by Michael Heitman

Created on: December 02, 2009

Choosing a Bible can be a daunting task, especially for some who do not have much familiarity with Bibles today. You might not be aware of the language of buying a Bible which is filled with acronyms such as KJV, NIV, NASB, ESV, NLT, HCSB, and KFC. Ok, well the last one is just what I was thinking about for lunch, but the others are some of the numerous translations of the Bible. The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Greek and some Aramaic and unless you are a scholar who can read those languages, then you need a translation in your native language.

Bible translations can overwhelm you with variety, but there are a couple of key concepts to keep in mind credibility and translation style. Credibility comes into play because there are over 450 versions of the Bible in English that have been created over the past few hundred years. The best selling English Bible translations in the U.S. in 2009 were:

New International Version (NIV)

New King James Version (NKJV)

King James Version (KJV)

New Living Translation (NLT)

English Standard Version (ESV)

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Message (MSG)

These are the most prominent translations in publication today and you would be wise to start off with one of these widely-read translations.

The key differences among these translations lie in the approach of the translator or team of translators. Generally, there are three main approaches to Bible translation: formal equivalence (or word for word translation), dynamic equivalence (or thought for thought translation), and a paraphrase (putting it in your own words). We will take a look at these eight translations individually and identify the translation approach to each.

The New International Version (NIV) is far and away the best selling translation today and is generally accepted by all Protestant denominations in the United States. The NIV is written on a seventh grade reading level and the comprehensive team of Bible scholars have generally used a thought for thought approach of translation in an effort to make the thoughts of the original writers to be conveyed clearly to modern readers.

The King James Version (KJV) is probably the best known translation as it has been used in various forms for nearly 400 years. It is written in an older English style language which can be different in some ways from how we speak today. The KJV is generally thought to be more of a word for word translation than most others.

The New King

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