I Explain and Rank Every Major Bible Translation (The List May Surprise You)

I've seen more arguments in church lobbies over this question, which translation of the Bible is the best? Maybe you've seen it in Bible studies, where someone pulls out a message Bible on their iPhone or iPad, and the person next to them is clutching the original 1611 King James Version of the Bible. And then what happens is this, people start debating and not studying scripture. Today, what I want to do is, I'm going to pull back the curtain on every major Bible translation. I'm going to show you how they work. I want to show you what they are, why people love them, and even how some of them fall short in their translation. And by the end of the video, you're going to know exactly which translation is right for you. If you stick to the end, I'll show you the one I use. And believe it or not, I bet you'll be surprised by my translation that I preach from. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. I'm going to walk you through every popular translation of the Bible, and we're going to rank them from superior down to F. Now, I'll just give you a heads up.

None of them are going to be in the F category, but there will be some Ds and some Cs for us to consider. And we're going to rank them not just on the integrity of the text, but the reliability, the readability, the devotional aspect, and then finally, the memorization piece, which a lot of people overlook. I want you to stick with me to the end, because I'm going to share with you my own translation journey, and it's going to lead me to the Bible I preach today and study from personally. And I will say this, it's probably going to surprise you. Before we can talk about any specific translation, we need to understand what I believe is the single most important concept in the entire conversation. And most people have never really heard it explained this way. And without this, I would argue the translation debate doesn't make a lot of sense. It's just noise. It doesn't apply to our lives. Every Bible translation ever made falls somewhere on a spectrum. On one hand, you have on this side the literal version of the Bible, word for word, thought for thought.

On the other side, you have the paraphrase section of the Bible. This is like a idea or a theme for theme approach. In the middle, you have the dynamic equivalent section of the Bible, and this is a thought for thought section. I'll show you a picture so you can visualize it. I want you to imagine that you speak Spanish and you're trying to translate something into English. The literal approach would be to take every Spanish word and then find the closest English word and then swap it out while preserving the structure of the translation. On the other hand, you would have like a dynamic approach, maybe in the middle, where you're trying to take words that you're translating and ideas that are being communicated and you're translating it into new sentences. You may have new words and new thoughts, but that's part of the process. Neither approach is dishonest. Neither approach is uninspired. They are two legitimate philosophies of translation. And when you understand this principle, you begin to unlock every debate you've ever heard about Bible translations. And you realize a lot of people argue

for things that are meaningless. Now, here's where it gets interesting. The Bible was not written in English, newsflash. It was actually written in the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic. And in the New Testament, it was written in Greek. Now, in Hebrew and the Old Testament, it's very hard to understand. I remember when I was learning it in seminary, it was simply dots and sticks. That's what it looked like. And honestly, it's not far from that. Biblical Hebrew is challenging for three reasons. One, because it reads from right to left, not left to right. Secondly, it uses symbols most Western readers have never encountered in their lifetime. And then finally, the original manuscripts didn't include vowels. A lot of people don't know this. It was just a series of consonants strung together. So in order to be able to pronounce the language, you added vowels years later. Scholars had to supply this so people could pronounce it. In the New Testament, it was written in Greek, specifically a form of what they call Koine Greek, which was the most common everyday language of the first century.

Greek presents a different challenge. The words have endings. I remember studying Greek in seminary and trying to remember all of these endings, O, S, A, Amen, Et, I, Usi. I mean, I still remember it today. It's how everything in the language connects. Now, if you have a mathematical mind or an engineering mind, you're probably gonna pick up Greek easier than Hebrew. For me, I actually did the opposite. of Hebrew faster than Greek. And I ended up serving after that as a teaching assistant for a year and a half. I was a fellow to one of my professors. I even considered to pursue a PhD in Hebrew instead of preaching. And then I went to take the entrance exam and got saved and went back to preaching again. But I love the Hebrew language, still do today. Here's something that will permanently change how you understand the Bible and the translation theory. The English European language, which I'm assuming a lot of you are speaking because you're here listening to me now, we have about 200,000 words accessible to us in the English European language, 200,000. Some say 250, but let's just go with 200. Biblical Hebrew in contrast only has 8,000 words. Let that sink in for a moment.

