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English Translations of the Bible

In general, translations fall into the following matrix.

 literalformaldynamicparaphrase
conservative Protestant  NASB  KJV*, NKJV*, HCSB*, NIV+  NCV, NETLB, NLT
liberal Protestant RSV, NRSV  TEV, NEB/REB  CEV
CatholicD-R*JB/NJB+, NAB+

* – scholarship out of date or rejects mainstream textual criticism.
+ – tends towards dynamic

Formal means that the translation tries to keep as close to the original form as possible, but translates idioms and may adjust sentence structure as needed to make the result good English style (in the case of KJV, of course that's good Elizabethan English style).

Dynamic means that it is not a goal to preserve original sentence structure, but it is intended to be a translation and not a paraphrase.

I have classified the AV as conservative, not because it was originally, but because that's the primary group that currently uses it.

I have classified the NET translation as conservative, because the preface identifies the translators as evangelical. There seem to be a number of people from the Dallas Theological Seminary involved. However the translation itself has scholarship similar to the RSV/NRSV.

The * associated with the HCSB is conjectural.

You'll find very few differences other than style among the formal and dynamic translations (except those that are starred), and the CEV. It's quite common for Catholics to use Protestant translations and visa versa. The primary arguments these days have been with very conservative Protestants, who reject mainstream textual criticism, and insist on KJV or NKJV. It's possible that a rift may be opening again with the Catholics. Although the NRSV had been approved for Catholic use, the Vatican has recently rescinded permission to use it liturgically. (No explanation was available when I saw this, but it was generally assumed that they did not like the non-sexist language. The NRSV has been by far the most aggressive of any major translation in rewording passages to avoid supposedly sexist language. Thus they have often translated "brothers" and "brothers and sisters" in passages where the reference was to people of both sexes.)

I personally consider NIV, NCV, RSV, NRSV, and TEV to be accurate translations, and NEB/REB, JB/NJB, and NAB to be nearly as good but with some oddities. Unfortunately I don't consider any of the translations ideal: NIV tends to accomodate OT passages to NT quotations, RSV is a bit too literal – it's the hardest to read of the lot, in the NRSV I find the non-sexist language annoying, and TEV's rendering of poetry is too prosaic. I don't know the NCV (New Century Version) well enough to be confident in commenting on it. From a textual point of view, RSV is slightly out of date, and NIV tends to be slightly less aggressive in OT textual criticism than RSV, NRSV, and TEV. I find it all very frustrating. I tend to use the NRSV and TEV most often. For scholarly work I think the current recommendation is the NRSV, but keeping a careful eye on the footnotes so you can see where they reworded passages for non-sexism.

I collect Bible translations as sort of a hobby, so let me try to summarize the ones I know.

"authorized" lineage
AV, RV, ASV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, NKJV, HCSB
Catholic equivalent
Douay-Rheims
use concensus scholarship, "formal equivalency"
NAB, NAB w/2nd ed. NT
NIV
RSV, RSV w/2nd ed. NT, NRSV
JB, NJB
use concensus scholarship, "dynamic equivalency"
TEV/Good News Bible, NCV, CEV
NEB, REB
NET
Phillips
conservative scholarship, literal
NASB
conservative scholarship, "formal equivalency"
NKJV, HCSB
paraphrase
LB, NLT
conservative Catholic
Navarre

[One of our Catholic readers asked which among the non-Catholic translations are available with the deutero-canonical books. The ones I know of are AV, RSV, NRSV, TEV/Good News, and NEB/REB. I've seen editions of RSV, TEV, and REB with imprimature. I think there is one of NRSV as well.]

I. The "Authorized" lineage

Just as a matter of history, I'll start by summarizing the translations that started with the Authorized Version ("King James"). (Note that AV and KJV mean the same thing. I normally use AV, because "King James" is really a nickname.)

RV – Revised Version – first major attempt to revise the AV, primarily because of the great number of earlier manuscripts. Great Britain.

ASV – American Standard Version – American equivalent of RV, done shortly thereafter. Contained some additional advances in scholarship. Tended to be more literal than AV.

