There are loads of different opinions, interpretations and translations of the Bible. Not only that, there are also tonnes of denominations, belief systems, factions and so on that have arisen from it, and not just Christian ones!
Even if I was interested in exploring Christianity, how would I know what to look into? How could I divide the "worth looking into stuff" from the "definitely without a doubt load of rubbish stuff"?
I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about. I certainly have. If you're at all interested, I'm planning on doing some posts on the matter. The first (the rest of this one), is on which Bible translations are worth reading (if any)? The second will probably be on why on earth are there so many different denominations, and what on earth we're meant to do if we just want to find out what the Bible has to say without bothering with all the nonsense. I may or may not do some more after that (hopefully much shorter posts!), based on the reception of these ones :P
But in case you just can't be bothered to read two massive posts (I probably wouldn't be), the short answer:
- The most common translations tend to be pretty good, so if you have a Bible then I wouldn't worry too much about it, what you've got is probably reliable and true. If you're interested in getting one, I'd recommend the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible, as they are very close to the original texts while remaining readable and without the thees and thous of the King James Bible. These are also the Bibles that you tend to find in hotels, they're the little red ones the Gideons gave out in a school assembly once, you probably have one somewhere, or the ability to get one for free if you want.
- Don't bother with denominations. Read the Bible, find out for yourself what it's all about. Anyone can understand it, don't let people convince you that you don't have what it takes. If there is anything you don't understand or want to ask someone about, go for it, ask someone! Just don't listen to people who make stuff up (like purgatory).
So, on with the post.
The Bible - Which One!?!?
There's the KJV, NIV, ESV, the Message, the New World Translation, the RSV, the DRB, the CCD, the NABRE, to name but a few. Most of which sound like the names of special forces and government agencies. And surely this throws up the question of reliability? How can any of it be true if so many different translations exist?
[WARNING - Lots of history stuff, might not be that interesting for you, feel free to skip to the ANYWAY below :P] First of all, we still have many Koine Greek, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew manuscripts (the languages that the collection of books and letters we call the Bible was written in). Many of these are on display in museums - if you can read the language then you can go and read these manuscripts for yourselves. It's the accuracy of these manuscripts that really matter in trying to work out whether or not the Bible is historically reliable, rather than the accuracy of the English translations people have made of these manuscripts (of course the accuracy of the translations we read does matter to us, but I'll get to that later). Just to justify my last point:
Imagine I heard a lecture from a Professor Higgs. I then went and told you all about what he said. Except what I told you was a load of rubbish, it wasn't what he was trying to say. That wouldn't make what he said untrue or unreliable, it would just make me false and unreliable. So it is with the Bible and people's translations of it.
Can we trust that these early (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents are indeed based on the original books and letters? And if so, can we trust that through paleography, textual criticism, and hundreds of thousands of hours of study, discussion and work that an accurate representation of the original books and letters can indeed be made through these? Yes. And if you use the same methods and critique as you use to determine the reliability of other historical documents, then overwhelmingly yes.
Take many of the Classical works for example:
"In evaluating the significance of these statistics...one should
consider, by way of contrast, the number of manuscripts which preserve
the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad...is preserved by 457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides
are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and
276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the
Byzantine period...the time between the composition of the books of the
New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief.
Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a
few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the
New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after
the composition of the original documents." Bruce M. Metzger - Pulled straight from Wikipedia.
What that's saying is that the time span between the earliest surviving copies of part of a widely accepted classical (ancient Greek) writing are from roughly a millennium or more after the originals were written, whereas the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament scriptures is less than a century. In fact, in those terms, the New Testament Scriptures are actually pretty top notch for ancient documents. Anyway, this is a lengthy discussion, but well worth looking into (I'm certainly going to be reading up much more on it. [Be warned, though, it's very easy to get the wrong idea when you read this stuff - it's a lot more complicated than you would think (or than I thought, at least). Later manuscripts are less reliable than earlier manuscripts, but people often refer to them in one category, so beware people talking about difficult to qualify statistics like, "There's x number of conflicting words between y manuscript and z manuscript", when really they've decided to dump something written by a monk 500 years later which no one uses for translation with a manuscript written less than 100 years later that everyone uses.]