The ancient writers of the Hebrew language had to be extraordinarily creative. Hebrew words, that's why they carry double and triple meaning. Even numbers do double duty. They go far beyond the face value of the numeric value that it proposes. Now, I could go down the rabbit hole one day, and I may do this. If you're interested in me doing a video on this, comment below and maybe I'll do a video on Gematria and the use of numbers and the symbolism of the numbers. It is beautiful and overwhelming. It's more than I could do here, but if you're interested, comment below. Here's the reality. Nobody on earth today speaks Biblical Hebrew or even Koine Greep. It's not their native tongue anymore. So every single English Bible you and I have ever held in our hand, every one of them is a translation made by a team of scholars who are trying to move from the ancient world to the present English of today, and they're trying to do it with accuracy and clarity. It's a hard task, if you can imagine. And the question is this. Accuracy to what degree? Do you wanna be accurate for the words

or do you wanna be accurate with the structure? Do you wanna be accurate in the meaning? The meaning of the text could be important, more important than the words. That's the debate. And both sides have something to say and offer about that. So let me walk you through the spectrum of how translation works. On the one hand, you have the literal version closest to the actual text and structure. On the other hand, you have the paraphrase form. And in the middle, you have the dynamic equivalent or as the CSB translators say, optimal equivalence. We're gonna start with the interlinear section. This is the more formal side. And you have Bibles like the NASV, the ESV, the King James, and the New King James Version in this section. And I'm gonna rank them in order, in my opinion of usefulness and order of the translation. Now, this is a personal reference point for me. You may disagree. I'd love to hear what your ranking is and your list in the comments, but this is the way I rank them. And at the end, I'll tell you why. I wanna start with the far left. And I don't have an icon for this, but if I had it, I would put it up here in the A section. And that is the interlinear Bible. It's not a translation at all.

It's not something you just sit down and read casually. What it does is it presents the Hebrew and the Greek text above with the English word printed directly beneath each word in the language. I'll show you a picture so you can visualize. It's a study tool. It's a window straight into the original language. It's excellent for people who are seminary students, people who are going to Bible college, pastors, or anyone who just wants to go deep into the text to see exactly what the word is that God gave to the people. Now, the challenge here is that the Greek and Hebrew grammar were completely different than our English language. So if you try to read it devotionally, it's hard to read. It's very clunky at best. It's not easy to read devotionally. That's why I would say it's simply a reference tool and it's unmatched in that area. Next, we have the New American Standard Bible, or the NASB. Of all the readable English translations, the NASB is the most rigorous translation of all of them. It's the most rigorously literal. Here's what I mean. Scholars call it the gold standard for serious study. If you wanna know exactly what a word means and how it was used in the original language, the NASB gets as close to the original Greek or Hebrew as possible. Now, there's a trade-off. The trade-off is that the language

can still feel a little clunky here. I'm messing up my chart here. It's awkward at times. It can feel stiff because they're trying to preserve the original grammatical structure. rather than the natural flow of the English language today. And so for that reason, even if it's difficult to understand like that, I put it in the S tier. Let me move it up here. It is an S tier superior translation. Next we move to the English standard version of the Bible, the ESV. And the ESV has become one of the most widely accepted and used translations by the evangelical world today. It was translated in 2001 and it was very rigorous, like the NASB. It stayed close to the original language, the Hebrew and Greek, but it was noticeably more readable. I remember when I first started reading it, it was very accessible to read. There's also, if you know anything about Crossway, they do an amazing job of resources and different versions or different types of journaling Bible and a study Bible. The ESV study Bible is arguably one of the best study Bibles out there. It's a translation I strongly recommend for anyone who wants the rigor of word studies without sacrificing too much readability in the text.

