Bible Translations: Old & New July 15, 2013 ISSUE

There's an app for that!

Mary Beth Saldívar

Reading the Bible is so easy nowadays. An app on my phone allows me to read and/or listen to the Bible a little each day. Once I set up my very own 365-day plan, so I could read and listen to it historically in chronological order. I completed the King James Version in a year. When the year was up, I wanted to continue to read and listen to the Bible throughout the next year. This time I decided to consider a different translation.

While I grew up with the King James Version, and I truly love it, I do get stumped from time to time on passages or story lines that make me wonder what meaning the writer was trying to get across. As a result, several years ago I started looking into other versions of the Bible.

First was the J.B. Phillips version of the New Testament, first published in the 1950s. I found the more modern language different at first, but definitely easier to understand.

Then I bought The Message. I like it, but found it a little too modern, although I do still occasionally check it if I’m uncertain about the meaning of the old English into which the King James’ scholars translated.

There’s another aspect of Bible translations that was really important to me. I wanted a translation that was easy to understand, extremely accurate compared to the original Greek and Hebrew, and one that included both the Old and New Testaments.

Then I came across an article in The Christian Science Journal called “Mary Baker Eddy and Bible translations” (Michael Davis, December 2012). One sentence in that article stood out to me as the answer to what I was going to do about reading/listening to the Bible for the next year: “Today, many scholars believe the New Revised Standard Version to be the most accurate English translation of the Bible.”

That was the one to read next! Since then I’ve very much enjoyed its clear rendition. Since I began serving as First Reader in my branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I often use the New Revised Standard Version for my Scriptural Selection and benediction. Church members have told me how much they appreciate the inspiration from hearing the text in a new way.

I relish the clarity and insight this translation brings. And, I’m loving my app for that!

About the author

Mary Beth Saldívar lives in Marengo, Illinois.

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