Basics 5: Choices, Choices, Choices!

Please forgive me! I thought I had finished this article already. I meant for us to have this discussion before we sat down to read Ephesians start to finish. That’s okay, whatever version you read, it will get you familiar with this letter and help you with the big picture. Maybe we will need to read it again in a different version to get a different flavor of the letter. But spending time actually thinking about what God is saying is what we’re ultimately after, right?

Actually tackling the book of Ephesians itself is coming. But before we can read it, the question of versions of the English Bible will certain come up in a student of the word’s mind.

• New International Version
• New American Standard Version
• English Standard Version
• The Living Bible
• The NET Bible
• King James Version
• New King James Version
• The Message

I haven’t even scratched the surface.

Stacks and stacks of books have been written on this subject of versions; I don’t need to rehash it all here. If you are curious about it (and I find it an extremely interesting topic), I have learned some about the subject from Dr. Robert Stein in his lecture titled Early Beginnings in his Biblical Hermeneutics class available on biblicaltraining.org. Books that I’ve used to help me understand are How We Got the Bibleby Neil Lightfoot, 3rd edition and R.C. Sproul’s Knowing Scripture.

For the purpose of both of us being on the same page, I will try to succinctly explain a little of what I’ve learned about a couple of types of translations in simple terms. The two types I will address are:

1. Formal equivalence translations

• These are translations that have tried to find the closest English equivalent for each word in the era they were translated. (We always have need for new translations as manuscripts are discovered and found to be better than the ones previously known, and we have need for new translations as our language changes.) Also known as word-for-word translations, these translations are the ones we use for the type of study we will be learning here, bite by bite. 

• As part of the layout for my Bible software, I have the ESV, NET, and NAS bibles open next to each other so I can click between them to compare the texts.

2. Paraphrase translations

• These are translations that have tried to express what the biblical author meant in more of a general sense, rather than focusing on the individual words. That’s why these translations are aptly known as thought-for-thought translations.

• If we were to sit down to read large portions of scripture without having a scholarly mindset, NIV or the Revised English Bible would be among our options. They also lend themselves nicely to reading aloud due to the smooth readability.

This is severely simplified, I’m aware. But like I said, more knowledgeable people have written tomes on this fascinating topic. And my purpose here is to help us choose versions that will best help us accomplish our goals of learning the science and application of hermeneutics.

As a side note, please don’t hear me dismissing other translations across the board. There are times and places for different versions. My father, for example, had a sixth grade education until he died at 86. I would never have handed him an ESV and said, “Have at it!” since the reading level is at least 11th grade. If the version isn’t understandable, let’s find one that is.

That being said, let’s make sure we have at least one version that has been translated using the best manuscripts we have to date and dive into reading Ephesians as our friend Paul meant it to be read. Well, I suppose he meant for it to be read aloud and heard… Why not? That would be fun too!