And for that reason, I'm gonna put the ESV at a C, non-plant. We'll put it at the A or the S category, superior. Now I know what you're thinking. Is everyone gonna? No, they're not. I promise, stick with me. We move on down the formal side. So we have interlinear, we have NASB, ESV, we get to King James, which is very close to that area of the chart. The King James version of the Bible was published in 1611 during the reign of King James I. It was the first Bible of the English speaking world that was introduced on a massive level. Now there were other Bibles like the Great Bible and the Tyndale Bible and the Wycliffe Bible and the Covered, but this one was widely accepted. Before you email me with the way I write this, let me just tell you, I love the King James version of the Bible. I've studied it extensively. I have actual pages from the original King James version, the he version, which is, I'm sorry, the she version, which is older than the he, which is a mistake. I love the version of the Bible. I have different years of it in my office. I've studied it to have an appreciation for it. It was translated over three years.

They had three different groups in Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. They worked for three years to translate. I think they edited it another three years after it went to translation. Then they took nine months to get it to press. Think about that, nine months, not on a Xerox photocopier at your office, nine months typesetting the words to produce the coveted King James version of the Bible. The King James version of the Bible was the only Bible, feel the weight of this, that was accepted and used around the world for 300 years. It was the Bible. There was no other Bible like it. And there are good and bad to that, but I will say one of the benefits to that, I've thought about this a lot, is that whenever you open the Bible and I open my Bible, we share the same common language. When you read a text, I read a text. Today, I'm not saying we don't need these versions and they aren't helpful, but today, you have a challenge because you'll read a version, I'll read a version, and they just sound and feel differently. At a time when the King James was prevalent, everybody had it, you had a lot of synergy, a lot of connectivity. Also, people don't understand this or know this,

but every Bible ever printed until the 1940s, I think it is, had the Apocrypha printed in it. Can you imagine a modern evangelical Bible today? Now, I was raised Catholic and I had the Apocrypha. Some are saying, what is the Apocrypha? The Apocrypha are the collection of non-canonical, non-accepted books by the councils as they tried to affirm what books are God's word and what are good for history and context. There are seven or 13, depending on which ones, Tobit, first, second, third, fourth, Maccabees. They have a lot of different books. Sirach, those are the Apocrypha books. Every Bible until the 1940s included the Apocrypha inside of it. So that's interesting. A lot of people don't know that. The language of the King James is beautiful. It's poetic. It's majestic. There's nothing really quite like it. But the challenge is this. You're reading, in the original King James version of the Bible, you're reading a translation that is 400 years old in English. And words like thee and thou and hibit and thereto and verily and hath, they just don't appear today in everyday conversation. Some words have actually shifted in meaning since 1611,

and you can actually be confused by the meaning. They're called false friends. If you wanna look this up on the internet, words like save, save a man be born again. He cannot inherit the kingdom. Well, that word save doesn't mean save like rescue. It meant accept, accept a man be. So these are examples that you need to be aware of. That said, generations of believers have memorized scripture in the King James Version of the Bible. And if for that reason alone, I think it's a great translation. It's still hard to read in the original. But by the way, here's another little sidebar most people who argue King James only, this is the Bible of the angels, the angels gave it to us, the only Bible authorized. Well, the challenge with that is this, most people don't realize the version they actually have in their present hands is the 11th translation or the 11th edition, updated edition of the 1769 William Blaney edition. Don't take my word for it, look it up. William Blaney, 1769 is the 11th upgrade or the 11th iteration of it, because why? Because you wouldn't understand the original King James language. And so for that reason, I'm gonna give it a solid B. I'll give it a B for that, okay?

