What are the major differences between the King James, New Revised Standard, and New International Versions of the Bible?

(Editor's Note: This helpful article is reprinted with permission from Interpreter magazine, November-December 2001 issue. Copyright © 2001 United Methodist Communications, Inc.)

Which Bible Translation Is Right for Me?

Which Bible translation should you use for public worship, Bible study or personal devotion?

Most mainline Protestant denominations would recommend as first choice the New Revised Standard Version. (The United Methodist Publishing House uses it as the official text for creating church-school curriculum and other denominational resources.)

The New Revised Standard Version, published in 1989, was prepared by a committee of respected scholars, headed up by Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary.

A translation intended for public use in the church should:

• Use contemporary language, but avoid slang words or contractions;
• Avoid theological bias and eccentric interpretations or those that have not yet won widespread acceptance.
• Handle text-critical matters in a responsible way.

The New English Bible, published in 1970 in England, has many fine features, but in the Old Testament in particular it uses many idiosyncratic translations and sometimes edits the text in an arbitrary way. [Its replacement, the Revised English Bible (1989), is superior in many ways.]

The Living Bible (1971) is not a translation (directly from ancient sources), but a paraphrase of other English versions by Kenneth N. Taylor, a man who was not able to read either Hebrew or Greek (the languages, along with Aramaic, in which the Bible was originally written).

While Taylor's renderings are often fresh and clear, The Living Bible has a conservative theological bias, and the translator's lack of linguistic training is often a serious deficit.

Translations are basically of two types. They are either of formal equivalence (word-for-word) or dynamic equivalence (thought-for-thought) with the original text. Most translations are of the formal equivalent type, for example the Revised Standard Version (1946, 1956), the New Revised Standard Version, the New International Version (1978) and the King James Version (1611).

The best-known dynamic equivalent translation is Today's English Version (1976), sometimes called the Good News Bible, published by the American Bible Society.

Today's English Version follows the theories of 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 (in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek).

Being literally or formally equivalent, in Nida's 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." To render it literally into English would be exceedingly tiresome, he believes. Hebrew also has relatively few adjectives. "His holy mountain" translated literally into Hebrew would read "the mountain of his holiness."

Other dynamically equivalent translations include the Contemporary English Version (1995) and the New Living Translation (1996).

The latter version intends to capitalize on the clarity achieved by the Living Bible. However, the people who worked on this version were well-respected evangelical biblical scholars who used the original languages. Consider 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. (King James version)

Then David died and was buried in the City of David. (New Living Translation)

Because so many different Bible translations are now available at reasonable prices, I encourage 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 100 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).

As a textual example, compare 1 Samuel 29:10 in the Revised Standard Version with the same verse in the New Revised Standard Version. The latter translation is almost twice as long. The New Revised team corrected the Hebrew text -- from which several clauses had been lost -- by restoring them from the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, made in the third or second century B.C. A footnote alerts the reader to the change; but not all such changes are fully marked.

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 the King James Version have been made in the last four centuries, in part because the English language has changed a great deal as well. Compare Psalm 59:10 in King James, "The God of my mercy shall prevent me," with the New Revised "My God in his steadfast love will meet me." In the 17th century "prevent" meant to "come before." That's no longer true. There are hundreds of similar cases.

The New Revised team attempted to introduce gender-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").

Which Bible translation should one use for public worship, Bible study or personal devotion? I favor the New Revised Standard Version, but if one's budget can afford it, I recommend buying one or more of the other late 20th-century versions (except for the Living Bible) and comparing them diligently with the New Revised. Sampling these versions in the church library or a bookstore can help match the version with your reading style.

-Ralph W Klein
Christ Seminary-Seminex professor of Old Testament
Lutheran School of Theology
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Reprinted with permission from Interpreter magazine, November-December 2001 issue. Copyright © 2001 United Methodist Communications, Inc.

Julian of Norwich, a late fourteenth-century mystic and spiritual writer, chose to live a solitary life in a cell attached to the Church of Saint Julian in Norwich, England. Because Julian was known for her wisdom, seekers approached the window of her cell to ask her questions about Christian faith and practice.

Learn more about Julian by reading Encounter with God's Love: Selected Writings of Julian of Norwich from Upper Room Books.