English Bible Translations Family Tree | Which Version Is Best?
hi this is Matt Baker today I'm going to show you a family tree of English Bible translations as you probably know there are a lot of different translations available these days from old ones like the King James version two new ones like the English Standard Version in this video I'll be explaining the differences between all of the various translations as well as going through the history of how the Bible came to be translated into English in the first place finally I'll be ending things by sharing with you which translation I personally like the best but first I've got some big news to share with you I am now the proud owner of a small plot of land in Scotland now there's a downside and an upside to this news the downside is that when I say small I mean small as in the size of my plot of land is actually only one foot wide by one foot deep but the upside is that there's this really old law in Scotland that says that anyone who owns at least one square foot of land there has the right to be called a Laird which is the Scottish equivalent of Lord I shall therefore henceforth be known as Lord Matt Baker which is cool because if I ever get around to publishing my own translation of the Bible I can now call it the lmv the Lord matte version but here's the really cool thing you can become a lord too or a lady all you have to do is check out today's sponsor established titles by using the link in the description or pinned comment after purchasing your plot of land they will also plant a tree on your behalf so not only do you get a fancy title and the right to brag to your friends but you also get to help the environment now if you're too humble to take the title for yourself you can also give it as a gift to whoever you want so don't wait check out the link in the description or pinned comment now okay so let's now look at today's family tree I'm going to start by explaining the three colors used on the chart as you probably know the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek the Old Testament aka the Jewish Bible was written in Hebrew with a tiny bit of Aramaic here and there the oldest complete copy of this part of the Bible in the original Hebrew is called the masoretic text and generally speaking this is what Bible translators use when translating the Old Testament however the New Testament is a bit more tricky this is because there are many any different Greek manuscripts available that Scholars can use generally these fall into three main categories first there are Western manuscripts which go back to the early days of the church in Rome they were used to create the Vulgate which is the Latin version of the Bible that was used by the Catholic church for many centuries on this chart the English translations that are based mainly on the Vulgate are colored in red second there are the Byzantine manuscripts also known as the majority text most of these manuscripts were created by the Eastern Church when Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire and in 1516 they were used to create a Greek version of the New Testament known as the textus receptus the English translations that are based mainly on the textus receptus are colored in blue finally there are alexandrian manuscripts also known as the neutral text these include some manuscripts that were found quite recently like within the last 100 years or so generally these manuscripts are the oldest and therefore they are considered to be the most reliable they form the basis of the novum testamentum a greiche also known as the Nestle Allen text which is the Greek text that most Scholars use today so the English translations that are based mainly on the Nestle allend or its precursors are colored in yellow okay so let's now start up at the top and look at some of the earliest attempts to translate the Bible into English the first major attempt was made by a priest named John Wycliffe and he relied entirely on the Latin Vulgate now he actually died before his translation was done but some of his colleagues finished it for him a around 1390 but one thing to keep in mind about wycliffe's Bible is that it was actually written in Middle English not Modern English so it actually makes for a pretty difficult reading the first Bible to be written in Modern English was the Tyndale bible translated by William Tyndale using both the Vulgate as well as a bit of the original Hebrew and Greek now Tyndale was one of the early leaders of the Protestant Reformation and this came through in his work which actually led to his execution for heresy in 1536 because he died early he wasn't able to finish the complete Bible so the Tyndale Bible actually only includes the New Testament the pentateuch and the Book of Jonah now ironically just a few short years after ordering the execution of William Tyndale King Henry VII of England authorized the great Bible which was based mostly on the Tyndale Bible with the rest of the Old Testament being finished by a priest named Miles Coverdale it was the first English Bible to be used in the church services of the Church of England however at this point it was still too expensive for the average person to own a book the size of the Bible that all changed with the publication of the Geneva Bible in 1560. this Bible was very different for several reasons first of all its New Testament was based on the textus receptus rather than on the Vulgate the textus receptus was a Greek New Testament created a few decades earlier by the Dutch philosopher Erasmus using all of the best Byzantine manuscripts available to him at the time secondly the Geneva Bible was created by Calvinists and hence was thoroughly Protestant third it was the first English Bible to use the chapter and verse divisions that we still use to this day a and fourth it was mass produced and therefore was the first Bible to end up in the hands of the average English-speaking person however the Anglican Bishops at the time were not happy about the Geneva Bible as they were worried that it might undermine their Authority they therefore produced The Bishop's Bible just a few years later the Bishops Bible was authorized by Queen Elizabeth the first so England ended up with a situation in which The Bishop's Bible was the one being read from the pulpit but the Geneva Bible was the one being read in the pews this problem was solved in 1611 with the publication of the most famous English translation of all time the King James version it was the third Bible to be authorized by an English Monarch This Time by James the first and it was based on both The Bishop's Bible and the Geneva Bible the KJV as it is now known is still one of the best-selling Bible translations to this day in fact there are some who will only use this particular translation claiming that it is the only one that is fully accurate now while I don't agree with that idea one thing I do agree with is that the language of the King James is particularly beautiful its iconic language has impacted the English language more than any other book ever published in fact it is estimated that over 250 English idioms can be traced directly back to phrases first used in the King James Bible okay now before I move on I'll quickly point out another translation that was created around the same time as the King James the dway Reems Bible the dway Reams was produced by the Catholic church at the time and as such was based on the Vulgate alright let's now move on past the King James the first and only authorized revision of the King James version was the English revised version often simply referred to as the RV or revised version it came out in the UK in 1885 and was quickly followed by the closely related American Standard Version in the U.S in 1901. now these two new translations