What about the new King James Version of the Bible? This is the update or the edit to the original King James. It was published in 18 or 1982, not 18, 1982, to solve a problem that we just discussed. And the problem was the language of the original King James was archaic. It was preserving some of the words that didn't make sense today. And so what they did is they updated the language while keeping the formal structure at the same time for the underlying tradition and manuscript. So if you love the King James Version of the Bible, but you had a barrier in a sense to the English, then the new King James Version is the natural progressive step. You get the heritage without the stumbling block of the old English. Now, the new King James Version of the Bible, I'd put up there on the A tier because it's been a helpful, beneficial translation. Now, here's the challenge with these two, and I don't have time to go into all of it here, but they are translated from the Textus Receptus, which is the majority text. Now, I know there's a lot of conspiracies around this, and I mean, I've gone down all of them, I promise you. But the real challenge was the King James Version translators did the best they could with the translation they had at the time, which was basically an 8th or 9th century copy.

The oldest they could get to the original 1st century time period in which it was written is the 8th or 9th century. That was the oldest manuscript. At the turn of the 19th century, we found two copies, the Codex Sineaticus, which was the Book of Sinai, and the Codex Vaticanus, or the Book at Canaan, or the Book of the Vatican. Those two copies, which matched exactly, brought the translation date back from the 8th or 9th century to the 2nd and 3rd century AD. So basically, in a sense, you went back 600 years. That's what every modern translation after the King James is translated from, the ESV, the NASB, the NIV, the CSB, the LSB, the HCSB, the NLT, you name it. And some people will say, well, you only have two versions of it. You have 8, 9,000, or 15,000 of the other. I get that. You have more later, fewer earlier. But you know as well as I do, the goal of translation is to get as close as we can to the original dissemination of the words. And that's why I opt for, and that's why the New King James or the King James is not superior for that reason. Now, here's the thing.

You're probably wondering, are there differences in the translation? Minor, minor differences. It's a long story, but I had a meeting with one of the leading scholars. He was the final gatekeeper for the Hebrew version of the New King James version. But he was like the guy, the main editor. I had a meeting with him years ago, and I asked him, am I reading the wrong translation? Should I opt for the King James, New King James, instead of all these other ones? And he said to me this line, which changed everything. He said, Robbie, the differences in the translation don't make a difference to the doctrine or theology. So it's the same. So you have minor scribal additions. Now, let's move on to the middle of the road, which would be more of the dynamic equivalent or the optimal equivalent section. And right here at the center of the spectrum, you have translators trying to ride the fence on the accuracy of the original text and the reliability or the readability of the English language. And the one that I like is the CSB right here, the Christian Standard Version of the Bible. Now, the translators adopted a new. approach they call optimal equivalence. And here's what that means.

It's not simply word for word, and it's not simply thought for thought or a paraphrase. The goal is to optimally choose whatever each individual passage necessitates. For example, when a word for word rendering preserves the meaning of the actual text and it reads clearly in English, they'll use that. When there's a strict literal rendering of the text, but it actually obscures what it means in English, they will move away from that to a more dynamic approach. So basically, whatever the text calls for, that's what they're going to do. The result of this approach, what I love about this is, the result is that it holds tight to the formal side of the spectrum while giving us a Bible that is easy to read, easy to understand. It has a strong evangelical theological commitment and an excellent translation committee behind it that went through it. And it delivers, in a sense, the precision of the NASB, but the readability of the NIV, which is why the CSB I'm gonna put at the top of the list. Now, I know this is surprising, but stay with me. Let me just tell you a little hint. This is the Bible I actually read and preach from, but you have to stay to the end for me to tell you why I do preach from this Bible. The New Revised Standard Version, or the NRSV, is the next one we'll consider.

This was published in 1989. It was an update of the RSV, the Revised Standard Version. It moved away from the strict word-for-word translation that came before it to a more readable version. It carried with it scholarship that was very solid. It has a wide appeal in the academic and the Protestant settings of today, although most evangelical circles have gotten away from it. If you're a serious student of the Bible, there is some value in the NRSV. And so for that reason, I'll put it as a solid B. Good, not top, but kind of middle of the road. Then there is the most well-known NIV, or the New International Version. Many of you watching, you're using this version now. It was originally published in 1978. There was a significant update in 2011. It is argued to be one of the best-selling English translations of all time. And there's a reason for this. It sits at the center of the spectrum. I mean, dead center. Literal on this side, paraphrase on this side, dynamic equivalent in the middle. And it's accurate for anyone serious about studying the Bible, but it's also reliable for devotional time with the Lord. If you ask me what Bible is probably the best for any new Christian to get involved in reading the Bible,

