Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
The Search for the Best Translation. It is a daunting task for the new Bible student to walk into a store for the purpose of purchasing a Bible. Immediately, he is met with shelves upon shelves of more than 150+ different English translation choices: NIV, TNIV, ESV, NASB, NRSV, CEV, CSB, NLT, and on and on.
An important necessity of good communication is that it be understood without difficulty. If the words that we use are not immediately understood by the one we are communicating with, it will be like they were attempting to carry on a conversation with a foreigner, in the foreigner’s language. All of this is vitally important if we intend to have effective communication.
Whose fault is it that the churchgoer for decades has been less informed about the Bible that they carry than the atheists, Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Skeptics?
One of the challenges you have in being a lone translator is remembering your lexical (word) choices. Any give Hebrew or Greek word has 2-10 different terms in the lexicon and many times 2-4 are very close synonyms with a little difference in the sense.
I am not going to assume but I am going to make some educated inferences about the Lockman Foundation and the NASB. First, let me preface it with I respect the NASB and every translator that has worked on it from the beginning.
Each committee disagreed with other committees. Within each committee, each translator likely disagrees with other translators. This is evident from the differences in the translations. Where does this leave the Bible reader?
The Old Testament was originally written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, while the New Testament was written in what is known as Koine Greek, namely, common Greek. The Bible has been translated into at least hundreds of other languages, possibly as many as 2,600. Of the billions of people who have read the Bible in... Continue Reading →