Which Bible to Read?

The New King James Bible is more readable than the KJV. It is untouched more or less from the KJV except for the removal of the Old English phrases (“thee”, “thou”, “verily”, etc).

The Complete Jewish Bible (Messianic) is structured with the verses in paragraphs instead of chopped into smaller pieces. However, one will have to get accustomed to the original Jewish names for people and cities (anglicized names are removed). On a positive note, it reads more like a conversation.

As mentioned above, the New American bible (which always includes the Apocrypha plus a few others) is the standard version for Catholics.

But the version that I have heard the most regard for in terms of readability is the NIV. Modern terms are used when appropriate and additional phrases are bracketed for better comprehension of the original meaning. Also, the NIV is very readable and is a good start for a casual or novice reader.

Though it is always best to have at least two versions available for comparison and a regional map for the Old/New Testament helps clarify the numerous references.

The KJV is the best read, with the most beautiful language.

As globalizati said, the New International Version is another one that is quite popular with evangelical Christians, with more modern language than the KJV. That would be my suggestion if you don’t like “thees and thous.”

My vote is for the Oxford Annotated NRSV w/ Apocrypha. Excellent essays, footnotes and careful translations. I haven’t noticed any incidence of gender neutral language either. The only thing is that it’s pretty dry.

For an easier read the Good News Bible is great. Not scholarly but much more fun and a whole hell of a lot cheaper.

Those are the two I have anyway and I find they compliment each other pretty well. One’s the nerdy brainiac who’s great for a challenging conversation, the other is the cute pool man you invite in for a roll in the hay.

The KJV has the best language.

The KJV may have the best language, but the manuscripts from which it was translated are relatively later than the manuscripts behind more modern translations, and so is less reflective of the original text. The NKJV just uses the same manuscripts as the KJV, so it’s no improvement in that regard.

If you want both readability and fidelity to the best manuscripts, then the NRSV is probably the best choice. The gender-neutral language in it, IIRC, is mainly used in the places where a masculine plural is used to refer to a mixed-gender group, as is common in languages with gender inflections, and there are footnotes to indicate what gender-neutral substitutions have been made, e.g. a footnote for “brothers and sisters” will say “brothers.”

I’d recommend reading the book “Introduction to the Bible” by Rogerson; it is short but packed with information on questions like these.

The NIV is an evangelical translation where the translators chose to translate in a way so as to soften any contradictions. The NRSV is a much more scholarly translation.

But for the Hebrew Bible (commonly called the Old Testament, though this isn’t the Catholic Old Testament), the Jewish Publication Society Tanack (sp) is good.

I’ve gotten bogged down in the KJV more than once because of the combination of difficult, overly-poetic language and tedious genealogies and whatnot. I ran out and bought a copy of the NRSV after reading Misquoting Jesus, since that’s the one recommended by Ehrman.

Robert Price (of the Bible Geek podcast and books like The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man) released the Pre-Nicene New Testament fairly recently, and cast some aspersions both on the NIV (for being slanted toward the conservative evangelicals) and the NRSV (for being slanted the other direction).

Ultimately, I suppose it’s all about what you’re looking for. I really like the phrasing in the KJV for a lot of the verses, but I trust Ehrman when he says that the NRSV is the most accurate version, and I like that one for how comprehensible it is.

King James Version with Apocrypha. It is the standard text for most modern Bibles and a brilliant piece of literature. I hate reading Bibles that are not KJV because the Bible loses so much eloquence and literary remarkability when it is dumbed down for today’s readers. Also, the modern versions change word to alter meanings of phrases to make the Bible seem less ridiculous. For instance, the reference to unicorns in KJV’s Job is omitted in many newer versions, replaced by a mule or a horse.

Hmmmm. Well, if he wants to really go to the original source, he should get the Artscroll Chumash and the Artscroll Tanakh, which contain the Jewish translations of what are, after all, Jewish scriptures. Can’t help him with Part Two, however.

The Artscroll Tanakh contains all of the books of the Jewish bible, and has fewer comments. The Artscroll Chumash covers only the first 5 books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, but the commentary is extensive and phenomenal. To my mind, it is absurd to just try to sit down and read the bible straight (this is the mistake that Christians made and it has led to no end of misunderstandings, not to mention all the mistranslations from the original Hebrew). He needs to read a bible that EXPLAINS to the reader what he is reading. To read Jewish scriptures while ignoring the entire body of Jewish religious scholarship and teaching and what it has to say about the scriptures is like ripping one page out of a large manual and thinking you can make sense of the whole by studying that one page. The bible has to be read in a historical as well as spiritual and cultural context.

that should be a dilemma. even those professing “Christians” wouldn’t know how to reconcile Bible versions* that contradict each other.

*note: as a Christian, i put stress on the Bible versions cause i believe that the Bible per se doesn’t contain contradictions.

😉

I’d recommend you watch “Real Live Preacher”‘s video clips on “How to Read the Bible”. He has some good ideas, etc., give him a chance. He’s one of the “good Christians”, if you know what I mean.

http://www.reallivepreacher.com/readthebible

I’d love to hear other atheists’ opinions on this series. If you feel so inclined, please drop a comment at http://thinktoomuch.net/2007/03/18/ancient-religious-texts/ – my impression is that this series should be good to watch for fundamentalists and atheists alike. (One of my atheistic friends did give this collection to one of his fundie friends… clearly he liked it…)

I’d go with Revised Standard or New Revised Standard. The language in King James is lovely, but in many places the translation is wildly inaccurate. And it’s not like the NRSV reads like it was written by monkeys. The writing is also graceful and lovely; it’s just more spartan and less flowery. And unlike the King James, it was translated by people who cared about accuracy above anything else.

