Whats your favorite Bible book?

Question

Which Bible translation is your favorite or, to put it another way, which one do you believe to be the most reliable? Why do you believe this? How much Hebrew and/or Greek do you know? If you can't read even one word of Hebrew or Greek, how can you make any assessment of the accuracy of any Bible translation?

And how do you know that all the translators (of all the English translations) haven't been lying to you all along? Haven't you made a pretty big leap of faith, considering that your eternal future is involved?

Isn't it true that what you REALLY have perfect faith in is (1) the manuscript-choosing/manuscript-rejecting people from the Fourth Century and (2) a bunch of translators, NONE of whom you know ANYTHING about ... not even their names?

Answer 1

Right now my favorite book of the Bible is the book of Revelation because it gives us a sure hope for our future and a picture of what we have waiting for us after we have endured the trials of life in this fallen world.

I know a little of the Hebrew alphabet and some Hebrew and Greek words but I'm not fluent in either of them. I can make an accurate assessment of the Bible by using the e-Sword software that has the KJV with Strong's numbers so that I can run my mouse pointer over the number by each word and see what the original Greek or Hebrew word is. Then I can click on the KJV concordance and see how the word was used in different passages and finally I can look at the different commentaries like Barnes Notes on the Bible where he goes to great length in examining passages to get the correct meaning from them.

If you want to get a copy there is a link in the Freeware section of the Free Stuff page @ http://web.express56.com/~bromar/

As to "what you REALLY have perfect faith in is (1) the manuscript-choosing/manuscript... people from the Fourth Century and (2) a bunch of translators, NONE of whom you know ANYTHING about ... not even their names?"

No, that's not true. Thousands of early Christian writings and lexionaries (first and second century) cite verses from the New Testament. In fact, it is nearly possible to put together the entire New Testament just from early Christian writings. For example, the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (dated 95 A.D.) cites verses from the Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, Hebrews, and 1 Peter. The letters of Ignatius (dated 115 A.D.) were written to several churches in Asia Minor and cites verses from Matthew, John, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. These letters indicate that the entire New Testament was written in the first century A.D. In addition, there is internal evidence for a first century date for the writing of the New Testament. The book of Acts ends abruptly with Paul in prison, awaiting trial (Acts 28:30-31 (1)). It is likely that Luke wrote Acts during this time, before Paul finally appeared before Nero. This would be about 62-63 A.D., meaning that Acts and Luke were written within thirty years of ministry and death of Jesus. Another internal evidence is that there is no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Although Matthew, Mark and Luke record Jesus' prophecy that the temple and city would be destroyed within that generation (Matthew 24:1-2 (2),Mark 13:1-2 (3), Luke 21:5-9,20-24,32(4)), no New Testament book refers to this event as having happened. If they had been written after 70 A.D., it is likely that letters written after 70 A.D. would have mentioned the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy. As stated by Nelson Glueck, former president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and renowned Jewish archaeologist, "In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D."

With all of the massive manuscript evidence you would think there would be massive discrepancies - just the opposite is true. New Testament manuscripts agree in 99.5% of the text (compared to only 95% for the Iliad). Most of the discrepancies are in spelling and word order. A few words have been changed or added. There are two passages that are disputed but no discrepancy is of any doctrinal significance (i.e., none would alter basic Christian doctrine). Most Bibles include the options as footnotes when there are discrepancies. How could there be such accuracy over a period of 1,400 years of copying? Two reasons: The scribes that did the copying had meticulous methods for checking their copies for errors. 2) The Holy Spirit made sure we would have an accurate copy of God's word so we would not be deceived. The Mormons, theological liberals as well as other cults and false religions such as Islam that claim the Bible has been tampered with are completely proven false by the extensive, historical manuscript evidence.

Answer 2

I love the book of JOHN it proves the Deity of Jesus Christ.

But to answer your other question. The bible translation I love the most is the word for word translation such as the Today's english translation and New American Standard Bible. I like these two translation because it has been translated word for word and not concept by concept translation like the new living translation. To give you an Idea on how we end up with our translation today, here is how it was broken down into;
1. The original manuscripts are from around 1500 BC and AD 100. We have 66 distinct works.
2. The manuscripts from the original language was translated into latin in AD 385-404. It was called the vulgate, jerome's Latin tanslation.
3. AD 700-1000 Various anglo-saxon partial translations
4. AD 1382: complete translation by John Wycliffe and his followers.
5. AD 1525-1535: first printed translation by william tyndale
6. AD 1535: Coverdale translation
7. Ad 1537: Matthew's translation which is the first authorized translation in england.
8. AD 1539: Taverner's and Great Bible translation
9. AD 1560: Geneva Bible
10. AD 1568: Bishop's translation
11. 1610: Rheim's douai translation Bible
12. 1611: THE KING JAMES VERSION
13: 1885: Englished revised version
14: 1901: American standard version
15: 1947: Dead sea scrolls found, confirmed the authenticity of the translations
16: 1952-1973: Revised standard version, new american standard version, the jerusalem bible, living bible, the common bible and the new international bible

this is how i know that the translations are not lying to me or was not tainted. It was confirmed by the found dead sea scrolls and that I have studied where it all originated from. Christianity is not Leap of Fait; it is OBJECTIVE FAITH where you believe because of the evidence presented. The word of God presented itself as The TRUTH.