RSV – Revised Standard Version, yet another American revision, done primarily because of yet more manuscripts, including Dead Sea Scrolls. Backed out of literalness of ASV, though still not a very free translation. Included scholarly views that were controversial at the time (like translating Is 7:14 as young woman instead of virgin). So it was considered flamingly liberal at the time. Most of these features are now present in evangelical translations, and in fact it is now considered a bit too conservative.

NASB – New American Standard Bible – in some sense a conservative reaction to RSV. Tried to return to the supposed accuracy (i.e. literalness) of ASV, backed out of some of the more controversial positions of the RSV. However did still make use of early manuscripts (though not very aggressively).

NKJV – New King James – I have looked at the preface and a few passages. Seems to be in opposition to the textual scholarship of the previous revisions: In the NT, it uses the Greek text behind the AV. Updates AV by removing "thee" and "thou", and other things that are blatantly inappropriate in the 20th Cent., but otherwise sticks very close to AV. Presumably this means it is not as literal as the AV or NASB. Sees to be a proprietary translation, done by Thomas Nelson. Capitalizes pronouns when referring to God. This includes references to Jesus in the NT.

Holman Christian Standard Bible – See below. It appears to be somewhat of a compromise between the NKJV and the NIV. Based on who did it, I'm guessing that the scholarship is more conservative than the NIV. However the language departments from the AV more than the NKJV. In a few test passages, seems to avoid "man" and "men" when both genders are intended.

IA. Douay-Rheims

The Catholic equivalent of the AV is the Douay-Rheims. I'm not a good one to speak on this, as I haven't read it. Based on postings from our Catholic readers, I'd say that like the AV it tends to be literal by today's standards. It also appears to be based on the Latin Vulgate rather than being made directly from Hebrew and Greek. A few differences from the AV are explained by this. It tends to be used by conservative Catholics (again, equivalent to the AV). It uses different names for some of the OT books than editions based on the AV tradition. In some cases it's just a spelling difference, e.g. Hoshea for Hosea. In others the difference is pretty significant. The results can be pretty amusing, since I've seen Protestants assume that somebody is quoting the Apocrypha, because it's a book they don't recognize, where it's just a different name. Also, I believe there are slight differences in numbering the psalms.

II. Current translations

I have classified current translations along two axes: their approach on textual matters, and their translational theory.

By textual matters I mean which Hebrew and Greek text they translate. As I'm sure you all know, we have many manuscripts. Textual criticism is the art of taking these manuscripts and figuring out what the original (if any – there are some scholars who think that the whole concept of "original" may be misleading for the Gospels) was. I am not competent to comment on textual matters in the OT.

The concensus view, among both conservative and liberal NT scholars, is that the best text is that represented by a small number of early manuscripts. Early in the 20th Cent. this meant primarily Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, two major manuscripts from the early 4th Cent. Since then we have found papyrii going back as early as the mid 2nd Cent. They have generally supported the accuracy of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, though some details have changed. The payrii are not complete, but there are enough of them that we have fairly good coverage from documents of about 200 A.D. The documents from before 200 are really fragmentary. One early criticism was that the work was based on only one or two documents, and that they might be unrepresentative. However the earlier papyrii discovered more recently have generally supported those readings. One thing that I find encouraging about textual criticism is that the results seem to be converging. There was a major change from King James to the first revised versions. Changes in successive revisions have been smaller and smaller, even though we keep findings earlier manuscripts.

All of this is based on a fairly small number of early documents. If you simply count existing Greek manuscripts, they are primarily late, and mostly follow texts that most scholars think have a number of minor additions and other changes. There is now a small group of scholars who believe that this "majority text" is the best. It very similar to the text on which the AV is based. I try to avoid terms like "crackpot" in FAQ's, but it's hard in this case. The argument for it is that assuming uniform diffusion of readings, you'd expect the earliest readings to appear in the most manuscripts. So they accept the readings that have the support for the most manuscripts, the so-called "majority text". (Note that "majority" refers to the majority of manuscripts, not the views of the majority of scholars.) The problem with this is that most of the manuscripts we have were produced in medieval "manuscript factories". This means that the basic assumption of uniform diffusion of readings is violated. The "majority text" is a late text that happened to be used by the groups doing the most copying. I confess to having a suspicion that this is an ex post facto argument, cooked up to justify not having to change from the reading of King James. (Note by the way that King James is based on a critical Greek text by Erasmus. It was a rush job, which he got out the door to get a jump on a more careful text being produced by a competitor. I really hate to see people regard this as if it were directly revealed. The concept of evangelicals rejecting careful 20th Cent. evangelical scholarship in favor of a 16th Cent. liberal humanist is really ironic.)

