More on The Bible

There are many versions of the Bible available. Some well known English versions (with abbreviations) are: The New American Standard (NASB); The New International Version (NIV); The King James Version (KJV); The New King James Version (NKJV); The Bible in Basic English (BBE)

Each version is a translation from the original languages. Since the Bible is so old, there are various opinions about the literal meanings of words and phrases. The various opinions result in different wordings in modern languages, which is one reason why there are different kinds of Bibles. It is also true that Bible translation into a modern language takes a long time and is only done infrequently. Because of this and the fact that any language in use is constantly changing, a particular translation of the Bible has aspects of the language it is translated into and over time becomes less current with modern usage of the language.

New International Version (NIV)
The New International Version is a translation of the Bible made by over a hundred scholars working from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. The goals of the translators were to produce an accurate translation that would have clarity and literary quality. The NIV had its beginning in 1965. The NIV New Testament was published in 1973, and the Old Testament was finished in 1978.

New American Standard Bible (NASB)
While preserving the literal accuracy of the 1901 ASV, the NASB has sought to render grammar and terminology in contemporary English. Special attention has been given to the rendering of verb tenses to give the English reader a rendering as close as possible to the sense of the original Greek and Hebrew texts.

Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Revised Standard Version (New Testament, 1946; Old Testament, 1952) is one of the most widely read translations of the Scriptures. Formally, the RSV is a revision of the AV(Authorized Version of 1611, otherwise known as the King James Version) and the ASV (American Standard Version of 1901), utilizing the best texts available at the time.

King James Version (KJV)
In 1604, King James I of England authorized that a new translation of the Bible into English be started. It was finished in 1611, just 85 years after the first translation of the New Testament into English appeared (Tyndale, 1526). The Authorized Version, or King James Version, quickly became the standard for English-speaking Protestants. Its flowing language and prose rhythm has had a profound influence on the literature of the past 300 years.

American Standard Version (ASV)
First published in 1901, this has long been regarded as the most literal translation of the Bible. This makes the ASV very popular for careful English Bible study, but not for ease of reading. While the KJV was translated entirely from "western manuscripts," the ASV was influenced also by the older "eastern manuscripts" that form the basis for most of our modern English translations.

Darby Translation
First published in 1890 by John Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher associated with the early years of the Plymouth Brethren. Darby also published translations of the Bible in French and German.

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
The Bible text designated YLT is from the 1898 Young's Literal Translation by Robert Young who also compiled Young's Analytical Concordance. This is an extremely literal translation that attempts to preserve the tense and word usage as found in the original Greek and Hebrew writings. The text was scanned from a reprint of the 1898 edition as published by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids Michigan. The book is still in print and may be ordered from Baker Book House. Obvious errors in spelling or inconsistent spellings of the same word were corrected in the computer edition of the text.

The Bible in World English (WE)
This New Testament was originally prepared by Annie Cressman, who died in 1993. She was a Canadian Bible teacher in Liberia in West Africa. Whilst teaching students in a Bible School where the language used was English, she found that she was spending more time explaining the meaning of the English than she was teaching the Bible itself. So she decided to write this simple version in easy English so that her students could easily understand.

In 1959 the Full Gospel Publishing House in Toronto, Canada, printed a trial edition of the Gospel of Mark. A further edition was published in 1962 by the American Bible Society. The whole New Testament was first published by SOON Publications in India in 1969 in hardback form. This was assisted by Operation Mobilisation (OM) and was reprinted in 1971.

The vision to rep