Why So Many Translations?

Which Bible Can I Trust?

The pastor reads the morning's verse, and you follow along in the Bible on your lap. Then you notice: the words don't match. Same chapter, same verse, different words. The person beside you is reading a third version on a phone. A small worry starts in the back of your mind. If the Bibles don't agree, which one is right? Can I trust any of them?

Maybe you've felt the same thing standing in front of a wall of Bibles in a bookstore, with a dozen sets of initials on the spines. For some 300 years the King James Version (KJV) was the Bible of the English-speaking world. Today, as the textbook behind Abide puts it, "today’s Bible reader is faced with dozens of translations."

Welcome to Abide 102. In Abide 101 you learned the seven guardrails and the ten questions that walk you from what a passage says to how God is inviting you to live it. Abide 102: Illuminate helps you understand why there are so many English Bible translations, and how this is a gift to the Church. Reading the Bible across translations brings illumination that evades us if we only read one. By the end of this course, you'll know why you can trust them, and how a few of them side by side help you see more of God's Word, not less.

Start with a man who had the Scriptures in his hands and still needed help. Luke tells the story in Acts 8. An official of the queen of the Ethiopians had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on the road home he was reading the prophet Isaiah in his chariot:

Where the MSB (Majority Text) differs: verse 27, "Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians" (BSB "Candace, queen of the Ethiopians").

The official could read every word on the scroll. What he needed was someone to guide him into what the words meant, and God sent one. The Spirit told Philip, "Go over to that chariot and stay by it" (v. 29, BSB). Philip didn't replace Isaiah. He "began with this very Scripture" (v. 35, BSB) and opened it up. Jesus had done the same for two disciples on the road to Emmaus: "He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself" (Luke 24:27, BSB).

If you read the Bible in English, you already have guides sitting beside you in the chariot. Unless you read Hebrew and Greek, someone carried every word on your page across from those languages into yours. Those people are translators. This lesson is about who they are, why their work differs, and how to let several of them help you at once.

Acts 8:26–35

The People Behind Your Bible

Reading God's Word in translation is not a modern compromise. The textbook reminds us, "To study the Word in translation is nothing new; even Jesus and the apostles utilized the Greek Septuagint in their reading of the Old Testament." (The Septuagint is an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.)

The Bible even translates itself. Jesus and His disciples most likely spoke Aramaic, yet the Gospels were written in Greek, so "the Gospel writers were actually involved in some level of translation as they composed their inspired texts." You can watch them do it. When Jesus raises a little girl, Mark keeps His Aramaic words, "Talitha koum!" (MSB: "Talitha koumi!"), and then gives their meaning: "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" (Mark 5:41, BSB). When two disciples first follow Jesus, John does the same, adding "(which means Teacher)" after "Rabbi" (John 1:38, BSB). The Holy Spirit inspired writers who cared that their readers understood.

So who translates the Bible you hold? Usually not one person, but a team. "Most English Bible translations come as the result of years of painstaking committee-based research and debate," the textbook explains. "Translation committees are typically comprised of experts in the original languages (Greek, Hebrew, and to a lesser degree, Aramaic), textual criticism, translation theory, and modern English style and composition."

Those teams also check one another. Committees usually include scholars from different churches and traditions, so "there is a hedge of protection from theological prejudice as Bible translation committees typically represent a variety of ecclesiastical traditions and theological positions." When translators disagree, the textbook says, "there’s rarely, if ever, any malicious intent to tamper with the original intent of the authors or to undermine the integrity of the Word of God. Nor is incompetence an issue." Instead, "differences occur due to legitimate points of view that come into play in the process of translation."

That is the first reason for confidence. The differences between good translations come from careful scholars making hard choices, and most of them tell you about those choices in a preface or a footnote.

