How do Christians know which Bible to use?

Question

There are tons of different versions with different amounts of books within them, and within these books there are even more versions of each. How is the Christian to know which one is the true Bible?
If you are a Christian, could you tell me which Bible you use and why you use it. Is there anything that makes it more accurate than pother versions? Also, what do you make of books that were never included like the Gospel of Thomas, the Nazarene Gospel, etc.?

Answer 1

The Holy Bible Douay-Rheims Version

With Challoner Revisions 1749-52
1899 Edition of the John Murphy Company

IMPRIMATUR:
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, September 1, 1899.

Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546.

The DR New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D. The DR Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D. The first King James Version was not published until 1611. This online DRV contains all 73 books, including the seven Deutero-Canonical books (erroneously called Apocrypha by Protestants). These seven books were included in the 1611 KJV, but not in later KJV Bibles.

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752 A.D. The notes included in the text were written by Dr. Challoner.

The DR Bible was photographically reproduced from the 1899 edition of the John Murphy Company, Baltimore, Maryland, by Tan Books in 1971. Eventually, this edition was optically scanned to produce a large text file which this publisher used for creating this website, with the aid of text-processing software.

One important goal of this project was to preserve the original text "as is", without making any changes in the wording, because the original text had the Imprimatur of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, dated Sept 1st 1899.

The text file was checked quite thoroughly by software written by the publisher for punctuation errors and verses out of order. The index was humanly checked for misspelled words and the corrections were made to the text. However, some spelling errors may still be present in the text. Many verses were out of order in the original file. These have been corrected.

Every effort was made to ensure that this online version is an exact match to the original printed version. No words were added or ommitted from the text, except for correcting errors caused by the scanning process. No words were rearranged. No verse numbers were changed, except in the case of Psalm 9.

Psalm 9 originally contained 21 verses and there were 2 versions of Psalm 10, numbering 1-18 and 1-8. This obviously caused a conflict, so it was decided to make the first Psalm 10 as the last part of Psalm 9 and renumber the verses 22-39. This retains the same numbering as all the Douay Rheims. Note, in the Protestant Bibles the numbering of Psalms 10 through 146 differs by one.

Answer 2

The Bible contains 66 books. There are some books that the Catholics and a few denominations that are catholic-wanna be's, add called the apocryphal books. But these books were never part of scripture. There are other spurious books such as the "gospel of Thomas " and many more that were rejected as false nearly 1600 years ago.
You are correct that there are many version or translation out there today. However they all say the same thing, except some are written on a 5th grade reading level and others on a 12th grade level. Some Bibles are translated to be as near word for word as possible, they have a high level of difficulty in reading and comprehending, others are translated more on the thought for thought idea. Some are easy to read others are very difficult. But the bottom line is they all tell the same story. Just in different degrees of complexity.
My choice/s-for daily reading I use the New Living Translation and the NIV. For study I add to those the HCSB and NASB. For deeper digging, I use Bible Navigator software (wordsearch) with more translations, old and new , than I can count.
Most any Bible you see sold today is okay. Some are better for study and others are better for reading. And, there are some that are made strictly for research.

Answer 3

All Bibles are essentially the same. Different translations don't take away from the meaning.

I currently own a King James Bible, but that's the only one I have right now, so I use it.

The Gospel of Thomas and other such books were never included in the Bible because they contained things contrary to beliefs already held by most Christians, and many of them didn't specify an author, and were just labled after people included in the Bible.

Answer 4

I have several different versions of the Bible in my possession. When I want to find out with the greatest accuracy what the original passage said I use the e-Sword software available for free download on the Free Stuff page @ http://web.express56.com/~bromar/ because it comes with the literal word for word KJV translation with Strong's numbers.

Strong's numbers are numbers assigned to the Greek and Hebrew words found in the original text and when you run your mouse pointer over the number the definition comes up in a pop up box. Also you can download the KJ concordance so that you can see who the same original word was used in different passages and get a sense of why the translators chose the same or different English words because of the context of the passage.

