I have over thirty versions of the Bible, in several languages � and have carefully excluded certain others that I know to be inaccurate. I grew-up with the King James version (KJV), and for several decades, based my Bible-study on it because all the best peripheral study references were keyed to it. Mainly out of mere habit now, I'm still programmed to turn to the KJV first � and because it's probably still the most familiar version among most Christians.

So I have two questions for y'all � consider 'em kind of a poll. (I'm honestly seeking candid answers to these questions, not aiming to start an argument or pissing match.)

� Which version of the English Bible do you like best?

� Which of the following is most important to you?
a. easy reading
b. accurate translation
c. familiarity
d. tradition
e. stately prose
f. clarity
g. understanding
h. other (in your own words)

I have what to me is a good reason for asking. As I write Christian essays and books, I often C&P long passages from the Bible. Since the whole purpose of these writings is to enliven readers' understanding, it's best to know which version does the best job with the most readers � and why.

I appreciate your attention and your help. Thanks!

I prefer the NIV, mainly for the modern language. Old English does have some advantages, like the handling of the singular/plural 'you', but for the most part, I like the NIV.

Which versions do you know have inaccuracies?

Schofield - basically a KJV with helpful footnotes.

I like the King James & New International Version.
Other's as well ...

'Understanding' comes from God's Holy Spirit MORE than any 'particular' translation.

English Standard Version/New American Standard for accuracy

New International Version for the Psalms as their translation is loose enough for readability and accuracy.

NASB familiarity.

NLT for fun.
KJV for memory.

NIV

I have favored the New King James for quite a few years in the Schofield version but recently have started using the NET.org bible. Crank it up and see what you think. It's free!

King James. It seems to be as accurate as anything we have available.

The KJV is the only one I was ever exposed to and not that for fifty years.

KJV, traditional, and somehow comforting in it's style of wording.

The King James Version. Call me a snob if you will, but later versions have, in my opinion, lost much of the majesty of the KJV. I freely admit that I am a "smells and bells" Anglican and prefer liturgy to "happy clappy" revivalism, and where I attend divine services we use the "Thomas Cranmer" Old Book of Common Prayer.

I always ask my friends who promote the NIV (and other modern versions) of the Bible as making it "more accessible", if they would favour a NIV of Shakespeare's Sonnets on the grounds of "making them more accessible"?

I think it is an error to remove the beauty of language from our understanding and worship of God.

Ken, I would choose "h. other"

The most important English version to me is the version which uses the Textus Receptus as the base Greek text from which it translates the New Testament. That means either the King James, or the New King James versions. All of the others use either the spurious 'Westcott and Hort" text or a derivative such as the Nestle text. The KJV and most of the new versions (basically the 1889 English Revised Version onward) use the Masoretic Hebrew text for the Old Testament, so there is no argument there. All of the new versions are hamstrung by not using the plenary Received Text as the basis for their New Testament translation.

I have been a big NIV guy for decades, but the new living translation is also very good IMO.

Both arer far easier to read and understand than a KJV and are more accurate in translation as well with more and older manuscripts avaialble at the time of translation, better understanding of ancient languages, and - this one is really important in my view - lots of multi denominational cross checking and oversight on both versions during translation to avoid undue or improper infulences or bents from contaminating anything or aiming the script from anything but the best possible and most true to the originals pure translation within the confines of using contemporary English.

NKJV for me.

This...

I've mentioned this here before, but doing it again won't hurt (I hope!) �

One of my Jewish friends gave me a copy of the 1985 Tanakh, "A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text" by the Hebrew linguists of the Jewish Publication Society. I find it fascinating and probably more trustworthy than the KJV Old Testament or any of its spin-offs.

For example, Genesis 1:1a reads


The footnote reads � Others "In the beginning God created."

In the front matter, the forenote Abbreviations and Terms explains that Others "Indicates a well-known traditional translation, especially if it was used in the older (1917) JPS version, that the committee does not find acceptable even as an alternative reading."

The difference seems to be very slight indeed, but I really appreciate the obviously meticulous attention to crystalline fidelity in translation � a quality proven to be appallingly lacking in the KJV and its spin-offs.

