Which Bible translation should I read?

What the Bible says

Is it all right to read the Bible in translation? The Bible itself says yes. In Nehemiah's day the Law was read aloud, and care was taken that people could follow it.

So they read from the Book of the Law of God, explaining it and giving insight, so that the people could understand what was being read.

Neh 8:8

At Pentecost, visitors from many nations heard the Galileans in their own tongues.

How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language?

Acts 2:8

Paul holds the same principle: in church, "I would rather speak five coherent words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue" (1 Cor 14:19). God wants his word understood.

Even more striking, the New Testament itself reaches us in translation. Jesus spoke mostly Aramaic, yet the Gospels are written in Greek. Mark sometimes keeps the Aramaic and then explains it: after "Talitha koum" he gives the meaning, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" (Mark 5:41). And when New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, they often use its Greek translation. From the start, the word travelled in translation too.

The purpose of Scripture is plain. Paul writes to Timothy:

From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

2 Tim 3:15

That wisdom is found in a translated Bible too. This does not mean any translation will do. The Bereans "received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true" (Acts 17:11). Careful reading is part of what Scripture invites.

Translations follow two broad philosophies. "Formal" translation keeps the original's words and sentence structure as closely as it can. It stays near the text but can sound foreign. "Dynamic" translation renders the meaning in natural modern speech. It reads easily but carries more of the translator's interpretation. Most translations sit somewhere between the two.

The church's witness

The church has translated Scripture from the beginning. The Old Testament was put into Greek in Alexandria in the third and second centuries BC (the Septuagint), followed by Syriac, Coptic and Latin versions. Jerome translated from the Hebrew into Latin in the late fourth century, and Augustine worried that this would unsettle churches long used to the Greek. Churches still differ on the base text for the Old Testament. The Orthodox value the Septuagint, Catholics long took the Latin Vulgate as the official text, and Protestants take the Hebrew as their standard. At the Reformation, Luther in German and Tyndale in English translated the New Testament so that ordinary people could read it. Tyndale was killed for it.

English readers can choose among many translations. The King James Version (1611) and the NASB (1971) and ESV (2001) lean formal. The NIV (1978; revised since) sits in the middle, and the NLT leans dynamic. The BSB, used in this app, leans toward the formal side. It is not this essay's job to rank them. They were made for different readers.

Korean readers have their own story. The first Korean Gospel, Luke, was translated in Manchuria by the Scottish missionary John Ross and Korean co-workers and printed in 1882. The first complete Korean Bible appeared in 1911 and was revised in 1938, and the 1961 revision (Gaeyeok Hangeul) is the Korean text this app uses. Later came the Gaeyeok Gaejeong (1998), the plainer Pyojun Saebeonyeok (1993; revised in 2001 and renamed Saebeonyeok in 2004), and the Gongdong Beonyeok (1977), a common translation made by Catholic and Protestant scholars together.

Matthew Henry, on Nehemiah 8:8, says: "Those who hear the word, should understand it, else it is to them but an empty sound of words" Matthew Henry. On Psalm 119:130 he says Scripture gives "to the simple, in a few days, understanding of those matters, which philosophers for ages sought in vain" Matthew Henry. And of the Bereans: "The doctrine of Christ does not fear inquiry" Matthew Henry. Comparing and testing are welcome.

In the original languages

A word that shows the translator's choices is monogenēs (μονογενής). In John 3:16 the KJV and older editions of the NASB have "only begotten Son," the ESV "only Son," the NIV and BSB "one and only Son." The traditional rendering treats the word as "begotten of God," which touches the Nicene confession that the Son is "begotten, not made." Many lexicons, however, take the word to mean "one of a kind." Both choices are judgments about meaning, and knowing the difference shows what a single translation hides.

Another is adelphos (ἀδελφός). It means "brother," but its plural can also name a mixed community. So whether a letter opens with "brothers" or "brothers and sisters" varies from one translation to another. It is the formal-versus-dynamic question in miniature. In this app you can tap a word to see the original-language entry and check such choices yourself.

Common objections

"All translations distort. Only the original is God's word." Put at its strongest: translation is interpretation, wordplay and tone are lost, and the translator's theology seeps in. There is much truth here. No translation is perfect. But as we saw, the New Testament itself renders Jesus' Aramaic into Greek, and the apostles quote translated Scriptures as God's word. And the "original" we have is itself a set of copies, so reading the Greek and Hebrew also requires judgment. Most of the loss is made good by reading more than one translation and by consulting original-language notes.

"Modern translations leave out verses and weaken the Bible. Only one translation is right." Some Christians hold this concern sincerely. It is true that some verses sit in brackets or footnotes in modern versions. Mark 16:9-20, for example, is missing from some of the oldest manuscripts, so many translations mark it. The Greek text behind the KJV was made before many of those older manuscripts were found or studied. Some Christians still prefer the text-type behind the KJV. The differences are mostly small, such as spelling and word order, and it is widely held that no central Christian teaching depends on a disputed reading. Still, it should be admitted that believers disagree about which text is closer to the original.

"Every church uses a different Bible. How do I know which is real?" The confusion is understandable. But most differences between translations are differences of wording, not of the gospel. One real difference is the canon: Catholic and Orthodox Bibles contain more books than Protestant ones. That is not a translation matter but a question of which books belong, treated in How did we get the Bible?. Rather than judging any church's choice, find out which Bible your own community uses and ask why.

Going further

So what should you read? There is no single answer, but a few habits help. Choose a translation you can follow as your main Bible; an accurate version you cannot read does little for you. For important passages open a second translation of a different kind. A formal and a dynamic version together fill each other's gaps. And use the original-language notes here to see where a translator had to choose. If you are starting out, read one Gospel.

You might ask yourself: am I understanding what I read, or only enjoying the comfort of a familiar style? If translation difficulty has kept me from reading, which one could I open today?

To read further, see How should we read the Bible? and Can the Bible be trusted?.