Choosing a Bible

In my previous essay, I took a short look into the history of the English translation of the Holy Bible. I did this so that I could have this discussion about choosing a Bible for your own use. There are a number of considerations to be made when choosing a Bible. Of course, there is always the option to purchase many separate editions. I personally feel that this is a great option as it allows you to compare and contrast the opinions of the translators and removes the reliance on any single translator's work.

Many religious institutions today believe that the King James Bible is the only English Bible that is ordained by God. I will address this at the end of this essay as it has a special relevancy to me.

From my own research, I have found three outstanding Bible translations that I feel constitute the core editions to be considered for a "primary" Bible. These translations are the New International Version, the New American Standard Bible and the New American Bible. Why do I choose these three in particular?

My first reason for choosing these three translations of the Bible is the quality of the translation. All three editions are serious scholarly works designed to bring the original text of the Bible to modern readers. The NASB and the NIV are both interdenominational Protestant efforts at making a neutral Bible while the NAB is the product of the Roman Catholic Church. If you are a Roman Catholic then I suggest most strongly using the NAB (and might I suggest the duo-tone edition from the Oxford University Press, it is a very nice edition.) The Catholic church has approved a number of Bible translations but I really feel that the NAB is THE serious Catholic study Bible. Protestants have the more difficult choice of choosing between all three.

[I would like to point out that while the NAB is produced by the Roman Catholic Church that it should not be considered to be a "Catholic" Bible. It is an excellent translation that should be considered by Protestants and Catholics alike. The NAB is the only one of these three editions to make available the complete 80 books inclusive of the Apocrypha and so, I suggest that anyone should own a copy of the NAB for reference.]

The NIV is from the early 1970's and is a very scholarly translation designed to bring the Bible to life through the use of Dynamic Equivalency. DE is a means of basing the translation on the meaning of the original phrase and not simply on a word by word basis. This method makes for a much more readable Bible that is more easily understand by a greater percentage of the population. For this reason, the NIV has been the most popular modern English Bible for more than twenty years. DE is both good and bad. It is a really wonderful tool to bring more of the Bible into a language that readers can understand because we are not required to understand archaic phrases and expressions. However, some detail must be lost because there are many times when there is additional meaning in the text that is carried through these expressions. So using DE is a tradeoff. For a Protestant diving into the Bible for the very first time, I highly recommend the NIV. But don't let it scare away serious Bible students either. The NIV is a very serious translation and has available with it some highly extensive translation notes that can be invaluable for anyone making a serious study of the Bible.

The NASB is often considered the most scholarly of the traditional translations (those translations designed to be read - the Amplified Bible, for example, is specifically a research tool that is very difficult to use as a regular reading Bible.) The NASB is an update of the ASB which was made in 1901. These two Bibles together represent more than a century of being considered the single greatest authority on the Word of God. The NASB is a word for word translation, often considered to be the authoritative means of translating the Bible. Translating word for word, however, makes the NASB harder for modern readers to read and slightly hard to understand. The NIV is far more pleasurable to read but the NASB is better for really serious research. In 1995 a new version of the NASB, knows as the Updated NASB, was made that made it slightly easier to understand while maintaining the translational integrity.

[In 2002 the English Standard Version was made as an attempt to bridge the gap between the NIV and the uNASB. The ESV is more readable than the uNASB but is closer to its translation than to the DE of the NIV.]

Now, the issue of the King James Bible or KJV. This edition of the Bible, first printed in 1611, is the most popular English version of the Bible ever translated. There are several issues with the KJV Bible. The biggest and most important issue is that the KJV is NOT a modern English translation of the Bible. It is written in Elizabethan (aka Shakespearian) English which is a language that is not generally understood today. This causes a number of issues on its own. The most prevalent issue is that modern readers find the Bible simply unusable as they cannot follow its meaning. Worse yet is the confusion that results when modern readers believe that old English words have the same meaning today as they did four hundred years ago. Many words in our vernacular have changed over the past centuries and the apparent meaning of the Bibles has often changed. This makes people believe that the Bibles says something that it doesn't. It is not uncommon for modern readers to only ever attempt to read the King James Bibles, find it too difficult and give up reading the Bible having never tried a version that was truly translated into their own language. This is the most important thing to note: we do not speak Shakespearean English - it is actually a different language. That means that we are forced to translate the KJV into the English that we speak as we read it which is quite cumbersome.

