Subject: Introducing the English Standard Version |
Bible Note: Hello, Makarios -- Oh my, a sure sign of getting old I suppose, but I long for the simplier life of the good old days when we weren't burdened with the onery task of picking and choosing from among the NIV, NASB, FBI, ESV, A and P, NKJV, KGB, ACLU, and the WC. We read an old black imitation leather book we called The Bible. Few of us even knew it was the King James Version, although I remember seeing on the front page of the book the words "Authorized Version" and figured I had the right one since it was authorized. I didn't want to read anything unauthorized. For all I knew, it might be illegal to carry around a Bible that hadn't been authorized, and I didn't want to be carted off to jail, for goodness sake. But now, with so many translations and mistranslations and paraphrases out there, a body has a hard time of it trying to decide which one to read. I suspect they're not all "authorized" and that a few of them ought to be illegal, even if they're not. It took me 50 years to venture far beyond the King James Version, and even now my translation of choice among the newer breeds is the New King James Version. Oh, I have a tall stack of different translations, a sacred menagerie of sorts, and find them helpful at times when I want to find a locution of a difficult passage that helps me understand it better, but I do most of my reading, memorizing and quoting from the New King James. ..... Thanks for supplying the forum with the web links, Makarios. They will no doubt be of help to the readers of the forum. .... In Christ, --Hank |