The gear and the goods

So recently our church changed the translation of its pew Bibles which reminded us that we needed to figure out what Bible to get our children which reminded me of what the point is.

When I was learning about photography, I stumbled across this phenomenon where some people love photographic gear more than they love making beautiful pictures. They get huge thrills out of the engineering of the thing that makes pictures, that's their interest. And that's great and it takes up a lot of pages on the internet, but it's not photography. It's gear.

I did my senior thesis in college on Bible translation, and I'll say that for 99% of people any Bible translation done by a committee is fine. The issue, particularly for the big English Bible translations, isn't which translation? The issue is do you read the Bible? For 99% of people who are thinking about picking one translation over another the only question that needs to be answered is, "Will I read this?" The 1% are people who study the Bible. And honestly, for people who study the Bible, they need many translations including the Greek and the Hebrew.

So if you love the King James Version because Grandma always read to you in the KJV, if that's what'll keep you reading the Bible, read the KJV. If you are a nerd who likes awkward phrasing that reminds you that you're reading a translation from Greek and Hebrew, knock yourself out on the New American Standard (NASB) or English Standard Version (ESV). I'm a nerd, I like those versions too. If you gravitate to a version that's more like what you encounter in everyday language there's the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT). Biblegateway.com and The Bible app are great places to review the same passage in many translations. Pick the one that you're ready to read a lot of.

Currently, I'm doing my daily Bible reading from a devotional called Seeking God's Face (my review of the book). I didn't even know what version I was reading until I looked it up today. Wouldn't have been my first choice (TNIV), but it's still be a great resource for daily Bible reading.

A second consideration is what are your friends reading. If you're in a situation where you're reading the Bible with other people, depending on the circumstances you might want to have the same version they do. Alternatively, you might be in a group where it is beneficial to have a few different translations on hand.

From there, onto children. For our kids, I'm looking for a sturdy Bible with large print that is easy on young eyes. That would be my primary criteria except that these are my kids. So it would be also nice for my kids to use the version that we're most familiar with and the version that I did most of my scripture memory in.

This is where things become tricky. I have done almost all Bible memorization from an out-of-print version of the NIV. It went out of print two years ago, before my kids started reading, before I knew to care about this. So now I'm stuck between learning verses with my kids in a new version or hunting up old versions of the NIV on ebay. What a pain.

If you're not in my boat, I would probably recommend the latest NIV version because it's a nice compromise between oddly contemporary and oddly archaic. (And it's in print.) If you want to see some kids' Bible verses in different versions, here's a pdf of Awanas verses for 3-4 year olds.