Some people and some churches like to make a claim that only the KJV is an "authentic" Bible as God intended it (apparently modern English was not acceptable to God.) This is curious as the Bible that we use today is not the actual KJV. In fact, the Bible sold to readers today is a modification of the KJV. First, the Bible was updated in 1769 to give us the far more usable book that we have today and secondly, it was truncated from 80 books to 66 in the 1880's. So the Bible that was authorized by King James I, is not quite the book that we give him credit for today.

We must also look at the purpose behind the creation of the KJV. This Bible was the product of a single denomination (an orthodox denomination) that was seeking to oppose the Roman Catholic Church while also seeking to oppose the Protestant churches which had already produced the most popular Bible at the time, the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible is often considered to be a more accurate translation and managed to be much more popular than the KJV in its day. The KJV is highly based upon the earlier Geneva Bible but it also referenced a number of other translations including at least one that was intentionally altered and is not a reliable source for Bible study. The decision to produce the Bible to the demands of the King rather than to the demands of accurate translation seriously degrade an otherwise remarkable translation. For its time, the KJV was a very good Bible. But not even, necessarily, the best of its day.

Today we have to question the use of the KJV. Yes, because of its age it is available without copyright which does make it available very cost effectively. However, the KJV often drives new or potential Christians away from the Bible because it is so hard to understand. It can often mislead those who try to learn from it. Many see the use of the KJV as a sign of a person who is attempting to mislead as wielding a KJV Bible tempts one to interpret it as one sees fit and to make the scriptures into whatever you want them to be. In my own experience, the KJV has often been used by a church when it wants to add or remove rules from the Bible because the KJV allows for so much individual interpretation. The KJV is often a tempting tool to a potential "Bible modifier".

Because of the bad image that the KJV projects, because it hurts more often than it helps and because it tempts so many to sin, I believe that the KJV should be relegated to scholarly duties only as a tool for comparison against translations of the early seventeenth century and even then it should be a secondary choice to the revered Geneva Bible.

Brief Survey of the English Bible

The Bible has been translated into the English language on many occasions and exists today in many different versions. John Wycliffe first translated Bible manuscripts into English in the 1380's. With his work, the English Bible and the move to get local language copies instead of the traditional Latin was underway in Europe.

Much later, Willian Tyndale was to print the first English New Testament in 1525 - 1526. One of Tyndale's disciples, Myles Coverdale was to finish the translation work that Tyndale had begun and in 1535 the very first published English Bible was produced and is known as the "Coverdale Bible." John Rodgers, under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew, was to produce, in 1537, the first English Bible translated from the original Hebrew and Greek known as the "Matthew-Tyndale Bible."

Up until this time, all of the work on the English versions of the Bible had to take place in secret as it was still illegal to translate or to publish the Bible except for in Latin. Even original languages such as Greek and Hebrew were forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1539, King Henry VIII of England authorized Coverdale to produce the first ever legal edition of the English Bible. This official Bible would become known as the "Great Bible" and was to be the official text of the Anglican Church (The Church of England) until 1611.

Another important Bible translation occurred in Geneva, a safe haven for Bible translators during this period, under the guidance of Coverdale and John Foxe. This new Bible was to be the first to incorporate the idea of numbered verses which have become ubiquitous in modern English Bibles. Because of the city that it was produced in, this Bible was to become known as the "Geneva Bible." The Geneva Bible had margin notes (also popular today) that, at the time, were highly controversial. Very quickly, a revision of the Great Bible called the Bishop's Bible was produced for the Church of England in the hopes that it would reduce the popularity of the Geneva Bible but this did not happen. In fact, the Geneva Bible is the English language Bible first brought to the Americas and was the edition used by the Puritans in Massachusetts. The Geneva Bible managed to be the most popular edition of the English language Bible from the time of its creation until near the middle of the 1600's.

