BK> Can anyone tell me which translation of the Bible is the best?
One with footnotes that tell the source language and documents for the verses. Online Bible and SeedMaster for Windows are both good shareware/freeware computer versions for the pc.
The NIV is the worst. Here's why:
The Winter 1994 issue of The Skeptical Review has a long article by former minister Dan Barker titled "Did Paul's Men Hear a Voice?" In it he exposes the NIV attempt to eliminate the conflicting accounts between Acts 9:7 and 22:9. He has this to say, quote:
The motives of the NIV and LB translations are made clear in the preface to each book. The NIV, translated by a team of evangelical scholars (instigated by the National Association of Evangelicals), is introduced with these words:
"We offer this version of the Bible to him in whose name and for whose glory it has been made. We pray that it will lead many into a better understanding of the Holy Scriptures and a fuller knowledge of Jesus Christ the incarnate Word, of whom the Scriptures so faithfully testify."If there is a contridiction in the New Testament, then it could not "faithfully testify" anything.
The NIV team was extremely selective in choosing its scholars:
"[T]he translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form. They believe that it contains the divine answer to the deepest needs of humanity, that it sheds light on our path in a dark world, and that it sets forth the way to our eternal well-being."This is not the agenda of a team of objective scholars! This is evangelism.
If there is a contradiction in the Bible, the NIV translators, commited a priori to infallibility, could never see it! (Some skeptics might be tempted to use the phrase, "There is none so blind as he who will not see," but I would never stoop to such ad hominem tactics.)
The Living Bible does not claim to be a strict translation. It is a paraphase by Dr. Kenneth Taylor, who admits in the preface:
"...when the Greek or Hebrew is not clear, then the theology of the translator is his guide, along with his sense of 'logic....' The theological lodestar in this book has been a rigid evangelical position."What if an "atheistic" or skeptical organization were to translate the Bible, putting together a team of staunch materialists, systematically excluding conservative or evangelical scholars, announcing a "rigid skeptical position," claiming to be "united in our commitment to the fallibility of the Bible" and advertising the "hope that this translation will lead many astray from faith into a solid doubt of the reliability of Scriptures?" Such prejdice clearly would taint the objectivity of the translation.