KJV - for its "familiarity" and "stately prose"

NIV - for "easy reading"

The combination of NIV and KJV for "understanding" (which is most important to me).

Ken, if you have not had the opportunity, read my post which answered your original question. The KJV is virtually the only widespread English translation that uses the plenary and ecclectic Textus Receptus as the underlying Greek text for the New Testament. An accurate translation of a spurious Greek text is just another incomplete and misleading translation. As for the Hebrew Old Testament, all of the study I have done points to the Masoretic text as the accurate Hebrew text.

NKJV

for reasons A,F,&G

Ken,

I use the New American Standard Bible and the New King James Bible.

Reasons:
a,b,c,g

Please help me here.

My several Greek texts don't include Text Receptus, and I don't know where to get it or access to it. Can you cite a specific and significant difference between Text Receptus and, say, Westcott-Hort or Nestle-Aland?

You're not the first whom I've heard deplore the use of the other Greek texts in lieu of Text Receptus, but so far no one has given me any specifics.

Also, I have to wonder whether any differences between Greek Text A and Greek Text B are greater or more significant than any of several documented differences between Text Receptus and the KJV. I've compared several pertinent passages in the half-dozen or more Greek texts that I have and have found no difference of any kind whatever.

NIV. However, having grown up with KJV, some passages just seem "right" in KJV. 23rd Psalm and 2nd chapter of Luke being two examples.

God can speak to our heart through His Word regardless the translation.

I've had many version over the years. I started reading the King James when I was fourteen, and learned to understand it perfectly, so nothing else seems quite right to my ears. For interpretation sake, I have a parallel King James/Amplified.

I use the NIV, but also enjoy the ESV the Revised English Version as well.

As a card-carrying, practicing Roman Catholic Christian I first reach for a New American Bible, study edition. One beautiful thing about study editions of any Bible is that the notes get updated. As a consequence, there is a deep market in 'obsolete' study Bibles. Obsolete as in 'the study notes are obsolete'. I bought 6 or 8 study Bibles from Alibris for 99 cents each. Each Bible is easily 4" thick! Lots of Book for a dollar.

Obviously I use NAB for Sunday School lessons.

For C-P to the general Internet I sometimes use the New King James because there are some people who will reflexively turn off if I use "a Catholic" Bible.

I like the Amplified Bible because it explains what specific words meant in the original languages and it does it right in the text instead of in footnotes.

When that gets too tedious, I go with the NKJV or the NIV for ease of reading.

That being said, I still read the KJV as often as the others. It gets the nod for prose but there are also passages that just jump out at me in the KJV.

ASV (1901) for structural accuracy, even though it's kinda "choppy" sometimes. But it's "American", while still sounding King Jamesy enough to satisfy my dinosaur-like traditionalism. NAS is a close second for me. When I want greek, I just read greek. When I want hebrew, I give up and stop wanting hebrew, in short order. I once had what I thought was the
perfect combination in more modern vocabulary- NIV Old Testament bound with NAS New Testament. Easy reading OT, accurate NT. Wore it out, wasn't worth the cost to make another.

Favorite: KJV

Reason: Other. Goes with Strong's and Vine's for study.

Amplified and Worrell for additional insight.

KJV. Because that's how God talks.

NIV. I studied the original Greek New Testament as well as reading most English translations and interpretations. The NIV is the closet modern English translation to the original Greek.

King James Version

and i'm leaning more towards the teachings of the Old Testament more each day.

Gunner

I don't have anything but a King James Version. I won't have anything but a King James Version. My little brother calls every once in awhile, and asks "Let read you a verse, tell me what you think of it." Then the takes off on some tear that may or may not sound vaguely familiar.

"Boy, says I, put down that heathen bible and call me back with the King James Version."

I realize that there are advantages for study purposes in reading from different versions, but FOR ME, I need the King James Version.

Ken maybe I am one of the hold out because I don't see it mentioned much:

RSV and NAS for b&f (tilt to RSV)

KJV for d & e

KJV

NIV - accurate, easy for me to read, and the one my preacher reads in church and the one our Sunday School literature is based on. I have read these: NKJV - used for many years until the print shrunk, NASB - read through one year, Holman CSB - read through one year, NLT - read through one year.

haven't a specific favorite, but like this:

downloading, reading, searching and comparing made easy:

e-sword

probably safe the say the KJV is one of the least used here due to the difficulty contemporary hearer's have understanding the unfamiliar 400 year old language.

