By Ralph W. Klein

Christ Seminary-Seminex Professor of Old Testament

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Which Bible translation should one use for public worship, Bible study, or personal devotion? Most mainline Protestant denominations would recommend as first choice, correctly in my judgment, the New Revised Standard Version, published in 1989 and prepared by a committee of respected scholars, headed up by Professor Bruce M. Metzger.

A translation intended for public use in the church, should use contemporary language and avoid slang words or contractions, it should avoid theological bias and eccentric interpretations or those that have not yet won widespread acceptance, and it should handle text critical matters in a responsible way. The New English Bible (NEB), published in 1970 in England (NT already in 1961), has many fine features, but in the Old Testament in particular it uses many idiosyncratic translations and sometimes emends the text in an arbitrary way. Its replacement is called the Revised English Bible (REB, 1989), and is superior in many ways. The Living Bible (LB, 1971) is not really a translation, but a paraphrase of other English versions by Kenneth N. Taylor, a man who was not able to read either Hebrew or Greek.. While his renderings are often fresh and clear, this version is marred by a conservative theological bias, and the translator's lack of linguistic training is often a serious deficit.

Translations are basically of two types. They show either formal equivalence (word-for-word) or dynamic equivalence (thought-for-thought) with the original text. These terms are more precise than the usual "literal" or "periphrastic" adjectives used popularly. Most translations are of the formal equivalent type--the NRSV, the Revised Standard Version (RSV; 1946, 1952), the New International Version (NIV, 1978), and of course the King James Version (1611). The best known dynamic equivalent translation is Today's English Version (TEV, sometimes called the Good News Bible; 1976), published by the American Bible Society. The TEV follows the theories of a great theorist of Bible translating, Eugene A. Nida, who argued that the goal of a translator is to achieve the same effect in the target language (English in this case) as was true of the original text, which was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. Being literal or formally equivalent, in his judgment, would often make the Bible more distant than it needs to be. The vast majority of sentences in Hebrew, for example, start with the word "and" and to bring that over literally into English would be exceedingly tiresome. Hebrew also has relatively few adjectives. "His holy mountain" would be expressed in Hebrew as "the mountain of his holiness." Other dynamically equivalent translations include the NEB, REB, the Contemporary English Version (1995) and the New Living Translation (NLT; 1996). This last version intends to capitalize on the clarity achieved by the Living Bible, but the people who worked on this version were well known evangelical biblical scholars, who utilized the original languages. Here is an illustration of the difference between formal and dynamic translations in 1 Kings 2:10 "So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David" (KJV). "Then David died and was buried in the City of David" (NLT).

Because there are so many different Bible translations today, available at reasonable prices, I encourage Bible readers to use more than one translation for their Bible study. Careful comparison of a formal and a dynamic translation will often point to and help clarify difficult verses. These different Bible translations will almost never agree one hundred percent though quite often their differences are slight. These differences are basically of three kinds: stylistic, exegetical (a technical term for interpretive), or textual (using a different text of the Hebrew or Greek Bible).

In Gen 1:1, the NRSV reads: "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth," but TEV reads: "In the beginning, when God created the universe." Both of these translations add "when" and thus make v 2 a kind of side remark, with the main thought continued in v 3. That is an exegetical or interpretive decision, a correct one in my opinion. The difference between "heaven and earth" and "universe" is primarily stylistic. The TEV team thought "heaven and earth" was "biblical English," not contemporary English. But almost every stylistic change also has content implications. Did the ancients really know anything about the "universe"?

If one would compare 1 Sam 29:10 in the RSV and the NRSV one would discover that the latter translation is almost twice as long. The NRSV team corrected the Hebrew text, which had accidentally lost several clauses, by restoring them from the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, made in the third or second century BCE. A footnote alerts the reader to this change, but not all such changes are fully marked.

You can actually learn a great deal about the Bible by comparing translations and deciding whether the changes are stylistic, exegetical, or textual. It could be an exciting exercise to try in an adult forum.

Many of us grew up on the King James Version, which remains unsurpassed in the vitality and richness of its language. But we have learned a great deal about the meaning of Hebrew and Greek words in the last four centuries and we can now reconstruct much better Hebrew and Greek texts from the available evidence (of course none of the original manuscripts survive). Thousands of minor changes to KJV have been made in the last four centuries, but the English language has changed a great deal as well. Compare Psalm 59:10 in the KJV "The God of my mercy shall prevent me" with the NRSV "My God in his steadfast love will meet me." In the 17^th century "prevent" meant to "come before." No longer. There are hundreds of similar cases.

The NRSV team attempted to introduce inclusive language, especially with regard to human beings. So now Paul addresses "friends" rather than "brothers" in his letters. The team did not change the references to God which predominantly use male pronouns or images (e.g. "father"). Some were happy with this decision, and others were distressed, leading to the creation of various inclusive language lectionaries for congregational use, most of them revisions of the NRSV.

Which Bible translation should one use for public worship, Bible study, or personal devotion? I still favor the NRSV, but if one's budget can afford it, I would recommend buying one or more of the other late twentieth century versions--except for the Living Bible--and comparing them diligently with the NRSV. Sampling these versions in the church library or a bookstore can help match the version with your reading style.