or what's the best for someone in their morning devotion time, if they've never read the Bible before, it's probably the NIV. It's not perfect, there's no translation that is, but it's incredibly accessible because it's good for new, growing believers. Now, I would not recommend the TNIV, which tries to take the language and remove the gender nature of the text and make it applicable to all. I wouldn't go there. And I would say the 1984 edition, 85 NIV, is probably the best of all of the NIV translations, although it's hard to get. But this is one that has stood the time as being one that is faithful for believers for generations and decades. So for that reason, I'm gonna give the NIV an A ranking, for those reasons alone. It's not the closest to the Greek, but it is readable and it's helpful. Now we're gonna move closer to the paraphrase, not completely there, but we're gonna get closer away from the optimal equivalence, more down the dynamic equivalent spectrum. These are the ones I feel read the most naturally, but they also carry some real risk that a lot of people honestly don't talk about. So let me tell you the reality of these translations.

We'll start with the New Living Translation. This is one of the most popular dynamic translations on the way to paraphrase, especially for devotional reading of any of them. It feels as you read it, almost like you're reading a novel. The language is smooth, it's modern, it's up to date, it's real easy to follow. And importantly, it's really done with scholarship. There's a lot of scholarship behind it. It's a genuine translation, qualified scholars put it together, and it's not a paraphrase as the message is on the far extreme. It's excellent for reading large sections of scripture quickly. It's great for introducing children to the Bible for the first time, even new believers. This is, I'll just tell you, the one my wife started, Candy, she started reading the Bible and the New Living Translation version, still loves it today. Okay, now here's the risk though. The risk is when you move away from the specific words of the original text and you move away from the structure, you sometimes move away from the important nuances or the meaning of the text. And the translators had to make an interpretive decision when they were translating, and that's a fine decision if you know it, but you just need to understand that that's what you're reading.

You may not be getting the actual word that God communicated through Moses to the people, you're getting the idea, and that's okay if you know that. For that reason, I'm gonna put it as a strong B on the list. The next one is the Good News Translation, sometimes called the GNB or the GNT, the Good News Bible, here it is right here. This one was designed with the specific reader in mind, someone with limited English vocabulary. They don't know a lot of English words, maybe English is not the original language they spoke, maybe they have another language as their primary language, and English is their second language. This is for someone who's reading at a basic literacy level. They designed this for someone to just understand it simply. So you need to know that when you understand what this Bible's about. It's clear, yes, it's accessible, it's easy to read, but it's limited in depth. It is not for the serious Bible student, for that I'm gonna put it at the D level. Again, probably not one I would recommend for anyone, really for anything, but okay. What about the Common English Bible, the CEB? It was published in 2011. It was intentionally written, you're gonna love this, at an eighth grade reading level. A lot of people don't know this,

but it was highly accessible. Some evangelical scholars have raised concerns, though, about the translation, why? Because when you move that far away from the original language, you tend to get away from the meaning of the text. And so the translators have to make a decision, and they're aware of this decision, but they move so far away that you miss what's actually happening. It's useful, in a sense, for readability. It's great for accessibility, if you're entering into the Bible-reading realm, and you're saying, man, I want something accessible. But here's my warning to you. You should never have this as your primary Bible, why? Because this should always be paired with a formal translation, or even a literal translation, to really understand the depth of what God is saying in his word. And so for that reason, I'm gonna put it in the C range, okay, not D, but C. The New Living Bible is one that crosses the line that most people don't even realize. The Living Bible is technically a paraphrase. It's not a translation at all. Kenneth Taylor was the one who translated it in 1970, and he did it to explain to his kids how to understand the Bible. He wanted to make it easy for children

