Which Bible Translation Should I Read?

Read a faithful translation that you understand and will keep opening. For most people starting out, that is a clear modern version such as the NIV, CSB, NLT or the Berean Standard Bible. If you want to stay close to the original wording, choose the ESV, NASB or NKJV. Catholic readers can begin with the NABRE or the RSV Second Catholic Edition.

That is the short answer. The longer one is worth a few minutes, because the differences between English Bibles are real, they are not random, and once you see how they arise you can choose calmly instead of anxiously.

Why are there so many English translations?

A Bible translation is a rendering of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Scriptures into another language. English has many of them for three plain reasons.

English itself keeps changing. A sentence that was clear in 1611 can be hard going now, and a few words have reversed their sense.

Scholars also know more than they once did. Older manuscripts have come to light, and the study of the ancient languages has moved on.

And translators aim at different readers. A version made for public reading in church, one made for close study, and one made for a twelve-year-old will not sound alike, even when all three are careful.

The need for translation is as old as the Bible. When Ezra read the Law to the people who had returned from exile, others stood by to make it understood.

⁸They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.

What do word-for-word and thought-for-thought mean?

Every translator has to decide how closely to follow the form of the original sentence. The answers fall along a range.

Formal equivalence, often called word-for-word, keeps as near as English allows to the words and structure of the source. You see more of how the original is built, and you sometimes have to work harder at the meaning.

Dynamic equivalence, often called thought-for-thought or functional equivalence, restates the meaning of each phrase in natural English. It reads easily, and the translator has made more of the interpretive decisions for you.

A paraphrase goes further and retells the text freely, usually in one writer's voice. The Message by Eugene Peterson is the best-known recent example.

No translation is purely one thing. The committee behind the CSB describes its method as optimal equivalence, a deliberate blend of the two approaches. The NRSV translators summed up theirs as being as literal as possible and as free as necessary. Crossway calls the ESV essentially literal.

You can hear the range in a psalm almost everyone knows. Here is the King James Version of 1611.

¹The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. ²He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. ³He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Here is the Berean Standard Bible, a modern translation that stays fairly close to the wording.

¹The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want. ²He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters. ³He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
for the sake of His name.

And here is the World English Bible.

¹Yahweh is my shepherd;
I shall lack nothing. ²He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters. ³He restores my soul.
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

The three agree in substance. The differences are instructive: older verb forms in the King James, quiet waters or still waters, and the World English Bible's choice to print the divine name where most English Bibles follow ancient custom and write the LORD in capitals.

How do the main translations compare?

The table gives the year the complete Bible first appeared and the general approach. Major revisions are in the notes.

A few of these labels are open to argument, and scholars place the NIV and NABRE a little differently along the range. The table is a map for orientation and not a ranking.

Which translation suits you?

Start from how you intend to read.

If you are reading the Bible for the first time

Choose clarity. The NIV, CSB, NLT and BSB all read naturally and were made by teams working from the original languages. If long sentences tire you, the NLT is the gentlest. Our guide to how to start reading the Bible suggests which book to open first.

If you want to study closely

Choose a word-for-word translation such as the ESV, NASB or NKJV, or the NRSVue if you want the version most often cited in academic work. These keep repeated words and sentence patterns visible, which helps when you compare passages.

If you are Catholic

You will want all 73 books. The NABRE is the Bible of the United States bishops' conference, and the readings at Mass in American dioceses come from the earlier New American Bible on which it is based. The RSV Second Catholic Edition is a more literal alternative, and the NRSV Catholic Edition and Good News Translation are on the bishops' list of approved translations. For why the list of books differs at all, see why Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles differ.

If you are Orthodox

There is no single official English Bible for the Orthodox churches, and it is worth asking your priest what your parish reads. The Orthodox Study Bible, completed in 2008, offers an Old Testament based on the Greek Septuagint, which is the Old Testament the Orthodox Church receives, together with the deuterocanonical books.

If you love the old language

Read the King James Version, and let its cadences do their work. It is a good text for memorizing because its rhythms hold. Keep a modern translation nearby for the hard places.

If you want to memorize

Pick one translation and stay with it, since switching makes verses blur. We describe a simple routine in how to memorize Bible verses.

Does the translation change what the Bible teaches?

On the central matters, no. Compare any two of the translations in the table and you will find the same creation, the same commandments, the same Gospel accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the same letters. Committees from different churches, working decades apart, arrive at sentences that differ in style far more often than in substance.

Differences that do touch meaning are usually flagged. Good editions print a footnote where the manuscripts vary or where a Hebrew or Greek phrase can fairly be taken two ways. Reading the footnotes is one of the quiet advantages of a printed study edition or a careful app.

Some choices reflect a tradition. In the angel's greeting to Mary, for example, the RSV Second Catholic Edition reads full of grace, where the first RSV had favored one (Luke 1:28). Neither is careless. Each follows a long line of interpretation, and knowing which line your Bible follows is part of reading it well.

The Bible itself is frank that reading needs help. On the road to Gaza an official is reading Isaiah, and a stranger runs up beside the chariot with a question.

³⁰Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

³¹He said, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” He begged Philip to come up and sit with him.

A translation is the first guide who climbs up to sit beside you. It is fair to ask a second guide now and then.

Why does Emmaus use the BSB, the WEB and the King James?

Most modern translations are under copyright, and an app needs a licence from the publisher to include them, often with limits on how much text may be stored on a device. Emmaus is built on a promise that the whole Bible is free, works offline, and never sits behind a paywall. Public domain translations make that promise possible without conditions.

So the app carries three. The Berean Standard Bible, dedicated to the public domain on 30 April 2023, is the clear modern text for daily reading. The World English Bible is also in the public domain and includes the deuterocanonical books, so Catholic and Orthodox readers have their full Old Testament. The King James Version is there with its Apocrypha for those who pray in its language. You can set two of them side by side on any verse.

If your home translation is a different one, keep it. A printed NIV on the table and a public domain text on your phone get along perfectly well.

How do you settle on one?

Try a simple test over a week.

1. Choose two candidates, one more literal and one more natural.
2. Read the same three passages in each: a psalm such as Psalm 23, a Gospel scene such as Luke 24, and a dense paragraph from a letter such as Romans 8.
3. Notice which one you understood on the first reading, and which one you wanted to read aloud.
4. Ask your pastor or priest what your church reads in worship, since hearing on Sunday what you read on Tuesday helps both.
5. Decide, and stay with your choice for a year.

The year matters more than the decision. A good translation read daily will shape you more than the ideal translation left on a shelf, and a steady daily reading habit is the thing every one of these versions was made to serve.