The work of making God's Word understood is an old and honorable one. After the exile, a priest and scribe named Ezra came up from Babylon to Jerusalem, and Scripture tells us what kind of man he was:

Later, the people of Israel gathered in the square before the Water Gate and asked Ezra to bring out the Book of the Law. He read it aloud "from daybreak until noon," and "all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law" (Nehemiah 8:3, BSB). Reading wasn't all they did. Levites "instructed the people in the Law as they stood in their places" (Nehemiah 8:7, BSB):

That scene was Israel's, at a turning point in its story. But the heart behind it runs through every faithful translator and teacher since: study the Word, live it, and help God's people understand it. You'll notice Ezra's order matches the one Abide is built on. He studied, then practiced, then taught. Study and Apply.

Ezra 7:10 · Nehemiah 8:8

Four Reasons Translations Differ

When two good translations read differently, it's tempting to assume one of them got it wrong. Usually neither did. "There’s almost always a good reason why translations may differ on any particular passage," the textbook says, and once you know the reasons, a difference stops being a worry and starts being a clue.

The textbook gives four reasons. We'll take them in the order that's easiest to picture:

1. The approach. Some translations stay as close as they can to the original words. Others carry over the thought in natural English. Most land somewhere in between.
2. The interpretation. Sometimes a Hebrew or Greek word could mean more than one thing, and the translators have to decide which meaning fits.
3. The manuscripts. The original pages are gone, and we have thousands of copies. Where the copies differ, translators have to choose which reading to follow.
4. The English. Our language keeps changing, so a word that was clear in 1611 may mean something else today.

Many of the differences you'll notice are the first kind, and those are mostly small. "Generally speaking, differences that occur as a result of translation philosophy are more issues of style than substance." But when the difference is big, the textbook says it can act like a red flag, a warning light on the dashboard, "indicating difficult exegetical or textual issues that warrant further investigation." A red flag isn't bad news. It's the text telling you to slow down, because there's something here worth seeing.

Each of the four reasons also turns out to be a reason for confidence, as you'll see in the next four sections.

Four reasons

Reason 1: Word for Word or Thought for Thought

Every translator faces the same problem. No two languages line up word for word. Hebrew and Greek put words in a different order than English, use expressions English doesn't have, and leave out words English needs. So every translation has to decide how closely to follow the original wording.

Picture a line, called the translation spectrum. At one end are translations that stay as close to the original words as English allows, often called word for word (formal equivalence). At the other end are translations that carry over the meaning in natural English, called thought for thought (functional equivalence). In between are balanced translations that try to do some of both. The Berean Standard Bible (BSB), which Abide quotes, describes itself as "near the middle of the range." The Translation Map in the free Translation Toolbox lays this spectrum across the top, so you can see where dozens of English Bibles sit.

No translation sits at either end. "Because no translation can be completely literal, all translations will employ a certain degree of dynamic equivalence," and "a truly literal approach to translation will result in a virtually unreadable English translation of the Bible." (A note on words: the textbook uses "literal" here to mean word for word. That's a different sense from the Literal guardrail you met in Abide 101, which means reading a passage according to its kind of writing.)

Here is the important part: as the textbook puts it, "literal" doesn't necessarily mean "accurate." A word-for-word translation and a thought-for-thought translation can both be faithful. You see the difference most clearly with idioms, expressions whose meaning isn't the sum of their words. Here is one from Jesus:

Where the MSB (Majority Text) differs: verse 43, "marveling at all that Jesus had done" (BSB "all that Jesus was doing").

The BSB's "Let these words sink into your ears" keeps the picture in the Greek. The New International Version (NIV) carries over the meaning instead: "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you" (Luke 9:44, NIV). The New Living Translation (NLT): "Listen to me and remember what I say" (Luke 9:44, NLT). The textbook singles out the New English Translation (NET), which found an English idiom to match the Greek one: "Take these words to heart." All of them say what Jesus meant: don't let this slip past you.

The Old Testament has idioms too. Through Amos, God reminded Israel of the hard times He had sent to call them back to Himself:

"Cleanness of teeth" (BSB) sounds like good dental care. It isn't. Look at the rest of the verse: "all your towns with lack of bread" (BSB). The two lines say the same thing in different words, and the second explains the first. Teeth stay clean when there's nothing to eat. The NIV says it outright: "I gave you empty stomachs in every city" (Amos 4:6, NIV). The NLT goes further: "I brought hunger to every city and famine to every town" (Amos 4:6, NLT).

