Bible in General

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Bible Question: In a recent question I began to question just what do Christians really know about the version of the Bible they are reading? For example the newest NIV (after 1985 version) is a mixture of the Todays NIV and the NIV making it a gender neutral, version which is a very liberal version of the Bible. The ESV is really a tweaking of RSV Bible. Bothe of these Bible fit well into the more liberal Denominations, and pastors.

All to often I have encountered believers who are unaware of what the words "liberal", "gender natural", "Formal Equivalence", "Dynamic or Functional Equivalence", and the newest description "Optimal Equivalence" and finally what a "Paraphrased" The Message is one such paraphrased Bible.

All to often people have no idea what kind of Bible they want. I have been friends with a Christian Book store owner. He has said many came into his store and really having no idea what translation of the Bible they wanted, if they wanted a Study Bible, or were surprised at the cost of Bibles. By far the most popular Bible was the NIV, even when he tried to show how much better the NASB, and some other translations were. Sadly the Bible that gets the most advertisement in Christian magazines is the NIV. ( as a side note I have seen the NASB more recently). I wondered and asked him what profit he made form his bookstore annually and he said he made less than 2 percent profit. the reason is people buy from Amazon, which sells more pornography than all other stores combined. He told me that such places buy huge amounts of Bible they can sell them cheaper than he bought them for. Will the Local Christian Book store be able to survive in the next ten years? By the way my friend lost almost seventy-five thousand dollars in ten years and went out of business last year.

What as Christians should we do? Buy from a national branded book store like Life Way, Family Book stores, Lemstone, or other local book store that has Bibles. Unless Christians begin to support especially local Christian Bookstores they may well go the way of so many stores that once were but no more.

The Bible I highly and completely recommend with no hesitation is the NASb and close to that is the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Why? they are Developed and translated by all Christian people who saw the Bible as God's inspired Word, Inerrant in the original manuscripts. Because they started with the right foundation the Bible translation the finished with is solidly dependable and trustworthy.

my last word is be careful when selecting your next Bible.

justme

Bible Answer: I agree with much of what you said. I will not buy a NIV nor do I buy from Zondervan the publisher of NIV.

My personal study Bible is the NASB but I have found I really can't read aloud from the NASB so I use the NKJV. The NASB 1995 revision was much easier to read aloud but still not what I desired. I'm hoping the upcoming revision will solve the problem for me completely while remaining faithful to the previous versions.

On the subject of Christian Book stores I have mixed emotions. I browse them but I rarely find something I buy. Most are oriented more towards light reading, Christian gifts and trinkets than serious study. As a pastor I am most often forced to go to the internet or my denominational suppliers for the material I'm looking for.

Lifeway is a great store but rarely has suitable Sunday School or discipleship material that I'm looking for.

Mom and Pop Christian book stores are the true underdogs and most have gone out of business.

Because there is such a variety of material these smaller stores can't possibly stock it all and if they have to order it, I might as well and eliminate the middle man.

To find out which bible you want all a person has to do it go to internet and look for the many comparisons of the various versions that are out there. Also most book store and internet Christian Bible retailers also have a comparison chart on their site.

What I find most difficult is finding a version that is easy to understand by bi language people where English is not their first language. I often lean toward the NLT in those situations.

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Bible in General

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