to have a first step to understand God's word. Here's the critical thing many people don't know. He worked for the American Standard version of the Bible translation, and he used that, not the original Greek and Hebrew, as the way he translated the text. Here's what I mean. He didn't go back to the original language. He used the translation to translate. What that means is he started one step further away from the original source than anyone else who had previously translated before. It's a great translation as far as conversational reading goes. It's warm, it's inviting, it's easy to read. But remember, you're reading one man's interpretation of another person's translation. And for that reason alone, it makes it enormously problematic. My seminary teacher used to say, the living Bible is neither living nor a Bible. And for that reason, I'm gonna give it a D, okay? The final one is the message, and we know about this one if you've been around Bible translations a while. It was written and translated, or written and translated by Pastor Eugene Peterson. He was a scholar and a pastor. Peterson started preaching through complete books of the Bible, Old and New Testament, and he realized that the King James, the new King James,

was hard for his people to digest. And so he wanted to translate it. Every time he would preach a passage, he would hand out the translation of the book. So Philippians, for example, or Exodus. The people fell in love with it so much that they basically asked him to do it for every book of the Bible that he was preaching through. And so that's how it started. In many places, the message, if you've ever read it, is incredibly vivid. It's poetic. Peterson had a genuine gift for the English language, and you can feel that on every page as you read it. But here's the challenge. The message was never designed to be a study Bible. Peterson himself even said it's supposed to be read. alongside a formal or even an interpretive, literal translation. It's never meant to be used alone or to replace a Bible translation. So if you're using the message as your only Bible, come in close. I wanna say this as directly and lovingly as I can. You should be reading a literal one alongside with it. Don't read the message alone because you're gonna miss the intent and the meaning of God's word, the way he intended it to be given to us. Some passages land brilliantly.

I've read them before and thought, wow, and I even use this in my own study. I won't say I throw it out completely. I use it, but I use it to supplement the text that I'm reading, the CSB or the ESV. Other times you'll see in the text, they translate it in a way that's misleading. They stretch the meaning a certain way. They come up with the vernacular or the colloquialisms that really go away from what I think is the intent of scripture. So use it as a supplement, never as the foundation. And for that reason, I'm gonna put it as a C, rate it as a C. Now, all this gets us to one place. And the question is this, which Bible translation should I read? And here's my honest answer. And I'll give this to a discipleship group I'm leading or my church if they ask me. Focus on one translation, but don't make it the only translation you read. Some of the best Bible readers I know, the ones with deep roots in their faith, the ones with strong convictions about their theological understanding of scripture, they don't just pick up one Bible and pretend that the others don't matter or the others don't exist. They'll use a literal translation for deep study,

but they'll compare it with a dynamic equivalent for devotional use. They'll study and memorize in one version and study in another. The point I'm trying to make is this. You need to use multiple Bibles to give you a perspective of the text from different angles. If you don't know the Greek and Hebrew, this is the best way to do it. Let me tell you my personal journey with Bibles myself, because I didn't arrive at this answer overnight. The Bible I use now is the CSB or the Christian Standard Version, but that's not where I started. I started, like many of you, with the New King James Version of the Bible. I had my MacArthur Study Bible in hand. I went to Bible studies. I would travel and preach early on, and I loved it. But then I started to preach to students early on in my ministry, and I realized that many of the students in the audience had a NIV or a New International Version in their hand simply because the New King James was hard to understand. The language was archaic, and it was choppy and difficult, and so I made the shift to the NIV or the New International Version of the Bible. I loved it, and then I went to seminary. When I went to seminary, many of the seminary students made fun of me for carrying what they called, quote,