I'm not the best person to give detailed evidence. But you should know whether translations are based on concensus scholarship, i.e. use the latest discoveries in early manuscripts, or stick with the majority text. ("Majority" here refers to the majority of the manuscripts, not the view of the majority of scholars.)

In the OT, there are similar issues. However here there's sort of an "official" Hebrew text, the Masoretic. This is the text produced by the best Jewish scholarship working between the 6th and 10th Cent., though the texts on which it is based are earlier than that. The newest Jewish translation of the OT ("Tanahk", from the Jewish Publishing Society) sticks almost completely to this text. However most other translations make occasional changes where the text appears to have suffered in transmission. These changes are based on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (2nd-3rd Cent. BC Greek translation) and other ancient translations, and now and then guesses. Often these guesses are simply changes in vowels. The earliest copies of the Hebrew were written without vowels, so the vowels in the Masoretic text have somewhat less authority than the consonants. However a few times "conjectural emendation" extends to whole words or phrases.

In general use of the Dead Sea Scrolls is widely agreed on (though only the more recent translations have them available), but more conservative translations use the other changes somewhat less often. Of the major translations, probably the JB has made the most changes (typically based on the Septuagint). The RSV tended to make somewhat more changes than conservatives were comfortable with, but fewer than the JB. Even in the newest versions, the NRSV has slightly more changes than the NIV. However the difference is minor, and most people would not notice it. All of the translations using "concensus scholarship" make some of these changes. It's just an issue of how often.

The other major axis is translational theory. They are two major ones: formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence says that we are trying to produce something whose form is as close to the original as possible. The same Greek word should be translated consistently as the same English word where possible, so people can see the form of the Greek by looking at the English. This has some similarity to a literal translation. However the major formal equivalence translations aren't really what I'd call literal. They do try to deal with idioms. There are lots of Greek words that can have many different effects, particularly prepositions and conjunctions. A Greek expert can normally tell which effect is meant in a given passage. Normally formal equivalence translations will choose different English words to express this. But still the intent is to bring over the form as well as the content of the original.

Dynamic equivalence says that the goal of translation is to transfer the same message to the 20th Cent. reader that the original did to the original reader. The English sentence structure will often not be at all similar to the original, since people say things differently in English than in Greek. Attempts will be made to bring out the implications of figures of speech and other implications that were part of the intended meaning but require special efforts to get across in English. This is still intended to be a translation. It is not supposed to add any interpretations by the translator.

A. The major formal equivalency translations

Let me start with the translations that I think are most widely quoted. These are all based on the formal equivalency method, and all accept modern textual scholarship. The first three families are very similar. They are

NAB, NAB w/2nd ed. NT (New American Bible) – Catholic
NIV (New International Version) – evangelical Protestant
RSV, RSV w/2nd ed. NT, NRSV (Revised Standard Version) – liberal Protestant

These translations all try to stick as close to the original as possible while still being readable English. None of them use "thee and thou", or other obsolete words. (Well, not normally – apparently the RSV uses it when addressing God. It's possible that others do as well.) Because they all adopt pretty much the same translational approach, and they are all based on modern textual scholarship, they tend to be very similar. You can find many verses that are identical or nearly identical. They are all fine translations. There are some minor differences. First, I think you can see slight differences in how literal they are. In the NT at least here's the order