differ from the King James in a very important way you see in the centuries that followed the publication of the King James many new manuscripts were found this allowed Scholars to create what's called a critical version of the Greek New Testament one that combined all of the available manuscripts together but in particular relied heavily on the alexandrian text type which represents the oldest and most accurate tradition so the revised version and everything that comes after it uses this new critical text instead of the much older textus receptus nowadays the critical text comes in the form of the Nestle Allen novum testamentum greiche which I mentioned earlier and which is also sometimes referred to as the UBS text which stands for the United Bible Society okay now after the American Standard Version the tree splits in a few different directions we get the RSV the nasb and the living Bible all of which were based directly on the American Standard Version let's start with the RSV or revised Standard Version which dates to the 1950s this translation stands out as being important because it was the first truly ecumenical translation ecumenical means that it was produced by Scholars representing several different Christian denominations in this case there were Protestants Catholics Greek Orthodox Christians and even a Jewish rabbi it was also the first English Bible to get rid of most of the these and vows however the RSV ended up being controversial mostly because of how it translated Isaiah 7 14 in the previous version this verse read the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son the Hebrew word for Virgin there is Alma and it actually just means young woman so the RSV changed this verse to the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son Christians understand this verse as being a direct reference to Jesus so the change although arguably more accurate made a lot of people unhappy this in part led to the creation of the nasb or New American Standard Bible however the nasb mostly stands out because it is generally considered to be the most literal translation of the Bible available in English a literal translation is basically a word for word translation with just a little bit of rearranging here and there so that the text is readable now all of the translations that we've looked at so far have been literal but the nasb is even more literal the living Bible is the complete opposite in fact it's not a translation at all rather it's a paraphrase and in this case it was done by just one man Kenneth Taylor however it made the Bible super easy to read and therefore people really liked it but for now let's go back to the RSV the revised Standard Version was replaced in 1989 by the new revised Standard Version both of these are published by the National Council of churches which is an umbrella organization that represents most of the mainline denominations in the United States now at this point I should probably explain the term Mainline these days churches can basically be divided into two main categories Mainline and Evangelical generally speaking Mainline churches are the more liberal ones like the methodists or episcopalians whereas evangelicals are the more conservative ones like the Baptists or Pentecostals to this day the nrsv is the translation that is preferred by most Mainline Christians as well as by academics and I should point out that one of the main differences between the RSV and the nrsv is that the nrsv is gender neutral so for example Matthew 19 23 in the RSV reads it will be hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven whereas the nrsv reads it will be hard for a rich person now the nrsv was actually updated very recently the latest version known as the nrsv updated Edition was released last year in an electronic format so for example if you go to biblegateway.com which lets you read the Bible in lots of different translations you can already read the nrsvue and it's actually this coming week that the print versions are being released for the first time now the updated version has once again created a bit of controversy this time over First Corinthians 6 verses 9 and 10. in the nasb it says that neither effeminate nor homosexuals will inherit the kingdom of God however in the updated nrsv it says neither male prostitutes nor men who engage in illicit sex will inherit the kingdom of God okay let's now switch from the nrsv which is preferred by Mainline Christians to some of the translations preferred by evangelicals the three most popular are the NIV the ESV and the NLT since its publication in 1978 the NIV or New International Version has pretty much remained in the top spot as the best-selling Bible in America unlike everything we've looked at so far the NIV translators started from scratch and didn't rely on any previous translations they also used a translation philosophy known as Dynamic equivalence meaning that instead of going word for word they went phrase by phrase in an effort to create a more readable translation this same general philosophy was used for the NLT or new Living Translation which came out in 1996 however in this case the translators used Kenneth Taylor's Living Bible as a starting point and tried to retain its popular style the ESV however is very different it's much more literal and is based off the old RSV basically it's a conservative alternative to the more liberal nrsv okay there's still several more translations to cover first of all I want to point out the JPS tanache JPS standing for the Jewish publication Society being a Jewish Bible this translation only includes the Old Testament which we Jews call the Tanakh interestingly though the original JPS Tanakh published in 1917 was based on the American Standard Version which is a Christian translation however the new JPS Tanakh or njps published in 1985 is not based on any previous work it was created from scratch from a team of Jewish Scholars representing all three of the main branches of Judaism Orthodox conservative and reform then there's the new King James version unlike all the other new translations it is not based on the critical text of the New Testament like the old King James it is based on the textus receptus for this reason it is often preferred by Eastern Christians for example it is the translation used for the Greek Orthodox Study Bible let's now look at some Catholic translations I mentioned the dway Reems Bible but a much more recent Catholic translation is the NAB or New American Bible public published in 1978 be careful not to confuse this one with the nasb which I mentioned earlier the NAB is notable in that it's the only English Bible authorized by the Catholic church in the U.S to be read during mass however in 2011 it was updated as the NAB revised Edition or nabre that one has yet to be authorized for use during mass but is recommended by the Catholic church for personal use finally there's the Holmen Christian Standard Bible now updated and known simply as the Christian Standard Bible or csb correct me if I'm wrong but I think this particular version is popular mostly among Southern Baptists okay now as promised I'm going to end by giving you my personal recommendations first of all I should say that anyone doing any sort of serious Bible study should never rely on just one translation it's always best to compare several different versions and if you're able to it's even better to go back to the original Hebrew and Greek perhaps by using an Interlinear together with a Hebrew or Greek dictionary however I know that for everyday reading most people like to have a go-to translation for me since I'm Jewish I usually use the new JPS Tanakh for the Hebrew Bible and the nrsv for the New Testament I like the N JPS because obviously it provides a more Jewish reading of the Bible and I like the nrsv because it's very ecumenical and it's the one that most academics use all right so that was a look at the family tree of English Bible translations if you want to download a free copy of this chart I'll leave a link to it in the description and don't forget to check out established titles while you're at it thanks for watching [Music] foreign
2022-08-14 20:38