I think a word-for-word translation is literally impossible. I speak a little German. Here’s an example. “Es tut mir der kopf weh” means “I have a headache”. Seems pretty straightforward, right? But if you try a word for word translation, you get “It does [to] me the head pain” (sort of, because “to” is implied and “weh” doesn’t seem to actually mean anything outside of this gramattical structure). Translation for meaning is much more, well, meaningful. But Germand and English are closely related (English is a Germanic language). If it’s impossible to get exact translations of simple sentences in two related languages, how much more difficult to translate between distant languages that are also separated over time and to try to convey the details of complicated philosophical ideas.

Obviously we read translations of things all the time and get the gist, but you can’t get the fine details unless you’re fluent in the original language.

An interesting book on this subject is “Le Ton Beau de Marot” by Douglas Hofstadter. Definitely worth reading for anyone interested in the possible and impossible nuances of translation.

I personally can’t read anything other than the KJV these days. I tried recently, but the content has no real appeal to me any more, so without the language and the familiarity of the translation I read when I was younger, the Bible holds nothing for me anymore. Although I’m tempted to read the translation Mike C suggested just to see how the text is being read by non-fundies these days.

Not sure it really matters which one you read. The bible, especially the old testament, likely came from an oral tradition passed from generation to generation. Then at some point it was written down in different forms by different people at different times. I’m guessing that then these multiple traditions were mushed together to form a single document – which explains some of the glaring inconsistencies and contradictions. Then it was translated over and over, copied by hand numerous times by people with their own opinions and axe to grind, added to, modified, anointed, retranslated, and ‘reinterpreted’. On and on for a couple thousand years. Pick whatever version you want and it will be about as equally flawed as any other. Books written by dysfunctional collaboration over long spans of time are not worth much in my opinion. Unless of course you believe that the bible is the literal word of God in which case it all makes perfect sense.

Suggest you also read “The Secular Bible” by Berlinerblau. It does a good job explaining why the Bible is a seriously flawed as a factual/historical document.

I prefer this one:
The Harper Collins Study Bible – it’s the NRSV, which is a better translation than King James (i.e. as much of it is from the original greek/oldest known texts as possible), and there is a lot of good introductory text before each book describing authorship and history around the origins of the text, along with a lot of footnotes about translating from greek, etc.

Another interesting read (though not a Bible) is “The Messianic Legacy” by Michael Baigent – he was a scholar that did a lot of work trying to uncover the historical Jesus – who Jesus the person really was – if nothing else it is extremely interesting and gives a very different perspective on the church and the basis of Christian religion.

Hmmmm. Well, if he wants to really go to the original source, he should get the Artscroll Chumash and the Artscroll Tanakh, which contain the Jewish translations of what are, after all, Jewish scriptures.

As a former Orthodox Jew, I have to strenuously object to the recommendation of Artscroll. While it’s true that the OT is Jewish in origin, Artscroll is well-known (among Orthodox Jews, I guess) as weaving interpretations into the translations.

My favorite example is in Song of Songs, which to be fair to Artscroll, they admit up from that the translation is interpretive. Anyway, here’s a literal translation:

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies”

I don’t have the ArtScroll translation in front of me, but I know for a fact that they translate “two breasts” as “Moses and Aaron.”

Hilarious, right? It’s true that they’re following a relatively common allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs, but I think they lose a little something in translation. 🙂

I would say New International Version. New American Standard. New Living Translation.

Stay away from New King James Version and King James Version.

The Message is good but it is a translation. So you will have to remeber that as you are reading it.

I would recommend buying the following book as a study guide to go along with whatever translation or translations this person chooses:

Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals by John Buehrens

You can find information on this book online here.

Buehrens recommends looking at multiple translations because each translations often have theological assumptions — for example, are you using a Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish translation of the text?

Buehrens recommends the following translations:

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha

The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with Apocrypha

The Catholic Study Bible: New American Bible

My local Unitarian Universalist church did a class using Buehrens’ book and when our class would look at a passage, everyone who was reading along in class would have a different translation — the word choice and the emphaasis between the different translations provoked lots of discussion.

One suggestion in the book is to “read against the grain” when reading the Bible. This means keeping in mind which voices are present and which voices are absent. For example, a feminist reading against the grain would suggest interpreting the Bible through a lens of suspicion. Women were present when the stories were written but were marginalized in these stories.

I agree with Mike C, the DaVinci Code is worthless if you are looking for history.

I only have a copy of the NRSV because in an effort to get me to read the Bible when a was teen my grandparents gave it to me. Thinking it was easier to read than the KJV, therefore I’d read it. Well, I did and was bored by it. My mother got me the NKJV thinking I’d like it better. I didn’t, but I used it the first time around in college when I took an Old Testement class, which was an easy A for me and went towards required credits. Yeah, it was and is a State uni, but you have required Humanities classes or whatever catagory it fell into for credit in that area.

It was there my sneaky suspecions about Christianity and Judaism evolving from other myths was confirmed, just not quite explained enough for me and I had more questions. Which I researched on my own. Now I thought it would be an easy minor for this degree, but Hinduism is proving to be a challenge, but it too is confirming my suspecions and answering some of my questions.

Those Bibles now have their backs off them and falling a part. So it looks like I read them a lot. 😆

Myself, I think it really does not matter. As some said before “…depends on what you seek…”. Read any of them, read them with an open mind, read them with a “hunger” or a “thirst” for truth (for want of a better word). What it comes down to is, does the whole gist of what you are reading tell you in your heart that what you are doing is right or wrong. In your heart, your mind (unless you are insane!) you know whether a thing would be good or bad. Summed up, would you want it done to you? As far as history, is anyone’s history more right than another’s? Just read it, read it often. Practice Love for your fellow “man”, and practice it always. Love, Ric.