In 1604, the Church of England petitioned the King, King James I, to allow a new translation to be made to replace the aging Bishop's Bible (which was 36 years old at the time) as the official text of the Anglican Church in the hopes that a new, fresh translation would reduce the usage of the Geneva Bible outside of the church which the church still felt was overly controversial in its directed attacks at the Roman Catholic Church. The new translation would require the services of approximately fifty researchers and would reference all of the major proceeding versions although it would rely most heavily on the work of the Geneva Bible. (This edition would also, however, take into consideration the text in the Doway/Rheims Bible which was and is known to have been altered by man and is not a direct translation but a modification of the Bible texts.) This Anglican Bible was to become known as the King James Bible or the King's Bible. Its purpose was to supplant the Protestant Geneva Bible but did manage to do so for decades. In the years since that time, the KJV has become the world's most published work even though it is often considered to be a less scholarly imitation of the Geneva Bible that is significantly older.

In 1769 a revision, known as the 1769 Baskerville, was made to bring the KJV a little more up to date. It is this revision that is actually used today and is often known as the original KJV due to the original preface being included.

In the 1880's, the Anglican Church, after 270 years, decided that it was time to update the aged King James Version of the Bible and set about producing the English Revised Version or ERV. This edition is incredibly important in English Bible history as it marks the acknowledgment by the Anglican Church that the KJV Bible needed to be updated and, far more importantly, it marked the first release of the new "reduced" Bible which was lowered, by the Church of England, from 80 books to 66. Up until the late nineteenth century all major English Bibles - including the KJV and Geneva - included what is today called the Apocrypha.

In America in 1901 a nearly identical Bible to the ERV was published: the American Standard Version or the Authorized Standard Version. The ASV, as it is known, was very popular in the US leading to its direct replacement in 1971. The product of that revision was the New American Standard Version or NASB. The NASB is a highly technical translation done at the word level making it very difficult to read and understand. The NASB was updated in 1995 and the Updated NASB is generally used today. It is only a minor update to the original translation making it slightly easier to read and based more on modern vocabulary.

Between the ASV and the NASB came the 1952 Revised Standard Version or RSV which was an update, not a re-translation, of the ASV. However, because the ASV had removed the apocrypha, this could not be updated from the ASV so that portion was updated directly from the 1611 KJV. In 1989 the RSV was updated again to produce the New RSV.

In 1958 the Amplified Bible was translated. This is a translation designed specifically to be used in scriptural research. It is annotated in such a way as to allow for a greater understanding of the original text. It is not designed to be a Bible that is easily readable in modern English.

In 1970 the Roman Catholic Church completed a twenty-five year update its official English text under the guidance of Pope Pius XII. This translation, the New American Bible, stands today as the official, accepted translation for Roman Catholics in the US. The edition is precise and technical but still readable.

In 1973 a tremendous ecumenical project was undertaken to create a new, phrase based translation of the Bible that would be accurate, timely and readable by the average reader. The result was the New International Version which has become the most popular modern language translation. The NIV took eight years and more than one hundred translators to complete. The NIV is also known for the extensive translation notes that are available for it.

In 1975 a new translation designed to be widely readable and accessible to all English speakers was created and known as Today's English Version. This version is very easy to read, includes the Apocrypha and is endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. Some confusion exists over its name as it was often called the Good News Bible. Today, the name has been changed and it is currently called the Good News Translation.

In 1982, a publisher decided to produce the "New King James Version" which would subtly update the traditional KJV while maintaining the style and flow. However, the subtle changes that they wanted to make were going to be too insignificant to qualify as a new, copyrightable, translation and so additional changes were made. Because of this, this edition is not generally well regarded by scholars.

2002 saw the creation of the English Standard Version, ESV, which was based on the NASB but was designed with readability in mind.

The NIV was updated into Today's New International Version in 2005. This Bible is currently hard to find as it is just beginning to be printed. Although criticism to this version is already beginning to surface.

Today there are many translations of the English Bible available and it can be difficult for someone to choose the translation(s) that are right for them. I encourage you to explore several versions as it is important to not become reliant upon a "translation." Bibles also vary based upon their intended audience. Some are highly technical and designed for scholars while others are highly readable, such as the GNT, The Living Bible, The Message or the New Century Version, to make reading the Bible easier and more enjoyable. Finding the Bible that is right for you can be a challenge.

I hope that this brief and, I hope, relatively accurate picture of the background of the most popular editions of the Bible is helpful. I wanted to make this essay available before looking at my own opinions on translations that I hope to make available very soon.