NAB 2nd edition, RSV
the most literal. The original RSV took very strictly the instructions to stick with AV wording where possible
NRSV
does a bit more to bring out the force of prepositions, conjunctions, and various expressions where literal translation would not do so
NIV, NAB 1st edition
go just slightly further than NRSV (though in NAB 1st edition there are clear differences in different NT books)
Other unique features:
NAB
the OT is uneven. It was done over decades. Gen was so far out of date that it had to be retranslated, so it ended up visibly newer, i.e. less literal and using more modern scholarship. Even the NT tended to be a bit uneven. The same expression would be translated differently in Mat. and Luke. The 2nd edition smooths this out, but makes it more literal. The newer parts of the OT still tend to have a less literal feeling. However this is still a competent translation. For detailed study of the NT, if you want something as close to the original words as possible but still want modern textual scholarship, the 2nd edition might be the best translation for you. In the OT they sometimes rearrange the order of passages. There's some theory that the originals got out of order. I find it annoying.
NIV
I find this more attractive the more I look at it (though it is not one of my default translations). It tries to go as far towards readability as one can go while still showing you the form of the original. Note that there's a tendency to make OT prophecies compatible with NT quotations, where a reading of the OT alone would come up with something different. Is 7:14 is the example that comes to mind, but I think there are others.
NRSV
still guided by the instruction to stick with AV wording where possible. It's not a bad compromise between literalness and readability. Its most visible feature is an avoidance of masculine gender where the original wording meant everyone. "brothers" will be translated "brothers and sisters", and "he" as "they" (with the whole passage turned plural). This was not true of RSV and RSV 2nd edition. It does not attempt to hide the patriachal nature of the ancient cultures. It is claimed that generic language is used only where that is the genuine meaning of the original. ("man" in the AV often translated a Greek word that really means "human".)

The textual scholarship of all of these is very similar, but the NAB 2nd edition and NRSV are enough newer that there are a few places where there are minor differences from NIV. Most people won't notice it. (NIV is based on the 2nd edition of the UBS Greek. NAB 2nd edition and NRSV are based on the 3rd. NRSV says they had access to the 4th in draft.)

B. Jerusalem Bible

The Jerusalem Bible is a Catholic translation, based on the French Bible de Jerusalem. The 2nd edition is known as the New Jerusalem Bible. In theory the original JB was a translation from the French, with the original Heb and Greek being used for reference. They had to get permission from the French translators to adopt a different interpretation than the French did. The NJB is announced as a translation from the Heb and Greek, with the French translation being used as a guide. However I'm not sure that in practice there's as much difference between JB and NJB as this would imply. As a practical matter, the original JB really worked with the original languages.

The Jerusalem Bible basically accepts all the same theories as the three above, but comes out with a very different result. Part of it may be the difference between American and British practice. But the Jerusalem Bible tends to be a bit closer to a dynamic equivalence translation. It also tends to be slightly wordier. The OT scholarship tends to be more "aggressive". I.e. they think the Hebrew is corrupt and use an early Greek translation a bit more often than the American translations (though RSV and NRSV go a bit further in this direction than NAB and NIV). They use the original names of God in the OT. "Yahweh" is used where other modern translations say "the LORD". Mostly the difference is simply stylistic. I think they simply did a better job of divorcing themselves from memories of the AV. This translation is well regarded by scholars, particularly in the OT. In my view the NT seems to be a bit uneven, i.e. to vary between formal and dynamic equivalence. It also shuffles parts of the OT where they think the original is out of order.

C. Dynamic equivalence translations using concensus scholarship

In this section I am going to include

Phillips is best thought of as a paraphrase, or maybe a very free translation. It was very popular for a few decades after the war. It was thought that he did the best job of presenting Paul's thought that has ever been done. Sometimes he got carried away and became a bit too much of a paraphrase. This was corrected in a 2nd edition. A lot of people still think this is the best translation to read simply to get a sense of things.

My favorite of these is the TEV. The big challenge in dynamic equivalence translations is to be systematic. You don't want to do a formal equivalence translation and just now and then where you happen to have a brilliant insight paraphrase one sentence. Doing this gives a very uneven feeling. TEV has a remarkably consistent style, and does a very good job of bringing out all of the implications implied in the original but not obvious in a literal translation. See particularly Job, which is full of irony, much of which is not visible in other translations. Bibles have traditionally become a model of style. Luther's translation did much to form modern German. Similarly with the AV for English. The TEV is a model of simple, clear language. I read it before writing any major technical documents. Some passages in the prophets are rendered as prose, with the amount of parallelism reduced. This is not done for the more poetical parts, obviously. They comment that things that come out as good, dignified prose look silly as poetry in English, so they think translatiing this way does more justice to the original. I'd rather have poetry translated with a bit more formal equivalence. There is a second edition of the Good News Bible, which goes further in removing sexist language, and makes a few other stylistic changes. It is hard to tell it from the first edition. (I haven't had a chance to assess the NET yet. It could end up being a good replacement for the TEV. It appears that the ABS is not going to update the TEV.)

