No cap fam….this blog is gonna be fire.
Language is a funny thing. It changes all the time. I try to stay up to date on all the latest slang terms floating around. Driving back from visiting our family over Christmas break, we brainstormed how many different ways one can say something is good. Just a simple sentence has so many permutations in modern slang:
I am certain that someone out there reading this just learned a term or two. Feel free to use these terms profusely at work, with your neighbors or at the drive-thru window…especially if you are over 50. The younger generation will gaze at you with deep admiration and I promise you will be relevant, youthful and bussin again.
Many folks will be starting a bible reading plan for 2024 and I want to offer some advice for a truly dope resource that gets taken for granted. I want to remind you that we all have access to an army of biblical scholars ready to come along side us and help us with the bible in 2024.
This is going to seem overly simple…but I’m talking about bible TRANSLATIONS!
We have an embarrassment of riches in the English language! I just looked in my personal bible software and found that I own 181 English versions of the bible. Now sometimes commentaries and singular teachers get all the spotlight - and they are certainly helpful- but these require extra care in navigating because they are singular points of view. In contrast, our best modern English translations are backed by a massive plurality of the world’s best biblical language scholars.
Biblical translators will readily admit that all translation is interpretation. Language is not a code. Growing up I remember doing the little code puzzles on the back of cereal boxes. One letter actually stood for another letter….sometimes there was a decoder ring. Language is way more complicated than a code. Every act of translation involves interpretation. Going from one language to another is part art and part science. So every time we open up a bible version, it is like we are employing our own team of dozens (sometimes hundreds) of bible scholars to help us read and understand. I purposely flip between versions for this very reason.
It is worth saying that there are a lot of goofy conspiracy stories about bible versions floating around out there that are just absurd. Most of our modern English translations are backed by robust scholarship. These are men and women who just want to see people flourish in reading and studying the bible. With that in mind, I thought I’d offer up a few of my favorites, a nickname for them, and why I find them helpful.
- The New English Translation (NET) “The Researcher” : This is my go-to bible version. I love comparing versions and seeing the push and pull of meaning in the text and how different translation committees wrestled with it. The NET is interesting and unique in that it includes scholar and translator notes. The notes elaborate on issues in the text and what those translators were thinking with in translating. I don’t always want to get side-tracked with a bunch of notes reading the bible, but when I want to dig in to study this bible is sooooo helpful.
- The New Living Translation (NLT) “The Poet”: Language has a beauty to it and that is one of the hardest things to communicate when translating from one language and culture to another. Again, you can’t just subsitute word-for-word and always come up with the meaning and message of the text. The NLT leans into this beauty. Having a good bible version doesn’t just mean “I WANT STONE COLD ACCURACY EVEN IF IT SOUNDS LIKE YODA SPEAKING.” I think it's important to have a bible version in our arsenal that is paying more attention to the flow and art of the biblical languages. I particularly enjoy reading Psalms, Proverbs and other narrative sections of the Old Testament in the NLT.
- The English Standard Version (ESV) “The Mediator”: It has been said that the ESV is a version of “understated elegance.” I think that is a perfect description of this version that is very middle of the road….and I mean that as a compliment. It’s not too flowery in its language nor too stilted.
- The New International Version (NIV) “The Old Friend”: The scholarship behind the NIV is massive and still ongoing. And that is a good thing to still be revising! As stated earlier, language is always changing…so interpretations can’t be frozen in time and be eternally helpful. The NIV is like the old friend you see once a year who you can just pick right up with where you left off. It is immensely readable and not trying to be elegant. If the ESV is a steakhouse, the NIV is a bbq joint. I need both of those kind of food joints! I like to pull out the NIV in those long laborious narrative sections in the OT.
- The King James Version (KJV) “The Old Wizard” : The KJV is a borderline miracle. For what they had to work with as far as manuscripts and resources it is absolutely amazing what the translators (primarily William Tyndale) were able to produce. It for sure has issues and is the penultimate example of how language changes. (My 8 year old daughter would appreciate seeing the unicorns in Isaiah.) But undeniably the KJV is the King of beauty in bible translation and has a place in any bible quiver. It has shaped our English language more than any other literary work. It seems like 99.9% of the time it is the KJV when you hear the Lord’s prayer and Psalm 23.
Apart from these fab five I regularly also look at the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), the Lexham English Bible (LEB) and yes, the Message (MSG). I would nickname the MSG, “The Funcle (fun uncle).” It is a translation done solely by Eugene Peterson so that warrants awareness….but Peterson was a biblical language teacher who longed for students to get the emotional thrust of the text. He thought the beauty and passion of scripture was sometimes lost on modern ears and I find it helpful to check in with him from time to time.
So I hope this is helpful in some way and stirs your bible reading this year. All of these versions can be accessed for free at www.biblegateway.com. May your bible reading slap and your study times be fire.