Confused Over All The Bible Translations?
Confused Over All the Different Bibles?
IIt seems that there are a lot of different Bibles today, which can be very confusing if you are trying to know God and His will for your life. If you go to a store you can buy a KJV, NASV, NKJV, RSV, NIV, CSB, NLT Amplified, NCV, and many, many more. The Catholics have their Bible, The Mormons their book, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have their version, and all the churches have their preferred version. How can anyone get to the truth with all the conflicting ideas, writings and translations?
I hope you slow down and think this through with me. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, in basically two languages, Hebrew and Greek. Therefore, because there are many English translations does not mean there are different Bibles. Since you and I cannot read or speak Hebrew and Greek we need a translation into our language.
The one Bible gets translated into thousands of languages so that the billions of people of the world can read and understand it for themselves. Language is a complicated thing. It is fluid and changing all the time that it is a living language. It is not like mathematics, so words in Hebrew do not always have equal English words to match. Greek and Hebrew do not have equal words that always clearly define a Spanish word, and so on. Therefore, the way someone translates becomes very important!
And not only that, people are prejudice in their thinking. When two people disagree on politics, they interpret the same words of our president in very different ways, even though they all speak English. Now, add this to translating a person’s words into another language too. Then add locations of the world where customs and figures of speech are different, this makes the translation even harder to help the readers to actually understand the sense of what God is revealing to them.
But wait there’s more! Add sworn enemies who try to corrupt and destroy the translation on purpose. Then add time, a lot of time, and now you have the difficulty of getting to the truth of God’s Word from the modern day translators. Yes it can be confusing, but if you will be careful, you can understand why there are so many modern day translations.
The Bible is true, eyewitness accounts of people who met God through His divine revelation to them. They recorded actual events they saw and heard themselves. Like in any court of law, truth is found through actual evidence and eye witnesses, not hear say and rumors.
One eyewitness records, “[WE ARE writing] about the Word of Life [in] Him Who existed from the beginning, Whom we have heard, Whom we have seen with our [own] eyes, Whom we have gazed upon [for ourselves] and have touched with our [own] hands. [2 ]And the Life [an aspect of His being] was revealed (made manifest, demonstrated), and we saw [as eyewitnesses] and are testifying to and declare to you the Life, the eternal Life [in Him] Who already existed with the Father and Who [actually] was made visible (was revealed) to us [His followers]. [3] What we have seen and [ourselves] heard, we are also telling you, so that you too may realize and enjoy fellowship as partners and partakers with us. And [this] fellowship that we have [which is a distinguishing mark of Christians] is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (the Messiah). [4] And we are now writing these things to you so that our joy [in seeing you included] may be full [and your joy may be complete].” 1 John 1:1-4 AMP
The New Testament authors’ saw, heard and touched, to verify truth. The Old Testament writers have the same testimony and are proven authentic. Therefore, we know the truth is clearly written in the original languages. And remember the Bible is the most questioned and tested book in all the history of mankind. Archeologists have dug up everything they can in Israel and have never contradicted the Bible, but instead proven it’s accuracy. Paul writes in the New Testament and verifies that all the Old Testament is the actual words of God [2 Timothy 3:16] and therefore trustworthy.
The Jews considered the Bible so sacred they had experts who memorized and made hand written copies to pass on from generation to generation. These men were so meticulous that every letter was counted on every page, so no mistakes would be preserved. The New Testament was written by the people who lived with and around Jesus. They were not some writers in another century who decided to write a history, these men preserved and watched over the truth. They carefully copied the writings and spread them across the Roman Empire as quickly as possible. We know this because the second and third generation Christians wrote letters to each other, and quoted the New Testament books over and over again. These people are known as the Early Church Fathers and in their writings alone all but eight verses of the New Testament have been quoted and verified. The Bible was well protected and preserved.
But, slowly during this time groups from Egypt and other locations began to do some dubious things. They disagreed with the original eyewitnesses on the message and truth, and invented a spin off type Christianity. And two streams of New Testament Bibles were now available. The northern stream was continuing to flow from Antioch and stayed faithful to Christ and the original Bible. But in the south a new Bible was beginning to circulate. The Christians from the Antioch translations created the Old Latin Bible that made its way even to England by 200 AD.
But, the southern stream was a perverted group. They wrote letters and articles and forged the famous apostles names to them, confusing many. Paul mentions this problem even during the first generation of believers. They got away with this because it was the common way the early church leaders taught. For example Paul writes, “After this letter has been read to you, make sure it gets read also in Laodicea. And get the letter that went to Laodicea and have it read to you.” [Col 4:16 TM]
Paul had to start warning the churches about forgers, “Don't let anyone shake you up or get you excited over some breathless report or rumored letter from me that the day of the Master's arrival has come and gone. Don't fall for any line like that.” [2 Thess 2:2-3 TM] Paul even had to start making a clear signature on each letter for authenticity. “I, Paul, write you this final greeting with my own hand. This is the mark and sign [that it is not a forgery] in every letter of mine. It is the way I write [my handwriting and signature].” [2 Thess 3:17 AMP]
This whole movement of false teachers mixed pagan philosophy with Christianity and created a mystic religion that felt they could erase the parts of the Bible they did not like. Origen became a leader of this movement, who rejected the fact that Jesus was God, dismissed the miracles of the Lord, and chose to remove Christ’s words. He even added words to the Bible, just like cults and modern day movements do today, instead of leaving the Bible alone and believing what it already says.
Now this group progressed for several hundred years and the evidence shows they produced all kinds of versions that were different from each other. They could not even agree what to add and subtract to propagate their lies. During the following few centuries [300-400 AD] a number of versions arose from these people such as, the Sinaiticus, Vatiicanus, and the Alexandrinus manuscripts which are preserved still today. These were so messed up they disagreed with each other in over 3000 places of the four gospels alone.
The Roman Catholic church of the following years embraced these men and their mutilated versions, which are the foundation of many of the popular Bibles today, and one reason for so many English translations and variations. The King James Version of the Bible is based off the Antioch stream of consistent and faithful copies. The quotes from the Early Church Fathers [100-200 AD] agree with and verify the old accepted Greek text used for the KJV version also. So even though the King James version is written like Shakespeare, it’s underlying Greek and Hebrew are the clearly preserved Words of God. But, like any translation be careful, you must be a real student of the Word.
What about all the other translations and versions?
Be careful, read the introductions and research them. Just because they are new does not mean they are all of the devil or from the corrupted texts of ancient heretics. But they might be, and it is getting harder to find out and see them. Whenever I use other translations, it is as a commentary and help in understanding the original text. I use a Strong’s Concordance to verify the words and definitions. I stick with KJV and NKJV for the main research.
Take note, all the new English versions are copyrighted. So many publishers commission their own translation to give them an exclusive Bible to sell to the public. As they compete in the marketplace they advertise their version as better than the others. Also, remember, because some Greek and Hebrew does not have exact equivalents, a variety of words can be used to give a good translation of the text. Within these good variations deeper truth can be understood. Also remember God finalized His Word in Greek and Hebrew, not English. We are all reading the attempts of men trying to give us God’s Word through language translation. Some, not all are using corrupted text, and even these corruptions are a small percent of the whole of the New Testament. The main message and doctrines are not destroyed, even in the worst of our modern translations, but be careful!
Created about 3 years ago