The New Century Version was first published in 1986 as the International Children's Bible. It has copyright dates of 1987, 88, and 1991, which appear to represent revised versions. The newest one is now being marketed as a general-purpose common-language translation. It was done by the World Bible Translation Center, and 50 additional scholars with experience with the NIV, NASB, and NKJV. It is based on the most recent standard critical texts. It is very similar to the TEV in goals and result. It is dynamic equivalence, meaning that it often changes idioms and other literary features that would not be meaningful if translated literally. It is non-sexist, avoiding use of masculine wording unless the original clearly implied males. It seems to go as far as the NRSV in this. It is very similar to the TEV. Slight differences can be seen in textual criticism, treatment of poetry, conforming OT to NT, and style. It does not footnote its textual changes, which makes it harder to evaluate quickly. However a few comparisons with the NRSV suggest that it is very slightly less likely to emend the Hebrew text, though it does do so. I'd assume it is roughly equivalent to the NIV in textual matters. Like the NIV, it uses "virgin" in Is 7:14, though it supplies a footnote explaining what the text actually says. It does not have the spurious Trinitarian addition to 1 John 5:7. In Mark, it has the longer ending in brackets, separated from the main text with an explanation (which is the same treatment given in the NRSV and the UBS Greek). It does not have the shorter ending at all. The woman caught in adultery in John 8 is treated similarly (as it is in NRSV). It's always difficult to handle Paul in a dynamic equivalence translation. His wording is so involved that you just about have to do something with it, but this raises the danger of changing the meaning. I checked some of the more sensitive passages, and am not entirely pleased with the results. In Rom 1:27, NRSV has "men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another". NCV says "men stopped having natural sex and began wanting each other." As those who have been involved with these issues will realize, this somewhat narrows the possible interpretations of the text. In Rom 11:28, NRSV has, speaking of the Jews, "As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors." NCV says "The Jews refuse to accept the Good News, so they are God's enemies. This has happened to help you who are not Jews. But the Jews are still God's chosen people, and he loves them very much because of the promises he made to their ancestors." I think there's a significant change in meaning here. In NRSV and other translations, it is clear that the Jews are enemies only in a qualified way. I think it's dangerous to say simply "they are God's enemies." Nevertheless, I think this translation is generally well-done. It will no doubt become the conservative counterpart of the TEV, as the NIV is the conservative counterpart of the NRSV.

I'm not as familiar with the CEV. It seems to be a TEV carried even further. It's still intended to be a translation rather than a paraphrase, but it's even further from "traditional" wording. I believe it's intended for readers who have little familiarity with the Bible, and need something that is as close as possible to a newspaper or other modern document. It reads rather well. While initially I didn't like it, I've found myself using it when I want to read a large section of the Bible. I would never consider it when doing exegesis, of course.

The NEB got rave reviews when it first came out. It was the first "official" translation to completely break with the AV tradition, and also to adopt dynamic equivalence. Of course "private" translations such as Phillips and Goodspeed had done so before. But this was an official translation. Like any dynamic equivalence translation, it clarifies a lot of things. However I do not like its style and I do not trust its scholarship. The style tends to be "high-falutin'", in my view – pseudo-literary. Not King James, but too intentionally dignified. It is interesting to see how two translations with the same theory can be as opposite as TEV and NEB. Also, its dynamic equivalence is not as consistently carried out as TEV's. Its textual criticism is idiosyncratic. There are many words, particularly in the OT, whose meaning isn't known. But they tend to make guesses that are rather different that most other scholars. This translation is not often quoted by scholars (though to be fair, neither is the TEV). The REB updates the scholarship a bit and reexamines some issues, but doesn't change the basic approach very much.