There! are you satisfied?
wasabi

Answer 3

Sorry, my promised update was delayed by server problems.
...

The 2 volume set of Luke - Acts...

I don't normally use ANY New Testament translation, with over 20 years of reading it in Greek, there is no translation that I'm 100% happy with.

I will give you one bit of negative advice, the KJV has HUNDREDS of DELIBERATE ERRORS. These are places where the translators HAD good manuscript evidence which indicated a TRUE reading and yet CHOSE to use a FAULTY reading, or, in a few cases, JUST MADE UP a reading to suit themselves.

By the way, the kjv is NOT the ORIGINAL ANYTHING. There were complete English Bibles over 2 centuries before it. There was a PRIOR "authorized" version.

I did a pretty long bit a few months ago on English translations. One BIG thing is the translation should resemble the FORM of English which YOU NORMALLY SPEAK OR READ. For YOU to understand it, it should USE WORDS that YOU KNOW rather than more OBSCURE language. There are several GOOD, SIMPLE, MODERN AMERICAN ENGLISH versions available. Search them and find one that MATCHES YOUR LANGUAGE as closely as possible.
Here are the "short versions" of a few:
CEV
TNIV
NIrV
NRSV
NLT
... The ESV, or English Standard Version is an example of a good translation on accuracy that fails on readability because it uses many words which are more complex than is needed to relate the thought of the original...

You mention trusting the people in ancient times whose work established the canon of the New Testament. This is easy. These were people who were 1700 years closer to the "end of the apostolic age" than we are. It was like as children, they played at the feet of someone who played at the feet of an apostle... They were close enough that the work of the apostles was still in the community's "collective memory," much the same as the US "founding fathers" are today. Not to say that errors could not have been made, but it would be much harder for any "pseudopigrapha" or forgery to get through the process. They had numerous documents from first and second century Christians writing about what they knew as scripture. The process resembles a detective game. The group is charged with establishing the authenticity of a document that MAY have been read and quoted for 225 to 295 years. They examine the writings of people like Justin Martyr, who wrote quite a bit in the middle of the second century, searching for evidence that HE had seen some document "X." If he and several others quote it, it is likely to be authentic. If NONE of them saw it, the odds go way down. The early church CRAVED these writings and made MANY COPIES of them.

On to the modern textual professionals… While most Christians do not know these men, I have had the privilege of knowing quite a few of them. F.F. Bruce wrote a book titled “The Books and the Parchments” which describes many elements that someone curious about the way the Bible was formed and preserved would find intriguing.

Answer 4

whats favorite bible book

Answer 5

I am at bible college and we use NRSV cause it is closer to the Greek/Hebrew then the NIV. Personally though I dont think that it matters. What ever bible suits you. There have been parts of the bible found everwhere like the dead sea scrolls. No to your last paragraph. We have faith in a God that although the authors may have been infallable that the accounts are accurate. BTW my favourite book is Esther at the moment.

Answer 6

John

Answer 7

God wanted us to have his perfect word. Psalms tells us he will preserve it forever. I believe he has. The KJV is the perfect, infalliable word of God. Why would God make you have to know greek or hebrew in order to be saved and truly know what he wants from us? He doesnt. He wrote the bible by inspiring men, any men, in order to give the common people his word.

God can bless people any way he wants. He can use lost people to give money to his children in need. Say your a christian, and in a hard time, he can have your lost dad help you out, out of no where. He can use unbelievers to do his will if he wants. Why couldnt he have used unbelievers, people who couldnt have really cared less what they were writting because they didnt believe it anyway, they were just told to do so. He can do ANYTHING perfectly with ANYONE on this earth.

Answer 8

Do you read English? Do you speak English? Knowing that English is made up of an amalgam of languages from Latin to German to French, how do you know what you're saying at all if you don't speak all the root languages English comes from? And you don't know the names of the people who defined even one single word of English, even if you could tell me who first wrote it down in a dictionary. However, I seriousely doubt that you lose any sleep at night worrying that your pecan pie recipe might, in fact, be a recipe for poison.

Answer 9

Daniel

Answer 10

The NASB is the most literally accurate. I dont have to take someones word for it. I can read the Greek . And we dont have to worry about the accuracy of the ancient manuscripts when they were copied over and over. The find of the Dead Sea Scrolls put that idea to rest forever. They are Accurate.....theBerean