Dear friends, This is not an actually Bible study, but a question on study of Bibles. If you could choose, from among the many English language versions of the whole Bible, choose only 5 different English versions of the whole OT and NT, which 5 English Bibles would you choose?
I would choose
1. The OSB
2. The ONT
3. The NKJV
4. The ESV
5. The NIV.
Just to stretch it a little, I would also have to add a 6th choice, and choose
the 6. NASB. If I stretch it a little farther, I would also include as no. 7 the RSV Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, with a caveat in the poor translation in the RSV in Isaiah 7:14. In Erie PA Scott R. Harrington
The simplest thing to do is to get yourself an Online Bible (or esword) which has about 10 different versions available by simply clicking on the relevant tab.
Amateurs (non-professional translators) can't really judge the virtue or otherwise of a translation, and it isn't smart to try.
The opinions of reviewers about the quality of a new translation is always highly suspect. They simply cannot have used it for long enough, and so have to rely on the old technique of looking at a few of their pet passages and assess how well (in their humble opinions) the translators have done their job.
We, on the other hand, have to be sensible about this - and the OLB is the most straightforward way to deal with this problem.
I simply read most often from the KJV and the Revised Version of 1885 in my Interlinear Bible.
They do a very useful thing: where the AV and RV agree, the text is printed in one line.
Where they differ, the text splits, and the RV is printed above, and the AV below.
This has the very great virtue of slowing my reading down, and forcing me to consider carefully why the change has been made by the RV.
If I'm not really happy, I then go to the OLB, and look up what the other translators have produced. I always give precedence to the versions produced by committees (like RSV, ESV) rather than individuals (like Message and Weymouth).
If you can handle it, stick to the KJV. There's nothing like it for reading out loud. Yes, there are errors which are well known, but there are major virtues which are not.
One of the lesser known virtues is, strangely enough, the use of 'thee' and 'thou'.
Many times, you can't tell whether a single person or several is being addressed in the newer versions. In the KJV it's perfectly clear, and terribly important sometimes.
"I am the Lord THY God" = your personal, individual God, who brought you, personally, individually, out of the land of Egypt.
Without the THY an Israelite could think: ah, He's talking about the whole nation there. Doesn't apply to me personally. As long as WE're doing the right thing, it's OK.
The marriage vows, after all, use them: I XYX, do take thee ABC to be my lawful wedded husband/wife.
The meaning is perfectly clear. I'm taking thee, meaning you, personally, individually, as my...
So get yourself an OLB and then get down to some serious Bible study.
Just BTW, I'd avoid the NET Bible if I could. It may be an excellent translation (I don't wish to comment), but it's got so many notes in it, you spend more time reading the notes than the text itself!
Which is pure bad news.
