did not make a fresh translation of those books.

My experience with the Bible in NICoC was that KJV onlyism was around. In fact, my Grandfather is a closet KJV-onlyist. He probably hasn't read any other version of the Bible in 40 years. That made for some painful sermonizing since he only had an 8th grade education and didn't have a clue when he was up against an archaic expression or word that has shifted meaning. In the 90s, the younger, better educated preachers started shifting to the NASB. I used it for a long while. In the 2000's, within a couple of years of the initial release of ESV (2001?), most of the guys that had done any Greek study were switching. The usual reason was that ESV was less 'Calvinist' than NASB. My parents' church still has KJV Bibles in the pews. I bet nearly half of them have never been opened.

[ena]

I like NASV because the margin notes tell me what other manuscripts say. That is handy and can be useful. The 1611 CE King James was based on newer manuscripts and older have been discovered since. In England it was revised in the 1880s and in the USA not. There are KJV only inerrantists claiming that it was never revised. P66 is a papyrus. The letter P means papyrus. There are many. The woman caught in adultery is not there. Earlier versions of John do not have it. It appears to have been added in the 4th century. Codex Sinaiticus does not have it either. Two witnesses. This link talks about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_66

[ena]

The Battle for an English Bible was long and bloody. The problem was the Catholic Bible translated the Hebrew and Greek into a Latin Bible. Services were in Latin. Because few really understood it and few could read. Toward the end of the 1300's John Wycliffe made an English translation from the Latin. It is middle English and you might run across some. I used the following link. You will need a pdf reader. This is from the 1395 CE edition. Spelling was not yet standardized.
It was hand copied. We have many copies. It started a movement that was attempted to be stamped out.

http://www.ibiblio.org/tnoble/download/ ... -Noble.pdf

page XXI

In the bigynniyng God made
of nou3t heuene and erthe.
Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide,

[ena]

The movement that began with John Wycliffe was called the Lollard movement. They were against many of the practices of the Catholic Churches. This is before the reformation. The attempts to stamp out this movement caused a few deaths by burning at the stake. Wycliffe died in 1384 CE only to be dug up around 40 years later to have his bones burned to ash. His ashes were dumped into the river Swift. The Lollard movement persisted into the 1400's. William Tyndale is next. His translation is from the Koine Greek. Koine means common. This is the Greek used by Alexander the Great. It was used in Palestine during the time of Jesus. Jesus spoke Aramaic. So the words of Jesus suffer at least two translations to get the English Bible.

William Tyndale produced first a New Testament and the Old Testament from the Hebrew later. His work influenced the later King James. He also was against the divorce of Henry the 8th. He was burned at the stake in 1536. His final words were: "Lord open the King of England's eyes." It was illegal to write an English bible.