What Do We Mean by the Bible? (Part II)
Which Modern English Translation is Best?
On Saturday, 8/1/2026, I argued the Bible is the authoritative Word of God.
We discussed how the Bible, focusing on the 66-book canon which is agreed to be divinely inspired by Catholics, Orthodox, Ethiopians, and Protestants alike, is a compilation of documents spanning possibly as old as their source material (c. 3000 BC).
We talked about how those documents came to be compiled during the Exile in Babylon and Persia, not written, because we have the Dead Sea Scrolls which have a full copy of Isaiah that dates to at least 700 BC, possibly earlier. That scroll then references books in the Old Testament that wouldโve had to exist for Isaiah to reference them, suggesting early composition for all 39 books of the OT.
I also laid out a brief case for the accuracy and authenticity of the New Testament.
You can read that article for yourselves to get the full details and also to learn about how the Bible was translated and why translations are reliable, but for this article Iโm going to focus on which modern English translations are the best for you to useโฆand which ones should you should avoid.
You and I will walk through the popular translations, the ones that everybody is familiar with. A full breakdown of their history and which ones I think are best.
This is not to say I have a preference of one over the other. I actually use many of them together when researching because comparing them and contrasting them reveals the nuances in the first manuscripts without you having to know the original languages.
Sure, itโs always best to know the originals, and if you should desire to do that, learn the Hebrew, Greek, and even Latin, I highly encourage it because the original languages open up the Bible in ways that just reading English or reading in your own personal language, your vernacular, does not.
But using multiple modern translations is a close second, so itโs important to know which ones are best.
Without any further ado, letโs go ahead and examine each of the popular translations so you can know which ones are valuable for learning and which ones are deceptive.
(P.S. Due to there being many translations, this article will be longer than our usual articles and our examination of their history, despite me only choosing the most common versions.)
Valuable Modern Translations of the Bible
The most valuable modern translations available are the NIV, the ESV, the CSB, the RSV, and the NASB. You can also use the King James Version or the New King James Version, but those are ones that should be used with caution, and Iโll explain why in a bit.
Letโs start with the NIV.
NIV
The New International Version was the vision of a guy named Howard Long.
A devout Christian, he lived in Seattle and was an engineer. Loved the King James Version but found the 17th-century language to be unuseful for trying to reach people with the Gospel of Christ.
People couldnโt understand Victorian English anymore. There was the need for something fresh.
In the 1950s, he decided to make a new version. Advocated for it and got his denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, to pair up with the National Association of Evangelicals and a group of evangelical scholars in 1965 near Chicago.
Together, they formed the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), 15 scholars who oversaw the work of more than 100 translators from various evangelical traditions. This group began a completely new translation from scratch that went back to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text of the Bible.
The translators slapped the different renderings together and reviewed them with the scholars to determine which version(s) best matched the original languages.
Accuracy the end goal.
The New Testament version of the NIV was published in 1973, and then the full Bible in 1978. A revision appeared in 1984.
This Bible is a very good Bible because it attempts a word-for-word match of the original languages. The translators intended to keep the integrity of the Word of God instead of trying to inject their own personal biases and ideas into the text.
A 2005 update called Todayโs NIV (TNIV) attempted to incorporate gender-inclusive language at the expense of accuracy and was discontinued after severe backlash. Then, in 2011, the version now available anywhere, which maintains accuracy while mixing in โinclusive language,โ replaced the 1984 revision.
Our present NIV remains a valuable translation despite politically correct updates. Although, itโs not near as good as the next translation.
ESV
The English Standard Version is a personal favorite. I like to go to this one all the time, and I know so many other people find it very popular.
I wonโt say itโs my only favorite version. My other favorite version is the New American Standard Bible (more on it below).
Both of these ones established from the beginning that their missions would be word-for-word matches of the original languages. I donโt know if it was explicitly stated the NIV would be a word-for-word match, though thatโs what Howard Long intended.
For the ESV, however, thereโs no mystery.
The ESV comes from, or is in the tradition of, the Tyndale-King James, and its immediate predecessor was the 1971 Revised Standard Version (more on this one also below).
