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What Bible Version Should I Study? |
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Original Languages... The bible was originally written in three different languages... Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. the Old Testament was mostly written in Hebrew because the Jewish people who spoke in Hebrew also wrote in Hebrew. A few parts were written in Aramaic, a language that uses the same alphabet as Hebrew, but is slightly different. The main section of the Old Testament that uses Aramaic is most of Daniel. This is because Daniel served in Babylon where people spoke Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek, which was the common language of the time. Even though Jesus and His apostles mostly spoke Aramaic or Hebrew, Greek was the main language spoken by people throughout the Roman Empire. It was a very good thing that the New Testament was written in Greek, this enabled many people to read it. Just to confuse things... there are a few scholars that think parts of the New Testament may have been written in Hebrew and Aramaic (parts of Matthew and John)... and some scholars think that Mark may have been written in Latin. A word about Aramaic... Very little of the bible was written in Aramaic! Aramaic was the language of the Babylonian Empire... when the Jewish people were exiled to Babylon, many of them started to use the Aramaic language. Some portions of the book of Daniel were written in Aramaic because Daniel was an exile in Babylon at that time. In the books of Ezra and Jeremiah there are several transcriptions that were written in Aramaic. Interestingly, during Jesus time on earth, Aramaic was the spoken language in Palestine but the new testament gospels were written in Greek. A word about Greek... There were different versions of "Greek"... Academic Classical Greek and Koine Greek. The new testament was written in Koine (Koine means "common") Greek. Koine Greek was not the Academic Classical Greek... it was the language of the "common" people. Early Translations... When the Greek Empire came to power and the Jewish people stated speaking Greek, the Jewish Scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek during the second or third century BC into a document called the "Septuagint". Then, about 700 years later, when the Roman Empire came into control the bible (including the New Testament) was translated into a Latin document called the "Vulgate". Then, somewhere around the seventh century AD, Jewish scribes known as the "Masoretes" standardized the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts by adding vowels, and adding divisions of the text into books, sections, paragraphs, and verses into a document called the "Masoretic Text". The first English translation of the entire bible by John Wycliffe did not occur until about 1382 AD. Then two more translations occurred in 1535, the Tyndale translation and the Coverdale translation; then the King James Version in 1611. And many more after that! Translations Today... The bible is the most translated book in the world. There are over 2200 bible versions, in over 1500 languages (over 450 English translations)... too many to read them all, so in this article we relate some of the differences and some reasons to review different versions. Some versions are "more accurate" in word for word translations from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to English. Some versions are "more easily understood" because the translators use more common English verbiage rather than exact translations (this can be dangerous because "understanding" differs between different people)! So, if you want to become a serious student of the Gospel, some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew can be very helpful. There is some "good news"... the different versions "mostly" say the same thing... some are easier to understand. Later in this article we will reveal the versions we think are the most accurate "word for word" translations and the "most accurate easily understood" versions. Discussion thoughts... So much for history... lets discuss a few of the different versions... the version I grew up with (as a majority of Americans living today have) was, of course, the King James Version KJV... I find myself going back to it when I stumble reading newer versions. The King James Version KJV original translation came out in 1611... in 1901 it was revised into the American Standard Version ASV... then in 1952 it became the Revised Standard Version RSV... and finally in 2001 a new version was created by removing the "gender neutral" positions created in the RSV version and evolved into the English Standard Version ESV (revisions in 2007, 2011 & 2016). So, the English Standard Version ESV is a descendant of the original King James Version KJV. The ESV version is what is known as an "essentially literal" translation... meaning that it mostly translates "word for word" from the Greek and Hebrew but sometimes may use "extra" words to clarify the original meaning of the text. Another descendant of the KJV is the New American Standard Bible NASB published in 1971 (revisions in 1995 & 2020) and is a direct translation revision of the 1901 American Standard Version (but incorporates some direct translations from the Greek and Hebrew). Another translation that I enjoy reading is the New Living Translation NLT... work on the NLT version started in 1989 with a group of 90 translators, using the 1971 The Living Bible TLV as a starting version, and was first published in 1996 (revisions in 2004, 2007, 2013 & 2015). The New Living Translation NLT bible is one of the most popular versions in use today. You may wonder why we have not included a discussion of some popular translations that are in use today, such as "The Message"; "The Passion Translation"; "The Living Bible"; "The Contemporary English Version", and others... these "new" versions are easier to read because they use "today's" common expressions; but our concerns is that sometimes these new "popular" versions change the meaning of the text (some do strange things like change everything to neutral gender... some are thought provoking, which sometimes is a good thing)! My Beliefs... We originally decided to use the New American Standard Bible NASB as the primary source of scriptures for our studies... it is sometimes difficult to read but is accepted as the most accurate "word for word" translations from the Greek and Hebrew... we say "sometimes difficult" but this is countered by being accurate... for instance, compare the KJV version of Romans chapter 14 with the NASB version... you will find that the KJV version has changed the gender to "male" from gender neutral a total of 45 times!!! And another prime example why we have chosen the NASB version... look at Mark 1:17 - KJV says "fishers of men"... NASB version says "fishers of people". The English Standard Version ESV was a close second in our selection process, for reasons explained above, and is what we call the "most accurate easily understood" version... the New Living Translation was a "distant" third. The NLT version is a pleasure to read but can sometimes be a problem... the method of translation used was to determine what the Greek and Hebrew said and then translate that "idea" into English language (so, not being an exact "word for word" translation it sometimes loses the thought or idea... suffice it to say that one persons "idea" may be different from another persons "idea"). We choose to not answer the question asked in the heading... you need to read various versions and decide which fits your style of study... as we stated above, the different versions "mostly" say the same thing... some are easier to understand... and some are thought provoking! There are many, many versions in use today... at a very popular website www.bible.com you can read many different versions.
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