Open Intellectual Licensing and its Impact on the Christian Church

One of the most fascinating and important legal initiatives of the last fifty years has arisen, at least in its popular form, from the field of computer science. This legal concept is that of "openness". What this concept is based upon is the fundamental belief that knowledge should be free. As humans and, more importantly, as Christians, we should desire to share all truth and knowledge with all of our fellow man. This concept first manifest itself, again - in its popular form, in Richard Stallman's General Public License often referred to as a "Copyleft."

The purpose of the General Public License, or GPL as it is commonly referred, is to aggressively promote intellectual freedom. This means that works that are licensed under the GPL are considered to be Open of Free. It is often said that this means "Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer." The bottom line of the GPL is that anyone may use something that is licensed under the GPL freely, as they see fit, they may add to it or modify it for their own use or for the use of others. People may learn from it, study it, tear it apart and, in fact, are encouraged to do so. What makes the GPL aggressive is that it states that any derivative works based upon something licensed under the GPL are also licensed under the GPL. Guaranteeing that those who benefit from open knowledge also contribute to open knowledge.

What the GPL does not do is prevent the sale of knowledge licensed under itself. This is where people often become confused. The purpose of the GPL is not to make all knowledge free to obtain but to make it free to share, to use and to expand upon. In the end, this almost always results in knowledge being free to obtain.

How does this affect Christian publishing? As Christians, we should evaluate the purposes with which we create, disseminate and deliver information and information about the Faith in particular. Our obvious example is the Bible. The Bible is, and always has been, free. The sources of the Bible are public domain and anyone is free to copy, distribute, sell, give away, read, etc. The Bible has always been this way. God did not write the Bible hoping to sell many copies and make a large franchise of Bible publishers. The Bible is free for all to use. Bible publishers are free to make money by packaging the Bible in handy formats for us and are free to include reference materials to add value. They are able to charge for their published copies of the Bible because they add value. But anyone is free to copy the Bible, to translate it themselves or to read it aloud for anyone to benefit from. This is important because those with financial resources can buy nicely packaged copies of important works while those without financial resources can obtain that same information - although often in less "convenient" formats. Authors who wish to expand on ideas or incorporate ideas can do so. Speakers may perform those works. People may share in the knowledge.

My point is not to go so far as to say that all written or spoken works should be licensed under an open license. Fiction, for example, that is designed only for entertainment purposes and not for the enlightenment of the reader should, most likely, remain under the traditional licenses that we are used to. But when the purpose of a work is to disseminate knowledge, the author of that work must consider the consequences of his or her actions in the choice of licensing of that work. If the purpose of writing is monetary gain, then by all means, traditional licensing is the obvious choice (although some publishers like the highly respective O'Reilly beg to differ) but if the purpose of a work is to give back to the human community, to make the world a better place or to do the good work of God, then shouldn't that knowledge be made free so as to better serve its purpose? One must, I believe, question the motives of a writer who writes about information claiming that it is given of God but believes that he or she has the write to keep that knowledge private and to charge others to hear it.

Charging to hear God's Word? If a church was to charge admission at the door instead of taking an offering, people would be outraged. If a minister or priest was to expect people to pay to hear a sermon, no one would come and listen. One of the primary purposes of the Church is to allow those who need to hear about God, his Son and his Word to have a place where they are free to hear his teachings. We would never think to exclude those who could not pay from hearing the Gospel, would we? Sure we might package up a number of sermons onto a CD and sell that - but we are selling convenience and packaging, the sermons where still free to hear. But we often forget that writers are doing exactly this. Claiming to be preaching insight into God's Word and yet reserving the knowledge for themselves and those that pay to hear it. Would Christ approve? Would it have been right for Jesus to have charged entrance to The Sermon on the Mount? Or more importantly, why would he have wanted to do so?

If a writer's heart is in the right place when writing about the Faith, wouldn't they demonstrate this by wanting the knowledge that God gave to them to be "free" so that all may benefit from it and not just those who can afford it?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License 2.0

Essays and Such

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All of the work that I post here, unless otherwise stated, is placed under the Creative Commons License 2.0. This license allows this work to be republished and used freely as I believe is proper and I will address in my first published essay.

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