In the โ90s, evangelical leaders, which included Crosswayโs Lane Dennis and also the renowned John Piper, all came together because they noticed a need for a highly accurate and readable translation that preserved the literary quality of earlier classic versions of the Bible (while at the same time updating language that may have become outdated). Same drive as Long.
After getting permission from the National Council of Churches to use the 1971 RSV as a starting point, translation work began in 1998 under the oversight of a translation committee, the general editor of which was the renowned J. I. Packer.
Denis and Piper enlisted involvement from over 100 scholars and reviewers, and the team worked on revisions from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. They focused on making revisions for accuracy and clarity, and rendered a contemporary English translation that retained traditional theological terminology.
The first edition was published by Crossway in 2001, and then there were other updates that appeared in 2007, 2011, and 2016.
To this day, Reformed and evangelical pastors, seminaries, and those who prefer formal equivalents for studying and preaching tend to prefer the English Standard Version because itโs a word-for-word model. They find it refreshing, and honestly, so do I, because there are so many other translations out there that are paraphrases or disrespectful to the ancient manuscripts.
KJV/NKJV
In my last article, I didnโt exactly give a glowing review of the King James Version, so before we get started, I just want to correct any misconceptions you may have that I donโt like it.
I do like the King James Version. Love it. I think the Victorian English it contains is quite beautiful, and I highly recommend it, especially for children who are learning to read, because then they get to experience not just an accurate reading of the Bible, but a poetic one as well.
The Victorian English of the King James Version contains is quite beautiful. A lost art of English we sorely need back in our lives. Just as we need Shakespeare, we need the King James Bible because of how splendid it is to read.
However, much to the chagrin of the KJV obsessors out there, the King James Version is not the perfect translation. Itโs just not.
It has variations just like all other common translations because capturing all the nuance of the original languages is difficult to do when moving them to vernaculars.
Also, King James VI Scotland/James I of England put qualifiers in there to elevate himself and ensure the Bible did not contradict his authority. These were stipulations he would not bend on when creating the King James Version for the Anglicans and Puritans of his day.
That being said, the King James Version and its successor, the NKJV (the New King James Version), are still extremely valuable.
The KJV came about because in 1604 there was conflict going on between the Anglicans and the New Puritan Movement. The Puritans wanted to return to biblical roots. They wanted to exact biblical purity based on the law, the prophets, the principles of Jesus, everything in society. Wanted it all upheld to the highest degree.
So they petitioned King James to render a new translation for them, one that also went back to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, the best that was available in their time.
James authorized the revision as long as it followed the Bishopsโ Bible as the base text with as little alteration as possible and included the stipulations mentioned above, which would elevate himself and not counter his authority. He also required they did not follow the popular Geneva Bible, which had controversial marginal notes.
At his request, 47-54 scholars organized into six companies that worked at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. While they focused on the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, they also used a Latin translation as inspiration and drew heavily from William Tyndaleโs English Bible, which got him burned at the stake.
Robert Barker, the Kingโs printer, released the official version of the King James in 1611, and the earliest printings had minor variations, just like the ESV and the NIV. To this day, it still has only minor variations, although some variations affect the meaning in places. But not so much that it ruins or completely alters the overall message of the Bible.
In the mid-1970s, as newer modern language translations gained popularity, Thomas Nelson sought to update the KJVโs archaic vocabulary and grammar while preserving its style, its accuracy, and its foundation. They began in 1975, under Arthur L. Farstad, with a team of about 130 scholars, church leaders, and lay people from various backgrounds to create the new King James Version.
Again, they went back to the Hebrew and Greek texts, using the same tradition as the original KJV, and aimed for a complete equivalent to the KJV, but with language everyone could understand.
The New King James was fully published in 1982, and it and the King James Version remain popular to this day. Rightly so, because again, they are very good translations.
CSB
The Christian Standard Bible is another one of my favorites, at least the version that we have now. The one redone in 2017.
The original version came about honorably, created by Arthur Farstad, from the NKJV project, and Edwin Blum, both of whom were sponsored by Holman Bible Publishers. Hence the original title Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).