As to why books like the gospel of Thomas are excluded it has to do with two things. On a human level, books like that one contained writings that were inconsistent with the rest of the Scriptures. For instance in one passage the writer has Jesus telling his disciples that women could not enter unto the Kingdom of God so they should pray for the women they cared about to be transformed into men so that they could be saved.

On a divine faith level, the compilation of the Bible was overseen by God who caused men to put together the books that He wanted to be there for future generations. Some Bibles have a middle section called the Apocrypha. These writings, while they may have some historical value like the books of the Macabees, are not considered to be inspired writings and they were not a part of the official Jewish cannon of Scripture before the time the New Testament was written.

Answer 5

Please note what these scholars had to say.

Old Testament:
In fact, the New World Translation is a scholarly work. In 1989, Professor Benjamin Kedar of Israel said:
"In my linguistic research in connection with the Hebrew Bible and translation, I often refer to the English edition as what is known as the New World Translation. In doing so, I find my feeling repeatedly confirmed that this kind of work reflects an honest endeavor to achieve an understanding of the text that is as accurate as possible. Giving evidence of a broad command of the original language, it renders the original words into a second language understandably without deviating unnecessarily from the specific structure of the Hebrew....Every statement of language allows for a certain latitude in interpreting or translating. So the linguistic solution in any given case may be open to debate. But I have never discovered in the New World Translation any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain."

New Testament:

While critical of some of its translation choices, BeDuhn called the New World Translation a “remarkably good” translation, “better by far” and “consistently better” than some of the others considered. Overall, concluded BeDuhn, the New World Translation “is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available” and “the most accurate of the translations compared.”—Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament.

“Here at last is a comprehensive comparison of nine major translations of the Bible:
King James Version,
New American Standard Bible,
New International Version,
New Revised Standard Version,
New American Bible,
Amplified Bible,
Today's English Version (Good News Bible),
Living Bible,
and the New World Translation.
The book provides a general introduction to the history and methods of Bible translation, and gives background on each of these versions. Then it compares them on key passages of the New Testament to determine their accuracy and identify their bias. Passages looked at include:
John 1:1; John 8:58; Philippians 2:5-11; Colossians 1:15-20; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1

Jason BeDuhn
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair
Department of Humanities, Arts, and Religion
Northern Arizona University

Answer 6

I use the NIV (New International Version). I used to work in a Christian Book Store and looked at all of them, at the time (20 yrs ago) this was the one I liked, now I have the same version and it's a study Bible. There are so many versions, you're right, the people at the Christian Book Store's will be very helpful, as they know all the versions. When I worked in one I did.
My husband is a Preacher and he says he uses the New American Standard (NAS) and he says this is most accurate. I like it too........

Answer 7

The New King James or the New International version are among the easiest to read that still stay as close to the original (greek, hebrew) Old king James is even closer but harder to read sometimes. God has kept His word together throughout history. If there are books that weren't included there was a reason.

Answer 8

It's hard to explain, one of the main ways is that, Bibles like the NIV, and The King James, basicaly say the same thing but word it differently, and are said to be most accurate to the origional hebrew bible. However Bibles like the message are quite different from the NIV and King James, and often twist and misword basic truths that Christians know.

Answer 9

The Gospel Of Thomas was writtenover 200 years after Jusus died.
All of the Gospels were written less than 100 years after Jesus died.

Answer 10

There two different ways bibles are interpretted - word for word and thought for thought. Word for word translations, such as kjv, nasb, and esv, the words are translated into english word for word and may be a little harder to understand but are more in line with the greek and hebrew translations. In thought for though translations, such as NIV, NLT, and the message, scholars have studied the greek and hebrew scriptures and interpreted what they mean and put them into language that means the same thing but is easier to understand, yet they are not word for word the same as the original scriptures. I suggest taking some time and researching the version you use for yourself.