You've seen this before. In Abide 101, lesson 3, Jesus spoke of a good eye, a Hebrew way of talking about generosity. A bad or evil eye meant the opposite: stinginess or envy. Jesus uses that idiom in two passages of Matthew, and it shows up again in Mark. Look across the table and watch what happens to the eye:

The KJV and the New King James Version (NKJV) keep the eye every time, so you can watch the same picture come back in all three verses. That's one of many reasons to love these translations. The Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) keeps the eye in both Matthew passages. In Matthew 20 it says "envious" where the Greek says "evil," and in Mark 7 it gives the meaning, "envy," and puts the literal words in a footnote each time. That's a fair trade, and it rewards anyone who reads the notes. The BSB, near the middle of the spectrum, keeps the picture in Matthew 6 but gives the meaning in Matthew 20 and Mark 7. With the BSB alone, you'd never see that the three verses share one idiom. The English Standard Version (ESV), NIV and NLT give the meaning in Matthew 20 and Mark 7, but in Matthew 6 they turn the eye into eyesight: "healthy." Each of these is a faithful translation, and none of them shows you everything. Read a translation that keeps the words beside one that gives the meaning, check the footnotes, and you'll see the picture and its meaning together.

A word about paraphrases. Past the far end of the spectrum are paraphrases, such as Eugene Peterson's The Message, which retell the Bible freely in modern speech. They can be refreshing, but they carry far more of the writer's own interpretation. The textbook offers this advice: "Therefore, if you consult a paraphrase, treat it as you would a commentary."

Luke 9:43–45 · Amos 4:6

Reason 2: The Same Words, Read Two Ways

Sometimes translations differ not because of their approach but because a word in the original could mean more than one thing. Then the translators have to interpret before they can translate. Most of the time the meaning is clear and every translation agrees. Now and then it isn't, and you can see the choice on the page.

David wrote Psalm 8 while looking up at the night sky:

The BSB says God made man "a little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8:5, BSB), and so do the KJV, NKJV and NIV. The ESV reads "a little lower than the heavenly beings" (Psalm 8:5, ESV). The NLT reads "only a little lower than God" (Psalm 8:5, NLT).

Three different words, and the reason is one Hebrew word: elohim. It's one of the most common words for God in the Old Testament, but it can also refer to other heavenly beings, and in this verse the context could point either way. The textbook weighs it carefully: lexically, the word "God" seems the better fit, but "angels" makes better sense of the context. Verse 5, it says, "acts as a hinge." Man is small next to the heavens (v. 3), yet crowned with glory and given rule over God's works (vv. 5–6), echoing the creation of man in God's image in Genesis 1. The textbook's conclusion is generous: "Clearly, any of the three translation choices could work, and a good argument can be made lexically and contextually for any of them."

Notice what the translators did with a hard choice. They couldn't print elohim and leave you to sort it out, so they chose. "While footnotes may reflect alternative glosses, each translation must make a choice." Many Bibles put the other option in a footnote, showing you their work. And you have one more help: the New Testament quotes this psalm. Hebrews 2:7 reads, "You made him a little lower than the angels" (BSB), and then applies the psalm to Jesus, who "was made a little lower than the angels" so "that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9, BSB). That's the Harmony guardrail at work: Scripture helping explain Scripture.

Psalm 8:3–6

Reason 3: Different Manuscripts, and Why We Can Trust Them

Before anyone can translate the Bible, they have to know what the Hebrew and Greek say. That sounds easy, but "Many English Bible readers don’t realize that transmission precedes translation, and the two are quite distinct." Transmission is the copying and preserving of the text through the centuries. Translation comes after.

Here are the facts. The pages the apostles and prophets first wrote are gone: "there are no autographs of any portion of the Bible in existence today." What we have are copies, thousands of them, made by hand over many centuries. The copies sometimes differ in small ways, and scholars call those differences variants. The work of comparing the copies to find the original wording is called textual criticism, and the textbook is quick to explain that word. It "is often misunderstood but the term is used in the sense of being discerning, not necessarily critical in a negative sense."

