Overview of English Bible Translations

COMMON ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

When studying the Bible, you will hear about differences in English translations.  While God's Word is perfect and without error in its original form, there is no perfect English translation of God's Word, because the Bible was not originally written in English.  God's Word, taken as a whole, these differences in English translations are actually minor, but a few can effect one's understanding on some critical principles. 

Source manuscripts for the Old Testament (Tanakh) are more established, the Greek sources for the New Testament (B'rit Chadashah) books have a few slight variations in them to give rise to scholarly debate.  Most English New Testament translations come from Greek manuscripts.

NASB - AMP - ESV - RSV - KJV - NKJV - HCSB - NRSV - NAB - NJB - NIV - TNIV - GW - NCV/ICB - NLT - NIrV - GNT - CEV - LIVING - MESSAGE - list

USING A BALANCED APPROACH TO BIBLE STUDY

In order to get a more accurate and in-depth understanding of God's Word, it is vitally important to develop a healthy habit of learning from and referencing:

1. use a variety from the more literal (word-for-word) English translations; and

2. use a variety of Bible language resources (Dictionaries & Concordances) for the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. 

BIASES

Every Bible translation has good and bad biases and practices in the process of its creation. It is important to know the fundamental beliefs of their editors. 

You may hear some people passionately denounce one English translation and promote another providing all sorts of evidence and comparisons. It is vitally important to maintain a more balanced approach and NOT TO to develop any strong biases for or against any translation or set of manuscripts unless one has first completed a comprehensive review and study of their own, which sometimes takes years of study to properly understand.

Editors of any worthy Bible translation must believe that Jesus (Y'shua) is God - also that the Heavenly Father and Holy Spirit are God, all part of the same "one God of Israel." Those who do not, ARE NOT considered a part of the faith once delivered to the Apostles and thus will have a fundamental flaw in how they translate Scriptures.