It was crafted in the 1980s and 1990s by a team of more than 100 conservative scholars from 17 denominations who worked from the Hebrew and the Greek. They used an optimal equivalence approach, which means they sought to optimize the English so it matched as closely as it could with the Greek and Hebrew without sacrificing clarity.
Balanced readability and accuracy.
The first full Bible for the HCSB appeared in 2004, and then a second edition in 2010. The most recent edition, the Christian Standard Bible, appeared in 2017.
In my opinion, itโs more accurate than the first editions because it follows scholarly advances, improves clarity and consistency, and makes the overall feeling of the text when reading so much better. Flows.
Even though itโs not as popular as the English Standard Version or the New American Standard, itโs still growing in popularity, especially in the United States.
RSV
Some of my Protestant friends donโt really like the Revised Standard Version, but I enjoy it. The only reason they donโt is because those who translated the RSV also translated Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical books to produce Catholic and Orthodox translations of the Bible as well.
Thatโs Protestant nitpicking that goes way too far because the Revised Standard Version is a very admirable and accurate translation.
Furthermore, the Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical texts from the Second Temple Period are fascinating and filled with truth. As noted in my last article, theyโre debated today only as to whether they are divinely inspired, which is a separate question from truth.
Godโs truth can and does appear all over the world, even in uninspired writings.
Like the NASB, which weโre going to discuss next, the Revised Standard Version used its immediate predecessor, the American Standard Version of 1901. A translation based on the British Revised Version from 1881-1885.
In 1928, the International Council of Religious Education acquired the ASV copyright, and after study, it authorized a thorough revision in 1937.
A committee of 32 scholars, including one Jewish scholar, got together and, under the guidance of Luther A. Weigle, Dean of Yale Divinity School, produced the RSV. They used the best available critical texts of the time, including the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, and for the Old Testament, incorporated some early findings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the Isaiah Scroll.
The New Testament was published in 1946, and the complete Bible with Old and New Testaments appeared in 1952. The Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical books followed in 1957, and then a second edition of the New Testament released in 1971, the committed produced Catholic versions.
Like the ESV and NASB, the RSV follows the Tyndale-King James tradition of translation. Prioritizes word-for-word and thematic honesty.
When going through the text, the committee modernized the Victorian English, much like the NKJV did, by removing archaic language. Even though they retained the โthouโ for address to God in earliest printings.
Their aim was to make a translation that would be accessible for private reading, public worship, and academic study and accomplished their goal so well that the panel of scholars and church leaders who made the English Standard Version used the RSV as a role model.
I consider the RSV an honorable translation and highly recommend, though not as much as the next translation on our list.
NASB
Perhaps the most important Bible you can ever have is the New American Standard Bible. I say that because, as far as word-for-word matches go, this Bible aimed from the start to be as literal as possible when translating the Hebrew and Greek into English.
It comes from the American Standard Version of 1901, counterpart to the English Revised Version of 1885.
In 1959, the Lockman Foundation wanted to launch a project because they wanted to update the ASVโs language while keeping its high degree of literal accuracy. They also wanted to incorporate new manuscript discoveries, because, as you know from my last article, manuscripts for the Bible were not discovered all at once but gradually over time.
The biggest discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls, absolutely revolutionized everything skeptical scholars believed about the Bible. Supported and proved the Bible to be authentic and true from beginning to end and to be earlier than once suspected.
Again, a team of scholars for the New American Standard Bible got together, not just a single scholar. It wasnโt like Jerome translating the Latin Vulgate for the church, but a team, comparing and contrasting, working side by side to make sure they got as accurate a translation as possible from one language to another. Worked over a decade to get the New American Standard Bible complete.
It was officially published in 1971 and gained a rapid reputation as one of the most literal English translations available. There were only a few revisions:
1977, minor
1995, to update readability while retaining the formal equivalents that the NASB contains
2020, which further modernized the English but kept the word-for-word philosophy
If your goal when reading the Bible is to be as precise as possible, which it should be, then the NASB is for you because it prioritizes precision above all else.
These are all the translations I highly recommend because they are absolutely fabulous, honest, and true to the original languages. Spectacular. Youโre never going to find a better source of truth than these.
However, there are some translations you should avoid at all costsโฆ
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