Should that worry you? The textbook's answer is reassuring: "But don’t be dismayed; variants are usually exegetically insignificant, and no area of Christian doctrine rests upon a textual variant." In fact, so many copies are a gift: "the best safeguard for the preservation of the Bible rests in the fact that textual variants exist among biblical manuscripts," because the copies can be checked against one another. The result: "we can affirm with confidence that the Greek New Testament we hold today is an accurate reflection of what was written in the original autographs."

English Bibles follow one of three main Greek texts of the New Testament. Most modern translations use a critical text, which weighs the readings of all the manuscripts verse by verse, including the earliest ones found. The KJV and NKJV follow the Textus Receptus, the printed Greek text of the 1500s. The name means "Received Text," but "In reality, this name has nothing to do with revelation, inspiration, or divine endorsement"; it was the standard text of its day. A few translations, such as the Majority Standard Bible (MSB), follow the Majority Text, the reading found in most of the surviving manuscripts.

Here is the textbook's best-known example. Paul is telling the Colossians what the Father has done:

Now read verse 14 in the NKJV: "in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:14, NKJV). The KJV has the phrase too. Most modern translations, the BSB among them, do not.

Some people have called the modern versions "bloodless Bibles," as if someone had cut the blood of Christ out of Scripture. The real story is less dramatic. The phrase, the textbook explains, "is found in only a few late New Testament manuscripts yet is represented in the Textus Receptus." The MSB doesn't have it either. So where did it come from? Paul wrote almost the same sentence to the Ephesians:

Here the phrase is secure. In the textbook's words, "The textual support" for it "in Ephesians 1:7 is very strong," and most scholars believe the phrase was carried into some late copies of Colossians 1:14 because the two verses are so alike. Nothing was lost. The textbook concludes, "Whatever the history behind the variant, clearly the New Testament doctrines relating to the blood of Christ don’t depend on the variant in Colossians 1:14." The New Testament teaches it again and again. God presented Christ "as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith" (Romans 3:25, BSB). "You who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13, BSB). Through Christ, God reconciled all things to Himself, "making peace through the blood of His cross" (Colossians 1:20, BSB).

Translators also show you where the questions are. The LSB keeps well-known passages found only in later manuscripts, many of them in the Majority Text, but sets them in brackets, which in its words mark "words probably not in the original manuscripts." You can see them, and you know where they came from. Other Bibles do the same in footnotes. Nothing is hidden.

Colossians 1:13–14 · Ephesians 1:7

Reason 4: English Keeps Changing

The last reason has nothing to do with Hebrew or Greek. It's about English. Living languages change, and words drift. A translation made in 1611 used the English of 1611.

Peter wrote to believers living as "foreigners and exiles" (v. 11, BSB) among neighbors who slandered them:

The KJV reads verse 12 this way: "Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles" (1 Peter 2:12, KJV). Today, "conversation" means talking. But the Greek word behind it, anastrophē, "does not infer verbal communication, but rather the broader elements of human conduct and behavior." Peter wasn't only talking about how believers speak. He meant their way of life. A reader with only the KJV could easily miss that.

Some changes are funnier. The KJV opens 2 Corinthians 8 with "Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia" (2 Corinthians 8:1, KJV). The textbook admits, "We’re not sure if anyone without consulting other translations could know exactly what Paul is saying in this verse." The BSB clears it up in a moment: "Now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the churches of Macedonia" (2 Corinthians 8:1, BSB).

None of this is a knock on the KJV. "This, of course, isn’t to indict the KJV as a poor translation of the Bible." It has fed English-speaking Christians for four centuries. And its own translators would cheer you on for comparing. In their preface to the 1611 Bible, they wrote: "Therefore, as S. Augustine saith, that variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures."

1 Peter 2:11–12

What's in Your Translation Toolbox?

So what do you do with all of this? Think of translations not as competitors but as tools. A carpenter doesn't own one tool and use it for every job. Each translation does some things well, and together they help you see the text from more than one angle.