There's loads more that I would love to say. I'm no expert, but I'm aware of archaeological evidence, non-Christian historians (Tacitus being my main example), historical standards and so on which would all suggest that the early manuscripts we have can indeed be used to come up with a highly accurate Bible. By that I mean a Bible which contains historically really accurate copies of the letters and books it does indeed claim to consist of. Whether or not what these original letters and books had to say is true is a different argument. But I don't want to consume the whole blog page in one post, so...
ANYWAY
I got carried away, my apologies.
Safe in the knowledge that there's a good chance the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents we get our English translations from are reliable and accurate, we're now left trying to work out what English stuff is accurate and what isn't.
First of all, stay away from anything Gnostic, Mormon, Catholic, Coptic, Jehovah's Witness' (New World Translation) or similar. Their scriptures often include stuff varying from inaccurate and unreliable to just plain made up. [WARNING AGAIN] I feel I ought to justify this, but I'm aware this is a pretty long post as it is. So I'll be as brief as possible...
The Book of Mormon - meant to have been written by someone writing down what someone else was reading off of a plate that no one else could read or see (in 1830 by an American). Enough said.
Gnostic Works - Gnosticism is a cult predating Christianity (some argue not) that adopted and mutated Christian beliefs, it does not align theologically with the major themes of the Scriptures and their additional texts are likely made up (e.g. the "Gospel of Mary") ("The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex." and, "Hollis Professor of Divinity Karen King at Harvard Divinity School suggests that the original gospel was written in Greek sometime during the time of Christ. Most scholars disagree with her conclusion..." Again, it's all on Wikipedia so you can see for yourself what I'm saying.)
Additional Catholic Old Testament Documents - this one is more ambiguous. There are 7 books present in the Catholic Old Testament which are not present in the Protestant Old Testament. These books are present in the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, but not in the more reliable Hebrew Old Testament, and hence they are not included in the protestant Bible (the standard of what could be considered part of the Bible had been increased since the formation of the Catholic Bible). They remain in the Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles mostly due to tradition, though you could attempt to make some standpoint on their reliability (this is without considering whether or not they even make sense historically and theologically - the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures do). No reference to these books is made in the entire Old or New Testament, and though this definitely does not mean that they are false documents, it's hardly in their favour.
ANYWAY
So we know what to stay away from, but what's good?
Well, the RSV (Revised Standard Version), the ESV (English Standard Version) and the NIV (New International Version) are all pretty reliable. They've had some of the most care and time taken (by countless highly trained and qualified translators, linguists, historians and scholars) out of all the English Bible translations. They also tend to show you wherever the translators are unsure of their translation - footnotes on the page tell you if they're unsure of a word, or if a verse is in some later manuscripts but not the original and most reliable ones. Such footnotes are comfortingly rare, too. The RSV and ESV go as much as possible towards as word for word a translation of the Bible as possible while still maintaining English grammar and "readability". The NIV also adheres to this, but with a slightly greater focus on conveying the meaning of the original manuscripts, as this can occasionally be lost in translation.
A lot of people have King James Bibles, these are ok, but they're not the nicest read (subjective, of course) and not as accurate as more modern translations.
The Message Bible is not really a translation of the Bible at all. The author has decided to convey the meaning of the Bible, without using most of the original Bible words. This can be really helpful, some bits of the Bible aren't the easiest read without patience, time and effort, and this could help make more sense of these. But I'd be very hesitant on calling it a Bible. It begs accuracy questions, and undoubtedly some of the great depth of meaning and authority that the actual Bible has will have been lost. Not saying it's a bad read, though.
So there you go. Sorry for a REALLY long post, but hope it was interesting enough for you to have got this far :P
All the best! Hope you're doing well (:
Matt(hew)