the nearly inspired version of the Bible. Seminary joke, obviously. But they carried the prestigious NASB. That's what we carry. That's what the professors carry, and they were right. It did connect, and it was close to the Greek and Hebrew, and there were many times with the NIV, I was wondering, what does the text say here? Is this the word God chose when he spoke through Paul, or is this what Jesus really said? And so I was finding myself doing that in study, so I made the shift. I shifted to the NASB Bible. I loved it. I loved the precision. I loved the integrity. But there's a problem that I noticed early on. Because I was leading discipleship groups, and we studied and memorized scripture, and we read devotionally and did hear journals, I noticed that the language was wooden. It was clunky. It was chunky at places, and it was doing exactly what it was designed to do, preserve the text, but at the same time, it made it difficult to internalize and memorize, and so I made the shift to the ESV, which was close to the original languages, but it had a feel and a flavor

that was easier to understand. It was better, in a sense, for memorization. It was still rigorous, but I honestly have to say, I ran into the same wall over time. It was stiff in some places. It was still clunky in others. I started to memorize passages, and it didn't flow in the way the English, oh, not to mention, there was a European flavor to it. I'm not trying to be critical of those who love the ESV. I think it's a great translation, but if you're honest, it's a European feel. Behold, the Lamb of God. We don't talk that way. We say, look, the Lamb of God. What I was looking for was a translation that did three things at the same time. I wanted something close to the original languages. I wanted something smooth enough to memorize, and I wanted something devotional enough to carry with me in my personal study. every morning and I didn't want three Bibles, three translations. I couldn't find anything until I found the CSB. This is the Bible I preach from, this is the Bible I teach from, this is what I memorize through. It's become easy for me. Now, we'll give you a full disclaimer. I've partnered with Lifeway to produce

many different Bible reading plans, even two different Bibles. The Disciple Study Bible is one we have if you're familiar or interested in, and it's a Bible with the CSB translation. It's a translation for me and my wife that gives us all three things and scratches all of those three itches. But at the end of the day, let me just say this. For your primary Bible, you should choose one of the three recommended ones I recommend, the NASB, the ESV, or the CSB. Pick one of those and stay with it for a while. Build roots in the text. Don't jump around every six months or eight months to a new translation. Why? Because depth comes from sustained engagement with one text. Now, if you're looking for something to read devotionally, to have a fresh perspective on the passage, one you've read your entire life, change it up and read the NIV or the NLT. There are mornings when reading a passage in the NLT will open up something in your life and in your heart that you haven't seen or maybe walked past for years. Try it, I promise you. But if you want something to supplement your reading, to maybe give you a whole different perspective, a new insight, you may wanna read the message. Again, don't use it as your primary text.

Use it to supplement what you're reading already. By the way, if you wanna go really deep in the text, then you may wanna look up an inner linear Bible or an interlinear Bible. And if you don't have one, you ready for this? You can go to blueletterbible.com and have access not only to the interlinear Bible, but all kind of commentaries and texts that are free for anyone. Maybe you're in seminary or Bible college, whatever it is. If you wanna go deep in the text, you can go to that website and you have access to all. And here's one more thing I'll say before I move on. Don't let anyone put you down for the Bible you have in your hand. Don't let anyone make you feel spiritually inferior because you have a certain translation that they don't have or they think they're superior to you. The goal of Bible translation was never to argue about the translations. The goal of Bible translation is to get you in the Word until the Word gets into you. So you study it, so you memorize it. Let the Word shape your thinking, your decisions, your character, your relationships. The translation conversation is worth having. Obviously, we've had it now. But it should never become a barrier to you opening your Bible today and reading God's Word. Here's what I want you to know.

At the end of the day, here's the answer. What is the best translation? The one you actually read. I find a lot of people argue for a translation. They never study themselves. I hope you've enjoyed this video. I know it's longer than usual, but hopefully it's been helpful to you. It gives you a picture of Bibles and translations. And you may disagree with the chart that I put up and the way I rank these different versions. If you have a different order, I'd love to hear it in the comments section. And if you know someone who is journeying through this process now and they wanna learn about translations and which one they should pick, make sure you share it with them. I know they would benefit from that. I know I have when I started studying this myself. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, go ahead and do that now. And until next time, let's get into the Word until the Word gets into us.