There is an ever-growing multitude of Bible versions available these days. I think the fact that all Bibles are not created equal is self-evident to anyone who has read a few different versions. The search for a good Bible is vitally important. After all, if you believe the Bible is the word of God, you should accept no substitute. I'm sure you'd be angry if you found out your pastor was teaching lies and manipulating you for years. How much more would you be shocked to find similar dishonesty in your Bible?
In my experience, people make the Bible version issue a lot more complicated than it really is. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to study Greek and Hebrew, to do some research on various texts and their histories, and to just generally dig into this interesting topic. But not everyone is a scholar. I submit that the average Joe Christian can know enough to find the right Bible with just a few basic questions.
1) Is the translation faithful to the original text?
This should be obvious, but you'd be surprised. Many modern versions use a process called dynamic equivalence. In short, this process is more concerned with preserving the 'feel' of a passage than creating a formal translation. This means that if you're reading a Bible that was “translated” using dynamic equivalence, you aren't really reading the word of God. Instead, you're reading a paraphrase of God's word through the eyes of another person, with all of their biases and opinions built into the text.
Clearly, this is no good. Average Joe Christian, you can eliminate all Bibles that use dynamic equivalence from your search. This includes the NIV, NLT, and the good news Bible.
2) Does the translation come from the right source material?
To answer this question, we must do a bit more digging. Still, it's not beyond the understanding of Average Joe. Let's start by looking what the Bible has to say about this issue. God's word will be preserved down to the smallest mark until the end of this Earth (Matt. 5:18, Luke 16:17). God will preserve his words in the hands of each generation (Psalms 12:6-7, Psalms 33:11). God promises a severe curse to anyone who would add or take away from Scripture (Rev. 22:18-19).
I want to now draw your attention to the verses that specifically promise that God's word will be in the hands of every generation. This means that God is not necessarily going to preserve his word in jars to be found and re-assembled thousands of years later. While we may find texts that were hidden away, they may or may not be God's preserved words. Again, the Biblical promise is that God's preserved word will be found in the hands of each generation.
Why is this important? Up until recently, Christians used Bibles that were in the family of the “received text”. In the late 1800s, a group of scholars made up of many heretics and unbelievers compiled the “critical text”, which has been used in nearly every modern translation, in whole or in part. The basis of this new text is a small number of new manuscripts which were significantly different from the received text (and each other as well). These new texts were supposedly better because they were younger, but they have been hidden away in jars and bookshelves for thousands of years, and were not used by God's people. Therefore, if we believe God's promises, the critical text should be rejected along with all versions that use it. There are many other reasons to reject the critical text, but I'm keeping this simple for you, Average Joe.
Now that we have eliminated Bible versions that use dynamic equivalency and those that use the critical text, what's left? The field of Bible versions has already been whittled down to one – the KJV. It's the only English Bible that holds water. Now, Average Joe Christian, wasn't that simple?
What's that you say, Average Joe? The KJV is too hard to read? Nonsense. It's very readable. Studies have rated the KJV's prose as “very easy” and suggested that it is written on about an 8th - 10th grade reading level. As for archaic language, if you come across words that you don't know, look them up in a dictionary. You might even learn something! Besides, it's much more important for a translation to be faithful to the original than to be 'easy'. Also consider that there are plenty of resources out there to assist in your Bible reading/study. One of my favorites is blue letter Bible.
So, the search for the right Bible is remarkably straightforward if you ask the right questions. It only requires that you recognize this as an issue worth some study. Should we accept anything less than God's words? I say we ought not to compromise on the slightest jot.