I use the NKJV for reasons A,B,C,F,&G. As a preacher starting in ministry 30 years ago half the people had the KJV with them and the others had NASB or (then fairly new) NIV. A reason I chose to go from the KJV to the NKJV was it "bridged" with those other translations best. Plus the KJV/NKJV are very good literal translations.

One contributor above cites the Textus Receptus as a significant reason for using the KJV. This is a contrarian though fairly TRUE view. (Contrary to the standard view taught in Bible Schools and seminaries which rely on "Egyptian texts"). The problem with the TR-only view is that the TR is a fairly poor representative of the text of the majority of the manuscripts which is what we want. About 30 years ago Thomas Nelson Co. published "The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text". Wilbur Pickering of Wickliffe Bible Translators wrote a book entitled "The Identity of the New Testament Text" (I think the title's right) that gives the thinking behind that 5 year project. The reason I point this out is that the NKJV has in it's marginal notes the "M" (majority text) plus the (NU text - Egyptian text). This aids the Bible student in knowing what the majority of the manuscripts read versus the TR plus what the other translations (Nasb, NIV and everything else) read.

The NIV is too much of a paraphrase to me. One preacher friend of mine insisted it was the only way to go and then a year later switched to the NKJV because he "got tired of having to correct the text in his sermons".

Final point - read the Bible you have.

+1

Ken,

If I had to choose only one English Bible translation to use, I would choose the NASB because it is widely recognized by scholars to be the closest to word-for-word translation. I think that level of word-for-word translation is critical to detailed study. When I am studying I gladly give up a little readability to get the closest to what the Greek and Hebrew (and Aramaic) texts say on a word-for-word basis. In fact, I often omit the "filler" words that are added for readability/clarity (marked by italics) because the large majority of the time the passage reads perfectly fine without them. Thus, "(b) accuracy" is most important to me. My opinion is that if I have the most accurate word-for-word translation, I have the closest to what God inspired the Scripture writers to write, and the Holy Spirit will help me understand what I need to understand.

I do use the NIV1984 translation for one Bible study I'm in because the questions are based on the NIV, and an NIV1984 is what I usually carry to church since the pastor usually uses the NIV.

I use several other translations for reading. In fact, a couple weeks ago I started reading Jesus' discourses (one discourse per week) from seven different translations (basically one translation per day for the week) in order of the spectrum from thought-for-thought translation to word-for-word translation: NLT, NIV, HCSB, NKJV, KJV, ESV, and NASB. My goal is to read each of the 54 discourses in the seven translations by the end of 2012.

My scripture memorization has been from the KJV (childhood) and NIV1984 (adulthood), and I've recently been trying to decide what translation to use for a new program of memorization I am embarking on. I'm leaning toward NIV1984, but I'm disappointed that the NIV's publisher/copyright holder isn't supporting the NIV1984 any more (i.e., they aren't allowing NIV1984 Bibles to be published since they came out with their "more politically correct" NIV2011 about a year ago). You can't even buy the Kindle version of NIV1984 any more. [step up onto soapbox] If the Hebrew or Greek word is masculine, there is no good reason to translate the word as gender neutral - the Holy Spirit can lead us to understand what God intended us to understand from the passage. It is sad that the NIV copyright holder taking actions to make the new NIV (NIV2011) less accurate in some areas contaminated the improvements in accuracy they made in other areas. [step down from soapbox] Thus, the conundrum because the copyright holder is making a concerted efforted to make the NIV1984 an "obsolete" translation. Therefore, I'm left to decide whether I continue memorizing from NIV1984 due to its general accuracy and ease of speaking (and remembering) or switch to another translation that will be maintained by its copyright holder for the next 40 years. The NASB is a logical choice, but it is a little more difficult for memorization in that the words do not always "flow" as well as the words flow in the same passage in another translation (e.g., NIV1984).

My goto bible is theHolman Christian Standard Bible for its ease of reading. I own the KJV, NKJV, NIV and I even have "The kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures" given to me by a former coworker who is a Jehovahs Witness.