D. Conservative translations

Now we come to two translations that consciously reject concensus scholarship. I am not the best source of information on these, because I don't own a copy of the NASB. But I have looked at them, and do know why they were done. The first is NASB. At a time when translations were becoming less literal and new manuscripts were being used, the NASB translators believed it was appropriate to return to the tradition of the ASV. Thus it is rather literal, and it is rather more cautious about using newly discovered manuscripts than the RSV was. It was intended to be more acceptable to evangelical Christians, who at that time generally considered the RSV to be the work of the devil. (Since then people seem to have gotten over their shock, and accepted just about everything the RSV did. The NIV generally goes further than the original RSV, and has been well received in the evangelical community.) I consider it so literal as to be nearly unreadable. If you really need this, you should be using an interlinear edition (original language with a literal translation written under it). Note that although it was cautious about new manuscripts, and rejected some of the more controversial decisions of the RSV, it didn't really have a clear alternative theory to suggest (as the NJKV seems to).

The NKJV is a more recent translation that seems to have similar goals. However this time the ideal is the AV, rather than the ASV. The AV is probably a better starting point, because the AV really didn't strike a bad balance between literalness and readability. It tends to be more literal than modern translations, but part of that is that they simply didn't understand some idioms that we do now. However to be fair the NASB was intended as a hardcore study Bible, for people who really wanted to know exactly what the original said. For that purpose, literalness is an asset. I think NKJV is intended for more general use. The OT uses the Dead Sea Scrolls. However the NT is based on the text behind the AV. In the preface they admit that no scholar currently considers this the best text. They discuss both the majority text theory and the usual critical text, with a strong bias against the critical text. But they choose not to translate either. Instead they translate the text behind the AV, and footnote significant differences for both the majority text and the critical text. This is one of the few modern translations that has Mark 16:9-20 in the text. They supply a footnote saying that it is not in the critical text, giving a misleading characterization of the manuscript evidence. The NKJV has gotten rid of blatantly out of date language, including "thee" and verbs ending in "est". But they've tried to stick with the AV where possible. They capitalize all pronouns referring to God, including references to Jesus in the NT. I find this rather distracting.

Translations I haven't fully assessed

Navarre Bible. [From Gordon Zaft] This is really a misnomer, at least at this point – right now only the four Gospels, Acts, Romans and Galatians, Corinthians, and Hebrews are available. This is (IMHO) a very good tool for serious study, since each page contains Latin (the Vulgate, I believe), the English translation, and commentary. It's a project of Opus Dei, I believe.

Living Bible and NLT. This is frankly a paraphrase. I believe the original Living Bible was done from the RSV. It has not gotten good reviews by scholars. I think you're better off with TEV. But I'm not the one to give a detailed review. There's a new version of the Living Bible, called NLT (New Living Translation). It is classified as a bit less free than the original Living, but still a paraphrase. I haven't seen a copy of it, although I've seen some sample translations.

Holman Christian Standard Bible. As of August, 2001 this is still in progress. It was started by the general editor of the NKJV (who has since died). Like the NKJV, all translators affirm a believe in inerrancy. Because of this background, I'm guessing that it will not use the critical Greek text. From the samples I've seen, it is slightly freer than the NKJV, but has similarities. While it still has a basic structural similarity to the AV, it modernizes a few more words than the NKJV, and treats the repeated "and"s in the NT more freely. ChristianBook.com classifies it as only slightly freer than NKJV, but it looks to me like it's about as free as the NIV. Unlike the NIV, the few test passages I've looked at seem to replace "man" and "men" when they refer to both genders. One interesting feature is that it has detailed word studies of critical words. There is a footnote near that beginning of John explaining that "the Jews" in John normally refers just to the Jewish leaders.

N.E.T. Bible. (New English Translation) A translation intended to be freely available via the Internet, at http://www.bible.org/netbible. It is dynamic equivalence. Uses concensus critical text. The translators are teachers of Biblical exegesis in seminaries and graduate school. The preface identifies them as evangelical. It includes technical notes on the translation approach. It seems to have similar goals to the NIV, but without the commitment to the AV language that the NIV had. And, as they point out, 25 years have gone by since the NIV. As an online translation, it will change over time.