Keep a Bible you love. "As a final point, we want to assure you that there’s nothing wrong with having a preferred translation of the Bible for devotional reading, teaching, or preaching." Read it, memorize from it, mark it up. Then get to know it: "Read the preface and the translator’s notes, as they will reveal the underlying translation theory and textual base behind that translation." Ten minutes with the preface tells you where your Bible sits on the translation spectrum and which Greek text it follows.

When you study, open a few. The textbook recommends "at least four or five reliable Bible translations open on your desk (or screen)," and a free Bible app makes that easy. Start with three or four from different parts of the Translation Map: one close to the words, one that carries the flow of thought, and one that follows a different Greek text or has good notes. Here are two sets to get you started:

When they differ, ask why. The textbook gives the question to ask: "Is the difference the result of (1) differing interpretations (the same text being translated differently), (2) differences in translation theory (still the same text being translated), (3) an underlying text-critical issue (different texts being translated and thus the translation being different), or some combination of these?" And if an older Bible reads strangely, add the fourth: has the English changed? A small difference in wording you can enjoy and move on. A big difference becomes one of your questions for the passage. This is how an English reader works the Linguistic guardrail from Abide 101: you may not read Hebrew or Greek, but your translations together will show you where the original adds something worth digging for.

Why does God give us so many ways to hear Him? Go back to the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Jews from all over the world were gathered in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came on Jesus' followers:

Where the MSB (Majority Text) differs: verse 7, "they asked one another" (BSB "they asked").

God didn't make the crowd learn one language before they could hear Him. By His Spirit, each one heard "in his own native language" (v. 8, BSB). From the cross on, the news about Jesus went out in more than one language; even the sign Pilate posted over Him was written "in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek" (John 19:20, BSB; MSB: "in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin"). Every faithful translation carries on that work, telling "the wonders of God in our own tongues" (v. 11, BSB).

That's why the many translations on the shelf are not a threat to your faith. They're evidence of how much God wants to be understood. The textbook's first chapter said it this way: "God is more intent on revealing himself to you than you are to get to know him." Jesus promised the one who loves Him and keeps His commandments, "I will love him and reveal Myself to him" (John 14:21, BSB). So open your Bible, open two or three more beside it, and ask the Author to guide you. He sent Philip to the chariot, and He still guides those who seek Him in His Word.

This week: choose your three or four translations. Then read one short passage, such as Ephesians 1:3–14, in all of them. Mark one place where they differ, and ask which of the four reasons is at work.

Acts 2:5–11

Meditate and Obey. Study and Apply. Hear and Do.

This is how we abide in Christ. This is how we demonstrate our love for God.

Sources

• Fuhr, Richard Alan, Jr., and Andreas J. Köstenberger. Inductive Bible Study: Observation, Interpretation, and Application through the Lenses of History, Literature, and Theology. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016. Ch. 1, 19; ch. 3, "Comparing Bible Translations: Translations as Tools of Observation," 46–73. Ch. 3 quotes the translators' preface to the King James Version (1611).
• Berean Bible Translation Committee. "Frequently Asked Questions." bereanbibles.com.
• Legacy Standard Bible. "Explanation of General Format." The Lockman Foundation, 2021.

Translations quoted

• Berean Standard Bible (BSB) and Majority Standard Bible (MSB). Berean Bible Translation Committee. Public domain since 2023. bereanbible.com, majoritybible.com.
• English Standard Version (ESV). Crossway, 2001.
• King James Version (KJV). 1611. Public domain in the United States.
• Legacy Standard Bible (LSB). The Lockman Foundation, 2021. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing.
• New International Version (NIV). Biblica, 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011.
• New King James Version (NKJV). Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• New Living Translation (NLT). Tyndale House Foundation, 1996, 2004, 2015.

Scripture quotations marked Berean Standard Bible (BSB) or Majority Standard Bible (MSB) are taken from texts that have been dedicated to the public domain. Free resources are available at BereanBible.com and MajorityBible.com. Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version, public domain in the United States.

Scripture quotations marked "ESV" are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by Permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright © 2014, Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked LSB are taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.